Sunday 16 June

A few of the members of the Church benefiting from the Water Project for their village.  Elder & Sister Haleck got to see first hand the blessings of projects like this.  

Elder Haleck, Pacific Area President viewing one of our Water Projects for a village of 150 people.

Funeral of Stake Patriarchs wife - beautiful scene as they walk to the graveyard right behind the church building

This is my breakfast every day.  I love it.

Warwick Resort we stayed the night
celebrating our 47th Wedding
Anniversary

Warwick Resort

Marriott Resort - we liked this place

We had a busy week with meetings with Area Welfare & Self Reliance folks, Funeral, visiting Water Project with Pres & Sister Haleck, buying cement to deliver to the project, meetings with villages needing our help, meeting a new provider for spinal cord injuries that we can work with, reviewing requests for our participation in Welfare needs in communities, planning for strategy going forward with Government, Non - Government Agencies, Embassy's, foreign Governments.  We hope to be able to find some exciting, meaningful projects with long lasting effect in the lives of people in need.

Sunday June 9/19

It was Saturday night and we went to a Fundraiser for the Fiji National Basketball Women and Mens team.  Our Supervisor Brother Paul Whippy got us tickets - Paul was a coach of the team at one point and he has had sons play on the team for years.  Two of his sons will play again this year.  The Games will be in Samoa in two weeks.  The Women took Gold and the Men took Silver last games so it was a time to promise everyone that they would bring back the Gold this year.  These games are held every 4 years with 26 different sports and 3500 participants.  They are the Olympics of the Pacific. 

members of the Ladies National Basketball Team dancing and people would come and stick money to their arms and neck.  Fund raiser for the team.  They are going to the Pacific games in Samoa in 2 weeks.  They took Gold medal as Pacific games.

This is the team and they pick up 5 more girls who are on scholarship in US universities to round out their team.  

This is the mens team and they also pick up 5 more player who are on scholarship at US universities to round out the team.  They took Silver last Pacific games and hoping to take Gold this time.  

Bro. Paul Whippy in the red shirt with his wife and three sons.  Two of them on the National Basketball team for third Pacific games.  Paul was the coach up until recently.  Fun night to go to a fund raiser with them.  

We had a great surprise - Dave & Ashley Cichy and family were vacationing in Fiji and came to church with us today and we had a chance to spend some time on the Temple grounds after church and then at our flat for a visit.  It was so great to get together with them.  They have 3 lovely daughters named Summer, Lucy and Rosie.  

First Week

Wendy and I have had a busy week of training meeting with Welfare Services leaders from New Zealand and with our local leaders.  We have felt overwhelmed at times, well most of the time.  We spent the first two days getting up at 4am (not on the time change yet) then going to the office till 4pm, home and in bed by 6-7pm and waking up at 4am.  It is getting better.  We spent Wednesday out at a project we will work on till completion, and it was exciting to go see the efforts of the village people as well as the welfare services in action.  Thursday we spent most of the day working through all the active projects as well as 17 new projects for us to consider.  It will take some meetings, investigation of costs and consideration for needs to make the final decisions but right now our plate is flowing over with work to do.  We have containers of desks, chairs and books coming for 4 schools that we will deliver as well as many water and school book projects being requested.  There are many other types of requests and it is humbling to both see the needs and also to be involved in making decisions regarding the help that is needed. 

Wendy entertaining some of the children in a village we visited for a clean drinking water project.

trenches taking the water up to a storage tank in the village

Village workers taking a break in the hot sun from hard work

village men and family from other villages helping clear the trees and dig the trench.  ROOTS

These guys sure know how to work and be happy.  They were singing and happy to take a break for a picture.  

LDS Charities

ldscharities.org

Go to ldscharities.org and get a feel for our assignments - they are varied, exciting, heart warming, needed and so inspiring.  

The District

The man on my right is Elder Walker.  He is the new director for humanitarian services in the Pacific so we will work a lot with him over the next two years.  The man on my left is going to Vietnam and he and his wife are really nervous about being in a communist country.

This is our District at the MTC
The two Elders on each side are our trainers - they were great.  Elder Colby on the right, Elder Davis on the left.  I'm standing next to Elder John Edwards - his wife Debbie, then Elder Curtis and his wife in the purple sweater.  Sister Murary in the white sweater.  The Edwards are going to our old mission in Samoa.  We are excited for them.

Jessica & kids joined us on Sunday at the MTC

Sunday morning at the MTC

Super Tuesday

Today, May 21, 2019 - our oldest grandson Carson Scott had his missionary papers sent to Salt Lake for a mission call.  We all wait in great anticipation to see where he will be called to serve.  We are very excited and proud of this fine young man.  All 16 of his cousins are making their guess as to where he will go serve.  We shall all know soon.
Carson is the oldest of the Great Grandchildren on the Saunders side of the family and he is the oldest of the Grandchildren so he has carried a heavy load of responsibility in being a good example and leading out.  We are grateful that he is up to the task.
As Wendy and I are in the Missionary Training Center (MTC) now getting trained before we leave for Fiji we see over 1200 young missionaries each day as they go to their classes, studying the language they will use in amazing language labs, at the cafeteria, and visiting together in all areas of the MTC grounds.  We can't help but think of our grandchildren that are approaching the age of mission application.  We see all these young boys and girls and we are inspired by how happy and excited they are to be on a mission.  They are excited about where they are going and are just so pleasant and nice to visit with.
We have nieces and nephews also that are coming of the age to go on missions and we are happy and excited for them.

On our Way - To MTC.

Had to get some Fijian money before we left.  They have beautiful money, Wendy said "I don't want to spend any of this cause it's too pretty".  The Fijian dollar is $1.61 for every Canadian dollar.   We are hoping the Fijian dollar goes a long way - it will be interesting to see how items and food compare in Fiji.

 We spent the morning finalizing every little thing before we leave and then had time to say good bye to our friends Ray & Sally Pyne ( they are renting our place while we are gone, we love them). Chuck and Sandra then took us to the Airport in Victoria to head to Provo Utah for the start of our training and adventure in Fiji.

Randy & Julie Keyes going to Fiji - they are from our Ward in Victoria - they will serve in self reliance while we will be in Humanitarian Services.

We took a stroll to the BYU bookstore and met up with a famous Cougar so we just had to get a picture together, hehe.  It was good to go for a nice long walk.  BYU of course has a beautiful campus and it's nice to stroll around and see the campus and the great buildings and feel the nice feeling of the wonderful institution of learning the Church has built over the years. 

 Our home away from home for the next two weeks here at the MTC.  They have very nice apartments for the Senior Couples and all your needs are taken care of.  We have a very busy schedule starting tomorrow morning with Church, District meetings, Devotionals, Films and of course Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.  Monday is our official check-in day at 10am and from that point on the week is very busy.