Our Time in Vanuatu

Another historical week happening during our mission. It started on Monday with this message from the Pacific Area Presidency: Dear Mission Presidents and wives serving in: Papua New Guinea Samoa Tonga Fiji Tahiti Marshall Island-Kiribati Vanuatu With regret, this email is to inform you that all foreign missionaries, couples and senior single sisters included, serving in your respective missions are to return home as soon as travel can be arranged. This will be done in a systematic way based on travel restrictions, level of COVID-19 concern, and other considerations. Mission presidents and their families will continue to serve in their mission unless they have serious health concerns that make that service inadvisable. And so the whirlwind began.. Since travel would be organized around the opening and shutting doors or borders, we knew we had to bring the missionaries serving on the islands of Santo, Malekula and Tan...

The highlight of our week was talking with Wesley for his birthday with a bonus hello from Jacob, Mason, Calvin and Arianne.  He is now 6 years old.  He is such a sweet boy and we were very happy he talked to us for almost 30 minutes!!!  We were thrilled.  We usually get a quick hello then a quick goodbye followed by a  I love you because he is busy playing . We could have talked a lot longer but we had to leave for a meeting.  A very close second was a chat with Halle, Bella, Jaden, Audrée and Jason.  Short but very sweet.  These conversations, Messenger, Facebook and pictures are such a support in these crazy times.   Like these sweet faces to look at every time we feel like screaming, gets us back in our zen zone and making us smile.                                         ...

Week 10 was relatively quiet because we stayed in Port Vila until Friday.  That is when we left for New Caledonia for the start of the mission tour.  We did have some interesting calls.  Monday night, one missionary serving in Malekula was feeling quite sick and his companion called as I was slumbering slowly to la-la land.  The missionary wanted to go to a hospital, he was feeling so bad.  So I called the sister who takes care of our flights so she could, first thing the next morning, try to get the missionary to Port Vila so he could see the doctor.  He had been to see the doctor in Malekula, but I am not sure if he is a doctor or not.  I received a phone call yesterday from another missionary who was in Malekula a few weeks ago and went to see the doctor for a sore on his ankle.  He gave him some bandaids.  Now this missionary has been transferred to Santo and the sore is much worst so he went to see the doctor in Santo who gave him some a...