For over a year now Elder Johnsen has been teaching the youth Sunday School class. In 2012, the lessons were from the Book of Mormon, and he totally loved teaching that material; he was sure nothing could top that experience. It has been an unexpected surprise for him to find how much he’s enjoyed teaching the new, “Come, Follow Me” lessons to this youth SS class. It’s been an even greater joy for Sister Johnsen (who normally teaches in-service) to find that Elder Johnsen can use the material for our monthly in-service lessons. This past Tuesday we invited all the branch leaders and teachers to join the seminary and institute teachers for our monthly in-service lesson. EJ reprised a lesson he taught in youth SS. To begin, he had Eli and Daniel demonstrate how US babies are fed in a high chairs (most Palauan families don’t have high chairs). They really hammed it up; it could have been a skit from one of those TV comedy improv shows. The class was laughing SO hard.
Then he had the class read D&C 88:122 and contrasted the teaching styles, where a teacher just spoon feeds the learners, to a class where everyone is engaged, and students and teachers are edifying each other. After the opening EJ assigned each participant a section from page 4-5 of “Teaching the Gospel in the Savior’s Way.” Each student was to find a scripture that supported the “Savior’s way of teaching” discussed in their section. Then each person taught their section to the rest of the class. The lesson didn’t end until 8:30 (about 30 minutes longer than usual). To close the meeting EJ asked each participant “What will you do in your next lesson to emulate the Saviors methods?” SJ made an insightful comment about something she read about how people learn and how the brain works from an interesting book called, Evolve Your Brain. She pointed out that the book suggests that research shows that we learn better when new information connects to something that we already know. Sister Johnsen said that this shows how brilliant the Savior’s teaching was. He always connected his teaching with something that people knew. He shared simple stories, parables, and real-life examples that made sense to them. He helped them discover gospel lessons from their own experiences, and from the world around them. He spoke of fishing, of childbirth, of working in the fields. To teach about watching over each other, He told stores about rescuing lost sheep. To teach His disciples to trust Heavenly Father’s tender care, He urged them to “consider the lilies of the field.” (see Matt 6:25-34) We felt good about the class. It was our final in-service on our mission in Palau, and we have a greater appreciation for the Master teacher, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
By Wednesday morning we had finally finished collecting all the supplies and tools needed to construct stairs down the slippery slope that leads to the Tervet family home in Ngerbeched. The slippery slope was even more slippery than usual because it rained before we arrived, and also rained during our work. While the Elders worked on the increasingly soggy slippery slope, Elder Johnsen was reminded of one of his favorite children books, "Horton Hatches the Egg" which is about an elephant named Horton who agrees to sit on an egg for the good-for-nothing, lazy bird, Maysie, so she can take a quick vacation. What he soon realizes is that the bird is not taking a quick vacation; she flies off to the beach and decides to never come back. Horton sits on the egg through the rain and the snow, and even when his friends ridicule him, he stays on the egg because "an elephant's faithful one hundred percent." No matter how tough times were, Horton stuck to his word and followed through with his task until the end. Likewise the Elders were faithful 100%, even though the work was hard and the rain poured down on them. We were pleased with the result as shown in these photos.
On Friday night we had Clair and Betty over to play games and eat food. They are two North Americans from the St. George Utah area. They are here in Palau with a mostly LDS crew working to repair the compact road (the road that circles the big island of Babeldaob). We ended up playing Mexican train. About 1/3 way thru EJ got a call to go give a blessing to Jose Evangelista, so Clair was his companion. While the guys were gone Betty told Sister Johnsen the story of how she had just gotten up from her prayer to Heavenly Father when the telephone rang and EJ was calling to invite her and her husband over to play games. She had been asking Heavenly Father to bless her so that she could enjoy her time here in Palau more. She felt that the Lord had heard and answered her prayer. Just a coincidence, right? We have come to agree with the idea expressed by Gerald Lund that a coincidence is when we can’t see the levers and pulleys being pulled on from the other side of the veil. Elder Bednar called those type of coincidences, Tender Mercies (see “The Tender Mercies of the Lord”, Ensign or Liahona, May 2005, 99-102). After the blessing the boys came back to the apartment and we finished our game. The party broke up about 11:00 and was super fun for all involved. Elder and Sister Johnsen always say, “It’s all missionary work.”
Happy Birthday to Elder Fullmer! We had our Sunday birthday dinner for him and had our usual poke and pour cake which we haven’t had for so long that Elder Dopp had never eaten one! He missed all the poke and pour fun we had! Wishing Elder Fullmer many, many more!
The other big event this week is that we learned that our replacements will be Allan and Kristine Carter from St. George, Utah. (Yes, they know all the construction crew that is here fixing the compact road). Just a coincidence, right? They are a very talented couple in drama, music, and church leadership. If we would have had 100 couples to choose from they would have been our first choice. It is such a relief to know that our “relief” has been named, and that our little branch in Palau will have such capable senior couple assigned to assist with the Lord’s work here. We fully agree with the sentiment they expressed in a recent email to us, “Isn't the gospel wonderful, and we have this opportunity to share it with the entire world?” We sing in chorus, “Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!” (Hymn 193). (They say they will be keeping a blog, so you mothers of the missionaries in Palau can still keep up with your sons!)
This week at seminary we were studying John 10 in which Jesus is spoken of as the good Shepherd. While we discussed verse 4 where the sheep know His voice, we heard a unique story told by Eli about the value of knowing the voice to follow. During WWII, a ship was sinking and another ship was alongside to remove the men from the sinking ship. The ships were both rocking furiously, but at exact opposite frequency—that is, at one point their sides would be together and the other point their sides would be far apart. The rocking frequency was such that in order to make the jump from one ship to the other the seaman would have to make his jump when the vessels sides were farthest apart; then while the person was in the air the vessels sides would rock together and he would safely land on the deck of the rescue ship. If they jumped when the vessels sides were next to each other the gap between the ships would open while the seaman was in midair, and he would fall in between the ships and be crushed and drowned in the ocean below. Many of the men being rescued knew and trusted the man who was commanding them when to jump. While it was difficult to implicitly trust his command to jump when the ships sides were farthest apart, those that did so were saved. So it is with our faith in the good shepherd, we make the leap of faith at the command of the good shepherd trusting that the outcome is according to his will. Sister Johnsen likes the saying she found in the book The Artist’s Way which says, “Leap and the net will appear.”
We had one of those trusting experiences on Tuesday night when we opened up our CES inservice lesson to all the branch leaders and teachers. Elder Johnsen’s lesson was about teaching after the manner of the spirit. After laying the groundwork by reading D&C 50: 13-22 and using Matthew O. Richardson’s October 2011 conference talk on the subject of “teaching after the manner of the spirit”, not in front of, not behind, but BY the spirit, we divided the attendees into teams of two. Each team used Teaching No Greater Call (teaching by the spirit section) to create a list of things we can do to teach by the spirit. After their reports EJ concluded with ideas from Richardson’s talk where he suggested that we must teach as the Holy Ghost teaches. He “teaches what we must know and do so we may become what we must be” and secondly “the Holy Ghost teaches by inviting, prompting, encouraging and inspiring us to act. Christ assured us that we come to the truth when we live doctrine and act accordingly.” Our final section was to have each person individually answer out loud the question, “How can you use this material to teach by the spirit.” Each person found at least one thing (from our long list on the board) that they committed to do so their teaching would be BY the spirit. Sister J made rice crispy squares for a treat—the meeting couldn’t have gone better. After it was over EJ received a text from the Elder’s Quorum President, “I really enjoyed attending in-service. I learned a lot and felt the spirit. Thanks.” For us it was a leap of faith to invite the busiest people in the branch to ANOTHER meeting, but it was gratifying that the good Shepherd would send the comforter so the instruction would model the lesson we were trying to teach.
On Tuesday morning we were up at the church doing service. We actually had two project choices. We could put a second coat of paint on the new doors on the BP and FHC (which some of you will remember were destroyed during our church break-in about a month ago), paint the back of the shed, and do some other deep cleaning work, or we could go and move some dirt at Diane’s place on Dead Dog road. (That’s our name for the road that Diane lives on because the day we found her house there was a dead dog on the road). We finally decided to split up and do both. We feel very happy that we made that decision. As we were concluding our work and the Koror elders had come back to the church, a guy from the Czech Republic stopped by the church and visited for a while with EJ. He was just walking to the crocodile farm, saw our church sign which said that visitors were welcome, and just stopped in to see what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was all about. He was actually surprised to learn that the church has a presence in the Czech Republic (which we knew because of our friends, the Hrncirik's served a mission there).
Elder Fullmer and Gubler actually had a “real” discussion with him, gave him a Book of Mormon and later that day had a follow-up meeting where they gave him more church literature. Talk about divine positioning. He’s been here in Palau for a month. This is the first time he’s stopped at the church, and this is the only Tuesday we’ve been at the church doing service this month. He took the leap of faith as prompted by the spirit, and missionaries were at the church to answer his questions. Coincidence? We don’t think so!
We just can’t stop bragging on our awesome Palau missionaries. This week the elders in Meyuns, Elder Fullmer and Pauga taught 51 lessons and Elder’s Gubler and Dopp taught 61. These are not just lessons for the sake of numbers, these are lessons taught to real people who are making and keeping commitments. The elders have taken the leap of faith which resulted from recent training, and we are astounded by the way the work of the Good Shepherd is going forward. Elder Gubler also celebrated his 20th birthday this past week, but he was in Guam on his actual birthday, so we celebrated it a week late. When we asked him what he wanted he said, a German chocolate cake. We were impressed to find the cake and the frosting in the store here…it’s the little miracles!
We’ve also continued our work this week with our 5 bright and dedicated Koror Elementary spelling bee students. Since we were only called in to help beginning January 24, and the island wide Spelling Bee is this coming Saturday (February 16th) our students have had much less preparation than did our Meyuns students last year. Nevertheless, they’ve been working hard and also taking a leap of faith that the extra hour they spend with us each day after school will pay dividends in a better spelling bee performance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” As we look inside of ourselves for our own faith, we are able to move forward in ways that we didn’t previously think possible. Every day we can practice our own special “leap” of faith!
Elder Johnsen was surprised this month that his picture project actually stumped the experts in Salt Lake. He has been using the windows Snipping tool to create head shots of our branch members, and get them loaded into the online LDS directory. By the first week in September he had captured about 175 photo’s but had been unable to get them uploaded. His appeals for system support finally reached the QA Engineers at church headquarters where they have noted all the problems he’s been having, not only uploading pictures but also mapping each member’s location on the LDS mapping tool. On September 14 Elder Johnsen received the following note back from SLC, “Well, I think you’ve stumped our experts. We just don’t know what to do from our end to make this easier for you. I’ve asked everyone I can find to ask with no success. I apologize and appreciate your patience in dealing with all these hiccups.” On most of the problems we are experiencing the experts could duplicate the problem and promised fixes in the next release of the directory and mapping tool (next month), but on the picture upload problem they couldn’t replicate the problem in SLC. Elder Johnsen took that as good news, there wasn’t a bug it was just a dial-up speed issue. So arising at 4:00 a.m. he began playing around and instead of trying to upload the pictures one at a time, he tried the multiple upload feature and wonder of wonders, it worked. On his first try he was able to upload about 75% of his head shots. It took all day, but by day’s end on Friday—all the pictures we had were uploaded and associated with the right person in the directory. His goal is to have pictures and locations for 90% of the members in the branch by the time we leave Palau.
Speaking of stumping the experts, we just had our second new AC evaporator replaced in our 2005 Corolla. The mechanic can’t figure out what is causing them to repeatedly get holes—we’re sure that Elder Anderson in Guam who keeps buying us new ones and sending them can’t either. What really stumps us is now that we have the Corolla all fixed up: new AC, brakes, tune up, oil change, new tie rods and tie rod ends, tires, paint job—we just took delivery of a brand new Toyota Yaris this week; it will replace our fixed up Corolla! You’d be surprised how much running around is required to take delivery of a new car in Palau; it has to clear customs, have all the taxes and fees paid, then you have to get it inspected, titled and registered. Other than rental cars, this is the first new car that we’ve ever had to drive. Elder Johnsen has always purchased vehicles which are two or more years old, and then drives them until they’ve lost all value and are uneconomic to repair. Don’t get too envious about our new ride, here’s what “consumer reports” says about the Yaris, “The original Yaris hatchback scored a dismal 52 out of 100 points in our road tests. Still, that looks good compared with the redesigned 2012 model, which dropped to 41. This spartan hatchback subjects you to a noisy cabin, uncomfortable seats, and a cheap-looking interior. It’s also slow to accelerate and has a choppy, uncomfortable ride. One redeeming quality is its excellent fuel economy of 32 mpg overall.” We’re sure our Yaris must be much better than what they evaluated; our Yaris has 4 doors, it’s not a hatchback, ha. Our main complaint is we no longer have power door locks and power windows. When you get in and out of a car all day long, like we do, it really gets old opening the car door with the key (no remote entry like the Corolla), and then leaning across the car to unlock the passenger door. It’s a good thing both Elder and Sister Johnsen are a spry 62 years old.
Speaking of getting older, we celebrated two birthdays this week, both Elder Early and Punga are turning 22 so we turned our typical Sunday dinner with the Elders into a birthday party. Here you see the two Elder’s about to blow out their respective candle on the birthday cake.
We stumped the experts; they couldn’t guess what kind of jello we used in the poke and pour cake (it actually was a white cake with strawberry Jell-o and vanilla pudding frosting). Sister Johnsen had great gifts for both Elders. Elder Early, after wearing short sleeve white shits for nearly two years, got a royal blue long sleeve dress shirt with matching tie (he’s going home soon). And Elder Punga received construction paper, colored sharpie pens, envelopes and stamps he is our artist and has a girl back home to whom he regularly writes. Sister Johnsen is the best gift giver! For dinner we had the famous GrandmaFay chicken pot pie recipe, with fruit salad, and brown sugar muffins. It was an awesome meal. Elder Johnsen was especially glad that there was one serving left over—that’s one lunch he won’t have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich this coming week.
This was another super busy week for us doing member leader support work. We had branch council this past Sunday so Elder Johnsen spent considerable time updating the budget so that could be reviewed. He also updated the October calendar, prepared the agenda and found out about the Fair which will be held at the end of the month at the midtown Bethlehem Park. We were considering having a booth as a follow-up to our open house which we held about 6 months ago.
Of course, Elder Johnsen also taught his usual Sunday school class—Sister Johnsen wrote an 11 page primary program, got the YW ready to sing a special musical number in Sacrament meeting, and also prepared and delivered a great talk about Temples in Sacrament meeting. At the end of September Sister Johnsen will be teaching a temple preparation class. We have a group of nearly 10 members who are preparing to go to the temple over the thanksgiving break. Given the limited economic circumstances of most of our members it is a great blessing that the church can help with travel expenses for first time temple attendees.
Elder Johnsen’s tried to stump his Sunday School class asking them what it would have felt like to have been numbered among the righteous Nephites who were waiting for the promised day and night and day with no darkness, which was the Sign predicted by Samuel the Lamanite Prophet of the Saviors birth in the holy land. The wicked part of the people set aside a day when the righteous believers would be killed if the sign did not appear. They were not stumped at all as to what they would do—some would hide, others would prostrate themselves before their enemies, others would fight rather than die passively. We supposed that the wicked would wait until night fall to do the dirty deed—then we speculated what the wicked man would be thinking as he sat at his grinding wheel sharpening his machete waiting for a night fall that didn’t come. What would he be feeling when at the setting of the sun it was as bright as noon day? We supposed that it would be much like how the wicked will feel at the time of the saviors second coming. We hope that some of the work we are doing will help us and the Koror Topside Branch prepare for that day—no one will want to be among the wicked when that day comes.
We are not stumped about what to do this coming week. The work list is so long!
