Goodbyes, Lap Lap, Fly Swatters, Testing, and Talks --- all in the week!!!
Hello Everyone!!!
Sorry, We are a little behind in posting this week. We have
had a busy week and it’s not slowing down. Last night I didn’t think I was
going to make it through dinner. Congratulations
to me, I made it although, I thought my face was going to fall into my dinner
plate. I was asleep by 7:30pm and no one
had to send me to bed. I went
willingly. So here is the weekly
update.
I’ve been thinking about the importance of memories and
experiences. One that has become especially meaningful to me is the memory of
receiving a letter from Mark every single week of his mission. Unlike this
blog, he hand‑wrote me faithfully, week after week. Which is truly a gift as he just loves
writing letters (Not Really). Those letters were truly an act of love that made
me feel especially Giddy. I hope our letters bring you the kind of Joy that
keeps you wanting to hear more about our service.
Speaking of memories, I love what President Henry B. Eyring
said about keeping a daily journal: “I wrote down a few lines every day for
years… Before I would write, I would ponder this question: ‘Have I seen the
hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?’”
His words remind me that recording our experiences helps us to recognize the
Lord’s hand in our lives and to remember.
I think that the word remember is one of the most important words in our
vocabulary. As humans we have a great
tendency to forget. When we remember our
lives are always more positively impacted instead of negatively impacted. Especially during rough periods,
This week has been such a fun
week and when I go back and read about it, I know my heart will burst in
gratitude. I do not like goodbyes and
that is how our week began. Tania Billy, one of our dear YSA friends left to
attend BYU Hawaii. Mark and I jumped in
the Car early Monday morning and drove down to the duty-free store to purchase
perfume for Tania and Cologne for Robert who will be leaving as soon as flights
can be arranged. Tania once said to me
that she felt like, “all any girl needs is a couple of bottles of
perfume.” Her leaving made me think of
the song from Wicked - For Good. “It well may be that we will never meet again,
in this lifetime. But because I knew
her my life has been changed for good". Tania, you are a Memory I don’t want to
forget. 😊Me with Sister Taravaki, Tania, and Robert.
On Tuesday I met Kaila and
Josphine at the Stake Center. Josphine needed to finish up her medical papers
for her mission call. Her doctor had some
concerns about her heart and wanted her to have an echocardiogram. She specifically said she had 2 heart
murmurs. We started off at the medical
center to get an order to have this procedure done at the hospital. When we left, we were told it could take up
to a month to get it done We were also told that we could call and schedule a
private appointment. There is only one
doctor on our island who does this line of work.
He is an internal medicine doctor but specializes in echocardiograms. People come from all the islands to our
island just to see him. In addition to this he is the only one who has the
equipment to do these procedures. We called and asked him to schedule a private
appointment, and he said he would call us back.
Josphine felt like we should also go to the hospital hoping to get one
that day. We arrived at the hospital and
found out he only does this procedure every 2 weeks on Thursdays, and he
already had 5 appointments and a note saying no more appoints for that day. The benefit of going to the hospital is it
would be free. The private appointment
would cost 25,000 Vatu and 5,000 Vatu for the report, which is around $250 US
Dollars. When that didn’t work out, I
decided to treat the girls to lunch as Kaila was leaving for her mission on
Thursday. We went down to the waterfront to a restaurant called Jill's. We had a wonderful time together and by the
time we left we had received an email from the doctor, saying he had expedited our
appoint for the next day.
On Wednesday I asked
Mark to go with Josphine and myself as I was a bit uneasy about where this doctors office was located. We had received a
note telling us to go to #three shopping center and that he would pick us
up. The doctor works privately from his
home. The road to his house was very
steep leading down to a waterfront property. He leads us to the back porch
where he had a bed set up with his equipment.
The doctor listened to Josphine’s heart and then performed the procedure. It was like an ultrasound, and he checked out
all Four chambers of her heart which are perfectly beautiful and strong and
healthy. He also checked out her liver
which was also very good. I asked about
the murmurs that the other doctor had mentioned in the report. He mentioned that the doctors don’t have good stethoscopes.
The medical equipment on the island is less than desirable and the island needs
supplies that will aid the doctors in giving correct diagnosis to their patients. We are hoping to have our humanitarian
missionaries meet with him to see if they can assist him at all. Can you imagine thinking for weeks that you
have a heart condition. This was scary
for Josphine. I am just so glad we were
able to get her in and resolve this mistake.
Josphine is now ready to submit her papers to serve.
That night Kaila invited us to
her house for a going away party. A
traditional celebration meal here in Vanuatu is call lap lap sosar. We had never eaten lap lap sosar. Kaila was
so excited for us to try it. Everyone says it is one of the best as it is what
is prepared on the island of Malekula. After
Ward council we headed to her place. We
were so pleased to see a large gathering of so many of our YSAs. I very much enjoyed participating in one of
their traditional celebrations. We all
sat in a circle around the lap and ate and laughed. It was such a fun evening, one that I will
not soon forget. I’m pretty sure they were laughing at us.YSA's eating lap lap.
 |
| Lap lap sosar is a combination of sweat potato, coconut juice, and chicken all cooked in coals wrapped in banana leaves |
Thursday was another
goodbye. This time it was Kaila. Kaila will be attending the mission training
center in Manilla, Philippians. Kaila
has never flown and now she was flying to Brisbane, Australia and then to Hong
Gong and then finally arriving in the Philippians. We drove over to the airport for our final
farewell to Kaila. I just love Kailas’
laugh and will miss her sweet calm disposition.
Kailas’ faith and courage to leave the island and travel to an unknow
place in this big world is to me compared to David killing the giant,
Goliath. Faith and Courage in Jesus
Christ gave her the strength to take flight!
After finishing her training, she will serve 18 months in Ghana. This Young Woman is one of my forever friends
and a newly cherished hero.Kaila is 2 to the right of me and Josephine is in purple
dress next to Kaila.Mark posing with Kaila (right of him) and some of her friends at the
airport before she leaves to the Philippians MTC
Friday afternoon, Mark left
around 2:30pm heading over to Etas. I
still had some prep work for Institute. Mark really wanted to do a review with
the older kids at SIS for the Test the next morning. He is so good with these kids! They love him too! Having only the truck I told him I would meet
him at the stake center; as I was teaching Math at 4pm. There was no way he
would be back to pick me up. I told him
I would take the transport. I did it, I
took my first public transport on the island! I am happy to report that it was
slow but pleasant as I was lucky enough to get a seat directly in front of the
air conditioning.
All week, Mark was busy with preparations
for our Fiji Socs testing for Saturday day.
Earlier in the week we received an email announcing that beginning in
September we would return to having Institute in the wards and units! Knowing that this would be out last week
teaching at the stake center I suggested to Mark that we do some kind of fun
review. With Mark focusing on the testing,
I prepared a review game for Institute.
Giving gospel clues with the fly swatters in the middle
of the room. They were ready to dash to the middle to
answer the questions.
I had Mark pick up some 24 fly swatters. I worked on review questions from our lessons
and typed out all the answers. We hung
the answers along with many other answers to kind of throw them off. I think we have a picture we can share to
give you an idea of what it looked like.
I would read a question or a quote with a missing word and say go and
the YSA's would have to pick up a fly swatter and run to the answer and place
their swatter on what they thought was the answer. If they got the answer correct, they got a
bean. Mark had suggested doing this as
it was easy to keep tract of their points.
At the end of the review, we invited those who had the most beans to get
in line first for ice-cream sundaes which Mark had so kindly shopped for. The great thing about Mark purchasing ice
cream is that he gets plenty as he loves ice cream. It was a fantastic activity; we all had so
much fun laughing at each other and some of the choices that were made as
answers to the questions. In addition, I
believe everyone learned a few different things about the gospel that they had
not known. I love this way of
learning! Gospel learning should be
fun! We cleaned up and then had the boys
help set up our testing tables for the next day. Enjoying the ice cream sundaes with some of the YSA's One of our YSA's who at first sat back and
watched the activity, then she jumped in and
loved it.
By Friday I thought I was
exhausted but then Saturday came. Mark
and I were up earlier gathering all the materials we would need to take with us
to the stake center for testing. We were
at the church from 8:00am until around 6:15pm Testing went well
and we had around 54 youth in the first testing session and then around 28 in
the 2nd session. During the testing
both Mark and I worked on putting some thoughts together for talks that we
would give the next day. Mark and I
enjoyed a delicious steak at Stone Grill and then headed home to polish our
talks. Sunday was an absolute
delight. I love Sundays, having the
opportunity to give our 1st talk in sacrament meeting was a sweet
experience. We gave our talk in English
if you were wondering.
Fiji SOCS testing - Mark captured me in the corner
doing a little preparation for our talk on SundayPicture of the Fiji SOCS testing trying to capture all
the youth in the room. For those who qualify it will
be such a blessing in their lives.Mark looking at the youth as they
tested.
We came home and started grading test as we
leave for Tanna the first of the week (which is why this is just going as we came to the island and have been very busy running around to different locations -- more on that in next weeks letter).
I
would like to close my letter my sharing my feelings about the youth who showed
up and took these tests. The 1st part of the test focused on
Listening and Reading Comprehension. It
is 90 minutes long. The students listen
to a series of stories and then answer questions with the optional answers A, B, C, or
D to choose from. Then they are asked to
choose the sentence that sounds exactly like the one being read for them. Then they have a page of pictures marked A,
B, C, or D. They are asked 25 questions
to identify what sentence goes with what picture. For example, the girl is reading a book. That
might be A. Then they have pages of
pictures with questions like the top line is longer than the bottom line. And they have to find the picture that goes
with that statement. After that 90-minute
test we took a break for 10 minutes.
I have to give a shout out to one of our amazing seminary teachers. We have so many amazing teachers, but this teacher deserves a spot in our blog this week. Amos, arrive with his students to support them. He also brought sandwiches and invited all the students, not just his, to come and get one during the break. Amos stayed with his students until it was over! When I think of a true shepherd, I think of Amos! Amos did what Jesus Christ would have done if he were here. I want to be more like Amos!
View of congregation before sacrament service begun. It
was a full house, and even the 1st Counselor in the Stake
Presidency was in attendance. No pressure for our talks. :-)Mark speaking Sunday
As I said Sunday, Mark and I
began marking the test. I marked most of
the math test. There was one paper I
graded where the student got 1 out of 44 correct. Now before you go Awe that’s terrible, I want
you to put on your spiritual eyes. This
student spent almost 4 hours Testing, filling in each block with an answer. What I saw was a warrior who was chasing his
dreams. The student didn’t say I can’t.
The student showed up and gave it all he could. I am super proud of the strength this student
had to TRY. The potential blessings that
will come to this student because of TRYING.
This week I learned how important it is to TRY. I am thankful for the opportunity the Lord
has allowed me to continue to learn. To
place these individuals in my life to help me grow in ways I thought I had
already conquered. Stay humble people,
allow the Lord to show you your weaknesses and press forward with Faith in
Him. He is surely walking beside
us. We love you all so very much, I wish
you were all with us. Have a fantastic
week! Love,
Nana & Papa, Mom &
Dad, Elda & Sista Lovelace, Mark & Daleen
Additional Weekly Pictures
YSA Friday activity with several gathered around one of
the answers on the wall.Another clue being given before dashing off.
Saturday Fiji SOCS testing - Morning Session
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