The Isle of Kosrae- A Missionary's Account: Teacher River has a smelly, squishy, yellow banana on his head.

"Should we take flippers today?"

"Eh. Sure."

Usually flippers are cumbersome while trying to spearfish, but we were going to try them today.

School was out, and the little yellow bus had magically transported the kids back to there homes at noon. It was friday, a half day. This meant that we had ample time to relax and possibly get some fish for the weekend, so we grabbed our spears and snorkels and headed for the water. It was high tide, and the waves were crashing big today. After the long trudge through the calm, shallow water we reached the breakers and fought through them to the other side, where it was deeper and the fish were bigger.

Much bigger, lets just say.

Swimming with my eyes down at the coral, I was hunting in about 8 feet of water. The waves were cresting above my head, so I was trying to be careful not to get caught up in a swell. All of a sudden I noticed that there weren't very many fish swimming in the rocks and coral below. I looked up in the water ahead of me, facing the shore, and saw a large swimming animal.

Thats a huge fi.......oh my. Not a fish.

About 10 feet in front of me between me and the shore, was a white-tipped reef shark.

We shared a moment of awkward eye contact. My next thought was a prayer. I quickly loaded my spear as tight as I could and aimed it at the shark as I smoothly tried to swim a wide circle around it, staying out of its way as much as possible. My heart skipped a beat when it turned and started to follow me, only a little quicker than I was swimming. Spear still aimed, I paddled my flippers as hard as I could, but the shark was still gaining on me. Finding Nemo was playing in the movie theater of my thoughts. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming....

Though the shark showed no major aggressive behavior, I still wasn't fond of it following me.

Send a wave. Please send a wave.

Sure enough, I looked up out of the water and saw a massive swell headed towards me, about to break. Perfect. I launched myself forward into the wave and rode it 30 feet into shallow water. After a few more wave rides, I was pretty sure the shark wasn't going to grow legs and wade in 1 foot of water.

God watches out for us here.

(A note on white-tipped reef sharks: This kind of shark is about 5 1/2 feet long. They are normally not aggressive unless the swimmer is carrying fish, such as a catch from spearfishing. Thankfully I did not have any fish at the time. They are not shy by nature, and are known to come close to swimmers out of curiosity. So in the big scheme of things, I probably was not in major danger. But, if you have ever seen a shark up close while swimming in real life, a shark is still a shark to someone in the water with it.)

Today I was tired of giving normal language assignments. I walked up to the front of the class and asked for a "drumroll please!"

I received an overly excited drumroll, as if they were about to receive a wonderful gift or surprise. I all of a sudden felt a little guilty.

I dramatically wrote the word "Adjective" on the board. The drumroll stopped behind me and instead there were overlapping mumbles of Kosraen children trying to pronounce the word "adjective".

After a brief lesson with adjectives, I made an announcement.

"Today, I will write two sentences. They will have plenty of adjectives in them. I want you to pick out the adjectives, and then draw pictures on what the sentence is saying!"

There was a below average level of excitement among the students.

"...and I will let you use the crayons."

Explosions of joy and fountains of happiness sprung forth from the 3rd and 4th grade classroom. They carefully selected crayons to begin working on their illustrations. I was so pleased by the depictions that I decided to share them with you tonight.

Here are the two sentences to be illustrated:

1. Teacher River had a smelly, squishy, yellow banana on his head.

2. The chicken was carrying a noisy, smiling, wet guitar on his back.

The results:

Great artwork. Love the badger-chicken. Although the faded face in the background may haunt my dreams for a few nights....

Again, beautiful. The blue odor coming from the banana makes me feel like I was there.

Ok, the beard in this one makes my heart sing. I have been attempting to grow a beard, and this is the first positive sign that it is making an impact on the world.