There must be a pony in there....

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 getting things fixed. This is an island nation without much urgency. We have learned that money talks, so withhold the rent payment and its amazing how fast they call you back and get things done :). All of the real estate issues take an extraordinary amount of time.

Road workers cutting the grass :)

BED BUGS... We worked on an apartment that had an infestation of bed bugs. Others had worked on this apartment 3 different times, and so we knew we needed to do something different and drastic. Bugs and eggs were inside light switch plates, and the clothes in the closet were "moving". We had another missionary couple with us who had a lot of training in public health on this issue and they were fantastic. We emptied the apartment, used a solution that is illegal in the USA, got new beds, and mattresses, took ALL clothes and bedding to a resort and worked a deal with them to wash all the clothes in hot water in the big commercial washer and dryers. (We have tiny washers, no hot water or dryer for clothes). Needless to say, we were VERY careful once we got back to our apartment to leave our clothes outside and properly clean everything. We will be checking weekly to make sure we got it all. WOW... gross. 

Bed bug grossness all over the wood bunk beds

We drive a Toyota HILUX... Very similar to the Tacoma. You can only get the HILUX in other parts of the world. It is a diesel, 4-wheel drive, off road, rugged beast. We all have them. That tells you something, right? I can not adequately explain the crazy roads, potholes, hills, and difficult spaces we drive on to get places. There are no addresses, but the maps program does work if you have the coordinates in the phone. Otherwise, it's, "Go down the road until you see the yellow building, turn left at the 4th tree and look for the big rock". For real.

We have several other assignments we are enjoying. I teach institute on Tuesday evenings, which I love and we also are helping to support the Mele branch we have been assigned to. A "branch" is smaller than a "ward" and there is a lot to do. Our focus is on helping the leadership with training, keeping it focused on the official handbook and helping the branch council and ministering programs function properly. It's easy for these small church units to start to depend on the missionaries but it's important that we stay in advisory role so that they learn and can move things forward without us. We attend branch presidency meetings sometimes and branch council meetings every week. We are starting to see some great things happening there.

We went with the other Sr missionaries to this
beach on the other side of the island. It was beautiful!
 

We have also been asked to teach a temple preparation class. There are 30 people from our branch who will be going to the temple in Fiji February 17th for the first time. Our branch President's family is one of them! He is 28 years old with 3 children and his wife is awesome. We love their family. We are excited for them to experience the blessings of the temple, as we know how life changing that can be. The temple here in Vanuatu is under construction and will be complete by the summer of 2026. The earthquake did shift some of the modules but it should only push back the completion a few months. It will be incredible for this country to have its own temple.

The opposition we are experiencing in everything we are doing is pretty intense. The story of the little boy in the middle of the horse manure was looking for the pony ... With the piles of manure, "there must be a pony in here somewhere". That pretty much sums up what we both feel like much of the time. OPPOSITION, in all caps. "Fear not" is referred to over 365 times in the scriptures and the promises of "rest" and peace as we trust in God are numerous. That's not an accident. So my thought is, there HAS to be some amazing things happening that we cannot see yet. SO, we continue to push through, move forward and do the best we can with what is in front of us. Sometimes, that is all we can do and it is enough....  

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."  John 14:27

We love and miss our family and friends!  Thank you for your prayers and support. We can feel them and it means the world to us!

The Kwans

The Lamphs run the mission office and we were
helping them get it put back together post earthquake.

Elder Lamph and Joe. The mission has been cleared to
move back into the office building.