Another Week in Paradise - Grandkids thinking of you as you start your summer holiday's in the USA.
Hello Family and Friends!
We have had another wonderful week serving in Vanuatu! Before
I tell you anything about our week. I want to take just a few lines to tell
Eldon, Ella, Gracie, Zac, Lincoln, Rylie, Alysse, Tate, Darcie, Luke, Grant,
and Jacob congratulations for finishing another year of school. Nana and Papa
are so proud of all of you! Balancing schoolwork with sports, music, seminary,
and youth night is a great accomplishment!
Seeing the pictures and videos of some of your last days in
school this year has made us so proud of you! Ya'all have grown so much
this year and your talents are developing at a rate that we cannot seem to keep
up with. Papa and Nana are your BIGGEST fans and we love and admire you
for doing your absolute BEST.
We know you will all be meeting soon for the annual family gathering. We will not be there, but our hearts sure will be! Ya’ll have fun and be safe on the water! To my olders: Do not sneak out to the water at night!!!! Do not make me worry about your safety. Play lots of games and make some good cousin memories. Ensure your parents keep the snack box filled with good things to eat, remind them when it needs to be refilled. Take pictures and make sure you video call us at least a few times!
Now let me tell you about our week! On Monday we were scheduled to visit a Seminary class in the Mele Branch that meets at 5:00pm – 6:00pm. Sister Mayline teaches a class of 6 students in her home. Early in the day I made banana, blueberry, pineapple, coconut bread for our succeed in school classes and for our seminary visit. Yes, the bread is AMAZING! We had received a text from Tania, one of our SIS teachers, saying she had asked someone to take her class as she was needed for a YW activity practice. When we arrived at the church, we helped get the classes set up and then found out the older class did not have a teacher. I checked on the younger class and to my surprise we had double the amount we usually get. Some were too young but, how can you turn them away if they want to learn! We were in a bit of a panic as we had a scheduled appt at 5pm. I asked several people if they could help us out but that did not pan out. Mark and I decided to divide and conquer. I also did not have enough snacks, so we had to improvise and the students had to share. Mark stayed to teach and I left the church at 4:30 and headed to Mayline’s seminary class. Mayline usually has 6 students, she said that she has 1 student that is faithful and comes every single day. He is 14 and his name is Jessie. We ended up with 2 students, Jessie and Chelsea. Mayline is a wonderful teacher. I was so incredibly impressed that her students have memorized the references of 12 scripture masteries. During the class Mayline’s nephew played on the floor with a little kitten. I watched him as he used this kitten like a race car. I thought several times that poor little kitty would escape but poor little thing was trapped. It reminded me of Toy Story where the toys are loved to death. At one point the kitten ended up beneath my feet. I looked down at the poor little thing, and it went meow. The weakest little meow I have ever heard. I shared my special bread with the class and promised to return and celebrate with the class when they memorized all 24 scripture masteries. It was an amazing visit, I wish all our teachers were as devoted and committed to their students.
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| Inside Mayline's humble home. |
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| Mayline and Jessie from the Mele Branch. The little cat wrangler is on the floor with his back to me. |
Mayline had shared that this past Friday that only Jessie had shown up
for class and so she said to Jessie "you will not be the only student today". She
took Jessie and they went to every student’s home and invited them to go to
class. Mayline gets the Hero Teacher award for the week; she taught me so much.
Everyone who knows Mark Lovelace knows that before I even
wake up in the morning, he has accomplished so much. Our SIS books in the Etas
ward were a mess, so we had brought them home to organized them.
Tuesday morning, while I was still sleeping Mark went
through the books and got rid of all the loose torn pages. He set us up for
success. When I finally got up around 7:30am it was nice to hear what he had
already accomplished. We spent the morning studying for our lesson for teaching
the seminary class in Eton. I made brownies to share with them.
We got a call from Marie, our seminary supervisor, from
Tanna. She is actually here on Efate with her 9-year-old son Nicholas. Nicholas
was scheduled to have surgery on a cleft palate. He was actually out of surgery
and was asking if Mark could come over to the hospital with another priesthood
leader to give Nicholas a blessing of healing. Mark called Elder Meyer and they
went over to the hospital and gave Nicholas a blessing. Marie was extremely
grateful.
That afternoon we headed to Eton for seminary. Every time we
go, we are prepared to teach hoping that the teacher will show up. Can I ask
for prayers for Sista Sereh? We really need her. Her students need her. The
lesson went great and the brownies were a huge hit!
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| Sweet Sista Sereh with her little grand daughter from the Eton Unit |
The younger kids
always gather outside the building peeking into through the windows. I always
try to bring extra as the kids LOVE treats. I went to the window after class
was finished and ask the kids to tell me something they knew about Jesus Christ.
For every answer, a brownie was handed out. One little boy who had attended our
primary class had remembered the story Mark had talked about Jesus feeding the
five thousand. He said Jesus is a miracle maker. I am addicted to these kids!!!
When it comes to sharing treats with them it brings me so much joy to see them
enjoy the things we bring.
Our ward council
meeting was cancelled, and so Mark and I decided he would cook. When Mark cooks
we go out to eat. We went to Stone Grill, which was delicious.
The air is cool now in the evening and the smoke has returned.
The fires are not only for cooking but to stay warm. Stephanie, you could
totally relate. It’s like when the temperature falls in Florida and everyone is
wearing gloves and earmuffs, even though it is still around 75 outside. I love Vanuatu in the Fall! It is still hot during
the day, but the evenings are spectacular!
Wednesday, we set out to see Marie and her son, Nicholas at
the hospital. We first went by and picked up some food for them. The hospital
does not provide food for the patients. The family is entirely responsible for
caring for the needs of the family member. There are clothes lines set up
around the hospital where the family members wash (by hand in a small sink outside) and hang their clothes to dry.
I have not seen a private room yet. While visiting with Marie, 2 beds over was a
little boy named Helaman. Helaman is the adoptive son of Maklen and Ed. Maklen
is our supervisor for seminary and institute here on Efate. Helaman was also
having cleft surgery. He actually had a cleft lip. The doctors from Australia
come over and preform these surgeries. Helaman had to gain some weight before
he could have his surgery. He had finally gained enough weight and had been scheduled
weeks ago but due to so many emergencies his surgery had been postponed. We had
a chance to talk to Ed and to Helaman and wish them well.
We had Succeed in School in Etas that afternoon. I am
excited to report that I had 8 students and Mark had 5 students! We are
thrilled to have so many showing up again! We focused on our reading and
writing. My class focused on finding the themes of a story. We studied the
story of Abraham and Sarah being blessed with a child. The theme was God keeps
his promises. I love that we can focus on our covenant relationship with Jesus
Christ and learn themes in a story. Mark’s class lesson was writing letters. The
students had to write a letter to a family or friend. So, they focused on
letter writing skills. We headed home to teach our Institute class by zoom to
the missionaries in the pathway program. The lesson was one of our favorites. The
Creation. Something was off, the class members did not participate, and we felt
like we were pulling tooth and nail to get them to participate in the
discussion. We talked about it and next time we are going to try something
different.
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| SIS class that I'm teaching in Etas Ward |
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| Love the clouds. God has put us on a beautiful planet to enjoy! |
Thursday, we headed to Eton early to pick Rachel up as she
had her final dentist’s appointment. Rachel had not been able to get to her appointments
for the past few weeks as the buses are not readily available to transport
people from Eton. Rachel's papers are all finished and she is now ready for her
final interviews with her Bishop and Stake President prior to submitting her
mission papers. I am so excited for her. She has been working towards this for
6 months now and finally she is ready. After the visit she took transport back
to Eton and we headed home for a few hours to finish our preparations for
seminary that afternoon.
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| This was the view from the waiting room of the dentist office. Not sure many of us in the US get this type of view when at the dentist office. |
Mark and I loved
teaching the book of Judges this week. The whole message of the book points to
Jesus Christ as the great deliverer. We told the stories of Ehud, Deborah, and Gideon.
Mark used AI to create a few drawings that we could share with the students. The
kids LOVED the stories. We taught them about patterns that are found in the
scriptures. Take a look at this drawing Mark created to help us teach the kids
how the children of Israel would forget God and Sin and then their would-be
consequences (usually being conquer by one of the Kings of the land) or going
to battle and being oppressed. The children of Israel would cry unto the Lord
and then the Lord would send them a deliverer (Judge) and then the judge would die,
and the pattern would repeat itself. Take a look at the amazing drawings.
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| The Book of Judges cycle of Sin and Deliverance as described in many chapters of the book |
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| Ehud delivering the people from King Eglon the Moabite king as describe in Judges 3 ... Mark's AI rendition |
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| Deborah delivering the people from King Jabin and the Caananite armies as told in Judges 4 ... More AI renditions |
We Love teaching the Old Testament. We are incredibly blessed to have the records preserved so that we can learn about their relationship with Jesus Christ. As a young girl the Old Testament was how I came to know and trust Jesus Christ. I just cannot get enough! I feel his love so abundantly. We took Apples and Nutella to share as a snack.
Friday was a busy day. Mark and I decided to go ahead and prepare
the Sloppy Joes for our Zone Conference lunch that will be held on Wednesday of this week (June 3rd). Elder Taniela B. Wakolo, a General Authority Seventy, and the new Pacific Area President, will be here. We are excited to meet
him and his wife and to receive instruction from him. For the Sloppy Joes we purchased over 20 lbs of
hamburger meat. Unfortunately, there is no Manwich sauce in a can here to make it easier, so I did a hunt on Pinterest
for a recipe and found a sloppy joe sauce. It came out great, per my taste testers comments (Mark). We went by a local bakery and
ordered the buns that we will pick up on Tuesday.
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| Some of the Sloppy Joe mix ready to store until next week. |
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| My taste tester with his little 'leg pop'. You can see our nice kitchen area behind him from our apartment here in Vanuatu. We have been lucky to have the nicest kitchen amongst the senior missionary apartments. |
We decided to take apples and Nutella to the four SIS classes that meet on Friday's. Mark cut apples and filled to-go containers full of Nutella (actually these were plastic shot glasses, the only thing that seemed like they would work when filled with Nutella). We headed over to Etas as we were scheduled to teach at 3:00pm. We are happy to report that Succeed in School is well attended once again. My 8 students and Mark's 5 returned!! My students had a momentous day as we studied division with remainders. It was so much fun to see how excited they got. I invited them to play teacher. I would give them a problem they would then come to the board and while doing the problem they would explain what they were doing. They were confident and happy especially when the other students said they got the same answers. They were jumping out of their seats wanting to be the teacher. We also had a map of Italy and were in search of where the Colosseum was. There were 8 cities in Italy, and each had an answer to one of the division problems on it. When they solved the division problem, they would underline the answer. There was one answer remaining and that was on Rome where they discovered the Colosseum. Class was so much fun! We ended by reviewing the multiplications of 7. I told them when they had all their answers to come and let me check their work. I had one boy who came up to me after every problem. He was so excited about showing me his work. After the class in Etas Ward building, we dropped off apples and Nutella to the 2 classes that are going on a little later in the Stake Center building.
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| Sister Taravaki with the older SIS class in the Stake Center showing the Nutella and apples at the end of her class. |
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| Tania with the younger SIS class in the Stake Center before wrapping up. |
We normally head over to Institute to hang out with the Young Single Adults. We were exhausted and decided since we were not teaching that we would skip out. We decided to go out for pizza and then head home.
On Saturday we did some laundry and around 11 headed over to
a Resort called M with Elder & Sister Meyer. The weather was perfect and we
stayed until around 4:30pm. We learned from one of the owners that from July to
August that the humpback whales can be seen from the resort going through the
channel. We are excited to return and do some whale watching soon.
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| Perfect shaped Palm tree |
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| Us and the Myer's at the "M" Resort. |
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| Area between the island in the background and the resort where the whales are said to pass in the "winter time" from migrations down to New Zealand & Australia. |
As church started on Sunday, we had a bus load of youth that walked into join us (~20 youth). These youth are here to build a school in our area. They are with an organization called HXP, (Humanitarian eXchange Program). This is the first of four groups who will assist in building the school. The youth are mainly from Utah and Idaho areas. During Sunday School, which was a joint meeting with the adults and youth on family history, these kids got up and instead of sitting together they went and sat around the room with local member kids from the Ward. That night they hosted a gathering where the youth shared what they were here to do, a spiritual messages, and then played a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. I have included a few pictures to give you a small idea of how much JOY filled the room.
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| Youth from HXP playing "Rock" a form of Rock, Paper, Scissors |
| Video of them going around the church playing the game. |
That is our week, as you can see, we are anxiously engaged in trying to do good. We ask for continued prayers; our car situation that we mentioned in last weeks letter has not been resolved with the police on the island of Malekula. Thank-you for your love and support. Thank-you for the good you are all doing in this big beautiful world.
Have a fantastic week!
We love you all!
Nana & Papa, Mom & Dad, Darleen & Mark, Sista & Elda Lovelace
Additional Pictures From the Week
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| Tyson, one of our favorite "pikinini" (means child in Bislama language). He's always giving us hi-fives when we see him.
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| Another one of your average foods found in the butcher cabinet at our local grocery store. |
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| One of my favorite breakfast treats, that I discovered on Vanuatu, is passion fruit mixed with Greek yogurt (when we can find it in the stores) |
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| I like coming upon a random cow as we drive along the bush areas here in Vanuatu. |
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