Relief society Valentine party, port Vila branj 2

Valentine parties put on by Relief Society is the same around the world.... Tablecloths and lots of food... With the exception of one of the main dishes was either "cat or dog". ...to many small vertebrae to be chicken. The raw fish was wonderful too!! :):)

Sunday church in Port Vila numba 1

Went to a different branch today, still in the nice chapel right in downtown Vila, probably the largest and nicest chapel on Efate, and possibly all Vanuatu ( we will have to let you know later).
Pictures of members after church. Notice the baptismal font outside in the courtyard.
Cute picture of two sister missionaries assigned to that branch, one from Fiji and one from Papa New Guinea. Both spoke in church and we understood their Bislama much better than the natives. Another picture with sister Maria and her son Michael, almost 2. She said she would love a copy of the picture.

Celebrated our anniversary yesterday by working all day on records and then a wonderful dinner out! Happy anniversary to my sweetheart, Elder Williams.

The Market

In the center of town is our fresh produce market . Here is a picture of ladies preparing coconuts for sale. We love talking with them and waiting for their beautiful smile. Everyone here smiles and waves to you. They even had some live blue lobsters or something just laying around on tables to buy.
The missionary badge is such a wonderful thing. We have one in French, English, and Bislama. Wherever we go people smile and say hello. We strike up a conversation and they want to know where we are from. We tell them and then we tell them we are missionaries for our church. We point to out badges and they say, what church, we say the Mormon church. Oh. We know Mormon church most reply with another smile. Last week we were walking around some neighborhoods looking at places to rent and a lady comes to say hello and as we talked I told her we were on a mission because we love Jesus Christ. She said she loved Christ too. She said if you rent one of these houses She would like to come work for us.

People here walk everywhere. We are up each morning before 6 and go for a walk. We smile and say hello to everyone. They aren't walking for exercise but to go to work. Some walk to work, some can afford to take local buses which are vans. A couple days ago a nice man walked along with us and helped us with our Bislama. We shared with him why we were here and everyone thinks it is good we are here in their country.
I feel that by the way we treat people wherever we go we are doing missionary work, letting people know that we are here in their country to help them and be kind and loving.

Great meeting with great Brethren!

Great meeting today with some of the brethren in the Port Vila Stake. President Kalpoi, Brother Otto and Brother Saksak, a young 23 year old man who although he is still single has a calling in the stake. They have such good hearts and want to do the right things. There is such humility in this part of the world.
We translated some of our training into Bislama and the rest in very slow English with the help of President Kalpoi.

Port Vila chapel and fellow missionaries

First Sunday I our branch!

Today we went to fast Sunday at Port Vila Numba tu branj. It was great. They are very spiritual, you can just feel it even if you don't understand. It is all in Bislama and we learned that we need to study the language more to understand more. I was asked to read in Bislama in the Book of Mormon in Sundays school! We met with the District 1st counselor after and planned more for our first training meeting next Saturday.

I have posted pictures of our first dinner out Saturday night. It was great little Chinese restaurant with lovely views. Also some pictures of our truck that we are using for a short time and the other side of our property which are abandon buildings..... Some ni-vans live in some of them. The children come down on the beach and swim, they are very friendly and nice.

A new day!

More pictures. Here is a view from our current place we are living and a picture of our apartment. Then you will see some pictures of downtown Port Vila. The public market is wonderful. We save our change and head down there for very fresh vegetables and fruit. Families come from all over the island and sell products from their home gardens. You see whole families there. We love eating such fresh foods. We wash them all in Clorox water before just to be sure :)....
There is also a couple pictures of a barbecue we had with the other senior missionaries a couple days ago. Great looking food, eh? The beef here is amazing and quite reasonable and Julie, it comes from a nice market now....you don't have to pick the dirt and rocks out of it because it was on the ground when you bought it! :):). They have come a long ways since you and Dennis lived here!
We will be meeting with the 2nd counselor in the port Vila district, President Kalpoi, to train a few of the local brethren for the upcoming audit. We are working on translating some of the training into Bislama :):)
Love you all! Please let us know how YOU are doing..