Our Time in Vanuatu

We arrived Sunday evening at Auckland New Zealand and left this afternoon (Monday) for Queenstown, New Zealand where the Mission Leadership Seminar is taking place. I had to take a picture of part of the airport.  It is the size of a normal airport but it looked sooo big!                                                                            What a view!    We just arrived.  It is beautiful out here.  It is great to see some  mountains again.   A view from our room Nice welcome basket Nice accommodations also. And it is very nice to relax a little and be with other mission presidents and wives and be buoyed up and edified. Tuesday:  First day of training.  We enjoyed seeing the 5 other mission presidents and wives who started their mission at the same time we did.  We have all survived our first quarter.  We pretty much have the same challenges.  It is kind of reassuring and we can share how we are handlin

Sitting at the airport now, wondering what happened this past week. The weeks seem to mesh together.  We had 3 missionaries coming in a week after the new missionaries because of visas for two of them and sister Myae stayed extra weeks at the MTC in the Philippines to learn English..  We came back from Tanna Monday and Sister Myae arrived Tuesday.  Benoit was conducting the interviews with the Efate and Tanna zones, so I went to greet her with the assistants and the travel elders.  It was weird to greet her without the mission president but we drove to the mission office and he met with her then.  She is from Myanmar.  I was very impressed with her English.  I enjoyed visiting with her as I drove her back to the mission office.  She is the only member of the Church in her family.  She met the Church as she was attending English class and she said one of the students really stood out.  She was so nice and helpful.  She asked her why she was always so happy.  She was invited t

😥😀 These emojis best describe for me, transfer week. Two of our missionaries were at the conclusion of their mission and they returned home. One of them returning to the province of Québec, Canada.  We have one québécois missionary left.  I hope we will have more come and join us. Nine missionaries arrived to start their missions in the field. (5 elders and 1 sister in New Caledonia, 3 elders on the island of Malekula).  One of the elders going to New Caledonia is from Belgium. J’ai pensé à toi Serge quand j’ai vu son nom.  Metdepenningen.  I asked him if he spoke Flemish and he said he did not.  Then I asked him with a name like yours surely someone in your family speaks Flemish.  He said his grandparents did.  I told him about my brother who served his mission in Antwerp, Belgium.  He asked me if my brother thought it was hard to learn the language.  I told him to my knowledge it was not.  I think my brother has the gift of tongues. We also had to say goodbye to Elder H