Happy Easter!

Our visit to Kosrae continued and included a meeting with the Assistants to the President and the Kosrae Zone, hosted by us at the senior couple's house.  Pictured below are Elders Murdoch, Blackwell, Gibb, Fabiano, Ferguson, Conk, Amato and Johnson.

We enjoyed meeting with families on Kosrae and talking about temple and family history.  This beautiful family hopes to go to the Manila temple this year to be sealed.

    This newly baptized family is also hoping to be sealed in the temple soon.

While on Kosrae, we also helped members research and record their family history.  Records for Kosrae are included in the Pohnpei vital records and we were able to help Rory (below) and others fill in their My Family Booklets.

Permides, the lone family history consultant on Kosrae is great.  Here she is helping one of the sisters from the Lelu Branch.  We worked out in the breezeway where it was cool.  The chapel has no air conditioning but it does have a great wireless internet connection.

We enjoyed our stay in Kosrae in the little missionary house on the beach.  The sunrises were especially beautiful.

We flew to Pohnpei on Sunday, March 29 after a 24 hour delay.  Monday morning we looked out our hotel window and saw this Founding Day parade go by.  Students were celebrating the 22nd anniversary of the establishment of the College of Micronesia.

Above is the Kosraean Student Association.  They sang a Protestant hymn as they marched by.

Next came the Pohnpeian Student Association. They boy in the blue shirt is blowing on a big shell.

Above is the Pingelap/Mokil (two small atolls that are part of Pohnpei State) Student Organization float.  The queen who is riding in the back and who you cannot see is one of our family history consultants.

These are the students from Chuuk.

These students are from Yap.  The yellow on their bodies is turmeric.  The girls in this photo are wearing lavalavas, a sign that they are from the outer islands of Yap State.

After the parade the student organizations performed dances.  We especially liked this one by the Pingelap/Mokil group depicting fierce warriors defending their women against European/American whalers.

      The Chuukese students performed a stick dance--a sort of ritual mock battle with lots of yelling.

The Yapeese students also performed.

That evening we went down to Wone to attend Family Home Evening with the group members there.  Peter Hebel showed us his beautiful garden.  Here you can see his peas, corn, pineapple, watermelon and bananas.  He also had cucumbers, squash and some citrus trees.

Later that evening we enjoyed a Spirit-filled family home evening.  Peter's wife is in the center.  The Wone group (part of the Kitti Branch) is truly one big family--most of the people in the group are related!

Wednesday evening we trained the new High Councilman in charge of Family History as well as the newly called Family History Director at the Pahnasang Stake Center.  They are talented and committed and will be a great asset to the work on Pohnpei.

Later we trained some of the Family History Consultants.  We challenged them, within the next month, to each complete their own My Family Booklet and also to Find (a name of an ancestor), Take (or share that name with the temple), and Teach (someone else how to do it too).

We arrived back in Guam, safe and sound, on Thursday evening.  Saturday we had our annual Easter Picnic at Ritidian Beach, one of our very favorite places on Guam.  Sunday we celebrated Easter with our dear fellow missionaries and friends in the Barrigada Ward.

We are grateful to have been kept safe from Typhoon Maysak and to be serving in this beautiful place.