Monday, October 26, 2015

Dry Season

Dry season hit Vanuatu hard this week.  It went from nice, paradisiacal weather to unbearable heat.  Oh what I would give to sit in an air conditioned room for just a minute or two!  I literally take four showers a day:  One with water in the morning after we exercise, a sweat shower during the day while we're out teaching, another with water at night so I can sleep and not smell myself, and then another sweat shower while I sleep.  I prefer the showers with water and not the ones of pure sweat!  Ugh!  Sunscreen is pointless because I sweat it off, so I just have to learn to love the heat and the sunburns!  The good thing about the dry season is that no one wants to leave their houses, so we get to teach a lot of people.  It's great!

On Monday Sista Tagini and I went to the mission office to pick up my mail and there, sitting in the office was Sista Auelua!  We were so excited!! She flew in from Santo to get her debit card and got to spend the day with us.  It made my day!  I love that girl:)  We spent family house night at Mama Ellen's with her family.  We shared a scripture and bore our testimonies and then ate kumala (a type of sweet potato), taro, chicken and rice.  It was super neat to have family home evening in another country.  Just goes to show the church is the same no matter where you are!  Well . . . sort of!
My mission district.
We sent home one of our assistants to the president at our district meeting on Wednesday, Elda Bynon.  I had the "experience" of giving the training and then he bore his testimony and we all sang "God be with you till we meet again".  It was like watching The Other Side of Heaven when Elder Groberg goes home--super cool!

The Ninja!
Our service this week took us “to the bush.”  It was my first time going to the bush and it made me sooooo thankful that my first area is in Vila and not out in the islands yet.  The bush, as you can see from the pictures, is just that- a bush.  It almost made me feel claustrophobic because there was so much foliage everywhere I looked!  We spent time weeding a kumala garden and then helped pick beans.  We got to use MACHETES to do the weeding and I felt like a NINJA!

Sunday would have to be the most exciting sacrament meeting I have ever been to.  Everyone had just sat down and the bishop was giving announcements when all of a sudden we heard a loud "CRACK" and the building started filling up with smoke!!  Immediately, everyone jumped up and started running for the door.  Once we got outside, we realized someone driving by had thrown a torch at the church, but it had landed in the field and not hit the church.  The smoke had just come in through the windows.  What a blessing no one was hurt!  Once the fire was out church went on as normal.

We are working with 7 investigators right now who have baptismal dates:  Simone and Allison are cousins and are scheduled for this Saturday. They are 11 and 13 and love coming to church and bring all their friends with them when they come.  Agnes and Steven are a couple and he leaves to go work on a cruise ship for the next 8 months at the end of November.  Their goal is to be worthy to be married and baptized before he goes.  It's going to take a lot of work because they both love kava, but with faith and prayers and God's help I know they can do it!  Mama Rachel is around 70 years old and just wants to be with her husband again.  She loves the Plan of Salvation.  She works during the week but we get to see her every Saturday and she is making and keeping commitments every week.  Pauline has pushed back her wedding until November but we are still visiting with her regularly and helping her learn more about the gospel.  We found two new investigators this week too!  One we met while I was running in the morning.  The man asked what the name tags were and so we talked with him.  He doesn’t live in our area, but goes to show, God works in mysterious ways, even when we're out exercising.  The other is a member of a string band and asked us to story with him and so we'll story on Tuesday!

I love you all.  Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.  God is real and he is aware of each one of his children.  He wants us to be happy and succeed!

1 comment:

  1. I told you that you need a fan blowing on you all night! -Jared

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