At last...birthdays, wedding and baptisms

Last Saturday we wondered if all that had been cancelled due to hurricane Vania could be rescheduled. Or at least how soon those events could be rescheduled. Today, a week later, we have celebrated the long awaited marriage and attended three baptisms. 'On deborde de joie.'

By Monday morning, much of the flooding was starting to recede although it continued to rain. The 3rd p-day in a row with rain. But we all had work to do cleaning apartments, washing and cleaning cars, picking up mail and having a little fun together before the week's work began. And also celebrating two birthdays that fell that very day. We are surprised that among the 26 missionaries here, we have a number of double ups on birthdays. Somebody better in statistics will have to explain that one. Shortly after missionaries arrived in the early afternoon, we sang happy birthday with great gusto and ate cake. But we still didn't know when the delayed wedding could be rescheduled at the Mairie.



However, By Tuesday afternoon that question had been answered and we looked forward to Saturday, January 22 with much anticipation.

The day dawned rainy with squall lines passing overhead bringing intermittent showers and sunshine. We were up early to drive to Tontouta for Jean-Claude Ouasette's baptism. We met Jean Claude many weeks ago as he faithfully attended church services in the Tontouta branch. The service today was small but with several members of his family present. His only daughter and grandchildren as well as his brother. He shared a simple, yet powerful, testimony of the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in his life, then encouraged his family, through tears of gratitude, to realize what they were feeling also.



The baptism was early so that we would have time to get back to Noumea for Soane and Vaea's wedding at 10a and the following baptisms at noon. We are grateful for the tender mercy that allowed a heavily scheduled day to roll along and the resultant blessings from Heavenly Father for so many people.


In French counties, marriages must be solemnized before a representative of the government in the city where the spouses live to be legal. This is important because at this ceremony the couple receives their 'family book' which records and is legal proof of all major events in their lives including marriages, births, deaths etc to which are tied all government benefits including healthcare.


The wedding took place at the appointed hour. All the necessary papers had been provided weeks before. That sentence took very few words, but the efforts to get to that point were enormous. Documents at Soane's birth had not been properly prepared. He is Wallisian by birth but was born in Vanuatu, formerly a French country, but now independent. Corrections to these all-important documents had to be done in Nantes, France. These corrections had mistakes themselves that had to be corrected. Every correction effort took 8-10 weeks of turn around time. Many months had passed trying to get it all done so that this marriage could happen and then the baptisms. In retrospect all of this provided both Saone and Vaea the opportunity to conform their lives, their family to a Christ-centered culture including family prayers, daily family scripture study, and weekly time together as a family studying the scriptures. Soane has learned to preside in his home, not as the boss, but to insure that his family is blessed with a stable, happy environment where the Gospel can be lived as well as studied.  Two young children in the home are blessed with peace and are eager to learn and do more. And Vaea's life has been blessed as she has prayed to be able to forgive others for difficult events earlier in her life. The peace of that forgiveness surpasseth understanding.

The ceremony itself took 15 minutes with the government representative addressing the couple on their responsibilities before the law in sharing each others financial obligations and responsibilities in raising any children coming from the marriage. These sacred concepts seemed sterile in the secular world in which they were presented. Where was the understanding of the eternal nature of the family and the importance of being sealed together across he generations as we care for each other knowing how important each is as a child of Heavenly Father and a member of a family linked forever across the generations. the event was joyous, however, because of the baptismal covenants that would follow. Pictures below will tell the story.




We were soon at the chapel in the baptismal service. Elder Hammond, one of our zone leaders, and Elder Sherrod performed the baptisms through their Priesthood authority.  In attendance was a large contingent of Soane's family. Significant because they were accepting of the events without the usual 'coutume' that might have been expected in earlier times. The pictures below will show the changes in clothing style, grooming that they have adopted as they leave local cultures behind.




Following the baptismal services was a wedding lunch provided by Soane and Vaea for a large group including most of the missionaries as well as his family. A great opportunity to get to know each other.



Toward the end of the festivities, a group of former missionaries from New Caledonia joined the events of the day via 'skype' to congratulate Soane and Vaea. As you might imagine, many missionaries have been involved in teaching and preparing them for baptism over the last 18 months. Several of them were together and had a wonderful 'face-to-face' conversation with Brother and Sister Munikihaafata. We enjoyed the reunion also. The twin miracles of having such a day as well as sharing it with friends and co-workers half-way around the world made an extra-ordinary day.


We are grateful for the blessing in our own lives of participating in gathering Heavenly Father's children into His Gospel. We see the blessings of peace and happiness that accompany those who accept it. In itself a testimony of the truthfulness of this great work.

HURRICANE and other events

January 15, 2010 had longed been planned:  a wedding of two investigators finally arranged so that they could both then be baptized, and a third baptism in Tontouta.  But none of it was to be, just yet. We had a hurricane instead. To say nothing of the 7 richter scale earthquake that we missed entirely.

But before that, we welcomed the arrival of three new missionaries. Elder Faura arrived first from Tahiti via the MTC in Auckland. Eager to get to work, he joined Elder Sherrod in Vallee des Colons.  They are teaching Soane and Vaea, the couple to have been married on January 15, 2011 and then baptized that afternoon.

Soane and Vaea ( his real name is Giovani Mari-Jean) have been studying with the missionaries for 18 months. There life has been changed completely as they have learned to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is from Wallis and she from Tahiti. However, he was born in Vanuatu and his birth certificate had a couple errors on it. These had to be corrected. (One of these errors was that he was female. How did his parents ever sign that one, we wonder.)  The difficulty with all of this is that the documents have to be sent to Nantes, France to be corrected. After multiple efforts to make corrections, each taking 8-10 weeks, finally things were ready. But that will be a story for another week when this marriage finally takes place. But you begin to understand our impatience just a little.

Second missionaries to arrive were Elders Lamb and Barker.  Elder Lamb is from Cedar City Utah, and Elder Barker from Sandy. Both arrive speaking great French. They arrived in the midst of increasing rains on the leading edge of the tropical depression that would become Hurricane Vania.  A tender mercy on both of their parts is that they both drive manual transmission cars. So in heavy rains before leaving for their new sectors and after having taken just a moment to get downtown for their immigration documents, we did driving tests. Hurricane Vania was arriving with wind and lots of rain. They were calm and learned the rules of the road and how to negotiate traffic circles quickly.

Transfers took place just before noon in driving rain. And they were off to their new sectors and shown in pictures nearby.

One of our local members, Jeffrey Tuihivaatetoohiti, aka Jeffrey Tuihiva, is awaiting his visa to serve in the Oakland San Francisco Mission. He is anxious to serve as a missionary as well as to strengthen his English so is serving with Elder Harry now in Bourail. The branch, as well as the missionaries, are excited to be back there.

Just before the storm arrived, we celebrated Elder Hammond’s birthday at a small, favorite local restaurant. The chef is from Provence in France and serves only 24 people at a time. In nearby pictures are images of several carved figures, very much from Provence called ‘saintons’ or small saints. Each face is individually carved. They are to represent common people bringing their gifts to the Savior and are usually presented as part of a nativity.

And then we hunkered down for two days of hurricane. Not a big storm as hurricanes go but beyond a local cyclone. Wind speed of 65 mph with gusts hitting well above that. The government put the country on ‘red alert’, which means ‘stay home and all shops are closed.’  The view from our 10^th floor apartment was spectacular. The lagoon outside, usually blue and calm, had 4 foot rollers crashing on the beach. Driving rains hit our large balcony windows head on and challenged us as water leaked underneath them. Took us a while to master the system of changing towels used to plug the leaks. These quickly saturated and had to be changed. We were grateful to have a high speed-spinning centrifugal washing machine to remove the moisture and that electricity stayed with us through the whole storm.

And we learned about the ‘eye of the storm’, which fooled us for a couple hours before the storm started up once again. By that time however, the storm had moved far enough south that we were no longer taking the storm full face on. After 24 hours of storm, the rain, which had been falling for 5 days, finally stopped and gave way to sunshine.  Chapels are cleaned up and ready for worship tomorrow. But another tropical depression threatens to envelope us tomorrow evening into Tuesday.

Pictures nearby show the only real damage, which was a series of landslides blocking the road north to Tontouta. We encountered the problem as we drove up to check on a team of missionaries whose cell phone didn’t seem to be working, making them unreachable.

Next Saturday promises to be exciting for the marriage and baptisms originally planned for Saturday. In the meantime, we learn patience and find great opportunities for service cleaning up after the storm. We are blessed to be safe, dry and comfortable.