Another Week in Paradise!

Mermaid Beach

Papapapai-tai Falls

This week went by quickly because we have been very busy.  Our routine daily schedule is as follows:

6:00 AM Get up and shower (our choice, we could get up later if we chose)

7:00 AM Breakfast, Personal Study

8:00 AM Leave for the office (we stop by the Cantina to buy sandwiches for lunch – it costs us just over $2.00 for two sandwiches). As we walk past the classrooms, they are having their devotionals.  We often here them singing a hymn.

8:30 AM Arrive in our office.  Work on planning our lessons that we will be teaching (BYU Hawaii education courses)

12:00       Stop for lunch and go back to our apartment.  We sometimes go shopping or take a quick nap

1:30 PM  Go back to our office and make final preparations for our class

3:30 PM  Teach our class.  We are currently teaching Educational Foundations to 6 teachers.

5:30 PM   Finish our class and either go home for dinner, eat out, or attend a session at the temple

9:00 PM   We sometimes watch pre-recorded episodes of the TV series Blue Bloods then read a chapter of the Book of Mormon out loud in both English and Samoan.

10:30 PM Retire to bed tired and happy to rest up to do the whole thing again the next day.

Our weekends are a little different.  Friday nights, we try to go out to dinner for a date.  Saturday mornings, we take an hour or two to clean the apartment and do our laundry then take off for either an activity with the other senior missionary couples or go off on our own to explore the Island.  Sundays, we go to Church at 7:30 AM to our Samoan-speaking ward.  We finish by 10:30 AM then have the rest of the day to rest, read, nap, visit or whatever we want to do.

This past Saturday, we went to a beautiful beach (Mermaid beach).  It had a row of fales we could use under the coconut palms.  We tied up our hammocks and then snorkeled in a beautiful blue lagoon.  Janice rested in the hammock while I hunted for shells up and down the beach.  I have included pictures on the blog.  On the way home, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall that must have been a 500 – 600-foot drop (Note the lovely lady in blue).  We also stopped at an overlook that showed some of the shoreline and a village.  There are hundreds of villages around the edge of the island.

We are happy, healthy, and working hard.  This is our dream come true.  The only thing that is missing is our family but we have been fortunate to be able to communicate with them at least once a week by phone or facetime.  We are extremely grateful for this opportunity to serve and feel so needed here.