18-24 Aug

 Think we could be in trouble?

The Elders brought us their empty gas tanks.  We have a basic idea of  how to fill them but.....as the people say "No worries."

metal from WWII

This metal was used during WWII to repair the runway at the airport.  The Japanese would bomb the runway and the Americans would scramble out and throw dirt and this metal down so our planes could use the runway.  Pretty amazing.  We have seen it used as fencing, a walkway over a ditch, or support for a wall.  

actual corn!!!

Lynn found this at a corner stand.  It seemed so good to see something we know. We ate it that night.  It wasn't like our sweet corn but it was a taste of Americana!

We forgot that we needed to pick up the mail for the mission until today.  

getting mail

beginning English

intermediate English

These are the people I teach on Tuesday and Thursday at the compound.  We are going to start teaching English once a week in Sept. at the two outlying branches, where they have to walk several miles to get to the chapel.  I am hoping to help them with their family history at the same time.  It's kind of sad when you ask about their ancestors.  They have no idea about birth dates or death dates.  When someone dies, they just bury them in the jungle...no records, no markers.  At least we can help them write down what they know and help them with their history.

Elder Fidow leaving

The Solomon Island missionaries

24 Aug Tuesday, we went to the airport to see Elder Fidow off.  He is heading to Vanuatu for the last month of his mission.  He is one of those dynamic missionaries, that worked hard and is very dedicated.  He wants to go to BYU-H but we were unable to get his application started.  I hope the missionary couple in Vanuatu can help him.

The lawn mower.

The ground is so hilly here and the grass is kind of different so they use weed eaters to trim the lawn.  It takes Nesta most of two days to do the compound.  Notice the harness with supports...and the two handles...

Schools

I'm not sure what I would like to say about the schools. After we delivered the net ball posts and then visited three schools last week, I am just amazed what the schools are like in the Solomon's. First I need to say that there isn't free education here. The parents pay for their children to go to school and students are required to wear uniforms. (I have seen several teenagers put their school shirt on just before they get to school and then take it off as they leave school. Pretty typical!) It is pretty impressive to watch as the children go to school, with their different uniforms, with a parent or older sibling walking with them. The schools buildings themselves are pretty good for the Solomon Islands, nothing like our school buildings but considering the area, they are not too bad. Of course, to fit in here, the building is run down, needs paint, is in need of repairs, if the floor had linoleum, it is pretty worn through. All of the buildings are open air, the “playgrounds” are either dirt or a little green something. Sports equipment???? Not much that we could see. The offices are stacked with papers and most don't have computers to keep track of students. And yet, the families are sending their children and hoping for a good education. I have to applaud the parents for that. Some students walk a few miles to attend. The schools aren't neighborhood schools. So one family could have children in several different schools. I haven't quite figured out how the school is chosen. At first, I thought the government decided where the student goes to school. But then there are students transferring to other schools. Back in America, we are so blessed to have great buildings and curriculum.

We were driving through town (our one main road) as students were walking home from school. I noticed a young woman who seemed to have a problem walking. As we got closer to her, I saw that she had two club feet! She was actually walking on the side of her heels and she had flip-flops on. It broke my heart to see her that way. We are soooo blessed to have great medical care in America.

I have been helping several students who are attending USP (University of South Pacific) and have been sad to see what they are learning. One student is studying biology and used a microscope for the first time to see an onion cell. I taught that in 6^th grade. And then there are the papers from the “professors” that have grammar and spelling errors, that I want to correct before the student hands them in. One student had to do her assignment and email it in. She didn't know how to do that. She took all day to type a few simple pages. What can I say? We are sooo blessed to have technology in America.

We are involved with the P-13 program, which is a church program in the Pacific (actually a private donor), that will subsidize students education. This involves each student applying, requiring the Branch President to determine what the family can afford to pay and then how much the church will need to pay. So the church pays for the first term, the parents then pay what they specified and then we (the church) pays for the rest. We are trying to figure out the final payment that the church needs to pay and are hoping we get it right, from the records that were left by the couple we replaced. And then we have to go to each of the 25+ schools to check their records against what we have. So this could take us several weeks. Thank goodness we don't have to be finished until the end of September. Just finding the schools will be a challenge. It took us 3 hours to find 3 schools last week! And I am worried about their record keeping...We are so blessed to have free public education.

Amoana School

Bright Star

Shamma School

Week of 7-13 Aug

6-7 Aug

Sat.
We had 6 baptisms.

We had District Conference.  The adult meeting was held at 2 p.m. Saturday

Sun
Conference started at 10 a.m.  Lynn and I talked.  This was the Sampson's final meeting.  Then we had a Relief Society meeting for the women and priesthood meeting for the men.  As I was sitting down for the meeting, the district relief society president asked is I was ready to teach!!!!  I gulped and let her know that I didn't know anything about teaching.  So I asked what she wanted me to teach.  She replied "the theme of conference" which was?????  She said I could teach about magnifying our callings.  So I shared some of my pioneer ancestor's histories and then had three returned missionaries share their experiences of leaving home for a mission.  It was a good meeting.  One sister said that they had heard about pioneers but had never had anyone who actually knew much about them share with them.

Mon
We did some training with the Sampson's.  We took them to lunch at the Lime Lounge.

Tuesday
The Sampson's left today.

Sampson's leaving

Wednesday
Picked up zone leaders at airport.  Went to pick up their vehicle but it wasn't ready so we brought them to our office.  They had an appointment, so we let them use the Sampson's truck.  (Opps, they aren't supposed to drive the missionary couples truck.)  They helped us with the sick missionary by taking him to the clinic.  And then they went home and their power was off.  So we had to try to find out how to get the power back on.

Aug 11, Thursday
Picked up David Lakista, the seminary and institute coordinator, who will be staying in the mission home (Sampson's) for a few days.  We only had 1 key for the door, so gave it to him.  We went to dinner with him at Heritage Hotel.

Aug 12, Friday
We had to go to the travel agency to buy plane tickets to bring the Elders from Malaita over for zone conference.  We had no idea what we needed to do.  Thank goodness we have great ZL who helped us with this.


Aug 13, Saturday
Picked up Betty to take her to the airport.  She is headed to London, England for her mission.

Betty's family

Aug 14, Sunday
Our self-reliance classes finished.  We presented the people who attended certificates.  They were so proud of their certificates.

Self-Reliance Class 2

Self-Reliance class

Aug 15 & 16 Zone Conference

Zone Conference

  These Elders are the best singers.  They are the smallest zone but the best singers, most of them are from Samoa.  I wanted to insert a video of them singing the song they sang for Elder Christopherson when he was here in March, but it was too large.  It was such a moving song.

Jul 30
Amazing baptisms

We had 10 baptisms today. It is so amazing how the church is growing.

More baptisms

Aug 1

Great Find at the Store

I was so excited to find this at the store. We bought 4 packages of the Doritos. Talk about comfort food.

YUM!!!!

Aug 4

More WWII

Today we were driving in the industrial area by the wharf and saw these wreckages of WWII ships.

WWII shipwreck

WWII shipwreck in back

Aug 9
Elder and Sister Sampson left today.  We are now the only missionary couple on the island.  It's kind of lonely not having someone to talk to and being in charge of everything for a while until the replacement couple comes.  They are from Samoa, so we will still be the only American missionary couple on the island.

27 Jul

WWII sites

Sister Sampson wanted us to see a few additional WWII sites before they leave. So we headed out to the Lunga River and just past there we went down the hill to a tunnel that was dug and used to treat injured soldiers. It was pretty interesting to go inside it and think about what it was used for. Today, it is a shortcut from one village to another. If only the walls could talk.

tunnel

tunnel

tunnel entrance

We then went to a sight where there were several airplanes. One of the planes, if you looked in the cockpit, you could see that the exhaust pipe went right through the cockpit. These planes were some of the ones that were pretty effective against the Japanese planes.

the cockpit

airacobras

tank

tank 2

Aug 2
Our “Can of Worms”...Water Tanks

Water tanks are a “hot item” here. We know how dependent we are on our running water in our houses. Here, if you are lucky, you have or live by a neighbor who shares their water tank. Otherwise, you head to the river, to wash your clothes, bathe in, play in, and then haul water back to your house. So water supply is pretty important. I just never imagined how much time it takes to take care of our basic needs without water. We had known that the missionary couple before us had delivered some water tanks and thought that was great. But now we fill like it is a “can of worms” for us.

First of all, the church will supply a water tank but it is for a community, not a single person. And some of the members are becoming possessive and are not allowing their neighbors to use their water. And then, several of the tanks that were delivered were not installed (putting a cinder block base under them and a tap) so there are tanks that are sitting empty. What a waste! And the rainy season is coming. Now enter The Sanders, the new missionary couple on the block that are in charge of self-reliance. And viola, what do we get? Requests for water tanks!!!!! So today, Lynn was just asking how much cement and wire he needed to finish up a tank and found out there was another tank just sitting needing to be finished. And the District President has asked us about getting 8 water tanks to Auki, which is a branch on another island.

Feelings are running high over this. Nesta (one of the grounds people here) says that she prays for no rain so the people with tanks won't have any water. A branch president mentioned that the tanks weren't evenly distributed and feels his neighborhood should have one. On the island of Malaita, the Faubua branch received several tanks so the Auki branch feels they should have some. What a mess. So we are going to try to get the materials to finish the initial tanks that are just sitting and letting the branch finish the work. And then we need to find out where there are tanks in each branch and figure out the best area for a tank. But really we aren't supposed to be involved in it at all. Somehow, we need to stress the community idea and have them “write up a proposal” and go from there. We don't even know what the fund or budget is for this. So we have to get information from New Zealand. What a “can of worms or I mean tanks”.

foundation 3 rows cinderblock, cement top

water tank to be placed on foundation

finished tank...pipes for water to drain into tank

Another “Can of Worms”...Wheelchairs

The missionary couple before us was able to order 300 wheelchairs and helped distribute them. So last week, we had someone say that they needed a wheelchair for a member. What???? We asked about it and were told to say,

“The Church will supply the wheelchairs to the hospital. The hospital then distributes them. No one gets special treatment because they are a member of the church.”

That is pretty easy to close that “can of worms.”

The water tanks and wheelchairs were great projects but it seems the people feel entitled to them. Thank goodness we have a self-reliance committee that will help with some of the decisions with these things.

26 Jul 2016

Net Ball Posts finally gone!!!!

If I could write a newspaper headline for Tuesday, this would be it. Let me give you some more information. First of all, net ball is a game that women play over here, that is similar to our basketball except that there is no dribbling. The “baskets” are rings welded to a post, which post is mounted in a tire with cement. Before we even came on our mission, the Sampson's had sent a picture to Katie showing that the previous couple had left us these net ball posts that we needed to deliver. Talk about a “monkey on our backs” for a long time.

When we arrived, we saw the posts there in the driveway, 10 net ball posts standing like soldiers, waiting to be delivered. Every day, we looked at them and hung our heads. How in the world were we supposed to get those posts up into a truck to deliver them and then how would we get them off the truck? Lynn decided that we would ask for some money and hire a truck to deliver them. But getting them on and off was still a problem.

On Monday, Joyce asked again about delivering the posts and said she knew someone that could use some posts at their school. She called them and her friends arrived within an hour. They were so happy to get some posts and they would actually get a truck and transport them themselves. Yeah, we were so excited to know that two posts would be gone. They waited and waited and waited for a relative, who had a truck, to come and pick them up. After an hour, they left with Joyce. Later Joyce comes back to let us know that they will help us deliver all of the posts the next day. WAHOO!!!! What great news.

So Tuesday comes and we are all waiting for the truck to come. Alas, we are on Solomon time and the truck arrives at 11. Now how to get those heavy posts into the truck. Luckily, we had a few strong young men and Bro. Maseru. It took 5 of them to lift each post into the truck. The guys were going to leave the 2 heaviest ones but Joyce said we needed them all so they struggled to lift the last two into the truck. We wondered if we should try laying them down but didn't. We finally leave to go to the first school about 12. The school was located on a side road that had huge holes in it and a low hanging electrical wire. The truck had to go really slow and then we had to find a young man who grabbed a pole to hold the wire up over the posts. When we got to the school, we had to figure out how to get the poles off of the truck. Luckily one of the teachers found a board and slide the poles down. Then we have to go back out, having a young man hold up the wire again.

At the next school, we again unloaded the posts but the man helping us also helped us lay the rest of the posts down. All of the rings were getting broken. So he had us lay them down and we tied them together. It took us three hours to finally get the posts delivered. We felt so tired, hot, and hungry but so relieved that the posts were gone.

Amoana School 1

Amoana school

St. John's School 1

St. John's School

Bright Star School

Ilias School

Shamma School

The loading crew & cheerleaders

1 2 3 lift

24 Jul Sunday

It is 7:15 a.m.
Conference music is playing, 
We hear shouting from the street.
The shouting continues.
Looking out the window, we see groups of young men (on top of the hill and outside our window)...shouting, throwing rocks and bottles at each other.
Clunk, a stone hits our house.  Clunk another stone.
Thank goodness our windows had screens and wire over them.
Sister Sampson calls the police.
The shouting and throwing continue.
Elder Sanders goes outside to get to the old chapel to see.
Neighbors say, "Get back in house.  This is a riot."


My thoughts go to the many prayers that are said to protect the missionaries. 
Clunk, there is another stone on the house.  These guys don't seem to be able to aim too good.  Of course, the road above us isn't that far away.  
The top group throws many stones and starts down our road with the other group heading down the road, throwing stones at them.   
There is shouting, yelling, stones thudding everywhere...the street, our compound, other houses.

Sister Sampson calls the police again.  Nothing.

We breathe a sigh of relief thinking the action has moved on.
But no such luck...  
Now the groups are hurrying up the street.
Several guys have bows and arrows...
Causing the top group to retreat up the hill.
It is all pretty exciting but scary at the same time.
But then we see there are always a few who will not stop..more yelling, more stone throwing and the groups move back on the street by us. 

This went on for about 1 1/2 hours.  
We see a brave man (one of the neighbor's here) trying to break it up. Several minutes go by to get them to stop and go back home.  We were so grateful that he put a stop to it.  

Our people at the compound told us that the two groups were from Temotu and Malaita and are always fighting.  The police don't get involved with groups fighting.  Our District Presidency had to postpone their meeting and all traffic stopped coming through that intersection during the "riot".  The local people who sell their goods know to leave the area during the whole mess.

When we left for church, we noticed the mess left behind..the street and our compound was littered with stones and glass from bottles, more litter than is normal.

This was a small taste of what it's like being in a riot.  I can't imagine going through days like that.  The pictures were taken through our wired screened in windows.  

Group 1

Group 2

bow made from reeds...