Institute class

Elder and sister Lindeman are the self reliance couple in the mission, but have stepped in to keep institute going.  Brian King, the coordinator for seminary and institute here in Vanuatu, has gone back home to the states.  He was here on a  three year contract with the church.  When he and his family left about 3 weeks ago, they didn't have a replacement for him.   The church was hoping to hire a Nivan, and have since found one to take over.  They hired bishop Kaun, a bishop in a ward here in the Port Vila stake, and until he starts, the Lindeman's have asked Greg and I to teach the class.  We are going to take turns teaching.  We've each taught one class, and are enjoying it.   There are only about five that attend, they start out strong and soon fizzle out and stop coming.  It's discouraging because it would help them so much.  But, we do what we can to help those that accept it. 

Elder and sister Collette are the couple that I told you about in the mission that have started a pilot program of the church called extra class.  They teach math and english to students that either don't go to school or go after school to try to help them keep caught up.   As I've told you before, school is not mandatory.  Parents don't have to send their kids to school and many don't bother to.  In addition to their calling, they are really going the extra mile.  They are trying to help Nivans to grow a business of their own.  Elder Collette has been teaching a family how to plant and grow tomatos to sell.   The first crop they got a little lazy and didn't water the plants.   They are doing much better though and actually had a nice little crop to sell.  Another venture has been to help a man set up a chicken business, to generate eggs to sell as well as chickens.  You might remember me telling you about the portable coops the people were learning to make so that they could keep track of the eggs.  Their chickens run free, so they don't always find the eggs.   That project hasn't worked out so well, the problem is they get hungary and eat the chickens instead of using them to get their eggs.  Anyway, Collettes have a couple of incubators in their apartment, and have been experimenting on hatching the eggs.  They bought about 100 eggs, a couple of times, and none of them hatched.  They think the place they got them from was not too trustworthy, so they found out about an egg farm in Malekula and sent for them. Finally, they now have 65 furry little chickies.  They are the cutest little things!  I guess they will now give them to this guy and see how it goes.

President and sister Granger have been in New Zealand this past week to a mission president seminar.  We're helping them to wrap up some of their last minute projects so the everything is ready to hand over to the new mission president in July.  I've  been working on a picture board that has pictures of all the district presidents in the mission.  This helps the president, especially a new president, to know and recognize them when he goes to visit them.  Greg's working on some new branches in Malekula, just like he did in Tanna.  He will be preparing paperwork and drawing the boundries on a computer generated map of the island, showing the new proposed branches and where they are to be located on the island.  He's hoping to take the map on the next audit to Malekula and have President Vanu help him draw the boundries.  There aren't roads or blocks to show boundries, it's just jungle terrain.  President Vanu will hopefully be able to show him where the villages are located that have members.  When the paperwork is finished, he will submit it to Salt Lake for approval.  It's a little harder to accomplish that here, than it is in the states!

Before the Davidson's left, they ended up training two young elders to run the mission office.  We are suppose to be getting a new office couple who are coming from American Somoa.   They should arrive in about three months.  

The last few weeks, we've had this cute Chinese guy, Carlos, joining us in pickleball.  He hardly speaks a word of English, so it's been a little challenging trying to explain the rules.  He does pretty well though, and is quite fun to play with.  There was also a man from Layton, Utah, that came here last  week doing some humanitarian work for the church.  He fits wheel chairs for people that need them, as well as training people here to fix them.  He was here working with the Roundy's, the Humanitarian couple.  He also joined us in pickleball.  He was really excited to learn how to play because he lived close to courts just built in Layton.  Another guy, Kelly,  has been here from Woods Cross, Utah, working with the translators here, to get the triple combination translated into Bislama.  We've had him out on the pickleball court too!  He absolutely loves it.  He was excited too, because courts had also been built in his community.  We're converting more and more to pickleball!  We'll leave it to the young missionaries to convert people to the church.  Ha!  Ha! 

Saturday we went to our favorite place, Hideaway, to snorkel.  I got brave and went out again in the deep to "the post office".  Greg wanted to just read on the beach, so sister Tucker went with me for moral support.  It's an actual underwater, small, dome shaped place where you can mail a letter underwater.  You have to buy a plastic envelope thing to mail it, plus spend money to mail it.  You also  have to dive down to it and put it in the slot (not me!).  It was scarey enough for me just to be on top of the water looking down at it.  It's obviously a gimmic, but a fun one.  The ocean is so beautiful, especially in the deep.  Although it was scarey for me to be swimming in water where you can't see the bottom, I just know that I will regret not taking advantage of this awesome opportunity to see the amazing creations in the south pacific ocean.  The ocean is the most beautiful color of turqoise that you will ever see.  The fish are just unbelieveable too.  They swim past you is schools of hundreds!  This one school of fish were as clear as glass.   Luckily they were outlined with a thin black line or I may not have noticed them.  There were bright orange and bright blue neon fish and many, many others.  It was like swimming in an aquarium, only 100 times better.  AWESOME!!  Not only are the fish incredible, but the coral and other ocean vegetation was so beautiful.  I saw bright purple, yellow, and green colored coral!  Elder and sister Sackley went home in January.  They sent us an email saying they had just returned from a cruise to the Caribbean.  They had a chance to go snorkeling, but it was nothing compared to what we have here in Vanuatu, and to take advantage, so we will.  They have a beach bar there where you can get fries and other goodies.  Elder Collette brought a cooler that had a container of catsup in it for our fries.   They only give you a tiny little cup of catsup with your fries.  Well, you know as well as I do you need LOTS of catsup with your fries!  Fry sauce would be even better, but we'll have to wait until we get home for that! Ha  We all had a great day.   The weather is finally becoming quite nice.  It's not so humid, we don't even need our sweat cloths.  Yahoo!  The humidity this time of year is at 73%.  Your humidity at home is at 30%.   Obviously we're adjusting, because 73% is high!  It's been nice not to have dry, itchy skin.  

Well dear family and friends, we hope all is well at home.  As always, we pray for you and think of you often.   Hugs and Kisses, Greg and Ann