Do you know where Tuvalu is? I didn't till I met these sailors you see on the pictures. Tuvalu is a small group of islands between Hawaii and Australia. There are only 10.000 citizens who are of Polynesian ethnicity.. Because of the countries' remoteness there is very little tourism. Most jobs are government jobs. Wikipedia tells us that 500 Tuvalu men are employed as sailors, primarily on German owned ships. The Asian Development Bank assists the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute which trains young Tuvalu so they can work aboard foreign vessels....... Back to the Mission; The ones I met were big but very friendly men. One went to the bible section and I asked him if he was a Christian? He said yes! I asked if he was a Roman Catholic, a protestant, baptist etc. he said, " No I'm a Christian!" Noticing his irritation, I decided to look up Tuvalu on Wikipedia where I discovered that 97 % of the Tuvaluans are members of the Church of Tuvalu, a Protestant Christian Church. No wonder he couldn't answer my question! When it was time to leave, they loaded up on bibles, devotional material and lots of Christian music. And yes the owner of the ship is German with a crew from Poland, Tuvalu, The Philippines and Bulgaria!....... a mini United Nations!
