Week of May 9, 2015 - A Flavor of Samoa

We are settling into our house, our mission assignment and our island.  This is our first full week in Samoa and we have been processed - received our Samoa driver's license.  We spent the better part of one day at the driver's license bureau showing the workers our Utah licenses, paying a rather large fee and posing for a nice picture.  We set-up our office in the Service Center which is a former hallway but being close lets us see each others work.

Next week there will be a multi-stake conference with the area presidency that is broadcast over the church's satellite system from New Zealand. We spent two days traveling to various stake centers and found equipment in various stages of usability. How many satellite dishes have you seen that point straight up and are guarded by a chicken?  Theron climbed the hill behind the Church to take this picture; could you pay attention in Sunday School if the waves were breaking outside your class window?  This is the small island Theron gave me for Mother's Day.

Per President Websters request, no pantyhose.

They are big into celebrating Mother's Day and the men had lunch brought in for everyone on Friday - Friday is island wear day we are told, so we will have to get some island wear; oh, wait, we did find a minute to shop and Theron purchased his first lava-lava.  Theron says, "Let the women wear pants to priesthood, I'm wearing a skit to church on Mother's Day".  It required him to learn a new sitting posture.  There are two kinds of lava-lava; a print material that is for casual wear and a formal dress one that everyone wears to work and church.  Pretty much all of the men and Aaronic Priesthood wear them and they are part of the school uniform..  A young man could pretty much wear the same Lava Lava through all his Aaronic Priesthood career.

Sometimes, you have to have food explained to you.

Everyone here keeps telling us that we are at the end of the rainy season and that the island has been in a drought for the last three years.  But, it rains several time everyday, but the showers are short and warm.  Maybe Utah should be in such a drought, but the island is beautiful. The Samoan's must think that leaving the Garden of Eden was no big deal!

It doesn't take long to fall in love with the people.  They are all very nice; however, it's going to take a lllllllloooooonnnnnggggg time for us to remember their names and pronounce them correctly.

We live less than five minutes (walking) from the Temple and were able to attend our first session there last Friday.  They have English sessions on Tuesday and Thursday, but we weren't able to attend these, so we attended a Samoan session and wore headphones.  You know, it's the same feeling and covenants, and we were surrounded by warmth and kindness.

This fellow is mowing the grass, Curt, you need to get a bigger weed eater.