Sunday in Efate, Monday errands

Sunday & Monday, December 6-7, 2015

Last night I was a dead woman again and fell asleep just after 8 PM.  I slept till 5 AM, but getting up early makes me fall asleep the rest of the day, no matter that I got enough sleep.  Today was Fast Sunday and some wards start early; today the one we went to, began at 8 AM.  The entire service was in their local language except the songs, which were sung in English.  Even the Sacrament prayers are in Bislama.  I tried to stay awake in the open air, fan only room; I read the Ensign and the scriptures on my phone but it was still a struggle all day.  Even though it was Fast Sunday, they had their Primary program.  Most of the songs were sung in English, but of course nothing else was.  It was a sweet program.  In R.S. they did have testimonies after a short lesson, and it went over.  Time is not awfully important in other countries.  Afterwards they all just sit there because there is always something else to talk about since they cannot get together like we do at home with constant contact through the Internet. 

When we got to the church we saw the large mound of dirt from the burying of the rotted taro, right on the grounds where the government wanted it to go.  But at least it is finally finished.

The buried the rotted taro, and this is what it looked like—what on earth will they do with all that dirt?  This is on the church grounds in the back of the building, but where everyone comes to park. 

Hair is very important to Africans so it was interesting to see the differences here—many women had extremely short hair, although it was a little longer than a man’s haircut.  It was quite becoming on them.  If their hair was long, they slicked it back into a ponytail and bun at the top.  I only saw one woman with braided hair.  I saw no wigs.  I saw no beads in the hair of little girls—sometimes they would have three ponytails on their heads.  I saw one girl with long hair and it was down, but hers was not as curly as most of the children. 

Everyone here is friendly and always shaking your hand and welcoming you and asking what you are doing here.  Without the crime and with the friendliness of the people, it really is more than just a paradise for tourists to enjoy.  

Leben’s dropped us off after church and came to fetch us later to feed us some food.  It has been a nice, relaxing day; truly a day of rest.  Afterwards while the men talked about the rain catchment structures they’re building, Petra and I visited and then we laid down on the bed, which is also in their living room.  I told her if I did I would fall asleep, and sure enough I did.  I just couldn’t help myself. 

Wherever we went this week we kept hearing over and over again what we thought sounded like, ‘Thank you Tomas,’ with the accent on the ‘a’.  Jim quipped that there must be a lot of Thomas’s on this island…well, of course, they were saying thank you very much in Bislama and it is written something like this: ‘Tank u tumas.’  Sometimes we can figure out what something means, but other times we don’t have a clue.  On the board today during Sunday school these words were written: “Lesen 39, Buk Efesas.  Dispensesen Blong las dei.  Blong olgeta man blong hem bambae oli rere blong mekem wok blong ‘Hem’”.  They call their children pikinini; I remember hearing that name when I was a child but can’t remember why.  You can make out the lesson number and that it was from the Book of Ephesians, and probably other things, just not all.  ‘Blong’ has to do with something that belongs together, kind of.  Many people here can speak English but when you speak in their language, it always gives you a better relationship with them.  And Leben’s have done this very well. 

Monday: We were picked up at 8:00 to take the men to the airport so that they could get a rain catchment started on Tanna.  They will be home tomorrow afternoon.  Petra and I ran errands all morning, mostly ordering supplies for when the men get back and start a catchment here.  Next week it will be back to Tanna to finish up, then have a couple of days to finish up here.  On the second trip, I will be going also.  In the meantime we went to three places to order materials and later got the checks signed and then returned to each place to pay the bills.  This all sounds so easy, but of course here it wasn’t—just a lot of running around—we delivered the checks at the end of our day.  We ran other errands.  Then we picked up a couple of returned missionaries so that they could direct us to an area where we were to do more assessments on houses to see if we would be helping more people either repair or rebuild their structure so that they could make it into a home with LDSC’s assistance.  Some Branch Presidents did a good job of this, making sure non-members were included; some needed more assessments because they had not included enough non-members.  The two young men, Norris and Henry had both served missions in New Zealand.  Henry has been home a year, but Norris just returned.

 

Henry on the left, Norris on the right, helping us assess cyclone damage at a home.

We ended up going to one home where the man was not there so we couldn’t ask the needed questions.  Then we went to another home and the man was present so we got to ask all the needed questions—we will be doing a repair for him.  He has quite a few people living in his home.  This takes quite a while just asking needed questions and then assessing what needs to be done.  We ran out of people to assess and ran out of time as these boys had to get back for some activity.  Both will be going to school soon.  Norris wants to be a surgeon and Henry wants to be a social worker and work with youth. 

We came back to our hotel and swam a while in the pool, and then had a fruit drink that they make here.  Neither of us was hungry at the end of this long, hot day.  Swimming in the pool could only be described as delicious…

When you have a wreck of a car, you can still make good use of its parts—the seat in the car can be a chair, even if the center is torn out a bit.

Graveyards are the most colorful sights here.  There are always massive amounts of flowers everywhere.  There are even more in the most economical parts.  The dirt graves are solid flowers, mostly fake, but well taken care of plots.  They have to keep up the dirt coverings, and I can imagine in bad weather that this must be quite a challenge.  These graves are all concrete boxes.  To the left out of the picture are the dirt graves.