Cooking Demonstrations at Farmers' Markets

Taiwan Technical Mission has worked for years to help develop local farmers in order to create better access to local produce. They hold a Farmers' Market the end of each month.

Taiwan Farms asked for some help recruiting organizations that would help launch a new series of cooking demos at their market. We found three groups for the first market and even helped at one run by the Wellness Center.

This is one of the other groups called KIJLE. Their wonderful volunteers work with families affected by addictions. They are great cooks too!
Next month we expect to have six cooking groups.

Non-Communicable Disease Coalition

 Our Non-communicable Disease Coalition, which has representatives from the Ministry of Health, community organizations, NGOs and churches, is going through some positive changes.

We have had several meetings in the past month to review and update our bylaws and to talk about where we want to go in the next year and years ahead.

We are now in the process of recruiting new and additional members to our Board of Directors. We look forward to further work with this group as we organize more community screenings for diabetes, cancer etc.

Opening of Agroforest

We were excited to help open a new Agroforest Demonstration Garden Dec 15th at the Majuro Hospital. This was the culmination of a broad project aimed at increasing access to fresh produce in the islands.

 The Agroforest was developed by partners LDS Charities, Canvasback Wellness Center and Taiwan Farms.

 Besides being a site that the Wellness Center can use to train gardeners, it will also provide space for healthy cooking demonstrations and a quiet green space that hospital patients can enjoy.

 LDS Charities provided technical expertise on garden design and plants, some labour, park benches, solar lighting and plaques describing plants.

Agroforestry is a system where trees and shrubs are grown around other crops to create more diverse, productive and sustainable land use.

Rising Sun, Flame Tree and Bridge Pier

I'm always fascinated by light - all kinds of light. I took this soon after sunrise and love the reflection of the rising sun on the pounding surf!

Here is the pier by our only bridge on that same morning but about half an hour later.  Coconut palms in the foreground. We eat a lot of coconut. We pick up the coconuts that fall off the trees by our apartment and Elder Crooks opens them up.








To the right is a picture of one of the "flame tree" blossoms. These trees are all over the island. This tree was just starting to get a fresh crop of blossoms. The blossoms cover the top of the tree so when they are all out, it looks like a flame on the top.

Second Clinic Series Complete

We finished a second series of 4 community clinics in the last week. Here you see Elder Crooks testing blood sugar of an adult but surrounded by young kids.  He was giving kids a stamp on their hands from our clinic which says "Bamille eo Ejmour" - Healthy Families!

Here I am testing blood pressure on one of the participants. We track weight, blood pressure and blood sugar readings and put them in a little passport for them as well as post it to their hospital data so their doctors can see it.

Boot Scootin' Boogie

 This past week was World Diabetes Week and there was a host of planned activities, some of which we were involved in. One of the these was to get Sister Clark (on the left) to lead some good ol' country and western line dancing for the exercise portion of an educational session for diabetics.

We've had Sister Clark do this with other groups. She is amazing and fun and as you can see from the faces of participants, people have a great time. She is pictured above with her companion Sister Fetalauga.

Early Saturday Morning

 Elder Crooks and I headed out to the pier below the bridge one recent Saturday morning. It was a gorgeous morning. We enjoyed watching and listening to the breakers crash on the reef.

When we got to the far end of the pier and looked back under the bridge into the lagoon, we could see one of the tuna ships.  The Marshall Islands has the largest tuna transshipment port in the world. Normally the lagoon is filled with smaller tuna ships which then unload their catch onto one of these large transshipment ships which takes the tuna to a market in other countries.