Our Last Week in Guam

Its hard to believe that we have spent our last week in Guam!  We arrived July 4 for our annual CES Couple's Conference.  Its a miracle we made it as tropical storm Chan-Hom sifted slightly north that morning and gave us a chance to slip in before coming back down on Guam with a vengeance.  Our experiences with the weather out here in the Pacific have made me realize that we live in a fantasy world  most of the time, created by wealth and technology, where we think that we have control over our circumstances.  We were glad to make it, not only for the conference but also for a much needed root canal and the chance to wrap us our Family Search Support Office and pack and clean up our apartment.  It turned out to be an impossibly busy week.

Sunday we attended church in the Barrigada Ward for the last time.  We both bore our testimonies and said our good-byes to the delightful people we have come to know and love there.  I ended up spending the second two hours of the block in the Family History Center with Tami Burton helping members prepare names for an upcoming temple trip.  A record 30 are participating.  Grant spent the last two hours of the block with Elder and Sister Hardy working on the soundtrack for the Book of Mormon Pageant for Kosrae. 

 After church all the senior couples gathered at the mission home for FHE.  Because we have traveled so much with our family history assignment, we have gotten to know the couples in the islands and it was really fun to see them again.  They are all strong, adventuresome and hardworking folks.

Tuesday through Thursday were filled with stewardship reports, instruction and socializing.  Wednesday we all went to lunch at Pizza Hut.  These are the BEST people and we feel like we are in our own little Zion when we are gathered with them.  Standing at the end of  the table is Brother Freddie Nicerio, the CES director for Micronesia.  We were also instructed by Elder Tae Gul Jung of the Eighth Quorum of the Seventy and Asia North Area director of Seminaries and Institutes.  

I just have to name all these great folks!  Center:  Elder Jung and Brother Nicerio.  Behind them, left to right:  Elder and Sister Hardy (CES, Chuuk), Elder and Sister Hedgepeth (CES, Pohnpei), Elder and Sister Thomas (Military Relations, Anderson Air Force Base and Navy Base), Elder and Sister Brimhall (CES, Yap), Elder and Sister Guercio (Mission Nurse), Elder and Sister Reed (Self-Reliance, Chuuk), us, Elder and Sister Proffit (CES, Palau), Elder and Sister Martin (Mission Office), Elder (Dr.) and Sister Eliason (Medical, Chuuk), Elder and Sister Furstenau (MLS, Pohnpei), President and Sister Zarbock.  We really love and admire these magnificent people!

We were so busy with so many things that we were not able to attend all of the Conference. One of them was a meeting with Governor Eddie Baza Calvo.  On Wednesday morning we slipped away to meet with  Barrigada Stake Family History Center Director, Tami Burton, to present some family history to him.  He is an avid history buff and knows a lot about Guam and his family's history.  He was so excited and interesting to talk to I think we all came away wishing we had more time to just sit and share.

We met with the governor several months ago to try to start the process of digitizing Guam's vital records.  At that time he expressed interest in knowing more about his great great great grandfather's sister, Carmen Olivares Calvo, who married an American whaler and eventually ended up in Alameda, California in the 1870s.  We decided to follow this question and in our research ran across a distant relative (by marriage) who has been interested in Carmen's family for a while.  He had done some excellent research and was willing to share it with us to share with the governor.  We printed a very nice book from a PDF file he sent.  For our part, we entered and sourced all the information we could find about Carmen and her descendants in FamilySearch and then generated family group records with sources.  We printed this also and created a second book.  Here you can see the governor holding both volumes.

The digitizing project is still in the approval stages, but the governor is squarely behind it and has asked that it be a priority.  Hopefully it will happen soon!