July 24th Celebration - Pioneer Day

 The Tarawa East Stake had a Pioneer Day celebration around July 24 (the 21st this year), which started with a pioneer trek of 6 kilometers from one chapel to Moroni HS.

 We made it through the gates to Moroni HS with the first group.  The guy with his walking cane (Ture, prounced "Suray") has bad knees after playing soccer for BYU-Hawaii.   He is the dorm parent for the young men.

This is their  "tired look."

 President Iotua Tune and his wife, Mei, participated.  President Tune was one of the first members in Kiribati, back in 1973, after attending Liahona HS in Fiji. 

 Etuete (Edward) is our univeral handyman.  He can fix anything, and services our missionaries' flats with whatever we need.  He usually rides around on a Honda 90 trail bike with a little backpack of tools on his back.  He has a truck for big jobs, but it's amazing what he can do -- from electrical to plumbing and carpentry -- with just his little bag and a lot of smarts.

Young single adults:  the tall one and the girl next to him actually won't be single for long.  Very talented young man in directing music with even large choirs, since he was a youth.  He served a mission in the U.S.  They all have great personalities and love to laugh.

Judy walks by some of the crowd waiting for the "pioneer dancing" and games to start after the trek.

 This group of YSA were 3/4 of one of the squares for a square dance Judy taught.  We filled in to complete the square.  Most of these are returned missionaries.
The girl with the flower in her hair is Mirian Tiira, who served in Oakland California mission with Sister Kunz from the Rexburg Temple.  Sister Kunz asked us to look her up, and we found her by chance

These are the others in the square dance group.  We told them to get some straw hats and Judy made suspenders for them.  We just didn't anticipate chartreuse shorts and red t-shirts.  The girls made the hats in about 15 minutes from palm leaves.

One of the games was a relay of blowing up balloons and sitting on them to pop them.  They had a lot of fun laughing at each other.