Friday, October 16, 2015

A Day at the Office

Friday, October 16, 2015

Church offices, Takapuna Beach, near Auckland:

I slept like I thought I’d never wake up again; normally I get up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep.  Jim even had to wake me up in time to get our included breakfast at the hotel (which was very fine), and get ready to go to the office.  Just to let you know the time difference: it is yesterday in CA and in the afternoon.  It is the next day here and in the morning.  That is enough time difference to mess with our daytime/nighttime sleeping and eating habits.  It is spring here going onto summer, also quite opposite of where we live. 

At about 9 AM Luisa from the office and secretary to the Area Welfare Manager, Hans Sorensen, came to fetch us.  With a name like Hans we expected to see a blond Norwegian.  Instead he is a native of NZ and looks like he belongs here; he told us that his grandfather was from Denmark and that is where he got his name.  We see on the wall two certificates for Hans: Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Laws, both from the University of Auckland.  He’s really a great guy.
 
We followed Luisa from the Spencer Hotel walking the short 2-block distance to the office.  Through our window we saw overcast skies and a stiff breeze so we knew our summertime clothes would be inadequate.  I layered what I could over my blouse—a cardigan, a Charities shirt, and a windbreaker, but it was not nearly as cool as it looked. 

The first thing we did after meeting Hans was to have a conference call with the couple on Vanuatu, E/S Leben, along with E/S Winters who are taking a few weeks in UT.  Vanuatu was hit with Cyclone Pam several months ago when E/S Leben first arrived, making it impossible for them to work on the old water projects begun by another couple who had to go home early because of health reasons.  They have had to deal with emergency relief instead, which changes a bit what we will be doing there.  Another couple, E/S Stanford, will be checking on and working with that project on the Island of Tanna, which is off of Vanuatu and where they will continue to complete the project, dropping the rest of it because of the emergency situation. 

The conference call dealt with the impending drought and the ongoing emergency relief; they have a plan and are working with a large conglomeration of NGO’s and the local government.  LDSC just joined these well-known NGO’s, some of which we worked with several years ago while doing tsunami relief in Indonesia, plus some the church has partnered with on many other humanitarian projects such as measles vaccinations.  The plan is 3-fold: emergency, mid-term, and long term water projects.  We will mostly be involved in the latter two.  Even though we won’t be visiting Vanuatu this time, they really want us to visit there on a future trip (sooner rather than later) to help solve the water problems.  While El Nino will be relieving us of our drought in CA, it will be causing a drought here.  This is more serious here than at home—we simply slow down our water consumption; in the islands the crops don’t grow, their animals die off, and so they end up with scarce water sources and little food.  NGO’s believe that prevention projects cost a whole lot less than when problems turn into emergency situations, so they are trying to solve these problems before the drought takes hold.

One emergency relief plan on Vanuatu by the church is to build slightly better shelters (homes) than they were used to, but not ones that would manage to avoid destruction by another category 5 cyclone.  They were having problems because those building the first model couldn’t read plans and did it all wrong.  Luckily Elder Leben does know how to do it so found himself more heavily involved in construction; once they build the first model correctly they can train others to read plans and build the rest.  The church is also putting a couple of saw mills on these islands to generate building materials and to train locals to on how to put the mills together and then run them.  There are enough cyclone-felled trees to use for this purpose.  If you read the reports about this disaster, you might remember the thorough devastation caused by the cyclone. 

As for water, there will be a combination of water catchment (but it has to rain for this to work), desalination (more costly and more expertise to keep running), boreholes and hand pumps (where an island is not too shallow), spring catchment (without rainfall could run dry), etc.  These problems are exacerbated by many islands so flat that you can’t get water, or where aquifers are running out of water, or you get salt water, etc.  Sanitation problems are also difficult because sometimes you can’t even dig a pit without spoiling the ocean where they catch the fish that they eat.  Again, we feel blessed about our living conditions in the U.S. every time we travel. 

After our conference call Hans had another one, but this was about welfare and family services--they had 6 people involved in this call; it was an LDSC Manager’s Meeting.  We were so impressed with the intelligent and thoughtful way that things were discussed, solving the various problems at hand.  These are the same social problems that people deal with across the world.  While he took care of his meeting, we went around and visited various couples serving there as lawyers, psychologists, doctors and everything else that you can think of.  We met E/S Whidden who are there as a resource to help young full-time missionaries with depression, OCD, bi-polar disorder, and other problems, which he handles via phone for the whole Pacific Area.  They were assigned to take us around NZ tomorrow in the place of E/S Winters.  They are from Canada and have 8 children and he is a qualified psychologist. 
Luisa ordered us an incredibly delicious lunch (just a sandwich but really, really good) from a place called Habitual Fix and introduced us to a soda only sold in NZ and Australia.  I don’t like soda much but this is something I really liked.  It tastes like vanilla and lemon all at the same time and is very mild and not as fizzy as most sodas.  It is called L&P, which apparently is quite famous. 


E/S Whidden on Saturday taking us on a tour.  She is originally from Holland; they live in Canada; he takes care of emotional health of missionaries; she has other duties.  They have 8 children.

After lunch we went with Hans to meet a couple of men: one is an engineer and an expert on things that we need to know about like solar and desalination units; the other man finds and purchases anything that the area needs.  Since we will be back in the office a couple more times we will be meeting with a man who is an expert on desalination units.  We’ll be learning a lot on this trip, and will finally be able to be more effective monitors while at home where we do most of our work through e-mails, Skype, and phone calls.

We were back at the hotel by mid-afternoon in time for Jim to mourn the loss by the Dodgers.  We also had time for the gym.  We ate dinner at the hotel, which was a bit too costly.  The food was really fancy—it was kind of like eating at a cooking show contest—unusual looking food, beautifully displayed, and quite tasty; but we just don’t feel like we ought to be spending that much money on food.  We’ll go to the Habitual Fix instead, and it is fresh, and they deliver…


The Thyme Restaurant in the Spencer Hotel in Takapuna.  A piano player serenaded us throughout our meal.   



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