September 1, 2011

Today we had to get up early and figure out how to repack so we could leave on bag here, get the other bag to weigh only 10 kilo’s and be able to go to Luganville on Santo Island for the next 2 nights. We got breakfast at the hotel (the Grand Hotel) and Sister Warner picked us up to go to the airport around 8:40. We met Elder Warner at the airport where he had brought a second pick-up for the Albrecht’s. The Albrecht’s are a S&I couple living in Luganville who are planning on coming to Port Vila on Saturday for a couple of days of meetings. They have a pickup that they use when then come to Port Vila and we weren’t going to be back in time for them so we had to leave that pick-up for them as we left town. We took the same plane as the Senior Zone Leaders (Elder Hakopa and Elder Prebble). We got to Luganville without complication around 11:30. The Albrecht’s and the zone leaders from Santo (Elder Fotukava and Elder Mafi) met us at the airport.

We went to the hotel to check in and then went right over the Church for our Zone Leader Training Council meeting. This meeting took the same format as the two previous ZLTC’s held in Fiji and New Caledonia. I covered ways we can receive impressions from the Holy Ghost and also trained on the Exposure concept and how it can help us understand our potential proselying hours available each week and how we can modify our plans for non-proselyting time by day in order to identify the best proselyting hours for this part of the mission.

Following this training, I interviewed two sister missionaries and a sister who wants to go to BYU Hawaii. Elder Albrecht then picked me up and I met the Warner’s, Jan, and the two sets of Zone Leaders at a Pizza place for a late lunch. I then went back to the Church and interviewed 6 Elders before going over to the Albrecht’s where we discussed the Lunganville District and the many branches and groups that make up this district. Elder Albrecht serves as 2nd counselor in the District Presidency as well as the S&I support for the area. The stories told reminded me a lot of the small branches we were exposed to on Tanna. I do realize that this may be because I have had that experience. It is possible that the terrain and people in this district (which are found on 6 different islands) could be much different. We finished up with a dish of ice cream and we were dropped off at our hotel around 9:30 pm. The day was full and it was good to see my missionaries from this part of the mission again.