So beautiful and unique that you forget……..

Samoa can be so beautiful and unique that you can forget how blessed you are to have a chance to serve here. The temple is less than a half mile away from our apartment and our office is within 1000 feet of it. Below are pictures of this beautiful building. One Gramma took of the sun rise over the Temple in the early morning on her way to teach some piano lessons. The others are ones I have taken recently. 

Below is the Samoa Apia Mission Home/Office and below that is the LDS Church Service Center for Samoa. 

As you drive in past these two buildings you turn into the Distribution Center, the translation department, and the motor pool, that keeps track of all our cars. 

On Mondays we drive to Sauniatu as you know, but I wanted you to see the chapel and a plaque that was placed there after Pres. David O. McKay dedicated the building in 1955. That saying "Whate'er Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part", was the Scottish Missions Moto when Max served there.

The last two years the LDS Church College of Pesega one of the schools where we teach, races in an island “long boat” race. The long boat has 50 rowers, a captain, and a drummer that sits in the front of the boat. Last year they took third completing against grown men with fancy fiberglass boats. Theirs is an old wooden one called “La Samoa”. This year they have worked hard a hope to do better when the big race happens on Samoan Independence Day in a couple of weeks. They had the first completion today against another team (it is call the yellow cup). It is about 5 Kilometers long. Here we are waiting at the curve for the boat to appear. They have already been racing several Kilometers when they get into view for us. That’s Gramma in the middle. 

This is Apia Bay where they are headed. 

An here they are appearing around the bend about 10 boat lengths ahead of the other boat.

We get in the van and race with everyone else down to the finish line. That’s them on the far right.

They win! I was impressed. 

Then there is a big celebration. 

So there goes another busy interesting week. This coming week we finish our first class at Pesega and Sauniatu and give our final exams. We teach another student teaching seminar on Tuesday besides all of Grammas music teaching. We leave this coming Sunday for New Zealand and attend the ITEP missionaries couples conference at Auckland. It will be good to see the Deckers again (they came out with us and went to Fiji)  and meet the other couples (6 others) serving through the south pacific islands. We love and miss you all and ask every day for the Lord to bless you. He is blessing us as missionaries. We love you. Tofa soifua, Elder and Sister Hammond
P.S. Because of the New Zealand trip our next blog will be earlier or later depending on how things go.