Living legends

 It's been a week with bits of this, that, and the other. But a few things stand out as legendary.

 We watched another session of General Conference for our Sabbath services as a branch. We were bold and issued an invitation to our Advanced and Intermediate English  classes to join us for it and explained it would all be in English but would provide a good chance to practice their listening comprehension. We asked for an RSVP, simply because one of Pres. Uber's many talents is baking. Last week he brought cinnamon rolls and caramel corn. They were legendary! This week he made chocolate chip cookies and cheese rolls! But only two of our many students sent a notice that they wanted to come. Imagine our joy when 5 showed up, only one being one who'd RSVP'd!  Is there a future member,  missionary, or branch president in our midst? You never can tell at this point.

The brother on the end came the week before but does not attend the English class. The other 4 are our students. Hey, where are the girls? 

Jack stayed after to talk.

They were all troopers to stay and listen the full two hours, though I don't know if they comprehended all that much. We always pray they'll feel the Spirit somehow, when the choir sings perhaps, or a prayer, or in the English words they might understand. 

An unofficial branch activity this week was a "Girls Night Out" with 3 of the 4 Da Silva girls. Their mother is the RS Pres and they truly are the pioneer family of Timor-Leste. Sister Uber chose her favorite local restaurant that's run as a vocational training center for young women and the food was par excell'ance! She wanted us missionaries to talk about our previous and current missions in natural conversation to germinate the idea of the young women possibly serving missions themselves one day. We also all shared about how we met our husbands and our temple marriages. It was truly a special evening spent with these darling gals.

I'm guessing the food was probably the fanciest meal they'd ever experienced in their young life. We hope the memories of this night will stay with them. And who knows if we planted any seeds? That's what we're trying to do. 

We had yet another chance to eat out this week because it was Sister Snow's birthday so we helped her celebrate by feasting at an outdoor rooftop restaurant. The night and view couldn't have been more spectacular. 

She is a real joy to serve with and we have been blessed to know her kindness and pleasant demeanor. She's also an awesome cookie maker! 

Sister Snow has lived most of her married life in Caldwell, Idaho. We all were pretty surprised to see this T-shirt on one of our students, advertising her home state.

It made no sense to any of us, even the owner of the shirt was clueless what it meant. 

Potato Variety Awareness Day maybe? 

With the Lallitans, we enjoyed a few more group outings this week. One was a memorial dedicated to the two Nobel Peace Prize winners in Timor-Leste's quest for independence. Our tour guide was John, a very friendly fellow who spoke excellent English.

Then on P-day we ventured to a cultural arts museum, dedicated to preserving the weaving traditions of the Timorese people. Every village has its own distinctive "tais" pattern that the natives readily recognize. The government doesn't want these skills and arts to die out with the modern generation so they created this museum and we had two excellent tour guides explain all they knew about it to us.

"And they did have fine-twined linen and they did work all manner of cloth, that they might clothe themselves from their nakedness"

I was quite fascinated by what I was seeing and wondering how these motifs began in the first place. Where do their cultural stories and traditions originate? It's pure speculation on my part but I was seeing ancient temple motifs; seraphim, the brazen serpent on the pole, and the Tree of Life. Could they be a remnant of the house of Israel? I love to think so. Look at the king and queens' crowns too.

The tour guide told me the bulb looking thing represented the King's sacred house and throne.

        I'm seeing 3 Degrees of Glory here with even more divisions on the highest level.  

We also became familiar with a Dili legend of a young boy being rescued by a crocodile by riding on his back.

The details of the story are vague to me due to my poor memory but much like our Timpanogas legend of the Sleeping Indian Maiden, if you look at the mountain ridge surrounding Dili, you'll see the snout and body of the legendary crocodile.

                              Can you see it?

                Easier to see in storybook form

The beaches here are unique in that there are no gulls whatsoever. I think I read online that the pigeon is the National Bird for Timor-Leste but we would vote for the chicken. Who needs alarm clocks with these early risers? We have many free range roosters and hens and chicks running freely on our apartment property. (Believe me, they are funner to watch than hear.) We've watched the adolescents get their crests as they've matured just in the 5 weeks we've lived here. They really have beautiful plumage in an endless variety of colors.

This week's lighthearted gravestone find was quite by accident. I was transcribing some people and I have come to the realization I will never stay caught up. So I was trying to delete some illegible ones and this one caught my eye and made me smile. Even though it's hard to decipher, I had to show it here as proof.

His name is Melgipson, born in 1989, but the little guy only lived 3 months. Australia is TL's closest neighbor and Mel must've been famous everywhere. Be careful who you name your children after! 

 

 This week Elder Dunlap got a sourdough start from President Uber and after 18 months of flop loaves on our mission, he finally found his groove and produced his best loaf evah! 

                   Now we're rolling in the dough

                    Even the bread was happy!

But what horrible timing.  For two weeks now, the Lallitans have been living in 2 different hotel rooms while we occupied the 2nd missionary apartment. But the writing is on the wall. Our time is soon coming to leave this place. Waah! We were informed by the mission that Elder Dunlap's visa is processed and now they are working on mine so it might not be too much longer. We figured the Lallitans should get settled into their permanent landing spot and we should be the vagrants. So we volunteered to vacate early and live our last days as squatters. We went out looking at every possible hotel and temporary apartment in Dili. It was like house hunting, I loved the experience and fell in love with every possible place, even the sketchy dives and the remote locations, just imagining living like castaways on a deserted island. (Girls just love to play house with the boys they love!) The feature we were looking for most was a kitchenette where we could cook meals for ourselves rather than eat out. Of all the places we looked, we finally found the best one 500 feet away. Seriously! It has almost everything we asked for in prayer except a convection oven but gratefully, we live close enough to our old place, we can walk there to bake our bread. And breakfast is included here! The Lord is often in the details of our lives if we'll ask Him to be. 

                Perfect for our temporary needs.

So we don't know when our last day is but we are preparing our hearts for another separation. Even our computer took a crash and decided it couldn't go on. How can we teach English now without Power Point?  Maybe it will resurrect. We know we can't stay here longer than our extended tourist visa which expires May 15th. So we're facing the inevitable end of a beautiful chapter of our mission. These days have been nothing less than legendary and never to be forgotten. 

"Wherefore, as ye are agents, ye are on the Lord's errand; and whatever ye do according to the will of the Lord is the Lord's business.But all things must come to pass in their time."

Doctrine and Covenants 64: 29, 32