August 2, 2011

Today was filled with work in the office. I spent time getting to understanding the district financing issues for the Taveuni District. I corresponded with the Area Offices on a number of topics. We had some missionary issues to cope with as well. I read the missionary letters to the president for the week. I made some good progress on getting some missionary applications finalized. Jan told me that we got a call from the shipping company and they are supposed to deliver our shipment tomorrow morning. As I told Elder Barfuss about the fact that they were going to deliver our shipment tomorrow, I commented that the Ostler’s had said they didn’t get their shipment until September. He said, “Tomorrow hasn’t come yet president. Remember, we’re in Fiji now!” He has reminded me on a number of occasions that one of the lessons you learn early and often in Fiji is that no one is in a hurry. Many times you will be promised that something will be ready tomorrow only to have it take another week. Jan and I both rode out with the assistants to the airport at 5:30. We were going to receive 2 new sister missionaries who are scheduled to come into Suva at 6:30. These sisters were called to serve in Vanuatu and were coming here just to get oriented and welcomed. They had arrived in Nadi around 10 am this morning from the New Zealand MTC. I got a call from them around 11:00 am wondering what they were supposed to do. I said, “Didn’t the airport Elders meet you?” As we were talking she said she spotted them coming. After I got off the phone, Elder Malo told me that just an hour earlier he noticed an e-mail telling us that the sister missionaries were coming in at 10 am rather than the previously expected 4pm. Unfortunately there was no earlier flight from Nadi to Suva so they were going to have to wait in Nadi until the 6pm flight to Suva.
They arrived on time in Suva and we waived to them as they were coming up the ramp with their luggage. It was Sister Tau from Tonga and Sister Ioteb’a from Kiribus. They seemed excited to meet us and we talked for the 45 minute ride back from the airport. The plan was for them to go to dinner with the sister missionaries whose apartment was nearest to the temple. They had an invitation from a member. They would then spend the night at the sister’s flat. We would meet them in the office tomorrow morning for some orientation and interviews that would take most of the morning and afternoon. We learned as we were riding back home that their flight plans had all changed and rather than leave for Vanuatu on Thursday morning, they wouldn’t be leaving until Saturday morning. Since they were going to stay a couple more days, we determined that we would try to squeeze a temple session in tomorrow before dinner. Instead Jan will have time to fix dinner the way she wanted and we would eat at 6pm. They would then be able to go to the temple on Thursday morning. This will make things much less hectic tomorrow. After the assistants dropped us back at the mission home they picked up the sister missionaries and took the 4 sisters to the member dinner appointment. Jan and I had dinner at the house and began some planning for our missionary fireside scheduled for this Sunday evening.