Wilma Visited

First off, this is the second time I am putting captions with these pictures. That's as in

GRRRRRRRRRR! I'm so Mad!

No one should have to rewrite clever comments that they can no longer remember.

I guess the good news is that the pictures are all still here. Elder Merrell and I have worked out a system. He loads the pictures and I write the captions. If I'd have lost his pictures, it would not have been pretty. He might have made me start loading them myself again which would have been sooooo much worse. I'm not sure whose guardian angel was at work on that one, but I'm pretty grateful.

That said, I will attempt to recreate the original 116 pages.

This past week, we experienced our first "almost cyclone" Wilma hit American Samoa and did quite a bit of damage. The tuna factory lost its roof which means a lot of jobs distrupted. Independent Samoa, which is where we live, got the remnants which still produced a lot of flooding. This is right in back of our apartment.

Here I am, just down from our apartment, wading in the water. It reminded me of my childhood visits to Grandma and Grandpa Shurtliff's when we got to play in the irrigation water.

These are the apartments that we first lived in on the mission compound. They were flooded. Luckily, we now are on higher ground.

This is the main road that runs past the temple.

We have been amazed at how much water the ground can hold here. Most of this water will be gone in a few hours. Until the next rainfall. Then it will be gone in a few hours again. The ground is made up of a lot of volcanic rock.

Here we are at the wharf. Look at those waves.

Again, this water will quickly seep into the ground in a short period of time. It sure doesn't do that in St. George or Vernal!

Notice the guy that is knee-deep in water. I'm pretty sure his house is flooded.

This is a road!

Here are a couple of videos of the rain coming down...We love it in Samoa!

Thank-You, Shara Dawn!

I have always loved hearing about the life experiences of President Monson. His words have been an inspiration to me as he draws great lessons from simple experiences.

For Christmas, Mark and Shara Dawn sent us this book.

I love it.

You should read it.

It will change your life.

Thanks, Shara Dawn. You have always known just what we needed.

(I promise to let Elder Merrell read it when I am through.)

Our new favorite cookie

We received many wonderful treats from family and friends for Christmas (stay with me...I know it's the end of January). We were so grateful to be able to share our plenty with many missionaries, ward members and friends.






But, we were stingy with a few. I hid this box of cookies in the back of the fridge and forgot about them. (I know...seems impossible) I found them a few days ago and immediately opened the box to try one. Which brings me to the following question...

How do you spell heaven?

A-n-d-e-s---C-r-e-m-e---d-e---M-e-n-t-h-e---C-o-o-k-i-e-s!

There were only 12 cookies. Elder Merrell came in and tried one, too. I tried telling him that I was sure they were intended just for me, because my kids know I love the candies. Elder Merrell bristled up and informed me that the box had both of our names on it... and he took his second cookie. It was then that I had to impose a two cookie per day limit on them.

I think I better go home and check to make sure the rest of my cookies are still there.

P.S. We cannot find them in Samoa. (HINT)

Escaping To Paradise

Last weekend, we got to go to Savaii, one of the three major islands in the Samoa Mission. Here we are, waiting for the ferry to take off. We had been told Savaii was much more primitive than Upolu, so I was surprised when we got there and saw that the place was quite civilized...and so beautiful!

This was the view from our motel.

What a fun picture!

Mike poked our badges in this black sand beach. I think the sand is black because of all the lava rock.

Mike is standing on a lava arch. He has just discovered a family of crabs, but they disappeared before I could get the camera over to him.





This is a better view of the arch. Everytime the tide came up, it filled with water.




We were very fortunate to have our own personal tour guides, Elder and Sister Krogh, who showed us all around the island. Here we are eating lunch with Elder Krogh and a sweet man who took us to the blowholes. (Sister Krogh is taking the picture)





He knew just when to throw a coconut shell into the hole so that the wave would toss it into the air.

Isn't this a gorgeous waterfall? Normally we have the place to ourselves, but we shared it with a youth group who were visiting from New Zealand that day. It felt like we were in the Garden of Eden!

Not long before this picture was taken, that piece of "tapa" cloth was the trunk of a mulberry tree! It was about 4 inches in diameter. We watched as this Samoan woman stripped the bark off, peeled away the layer of white, soaked it, pounded it, flattened it with a tool made from a shell, stretched it some more and laid it out to dry. She then stenciled over it and painted it with a brush made from a seed pod. The paint was made from a plant as well. Notice the woven mats we all sat on. I love the culture of this country!

Elder Krogh said we should ask our grandkids the following question,

"How big is a leaf?"
This one's pretty big! But they get much bigger.

Here we are with Elder and Sister Krogh. We had such a wonderful time with them. And, they live right outside of Heber! We'll be able to visit them when we go to Vernal!

This is what is left of an old Catholic church that was filled with hot lava when a volcano errupted in Savaii back in 1905. This is a view from the front of the church, looking back. Interestingly,
the lava stopped just before it got to what would have been the pulpit.

We had a great time feeding the giant turtles. Look at them fighting to get to that papaia!

Yes, it truly was an... escape to paradise!

The Rescue

Chickens roam freely in Samoa, as do pigs. It's a delightful part of the culture and we love it...well, at least the chickens. (The pigs can be a bit intimidating at times.) We haven't run across any pigs in the mission compound, but there are several chickens. We have been watching two mama hens with their babies. One hen had three chicks that are getting quite large. Another hen had five. I'm not sure, but maybe five was too many for this young mama hen, because two of them got away from her and fell through a drainage grate. We heard the chicks peeping like crazy, but it took us awhile to locate where they were. Unfortunately, the grate was secured with heavy bolts on each side that were tight and rusted. Mike was finally able to get one side undone. I wish we had a picture of the two guards and Elder Merrell holding up the grate as I fearlessly reached inside to rescue the two little chicks.

They came right to me because I had been kneeling by the grate talking to them for the twenty minutes it took to round up enough man-power to get the job done.

Afterwards, I started walking around the compound, in the direction we had seen the mama and her three other babies head. Soon, the quiet little chicks began peeping and wriggling in my hands and I knew we were close so I set them down. They scurried over to mama and she immediately covered them with her wings. Sister Kelly and I both agreed that the scripture, "...how oft would I have gathered you under my wing ..." was a fitting end to the story!

Post #100!

Elder Merrell mentioned awhile ago that he thought he ought to start helping with the blog. I let him know that it was MINE! He respected my wishes and the blog has been pretty slow-going. So, I decided it was time to repent. He will now be making some posts, too, including the one just before this one. I wonder if you will be able to tell them apart?! (And, I'm also pretty excited to start seeing more stuff come up on this blog!)

Pesenga 2nd Ward Choir

The first Sunday we attended church in Samoa the ward choir sang. We didn't realize that it was the ward choir because they didn't have a conductor and they were in the first 6 rows of the chapel. (Not facing the audience) They sang so clear and loud we instantly fell in love with their singing. We knew that it would probably take months before we could sing like those ward members because we didn't know more than two words in their language. The next week Bishop Joseph asked us to participate in the choir. We agreed reluctantly because of the language barrier. The first practice they sang the Halleluia choris. They were SO VERY GOOD. Then we found out that the songs they were learning were in english. We thought we could do it. Then as the conductor lead all of us his instructions were in Samoan. Again we followed along and had a few helpers point to where we were in the music and we hung on for the ride.

We thought that we would sing once or twice for the ward at Chrismas time. We knew that this would give us an opportunity to get to know these wonderful people. Then all of a sudden we heard about more and more practices. They got longer and longer and more and more frequent. We were having a hard time keeping up with choir practice, visiting families, mission office and home upkeep. Let alone preparing for Christmas. Then we found out they were practicing for a program to be taped and shown on Samoan TV. These people love to perform. Since they were preparing for the TV progam they either voluntered or were asked to preform at more places. Some were on the other end of the island. Getting to these other places is a whole different story. A couple of the pictures give you a hint how we traveled.

When all the performances were over we realized what a wonderful, exilerating and spiritual trip we had been on. Because of our willingness to participate, we gained some very choice friends. We had been so busy we had not become homesick. We were with our Samonan family. They filled in the void of our family back at home. We really enjoyed Christmas. I have videos of one of the performances. I can't get it to upload. I'll keep trying.