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| Sunset on Denerau island |
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| Sister Wahlstrom and Sister Ma'ake |
March has been a month of many meetings. We had a Fiji Country Office conference on the 7th. It was held in the Lami chapel, which enabled all the employees from this side of the island to get together outside the confines of the office. The presenters were all interesting, and there was some historical perspective on how much the church has grown over the last 20 years, some interesting stories and pictures of the temple, and how the current collection of building on the temple site (offices, patron housing, mission home, temple presidents home) expanded and grew to cover all the property available to the church at this location. Steve and I stayed for the morning session, but then we had other obligations to attend to. The employee group went to a local waterfall and had lunch and "team building" activities during the afternoon.
March 8th was International Women's Day. It was celebrated here in the office by our HR manager inviting all the women on this campus, both church schools, and some of the other satellite offices here in Suva to a gathering in the conference room. We started at 4:30 in the afternoon. We were greeted at the door with the presentation of a salusalu (Lei) and then we did some "getting to know you" activities and games, followed by the presentation of a slide show and comments from husbands, fathers, brothers and friends honouring many of the women in the room. We were then served a delicious dinner topped with cake and ice cream. It was a lovely event.
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| International Women's Day Suva, Fiji Country Office |
I have been with this woman for almost 51 years. She is just as beautiful now as she was when we faced each other over the alter in the Oakland California temple. She is great missionary companion. She cares for me when I am sick. She prepares wonderful meals to keep me healthy.
She is intelligent, hard working (to her energy level), kind, loving, thoughtful, and the best companion in the world for me.
💕 💕 💕 💕
Steve works in the temple on Saturday mornings. He shared a special experience he had there. In Steve's words:
Saturday Morning is my opportunity to work at the Fiji Suva Temple. For the past several months, I have been working in the Baptistry. A few weeks ago I arrived for my shift which starts at 7 am. There were 18 young men from the LDS college dorms already dressed in white and waiting. What an awesome sight they were.
I was spiritually impressed with power of the Priesthood these young men held. Thoughts of Helaman’s Stripling Warriors passed through my mind. Our normal practice with a baptismal group is to have them sing a song, pray, and then I share some short remarks. (Sadly we were informed last week that that will no longer be done)
I turned to them with the request to choose one to lead a song and another to offer the prayer. The song they began singing was the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. The gifted singing of this group was absolutely amazing. As they sang the chorus they added a beautiful descant. Talk about chills and such a strong spirit as they sang “My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”.
After the prayer, I shared with them my impression that they would indeed see the coming of their Lord. This is a spiritual moment I will never forget.
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| From the front: Sister Walk, Sister Klomp, Me, Sister Williams, Sister Gerken, Sister Moyes |
Another special women's event occurred on Sunday March 17th with the Relief Society Birthday broadcast from SLC. Our meeting at the Samabula chapel was delayed because the brother who was setting up the IT equipment took a fall down a flight of stairs. He was whisked off to the hospital in a taxi, and there was a scramble to get everything set up so we could enjoy the broadcast. With a few adjustments, they were able to get the program started about 20 minutes late, and we sat in the chapel, sang hymns and visited while we waited. Cake and ice cream were served after the meeting. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon. (President Gima was treated and released, and limped for a few days, but was otherwise fine.)
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| My rain gauge basin |
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| 8' deep |
The basin is placed in an area that is fairly level, and gets no run-off from buildings or plants. It's certainly not very scientific, but did ultimately serve a useful purpose.
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| This was water from the time I left the flat about 9 am until I came home for lunch. |
I never complain about the weather until I hear Fijians complaining about the weather. According to that metric, we are definitely having a wet year. All that water run-off has consequences, and sure enough, there was a road washed out up the hill from us in Wailouku. Unfortunately, the water main that serves most of the Suva and Lami areas was washed out with it. Ultimately, we were without running water in the flat for 11 days.
All the pictures of road conditions and repair activities are courtesy of the Water Authority of Fiji (WAF) Facebook page. I collected them and had them with me on my phone, because the missionaries have no access to the news, and they were pretty interested in the progression of the repairs.
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| The Savura Road washout |
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| That's our water gushing out of that pipe! |
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| Repair work stabilising from the bottom up |
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| They had lots of workers and big machines on the job. |
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| I wonder how they got those big machines down to the bottom of that giant hole! |
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| Weather permitting, they worked around the clock |
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| As a service to the community, 50 water trucks made daily deliveries. The temple site delivery is circled in yellow |
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| The Temple site has a couple of large water tanks, so we got regular water deliveries (this is the lower parking lot where our office is located). The temple never had to be closed due to water shortage. |
The day the water drama started, Steve and I left town on a scheduled trip to the west. We spent 2 days in Nadi having meetings, both medical and Self-Reliance. We didn't find out about the water situation until we were having dinner at the port on Denerau island (see the beautiful sunset picture above) and I got a call about a sick missionary in Suva.
Bodil Fricke is our contact at Sydney Euro (the medical insurance administrator that takes care of Aetna claims in the South Pacific). She and I are in frequent communication by phone or email, but we had never met in person. Bodil let me know she would be traveling to Fiji and staying at a resort just outside of Nadi. She invited me to meet with her. Steve and I are always happy for a chance to get away from Suva, so we lined up a few other meetings for that same time frame and drove to Nadi. One thing I really wanted to do was check out a new Pacific Healthcare Specialist (PSH) hospital right across the road from the airport.
We met Bodil at one of our favourite coffee shops, Bulaccino's, and had a lovely visit. Bodil had scheduled a visit to PSH, and she had contacted the chief medical officer and arranged a tour. She invited us along, and we were able to see the entire facility from ground floor to 5th floor conference room (with a great view!) guided by Dr. Ratesh Kumar.
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| Bodil Fricke and Mickey |
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| Bodil Fricke, Mickey, Steve, Dr. Ratesh Kumar |
In February we had the opportunity to observe a couple of Fijian funerals. March brought us up close to an IndoFijian funeral. Our landlord's family lives next door to us, and their aged auntie passed away. We were intrigued to note a scaffolding with an awning erected in the front courtyard, along with lights and a generator to power them. For over a week there were various gatherings under the awning each evening, accompanied by food, music, chanting, cymbals and drums. About a week after the event, I had a chance to talk with Shammie. She was gracious enough to explain some of the end-of-life traditions:
The stove is turned off and there is no cooking in the home after the family member passes, until the priest comes in after the funeral service to bless the house and turn on stove. Family and frends provide vegetarian meals for 3-5 days. The family hosts the funeral service and 10 days of prayers and food (vegetarian) every evening. Prayers include drums, cymbals, chants and singing.The family will have additional commemorative services at 100 days and again at 1year.
I'll finish this up with a few random pictures in no particular order.
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| This is a restaurant at the Denarau Port that was recommended to us several months ago. We had a delicious dinner on our final night in Nadi |
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| The police officers on Denerau wear the ceremonial uniforms. The only other place I've seen these uniforms is the Prime Minister's Palace in Suva |
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| Senior missionary Easter dinner on Good Friday. |
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| Presiding Bishop Causse (front row, 3rd left) conducted a devotional with our office staff while visiting Fiji. |
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| Naomi Volavola Waganika gave me a pronunciation lesson for her last name one day when I was struggling to remember it. Needless to say, I haven't forgotten how to say it since. |
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| Jeromy Hall (BYU Pathways) and Dan Teuscher, IT, came to Fiji to work on the technical issues we cope with to help BYU Pathway students be successful. |
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| Elder White, Elder Gerken and Elder Singh. These are hard working missionaries who take care of all the housing needs, as well as many other missionary responsibilities. Elder Singh is from Enterprise Utah. His mother is Native American and his father is Fijian. He has some very interesting stories to tell! |
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| With big, heavy water trucks comes big, heavy damage sometimes. One of the gate posts took the impact. Steve and I watched the repair and replace project with great interest. |
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| A little paint and it will be like it never happened! |
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| The rubble between the car and the cement form is what's left of the old post. |
Steve and Mickey Hinkson
