Another week staying on schedule in paradise……

We are so busy, the weeks seem to just disappear as we try to stay on schedule. This week was another busy one. This first picture was on our Monday deliveries. This pond near the ocean and about 100 feet from the Siumu Chapel it is full of fish and the day we were there it was full of little boys skinny dipping. Oh, were they having fun. It was very hot and didn’t look like too bad of an idea. 

The Samoan classes had a culture activity getting ready for the school wide Samoan cultural day in a few weeks. They dipped a small pig in hot water to get the hair off, cleaned it and cooked it. They don’t bury their food in a pit (like Tonga and Hawaii) they cook it on top of the ground with hot rocks they have heated with a fire. They also prepared taro and some other items. We were leaving for Sauniatu and didn’t get to eat it. 

We live in a gated community here at the Church compound, with three gates. They all three have security guards and this one has a bar that goes up and down like a railroad crossing. 

I still remain fascinated by the way they build some of their buildings. Here is a church they are building downtown and the scaffolding (not OSHA approved) they use fascinate me. See the guy on the very top,  

We had the Motootua Ward conference this week end and on Saturday they have a meeting with the Stake and have displays in the cultural hall of some of the young women’s  projects. 
The pole displays were made by the ward young men’s organization. 

This little guy is the Bishops son and he is a holy tare. He crawls under your legs and pushes his way through the congregation, and all this during Sacrament meeting. He is seemingly unsupervised, but he is hard not to like.   

We are expecting a great week coming up; it is the last week of our special needs class except for a half day class during the first week of break, Tuesday at Pesega and Tuesday at Sanuiatu. On Friday Elder Gifford Nielson of the Seventy will be here at a 2:00 meeting with all the missionaries in the area, including us couples. The Crowley’s went home this last week. They were Temple missionaries. They are the parents some one of Ben’s old ward members and were the first couple to email us from Samoa and told us about magic jack phone. They also put us in contact with the Spencer’s who we replaced. There is only one Temple couple now that is “palagi", out of the three couples and 2 sisters that are assigned to the temple, all the rest are Samoan mostly from the states. We have three Stake choir practices this coming week; we represent the Church on the island for the big festival during first week of September. We also have a professional development Wednesday on Love and Logic. The days are getting longer (sun is up more) and a little warmer, and we hope to get a couple of slow days during the term break in a couple of weeks. We may even make it to the beach again. We miss all of you, and think of you often. That the hardest part of being so far away on a mission, but we are here for a reason and we realize that this call was for us, to help us, and to help those we serve.  We hope your summer is ending in a positive way, that you created a lot of great memories. Now it is on to school for many of you, and back to the schedule’s that brings, and believe me we know about schedules. The Gospel is true, we love you and may God bless you. Tofa Soifua, Grampa and Gramma Hammond.