Roper Fijian Crusades: Busy is Better than Bored

I just have to say that we truly love what we are doing. We are extremely busy though. Now that school is going, it is non-stop. This is what our typical week is like....it won't sound as crazy as it is. On Monday mornings, Kim teaches the college (junior high & high school) teachers one principle each week to help them be a more effective teacher. He is teaching them John Goodlad's 14 scales of excellent teachers. I think they have been enjoying them. Many of them have been doing his assignments and he's been able to observe one teacher using some of the principles in his classroom. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings he teaches an ITEP course to 4 teachers that are taking it for credit and 1 that is suppose to be there for credit but has only been to 1 class and there are 2-3 other teachers that come because they are interested in the class. This term he is teaching classroom management. It's been a great class. Monday through Thursday I have been teaching a group of 12 students who are year 13. (Yes the schools here go one year longer than we do at home!) I am teaching them reading strategies and principles so they can mentor other students who are reading on a 1st-3rd grade level of reading. It's pretty hard to succeed in junior high or high school when you can't read higher than a 3rd grade level. I have finished my training with them and this week we will begin testing to see which students they will be tutoring. They are a great group of students. They are super excited to get started helping other students. Two weeks ago we had the prefect inductions, which is kind of where the student body officers who were selected are announced. It's a big deal and they have a big ceremony. They each wear a pin that tells their position. Their parents come and "pin them." All but 2 or 3 of the students I am teaching are prefects. And both the head boy and girl and their assistants are in my class. That just tells you the caliber of kids that they are. GREAT GREAT GREAT KIDS! I love working with them. On Wednesdays I also am teaching the Primary (Elementary) Teachers reading strategies. The kids are really struggling in reading and the teachers really do not know what to do with them. I taught the lower grades last year and now I am doing the upper grades but have invited the younger grades to join us for a good review. Most of them come, but the few that need the help the most. Isn't that usually the case? The 6th grade teacher asked me to test about 20 of the 6th graders on their reading and give her some suggestions on how to help her. This has extended to a few 5th graders as well. So I've been busy doing that all last week. We have also been asked to help with the new dorm students. The college opened dorms for the first time ever. It is not uncommon for the more elite high schools to have dorms to host students that live out in the villages so they can attend school. The other church schools in the south pacific all have dorms. They host students in grades 9-13. I don't know why, but Fiji has never had dorms. They built a beautiful new facility and opened the doors in January. They are not full for this first year, with only 54 students. I think it's a little less than half the capacity. The students have been brought in from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. They only have students that are grades 11-13 this year. Some went to the church schools in Samoa last year and lived in their dorms. They have told us that ours are much better as there are private bedrooms for every 4 students. In Samoa, there was just one huge bunk room that they all lived in. They are all very happy, excited and appreciative to be here. Anyway, they have asked us if we would go to the dorms on Friday and Sunday evenings and do activities and devotionals with the students. Wow! Has this ever been a lot of fun! We love doing all of these things, but they all take a LOT of preparation. It seems like we spend hours and hours preparing for a 30 minute lesson. OH, and of course we have our branch that we attend. We've been asked to teach the gospel doctrine class once a month and I teach primary once a month also. There is a 15 year old girl in the branch that has dropped out of school because she can't read. And when I say she can't read, I mean she CAN NOT read. I don't know how you can attend school for 10 years and not even know all the alphabet. I'm not sure if she dropped out of school or if she was kicked out because of tests scores. I think it's possible that that is the case. Anyway, I am helping her a little bit on Sundays after church. I don't know if it'll do much good but she wants to learn and it for sure can't hurt. There are so many needy people that my heart just aches for them. We do what we can but unfortunately we can't do it all.

That's a run down on what a normal week looks like. It's Hot Hot Hot here right now and very humid. We've had one small cyclone that went through. We got a lot of rain and one night of heavy wind. It took out several trees around town and the power was out for about 24 hours for us but longer in other areas. We had our self-reliant missionary couple leave and go home about 3 weeks ago. She has battled respiratory illness for several months and wasn't getting better so they finally decided to just go home. They lived in a much nicer apartment than ours. No one is coming to replace them so they asked us to move to their place and they are going to shut our apartment down. We were HAPPY to get a nice place but it was a royal pain to move. We really liked our neighbor. We're not too far from where we were so I'm sure we will get together from time to time. But it's not the same.

Life is good. The gospel is true. We are led by a prophet of God. The Book of Mormon testifies and teaches of Jesus Christ. It will bring us closer to God and give us strength to obey and avoid temptations. I love studying it and am grateful it is the curriculum for Come For Me this year. We love hearing about our dear friends back home. We miss our missionary friends who have returned home after serving faithfully. We love our family and miss them more than they know!