Today we got up at 4am to finish packing and go to Vanuatu. The assistants picked us up at 5am and we were off to the airport. Our flights to Nadi and then to Port Vila went smoothly. However, we bought 5 cameras at the duty free zone in the Nadi airport for missionaries in Vanuatu. When we got to Vanuatu, because we were bringing them for someone else and not for ourselves, they assessed a value added tax of 12.5%! Oh well, live and learnJ. Elder and Sister Warner picked us up at the airport and took us back to their house. Elder Warner and I spoke about transfer issues and Jan and Sister Warner went shopping. We had a plan flight scheduled to fly to Tanna (the southern most of the islands where we have missionaries) at 2pm. We got back to the airport and took about a 40 minute plane ride to the Tanna airport. There were 4 Elders there at the airport to welcome us. As we came out of the airport, the branch president from Green Hill was there and we spoke with him for a few minutes. He spoke French since he was more comfortable in that language than in English. We got our luggage and Elder and Sister Warner, Jan, and Elder Tupou and I drove the missionaries truck to go and see a remote branch of the Church on the side of the island opposite the airport. We drove some very rough roads. Along the way, we stopped at a member’s house. This member has held sacrament meeting in his home for the past 23+ years. We got out and met him and his wife and thanked them for their faithfulness before we moved on. We stopped along the way also to take a few pictures of the live volcano on the island and also some beautiful shots showing the ocean meeting the island.
We got to the Whitesands branch between 3:30 and 4pm. Much of the branch membership was there to welcome us. After greeting everyone, I went into the Branch President’s office to interview some prospective missionaries who have nearly completed the missionary recommendation forms. I ended up interviewing 3 prospective missionaries. While I was doing that, Jan sang songs with the children of the branch. She had them all doing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and the kids all seemed to love it. After I finished my interviews, the branch had “refreshments”. I would have called it dinner. They had a very nice rice dish, chicken, some very yummy fried bread, and fresh coconut milk. We felt very loved and it was hard for us to say good-bye to them just before 6pm.
We then drove mostly in the dark back to the airport side of the island where we had reservations at the Tanna Lodge. We got there where there were 2 prospective sister missionaries waiting for us in order for them to receive interviews. We checked into our rooms and then I interviewed each of these two young women as well. We finished all our interviews for the day by a little after 8pm and I went back to the room where Jan was already resting. Jan hadn’t had much sleep the night before and was very tired and needed the rest. The sound of the ocean was quite loud and gave the impression we were very close. However, it was too dark to see anything tonight. I was a great blessing to meet the people from the Whitesands Branch today.
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