Today we got up and looked out the window at an awesome scene of the ocean very near our hotel bungalow. We got up and got ready and met the Warner’s in the Lodge restaurant area about 7am for breakfast. I took my laptop and found out how to get their wireless service and spent about 45 minutes catching up on e-mails. After breakfast and finishing up my responses to outstanding e-mails we left for Whitegrass and then to Green Hill. We got to Whitegrass about 10 am. Waiting for us at this village were two prospective missionaries expecting interviews. In addition, the branch president, both his counselors, the branch cleark, the Elder’s Quorum president, the relief society president, and the chief of the village (who is not yet a member but who is actively taking the discussions) were all waiting for us with much anticipation. After interviewing the 2 prospective missionaries, I had an interview with the Branch President. We had a good conversation (using Elder Tupou to translate into Bislama) and at the end he asked me to give him a blessing to help him moving forward which I did. During our interview, I got a glimpse as to just how difficult it is for these good members. They don’t know English very well, there educational level is fairly low, and we are asking them to implement the church programs following handbooks that are translated into English and French but not Bislama. He has a number of branch members who don’t read at all. Most of the others read Bislama but don’t have many resources to read in that language to become more familiar with the Church and it’s teachings.
As we were walking back to the other members, I stopped and pulled him aside to tell him this story:
Many years ago my father was the branch president of a small branch of the Church. He was suffering from stomach ulcers and was resolved that when the mission president next came to town he was going to ask him if he couldn’t be released in order to get some relief from this ailment. As it happened, Elder Harold B. Lee (a young member of the Quorum of the Twelve at that time) came to Kalispell with the mission president. They came to my parents house for dinner that day. Dad explained to Elder Lee that he was suffering from a bleeding ulcer. Before saying much more, Elder Lee got up and told him he wanted to give Dad a blessing. He blessed him that he would not have any further problems with this ulcer. Dad never did raise the possibility of being released. Dad never had further problems with that bleeding ulcer. I told the Branch President that our family learned a great lesson that day of the importance of faith.
While there, we got to speak with these branch leaders about what they could do to get members of their congregation ready to take their families to the temple. There was much interest and many questions asked. I interviewed one of our missionaries and then we were off to go to Green Hill (spelled Grin Hil in Bislama). The roads were incredibly rough and undeveloped. There were huge ruts in much of the road and they told me that during the rainy season it was nearly impossible to get there via truck even though we had 4 wheel drive diesel vehicles. We arrived at the Green Hill chapel and found the branch president of this branch waiting for us. This was the same president I met at the airport the previous day. He and I spoke for a few minutes and then we went into the missionary apartment there on the property. I took the opportunity to interview the 2 missionaries who lived there and then interviewed Elder Tupou before we left to go back to the airport to catch a 3:50 flight back to Port Vila. After the long drive back on the rough roads we had traveled that morning, we got back to the airport in plenty of time for the flight. I made a couple of phone calls and contacted of few others via text messaging as we checked in a grabbed a snack to tide us over until we got back to Port Vila.
We got back to Port Vila and got our luggage around 5pm and went over to check us into the Grand Hotel for the night. We then went to dinner with Elder and Sister Warner, Sister Coleman and Sister Maha (two senior sisters on the island) and Brother Coy who is the area director of education for the Church who was in town for a number of meetings for a week or so. The evening went very well as I learned a lot about the Church Education support service in the Pacific Area and found some resources we could use to help our returning missionaries understand their options regarding education, education grants, and the Perpetual Education Fund that could help them with education needs after their missions. The dinner was also a going away dinner for Sister Coleman as she received a transfer to go to work in the Washington DC temple and we had learned earlier that day that her ticket to the states, which was originally purchased for September 8th had been moved up to September 1st (tomorrow). She was very happy about the transfer and equally happy to have it come a week earlier than expected so all was well.
We got to the hotel just before 9pm and I spent about an hour preparing an e-mail to Elder Pearson (a counselor in our Area Presidency) that he needed first thing in the morning. This was another extremely interesting day.
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