Ouch!

It is Sunday night here and I cannot believe that it has been almost a week since I last blogged. I cannot believe how fast the time flies by each day. Of course, last week was like a holiday week since we didn't get home from our Labasa trip until Monday night. We were only in the office for 4 days and to be more exact, we left the office early on Friday afternoon for our weekend adventure so we really only had 3 1/2 days in the office. Paul picked up a sore throat and what we thought was a cold right before we went to Labasa and when we got back to Suva it just didn't want to get any better so we had another "first"... our first trip to the doctor! Yes, that would be a local Dr. There are 2 main hospitals here in Suva. One is called the War Memorial Hospital and I'm not sure which war it is memorializing but it looks like it could be something like WW I because it is very old and decrepit and does not have the best reputation. Thankfully, the Church has contacts in the other hospital that is called the Suva Private Hospital. We drove over and walked into the "out patient clinic" and the waiting room was very full with a lot of very sick-looking people. I initially wondered if we'd come out sicker than we went in. But we checked in and they told us we'd be seen by Dr. Daryl. I liked his name mostly because I could pronounce it. His full name is Daryl O'Conner. I was liking him more and more. I was really caught off guard when we finally went in to meet him and he was a big, rugby-looking Fijian man! He was born and raised and attended medical school right here in Fiji. When we asked about his name, he said, oh his great, great, great grandpa was just sailing by and must have decided to jump ship when he got to this beautiful island. Turns out, Dr. Daryl is a super, competent Dr. He determined that Paul's little cold has turned into a sinus infection, gave him some antibiotics and we were good to go! Oh, and he also gave us an RX for the malaria pills that we needed to begin taking for our upcoming trip to Vanuatu! And the best part of the whole experience: $12 to visit the Dr (no insurance company involved!) and $22 for 3 cold/sinus RXs and 2 malaria RXs.

I mentioned that we left Friday afternoon for our weekend adventure. This involved driving to the other side of this island to attend the Latoka Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday sessions. I also mentioned that it had been raining non stop here in Suva since we flew in last Monday night and we were really getting tired of the constant precipitation. Suva is the "wet" side of the island. That is why it is so lush and green. Latoka and Nadi are on the "dry" side of the island. We were ready for a few days of sunshine. The drive is really an interesting drive. It is approximately 180K which is about 120 miles and it takes about 3 - 3 1/2 hours. It is very scenic but you can hardly look at the scenery because you have to pay such close attention to buses, pedestrians, unexpected speed bumps, dogs, horses, pigs and cows hanging out along the roadsides and crossing whenever they feel like it and the road is "paved" meaning most of the time there is pavement but there are surprising pot holes and destroyed sections around any corner. Very entertaining drive. Actually I consider it my abs workout since I am usually clinching all my muscles trying to not freak out Paul with all my "helpful, up ahead, road situation warnings". It was definitely worth the effort because Nadi was sunny and clear and just made us feel better.

We met up with 2 other senior missionary couples, the Seares and the Bothwells, and decided to treat ourselves to a really fun evening out and have dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe on Denarau Island!!!! Denarau Island is an area just outside Nadi where all the high end resorts are located -- like the Sheraton, the Westin and 4 or 5 others. There is this really nice shopping center and that is where the Hard Rock Cafe is.


On our drive to dinner, we had a minor (hugely annoying) encounter with a HUGE POT HOLE! The sun goes down around 6 pm here and there are NO street lights so it is not one of our favorite things to do to drive after dark but we can't always avoid it and we encountered one of the things we worry about the most...and unexpected, unavoidable pot hole! Paul was able to get the car off the main road on to a side road where we pulled over to the curb to get out and access the damage. It was not good!! The tire was shot and the rim was damaged too. As all 6 of us were standing outside the car, in our white shirts and missionary clothes, a really nice Fijian guy stopped to see if we needed any help. He just took over and with his Rugby-player body he had us taken care of in no time. We were so blessed by his service. We wives were very helpful too. We were spraying everyone with bug spray and taking memory-preserving photos!

The Stake Conference was so wonderful. We enjoyed ourselves so much. We have been really anxious to meet the members and leaders that live on that side of the island. There are 4 wards and 4 branches and the members came out in droves...especially for today's Sunday session. Latoka is the only other official city besides Suva in the whole country of Fiji. It is located about 30K from Nadi town which is where the International Airport is. That is it's claim to fame. Latoka is a very industrial city with a huge sugar cane processing factory as well as some huge wood chip exporting factory. It has a huge Indian population, similar to Labasa. The Stake Center is in Latoka so the Saturday meetings where held there but then today, the Sunday session was held in Nadi. There were about 8 people that we work with in the Church's service center in Suva who had come up to the Stake Conference for various assignment. There is a translation department in our service center (very busy right now translating the General Conference talks into Fijian and Hindi) and they had the responsibility of translating the English talks into Fijian so that members in the congregation could have earphones on and hear the talks in their own language. When the most important talks were given, a translator actually came up on the stand and stood next to the speaker and translated sentence by sentence. In the women's auxillary training meeting, the presenter would talk for a few minutes and then they would ask another woman to stand and explain it in Fijian. It fascinates me how well this works. Most of the people here are bi-lingual -- Fijian and English but some of the villagers from the remote branches don't understand English very well so it is important that they get this level of information in their own tongue.

One of the highlights of the conference was the presence of Elder Wakolo who is the Pacific Area Seventy. He is a local Fijian and he was just given this calling last April at General Conference. He is a spiritual giant. He is very sincere and compassionate and inspiring. Maybe that is why so many members were in attendance. They love having "their" general authority connection present. Pres. and Sister Woolley, who are the Suva Fiji Temple President and Matron were also the speakers at two of the sessions and they gave very wonderful, inspiring and personal talks. One of the stories that Pres. Woolley told was about one of his ancestor who was the contractor in charge of building the Laia Temple in Hawaii. He told how this man discovered that he was running out of timber to finish the construction of the Temple and he didn't know where he was going to get any timber. There was no timber any where to be found or used. He decided one day to go up on the bell tower of the Chapel that was on the property next door to the Temple site and kneel down in prayer and ask the Lord what he should do to deal with this complication. As he stood up from his prayer, he looked out to the ocean and saw a huge cargo ship had run aground on a reef and was in a serious situation. He could see the name on the ship of a transporting company so he called the company on the phone and told them of the situation with their freighter. The company was distressed and asked if he could get men to go out to the freighter in their canoes and remove the cargo of timber they were carrying. The company did not care what they did with the timber they just wanted their ship to be rescued. And that is the miracle that provided the timber to finish the construction. Then he continued talking about miracles that happen inside of the Temples as well. It was a sweet and moving talk.

So now I have just finished some laundry because we will be taking off tomorrow for our next adventure. We are going to Vanuatu for 2 weeks!!! This should be really interesting. Vanuatu is it's own country. It is about an hour and forty minute flight. They have a very unique currency there called Vatus and the exchange difference is huge, something like 10,000 Vatus equals $100 US. Paul says 1 Vatu is about equal to a penny. They speak a different language called Bislama which is something like "pidgeon english". And.... they drive on the RIGHT side of the road so we are going to be either so back to our comfort zone or so mixed up our brains won't know where we should be driving! Thankfully, I don't think we are going to do any driving over there. We will be going to 2 different islands to begin with and on the first island is a Senior Missionary couple, the Scherns, so they will be driving us all around. We may even fly to one or two more islands while we are with them. We have been told to make sure and begin taking some RX to help us prevent coming down with malaria. We have been told to pack up with the bug spray!! I'm OK with what we have been told, it is what we haven't been told that makes me a little anxious. I'll keep you posted!

So if you have stuck through clear to the end of this long narrative --- thank you for your patience. I feel like I have so much I want to share with you but it ends up being so much that I feel like I can't delve in too deep. I hope you can get just a little taste of the wonderful experiences we are having. We are happy and enjoying being in the Lord's service 24 hours a day!