Pouring Rain

Wow! It's been pouring rain today.  We were able to get pickleball in this morning, but an hour after that it started to come down by the buckets full.  The temperature is starting to inch its way up too.  It was quite humid yesterday, so sauna weather is on its way.  We can hardly wait!! ha ha.

Wednesday night, the senior missionaries, along with the members of the Mele (Maylay) Branch, were invited to a "smol kakae" (which means small meal) at the new Mele branch chapel that was just built.  They are thanking the construction workers and contractors for their good work.  The Davidson's attend Mele and are so excited for the members.

As we left our apartment and on our way to Mele, Mary and Anita, two of the women that clean our apartments were just finishing for the day.  We asked them if we could give them a ride home.  Mary is in our ward and lives out by where we were going.  They both got in the truck and away we went.  We dropped Anita off down the road.  As we continued on our way, I remembered that we needed bread.   Greg pulled into Crave bakery where we like to buy our bread.  We like to buy it there because you can get whole grain bread, and it's really good.  After I bought the bread, I asked Mary if I could lay it by her on the back seat.  She said, oh yes thank you.  Mary doesn't speak much English, so it's hard to understand her sometimes, and she inturn doesn't always understand us.  When we got to the place where we would drop her off, she had us pull over.  Very seldom do you take them right to their home.  They live up a path that you can only get to by walking.  She then thanked us, took the bread and was on her way.  She thought we bought the bread for her!  That's okay I'm sure she needed it more than we did.  So funny.  We love Mary!  

The celebration at Mele was suppose to start at 5:00.  When we got there they were no where near ready to start.  We couldn't stay because we had our returned missionary self reliance class to teach.  The chapel is really nice and alot better than the bush chapel they were meeting in.  

This is the second My Plan for Returned Missionary's/self reliance class that we've held.  This go around, we started with six returned missionaries; five young men and one young women.  We now have between three or four attending on a regular basis which for them isn't a bad attendance. (I'll attach a picture of them)  We've been talking to them about planning for the future.  They are really at a loss for planning a career, let alone have a wife and pikinini's, it's hard to do that here.  There just aren't that many jobs available.  The only manufacturing they have here is Vanuatu water.  They have a spring here and can bottle water.  They also make ice cream, and have a factory called Switi, however, the cream comes from New Zealand.  Let me tell you, it's some of the best ice cream I've ever had.  Kinda weird to have something like that here.  There are some government jobs, there's the gas and electric company, bus drivers, clerks at the Bon Marche (grocery store) and the many Chinese five and dime stores, hotel maides, teachers and a few other things.  The pay is maybe $1-2 American dollars an hour.  If you work at the Bon Marche, once you get three years in with them, you get fired because they are suppose to start giving you retirement benefits and they don't want to do that.  Some of these young adults are starting to want more than that.  

This is the returned missionary class picture.  Brian is the one on the far right.  He wants to be a pilot.

Some of the young men in our class have an idea of what they want to do, as far as a career goes, in their quest for becoming self reliant.  Brian wants to be a pilot, so he's listening intently on what Greg has to say to him.  Moroni wants to be a doctor, and Greg wants to get a business degree.  They don't realize all that's involved.  They don't have all the options and opportunity that we have in American.  The church has programs to help such as Pathway /BYU Idaho, BYU Hawaii, they can get some money to help with the college fees.   The Perpetual Education Fund was available at one time, but it was taken away because no one was paying it back.  There are some government grants, but it seems that your have to "know someone" to get any of that money.  The is a private scholarship program that was set up by some rich Austrailian.  FiJi has a program where they can go there to get a plumbing or electrician license.   It's difficult though, because it's so expensive.  With the internet being world wide, the young people in these countries are starting to see what's out there, and some of them want more.  It will be interesting to see what happens in the years to come.  You just don't realize how blessed you are until you come to country that struggles mightily.  We love our brothers and sisters here in Vanuatu, and we'll do what we can for them.  Love to all of you at home.  XO   Elda and Sista Robison