The Adventures of Yapman: A Year of Blessings

As my time on Yap is rapidly coming to a close – I am spending more and more time reflecting on how blessed I have been these past two years living on this beautiful island of stone money. I am spending as much time as possible with my local friends and family, and even just the late nights sitting and chatting with my Yapese nina nge waleg ni piin (mom and sister) are meaning more and more to me each day. I am set to fly home on June 4^th – and my mind and body are still in denial of this fact as I am keeping them both as busy as possible right up until that bittersweet date.

The last few months have been especially filled with God’s grace and little wonders. In March, we celebrated Yap Day in Tomil – which involved thuws, so much incredible local food, a tremendous display of Yapese culture – and some of the most fantastic dances I have ever seen. My village, Nimar, did not dance at Yap Day, but they did perform for a cruise ship that brought over 1,000 visitors – this group will be headed to France over the summer to perform as well – I am not supposed to brag because that would be Un-Yapese – but my village’s bamboo dance is by far the best – just saying.

For Easter – I was all set to head off to Ulithi again (you may remember my stories of the “suicide run” boat ride in the middle of the night with dying motors and huge swells for the Easter Vigil) – but those plans changed the week before Easter when I was asked by my Yapese family if I would be the Godfather for Dafrad, my Yapese nephew. I of course immediately canceled my flight reservation to be here for Alfonso Joshua Dafrad’s big baptismal/ first communion day! The Holy Week masses on Yap were simply awe-inspiring. Good Friday included a local tradition that involved funeral wailing, the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil involved a candle light procession into mass and a fantastic local woman’s standing dance. Instead of shaking hands at the vigil mass – everyone was exchanging nunuws/marmars! Mary made all of ours, and I in exchange made one for her – which let’s just say it was a good thing she got to swap it out halfway through mass. Easter Sunday was the big day – and I joined Dafrad’s godmother and his other godfather, my good friend Martin Ruwniyol (I am the American godfather, he is the Yapese godfather – we were a very accepting Godfamily) in welcoming Dafrad into the Catholic Church.

In other exciting news of blessings - one of our seniors, Domclancy, was a winner of a Gates Millenium Scholarship! This scholarship covers the educational expenses to any school that the scholarship winner has been accepted – so Domclancy will be headed to the University of Portland. Check out more info/picture at http://www.ychs.net/apps/blog/entries/show/42164221-tiliwebug-wins-gates-scholarship! As a side note – he was also accepted to the elite University of Scranton, but he is studying engineering so Scranton was not a logical choice. I could not possible be more proud of him and how far he has come. It is moments like these that make me want to stay here and teach at YCHS forever.

“Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live.” - Robert Southwell, S.J.