Mission Adventures in Vanuatu

Incredible beauty of the ocean - Tanna Vanuatu is made up of 83 islands, of which 65 are inhabited. We live on the island of Efate, in the capital city of Port Vila. It's located in the South-Western Pacific, close to Fiji and Australia. Honestly, I had never heard of Vanuatu in my life and it literally is a dot in the Ocean. The people look very Fijian which is Melanesian not Polynesian. I didn't know that was a thing either. Kids walking home from school in Tanna These are very happy people with simple lives who enjoy life without what most people in the USA would consider "comfortable". The beach and waters are absolutely breathtaking with little gems all over the islands to explore. We have not done any of that yet, but are still trying to find our way with basic things in this new environment. In the USA we are used to things being exact. For example, at home we set our oven for 350 degrees and we know it's pretty much going to be 350 degrees. Here, you have ...

View from Elder and Sister Meurs balcony in New Zealand What a whirlwind week and a half! It feels like its been two months! We flew out of San Fran on Sunday Nov 3rd and arrived in Auckland New Zealand Tuesday the 5th. We had an amazing 4 days there having meetings, enjoyed some time with Elder and Sister Meurs, as well as going to the Hamilton temple and visiting the Hobbiton movie set. Elder and Sister Meurs  Hobbiton Hobbiton In New Zealand they drive on the opposite side of the road and that increased the adventure level by about ten. It literally takes two people to navigate and we almost went off the road or hit something only twice so that’s good, right? I may or may not have said many times, “to the left, to the left, to the left” with some intensity in my voice, ha ha…   The Hamilton temple is an hour and a half from Auckland, and then Hobbiton is 40 minutes farther so we were able to visit both on one of the days. It was a really fun experience. Friday, November 8th...

Well, Here we go on another adventure! We are at the San Francisco Airport awaiting our direct flight to Auckland. We are excited and there is also a healthy amount of anxious unknowns. There is always the "idea" of what our assignments will be, and then there is the reality. From our experience, the space between those two things, the "gap", is often very huge! We will see what awaits us on the other side of the world. Six years ago when we served a mission in Hong Kong that also took us to Mongolia on a huge humanitarian project, we were able to create some amazing connections and friendships. This was the bridge of how this new mission came to be. We were requested by the church leader that we had worked with in that area to go to the South Pacific, Vanuatu specifically and manage a building project as well as offer other leadership support in different areas of the islands. What all of this will look like we are not sure. Thus, that is where the gap lies. Genera...