We went to the airport today to take Renee Solomon (our trainer) and see a missionary off, Leon. Here are pictures of Leon. These young people are so brave to fly off all by themselves, never having been on a plane and then having to transfer planes and all. It is a wonder that they make it to their mission. Leon was flying to Auckland and so was Renee so she helped him the whole way. From what she said, Leon was pretty cold during the flight and amazed at the size of the Brisbane, Australia airport. And his mission people were waiting for him at Auckland. So he is in good hands. His mother, whom he just baptized two months ago, was so happy about it all.
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| Leon and mother |
At the airport, there is a memorial garden there. I thought it was for the men who died in the war, but there are trees planted and anyone can buy a plaque and put a name on it and it is placed in front of a tree. Then in the center of this memorial are several plaques in honor of the Marines. I was quite impressed with it.
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| Memorial Garden |
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| Memorial Garden |
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| Memorial Garden |
We did some driving around in the White River village. This gentleman is the Sunday School president and helped us find the Relief Society president's house, which was on the other side of the mountain. He was so excited for us to take a picture of his family.
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| typical kitchen |
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| Relief Society pres White River..Surina and 5 of her 10 children |
We did a little shopping on Friday and found a piece of pumpkin pie at the bread store. So of course, we had to buy and eat it. The crust was pretty thick and had a lot of cinnamon so it was hard to taste the pumpkin. Not as good as Costco's but it was fun to try. I wonder if there is pumpkin here, fresh or canned.
On Saturday, we had 14 baptisms!!! Wow that was pretty great. And then there was a marriage performed after.
Sunday was not too bad. Our usual 3 hour block meetings. And then there is our self-reliance groups that meet for two hours. We have members that facilitate the meetings so that helps but we still have to help set up (which involves taking tables from our compound and a TV and the books for the class). The biggest thing that happened was that I forgot some water so I was pretty thirsty by the time we got home.
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| The Primary |
Today was our p-day so we thought we would head to the office and take care of a few registrations for students for USP (University of the South Pacific) that we received at church. We have to send them to New Zealand for approval so we can pay for their classes. We ended up being here all day. We we able to help David Ifuna'au finally get his all completed. We have been working for about two weeks for it. He originally applied for a P-13 scholarship but was then told to apply for the Returned Missionary Scholarship. He has been pretty patient about it all. The money needs to be paid this week, so students are trying to get their apps in so we can pay...only problem is we can't sign any checks yet. The banks are pretty slow at changing signatures. I'm not sure what will happen.
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| David |
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| Consita |
I have been coveting my library at home and the availability of books. I think about teaching English and wanting them to read....but what? There aren't many books at all. I wanted to help the students with their classwork but there are some words they don't quite understand and we don't have a dictionary here so that I can teach them how to use one. Kind of frustrating. We (Americans) are so truly blessed.
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