Girls come to town

Ok.... so this post is WAY BEHIND TIMES but I'm going with the mindset of "better late than never"!

We had the most amazing reunion with Heidi and Katie that last week of April. Katie spent 7 days with us and Heidi squeezed in 4 but we made the MOST of every second we had together!

I'm going to also leave most of the narration up to "pictures speak louder than words"...

here is my report:

Katie, Paul and I had spent 4 days on an outer island and then flew back to Nadi Airport where Heidi was patiently waiting for us... we enjoyed several hours at this airport cafe snacking on hot chocolate, carrot cake and catching up with each other's lives.

The girls were quite impressed with the beautiful view from the balcony at our apartment.

The Suva weather decided to give us a break from the rainy season and treated us to a gorgeous sunny, blue sky couple of days. Here we were on our way to a session at the Temple... it felt like "heaven on earth"!

We had to show off downtown Suva and took the girls to the traditional handicraft market where everyone, including Paul found some impressive souveniors! Paul's is a Fijian warrior head banger!

Turns out they were very useful just a short time later!
(this is the local Fijian warrior that turns up downtown whenever a big cruise ship comes to town)

Paul had lots to choose from... luckily he didn't choose any of those masks.

The girls loved seeing the guard at the Fiji Prime Ministers compound. I love these uniforms.

Turns out what we really needed was some R & R time so we went to this hidden resort that Paul & I had never been to before but looked really nice when we checked it out on the internet.

Here are our rooms: K & H on the left and P & me on the right.

I think K & H were happy with our choice!
Inside and out.....

Unfortunately, these reunions never last long enough!
Thanks for making the effort to come! It was just what we needed!

PS: any one else like to come on over?

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!

Thought you might enjoy seeing the "chapels" for the 2 annexes...
very humble meetinghouses.

Life on Tanna is very simple but quite the ADVENTURE!

Happy 4th of July! God Bless America!

Just because we are living on the other side of the world doesn't mean we don't celebrate those really special American holidays! Especially with so many American friends by our side!

Hope you all had a wonderful and patriotic and safe 4th of July!

We feel extremely blessed to be Americans!

What? End of May! No way!

Poulet fish, fresh and headed to Luganville from Malekula aboard our flight

A mother and her young son out collecting their firewood for the day

Fresh caught and still alive ... how would you like fresh CRAB for dinner tonight!

One of 4 new neckties that I have made for Paul with some "island flare"!

Cute little guy enjoyed sketching on the chalkboard during Gospel Doctrine class

Visiting Osea at his farm

Seriously! Where does the time go! I cannot believe that I haven't posted on my blog since April 15th! It's not that I don't have things to blog about! It is just that I have TOO MUCH to blog about and too little time to spend putting a post together. So that is my excuse!

Since I last connected with you here on my blog we have been coming and going non stop! We even had our darling girls, Heidi and Katie, come to Fiji for a quick visit (I have been sitting on that post for over a month now! Yikes! I still plan to post about that reunion!)

Right now, I am sitting in Port Vila, Vanuatu enjoying a couple hours of "down time" and with a decent internet connection so here I am and yes, we are still alive!

Since the middle of May we have been traveling around Fiji and now Vanuatu. The middle of May we went to the west side of Fiji to the Lautoka Stake Conference because there was a Stake Presidency change which had been long awaited and much anticipated. A member of the Pacific Area Presidency, Elder Brent Nielson and our Pacific Area Seventy, Elder Wakolo were presiding which added to the specialness of the conference. Paul had the assignment to audit the stake checkbook and financial records before the change so we traveled from Suva to Lautoka a few days early. The new Stake Presidency is wonderful. There is always a burst of enthusiasm when new leadership takes over so we are anxious to see how things will take off and progress over there. The new Stake President is a wonderful man. He was serving as the Bishop in one of the Lautoka Wards at the time of this calling. He is from a 4-generation Church member family which is a very unique situation. His mother was one of the first 50-members of the Church here in Fiji. His nephew serves as a Branch President on the island of Taveuni. Solid family!

We were only back in Suva for 2 days before we flew off to another Fijian island of Vanua Levu to meet with the 5 unit leaders of the Labasa District. We were over on this island back in February but it seems like we cycle around every 3 or 4 months. We left on a Weds and returned to Suva on Sunday and we were out and about non stop! We really felt like this was one of our most productive trips with these leaders. Besides all of our meetings and training get togethers, we were able to go out and meet several individual members at their "homes".

In one of the pictures above is Paul and me and a man with a beard. His name is Osea and he has quite "the story". We had heard about him from Staggs (who served in our position before us) but we were never really sure where he lived. When we found out he was near Labasa, we asked someone to take us out to meet him. Osea has only been a member of the Church for a couple of years but what a total turnaround his life has taken since he joined. He told us that he had been a terrible man. He had done almost every kind of illegal activity, been in and out of prision many times, was a converted Muslim, heavy drinker and marijina user and at the time the missionaries connected with him, he was a mess! But the missionaries told him that his Heavenly Father still loved him and Osea decided to believe it. He is a changed man! and a very passionate believer. He shares the Gospel with everyone he meets and has helped to bring quite a lot of others into the Church as well. He is a totally different man! We were glad we were able to hook up with him and that he was willing to hike out of his sugar cane field to come and meet us.

I even enjoyed my own little bit of missionary work by sharing copies of the "Proclamation of the Family" and "The Living Christ" with Navin who is the man we rent our truck from. He is an Indian man but he is also a minister in the Pentacostal Church. He was so excited to get these two pages. He happened to see my copy of the "Gospel Principles" manual and was just in awe. He asked where I got that book and I could tell he wanted that too. I told him I could have the young Elders come and visit him and they could tell him how he could get a copy.... we'll see....

We were only home in Suva for 2 nights before we packed up again for a 10-day trip to Vanuatu. We haven't been here since January so it was definately time to come again. We love to come to Vanuatu. It is so different than Fiji (usually lots less rain!) We loved going to the island of Santo because we have some good friends there, Elder & Sister Schern, who are the only senior missionary couple on that island and it is really fun to spend time with them and compare our different situations and experiences. Plus they take such good care of use by feeding us meals and driving us everywhere and arranging our meetings and training sessions. There are about 17 units in the Luganville District but many of them are far away on remote islands. We met with the 4 units that are close to Luganville and that was very worthwhile and productive. These leaders are such an example of committment and dedication to a leadership calling even though they are infantly new in the Gospel and have never had these kinds of responsibility in their entire lives. They are so willing to accept guidance and instruction and try to do the best they can.

When we were in Luganville last January, we had all the outlaying island leaders come in to town to meet with us so this time we felt like we should go out to them. So we choose to go to Malekula Island where there are 6 branches. We got to fly over on one of those tiny little 8-passenger planes and for the first time ever, there was only one pilot! I was hoping he didn't have a heart attack or anything seriously unexpected since there wasn't a backup pilot! Thankfully the flight is only about 15 minutes and we all survived! 4 of of the units leadership (a total of 7 men) showed up for our training so we were pleased about that. Once again, very dedicated and humble men. They are kind and generous and also express so much gratitude for our presence and our messages. The next morning the plane that took us back to Luganville was a bigger plane -- 18 passengers and 2 pilots but just when I think "ahhh, this is comfortable" they surprise us and land on the grass next to the runway instead of the tarmack! You just never know what to expect!

With that last sentence in mind... in the middle of the night, actually at 4:12am we were suddenly awakened by our bed rocking and rolling! It woke us both up and we turned to each other and just said "earthquake!" and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Scherns have told us many times that they always feel earthquakes so we didn't think it was a very big deal. The next morning, Scherns told us that it had been a BIG one actually - 7.2. It had struck 200 miles north of their island and it was out in the sea. It didn't do any damage any where; just ruffled some feathers is all. Once again, you just never know what to expect!

Now we are in Port Vila which is the capital of Vanuatu. It is the "big city". We really enjoy it here. There is a lot of French influence and lots of tourists so there are really good restaurants and nice hotels. We went to Church yesterday at the Port Vila 1st and 2nd Branches and they each had about 130 members in attendance. There are 6 Branches close by here but the highlight of this trip will be our adventure tomorrow. We are going to fly over to Tanna Island to meet with the Branch leaders of the 4 units on that island. Now the interesting thing is that this island has a live volcano and thanks to Elder Schern, we know that it is ramping up its erupting activity. If you want to google it, it is called Yasur volcano. It says on the Vanuatu Volcanic activity bulletin "the increasing activity of the Yasur volcano since Jan 2010 led to an upgrade in the hazard rating of this volcano to Alert Lever 3 starting from May 27, 2010. Therefore the access to the volcano is now closed and its 500 meter surrounding zoine is strictly prohibited." OK, that sounds a little unnerving! I should have something interesting to blog about next time!

Before I end this post, one more interesting item: we noticed on lds.org under the full-time missionary opportunity category that our position has been posted as available so in case you have been considering a senior missionary experience, we highly recommend this one! Of course, we'll still be here until next Feb but then we could hand everything off to you! If not here, there are tons of other opportunities... check it out... sign up and be prepared to have the most wonderful, life-changing experiences ever! Missions are the Best!