Our First Visit Off The Island

On Sunday afternoon, we drove our car onto the ferry for the one hour boat ride to Savai'i (the big island).  I rather enjoyed the ride because I was able to get out of the car before it was fully parked.  Theron could not get out, so he spent the ride in the belly of the boat sitting in the car. We were on a quest to visit every chapel, assess the technology and update the older firewalls.  We scheduled to stay in a "guest house" at the Vaiola School Campus.  The Church sponsors two schools in Samoa - one in Pesega, where we live and one on Savai'i, Vaiola.  Vaiola has about 400 students and about 100 of these students live on the campus.  Some of these students are from Vanauatu, Tonga and other islands.  There are about 50 girls and 50 boys that comprise this number.  There is a senior missionary couple who teach BYU Hawaii courses to the teachers and participate in the activities of the campus.  The current couple is Elder Nelson and Sister Joanne Stonehocker from Lethbridge, Canada.  They will be leaving in about 5 weeks and the next couple is not scheduled to come until November.

We were told not to expect much at the guest house, however, our low expectations were not quite low enough.  We were greeted by several geckos running around the walls.  Theron quickly found the holes in the window screens and chased as many out through the holes as would go and then plugged the holes and killed the rest.  There were two bedrooms and one bed, the bed sheet was covered with flying ants so out came the Mortein (bug spray, we need this type in the states) and the sheet was replaced with some we had brought with us along with pillows, towels, utensils, food, etc.  We know how to go camping.  There was no hot water, so Theron determined that the pipes needed to be primed (of course this was Monday morning when we went to take a shower) BURR!  cold water shower.  Now don't start thinking shower with nice door, clean tile, and shower head -- nope, this was spider infested tile and a pipe out the wall.  We didn't bring a broom, so we walked around with our shoes on.  My estimate is that this typical of many Samoan homes and much better than some I've seen.  We survived and completed our work, but after one week of living here we voted ourselves back to our own island.

These pictures are the view of Vaiola Campus from the 270 steps that lead up to the Vaiola letters on the hill side.

Starting up the stairs.

A selfie at the top