Sanders Solomon Island Mission

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.