Our Mission Experience in Vanuatu

I wouldn’t say this past week was easy, but it was a bit less rigorous than the previous months — a welcome break before January 26 when school resumes and seminary, institute, and Succeed in School all start back up. So, we enjoyed a quieter week while we could. Momma Ruth's activity -  Making baskets Monday began with our regular Seminary & Institute leader meeting. Afterward Darleen went to support a sister in our ward, “Momma Ruth,” who had a mom’s education event she’d been planning for months. Momma Ruth invited several of the mothers in her small community to come and learn different crafts (e.g. Sewing, weaving, painting, etc.) that they could potential use to earn money to support their families.   Our humanitarian senior couple, the Meyers, were instrumental in securing funding and helping with publicity and logistics; Sister Meyer even accompanied Momma Ruth to the ministry of education and helped with pre-event work. Darleen has visited Momma Ruth a few ...

  Hello Everyone! [ Mark's addition comments in red ] It seems like it has been a month since the last time I actually wrote the full weekly letter. It has been a Month!   We were so busy.   Of course, in a really good way!   This past week has been a bit lighter since the convention ended.   With Summer vacation ending we are preparing for a New year and New Start to all our educational programs.   School starts back on January 26 th and so does Seminary and Institute and SIS.   We are excited for the new year. I think I have it pointed the wrong direction!!! So, at the beginning of our week, we met with one of our head Seminary teachers and planned a Seminary Jubilee for the Congregational that we support.   I’ll tell you more about that in a few.   After our meeting we set out to deliver fliers to other seminary teachers to attend a special training being held this week. Having no addresses, we really had no idea where to find them....

Happy New Years to you all!!! Christmas and New Years are now well behind us, and we are finally sitting down to write this letter. Our New Year’s season was especially busy as we prepared to host the YSA Convention. We promise we will stop talking about this in our future letters, but it has been a nonstop weekly list of activities that consumed a lot of our time and has defined our mission these past 4 months. After weeks of planning—meetings with the committee we wrestled through the list of open action items we needed to get done. We were constantly reviewing the list of attendees for last-minute flights and ferry schedule changes. While continuing to get new names and adding more to the flights. Brother Tounguen and I ran around trying to get checks written and signed to pay for items. Many hours were spent running around town buying items needed for the convention. I had to go to a number of different stores to purchase mattresses for the additional dorms we had to set up. Cleani...