Missionaries - 7 Re-activations This Week

We were driving around the island doing our work this week and I asked Theron how to write home about the totally exciting work that we do - watching internet lights come up on a firewall.  He always has a great perspective - we will write and tell them we re-activated 7 this week.  That should impress the bishop and the ward mission leader.  However we only reactivate internet firewalls.

Most of our 130 firewalls can be updated remotely, however, there are 30 of them that are an older model that have to have the laying of of hands, so we have to go on-site, talk with the GSC (global service center), start and re-start the firewall, and watch the resident geiko walk in and out of the internet cabinet.  Every clerk office has a resident geiko and they reside in that cabinet.

So, here is a little trip around the island so you can see some of the Church's buildings as this is where we spend a lot of our time.

 If you look close at the end of this road, through the banana field, there is a chapel.

 Theron is walking on the sea wall of the Falepuna Branch.  The picture below is of the open air fale chapel for this branch with a beautiful view of the ocean.  In the fourth picture I am standing by the church bell. You probably didn't know that we use bells to call everyone to church did you? The bell is an old oxygen tank.  All the villages have a gong to ring every night about 6:30 to call the village to prayer.

 Look closely in the background and you will see Luatuanuu's Chapel waterfall. Every chapel should have its own waterfall behind the basketball court.

 See the white dot in the middle, that's the Nu'umanu Stake Center.  In front of this chapel is a beach and a little island you can walk out to at low tide or swim to at high tide.  It's one of our very favorite beaches on the island.

This is the road to the Siumu Chapel right after a big rainstorm -- all the large pot holes are full and there are always pigs roaming around.  In fact, they have to keep the church gate closed or the pigs go in and rut up the grass.  In Jamaica it was goats, in Samoa it's pigs.