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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