Sher-ing Time: Kaboom!!!

Paul and our tour guide, Celina arriving at the edge of the volcano about the same time it began to rain

Mt. Yasur, the non stop, active volcano on the island of Tanna as we approached from the ash covered side... looked very similar to the Bonneville salt flats only gray. We had to drive along this ash plane to access the road to the crater which is on the other side of the mountain.

A sample of what the debris that gets regularly blown up and out of the crater look like...seriously, you wouldn't want to be attacked by one of those stones!

Beautiful clouds of gas, ash and red-hot lava shards! All were accompanied with tremendous earth-shaking, ear-deafening explosions! Very attention getting!

You can't really say that you have been to Tanna if you don't go and see the volcano! We were really hoping that we would get to have this adventure but we weren't quite sure since we would only be on the island for about 28 hours.
We arrived around noon and found out that our training meeting had been scheduled for the next day so we found a driver and a tour guide and headed off to check out this amazing hot spot!
We didn't really know what to expect for this tour and it turned out to be much more than we expected. First of all, it takes about 2 hours (each way) to drive to the volcano along a very rough dirt road. Second, it had rained the day before and if the road wasn't bumpy and rough, it was muddy and had mini swamps to drive through.
But as this road was also a "main road" through many villages, there was a lot of everyday life happening along the route.

We were so surprised when we came across this group standing by the side of the road waiting for us! We were invited out of the truck and warmly welcomed to their village and then treated to 4 beautiful songs by these dear women and children. Islanders have the most amazing voices and harmony! Then they gave us ALL those bouquets of flowers -- beautiful, fresh and very fragrant! I so wished that I had come prepared with some kind of gift in return. After we thanked them profusely and got back in the truck and started down the road again, all the young kids chased after the truck laughing and waving! So cute!

Here are a few more people we passed along the way

This group of boys were walking home from school and loved seeing our white faces!
Thumbs Up!!!

The next day we had a really great and productive training meeting with all the Branch leaders from this whole island. There are about 30,000 people that live on this island of which there are about 400 Church members within 4 Branches and 2 Anexes (units that are much smaller than a Branch).
After the training meeting, we brought everyone back to the place we were staying and enjoyed a delicious lunch together. I'm pretty sure that most of these dear men had NEVER eaten at a restaurant like this before.
See the man in the plaid shirt, standing up on the right side... turns out he is the resort manager and from Australia and he knew my father from back in 1977-1980 when my father was a mission president in Adelaide, Australia. Quite AMAZING! Another "small world" connection!