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.