Pickleball & Primary Program

Our blog entries might be a little less exciting since we won't be traveling again until January, but we'll do our best to keep your interest!  

Greg is trying to finish up the audits for this cycle.  Tomorrow, 15   September, is the time line for audits around the world.  Tonight is his last audit with one of the wards here in Port Vila.   There are two ways to do church financial audits; one is a paper audit and the other a computer audit.  The stake here in Port Vila got their computers about 18 months ago, but up until now the audits have been paper audits.  Fiji sets up the computers in this part of the world for wards and branches and teaches them how to use them.    They are now able to enter their church records on line.  Audits in Port Vila have not been done on line until this cycle.  Greg had them do computer audits for the first time and it worked out great.   New Caledonia, which is a French speaking country in the mission has computers and  have been doing computer audits for a couple of years.  Since we don't speak French, they don't have us go there.  

Next week we will be loosing one of our senior missionaries.  Elder Rice will be returning home after serving an 18 month mission here in Port Vila.  The church doesn't send senior, single, men on missions, so Elder Rice was on his own dime.  He lost his wife to cancer two years prior to coming.  He will truly be missed.  He's a great example and alot of fun.  We're having a pizza party for him on Saturday night.  On Monday, there will  be another party at the mission home with the Grangers.  He leaves on Wednesday morning for his home in Austraila.

This morning we had a pickleball tournament!   Elder Rice made a trophy for the winners out of wood and attached a pickleball to it, so cleaver.  Names were drawn to choose teams.  Elder and Sister Sackley, Brian King (Seminary/Institute), and Elder Rice are the best players.  It was really humid, so we were all sweating like crazy.  We played for about two hours.  When it was over, Elder Sackley and I were the winners! Imagine that!  Of course, he played circles around me, but it was still fun. We all had a good time and it's great exercise for seniors.  If you've ever thought about giving it a try, do it!  I guess pickleball is getting to be quite the rage in the states.

Elder and Sister Collette, our newest couple, are Educations Specialists here in the mission.  They help the students with english and math. They asked us if we would help teach some of the classes since we have time before the next audit.  We're happy to help where we can.  We are also planning to start a new My Plan for Retured Missionary class in another part of the stake.  The people have to walk so far to get anywhere, so we decided to hold the classes closer to where they live.  There are tons of vans (like a VW bus) that take people where they need to go.  I think they charge $1.50 each way.  Very few people could ever afford a car, so you see alot of people walking everywhere or riding a van. 

We talked to the Granger's the other day, and they asked how close we were to being finished with the audits.  We will be helping them get families to the temple.  A lot of it will be locating records such as birth certificates, marriage licenses... Not sure how we'll do that, but we'll find out.  The members are holding a temple prep class in our ward, so that's a good thing. 

Today was the primary program for our ward.  The kids did a really good job, they know those primary songs.  As I sat there listening, I was thinking about how they were going on all over the world about this time of year.  I have always enjoyed watching the kids pick their noses, pull funny faces and trying to get their parents attention!  They were doing the same thing here!  So funny.  We used to have another ward in our building, but it was so far for them to travel (walking), that they have rented an old school building for church services that is much closer to where they live. 

I can tell the humidity is picking up, I put a throat losenge in my mouth and it was soft and chewy.  I think we are getting used to it, maybe it won't be so bad!  We hope all is well with your and your family.  Take good care, we love you!

Elda and Sista Robison XO