Mission Adventures in Vanuatu

We are settling into our assignments which have changed quite a bit. Our initial assignment was to help move the construction forward with new church buildings and missionary quarters that will be built on several islands here in Vanuatu. That is still a part of what we are doing, but have also been given the responsibility of managing all of the missionary housing for four islands which is very complicated.   Example, we need to find and rent a few new missionary quarters on the island of Tanna. Tanna is far from the island of Efate where we live, and purchasing everything for the new apartment has to come from here and then packaged and put on a ferry for 19 hours to be sent over. Logistically it is very involved. (beds, mattresses, kitchen stuff, stove top, refrigerator, etc...) Post earthquake, as you can imagine there have been issues with several apartments and we have had to move missionaries around, handle repair issues, look for new apartments, and work with landlords on g...

Adorable Nivan children playing It’s been 3 weeks since the earthquake happened and it feels like things should be mostly back to normal but they are not. We have gotten so many aftershocks I can’t count and they have been in the 5.2 range. We did get one that was 6.6 that woke us up in the night. The waterfront area is closed because of a few buildings that collapsed and others that are not safe so the banking, government offices, and other major businesses have been displaced. Everything is still in flux and they are not sure where all of that will land permanently or even semi-permanently. The mission office is also downtown where there is still no water or power. That building seems to be ok but the ones around it are not so for now, the basic mission office stuff has been moved to the different senior missionary apartments to work from “home” where we now have power, internet, and water (most of the time). A room in the mission office right after the earthquake With as hard as thi...