If we listen, the Lord Guides!

As I look over our many pictures of the past weeks, I still keep pinching myself and ask "Are we really on a mission?"  We are extreamly tired but so grateful for this opportunity to serve in a wonderful country with such wonderful young people. 

I had my first experience of falling asleep while on my knees praying.  I have heard this happening, but couldn’t imagine this ever happening to me since I have to take a sleeping pill to even go to sleep.  I don’t think I have ever been so tired in my life, but it is an "exhilarating" tired.

It is my turn to post on this blog and we usually try to get it done on Sundays, but I just didn’t get to it so here I am on Thursday afternoon  at the Institute with 40 YSA’s laughing, playing pool, playing piano, singing and eating, and me trying to work on this blog.  It’s CRAZY to say the least.

We have a busy day today.  First, Missionary Prep at 10:00.  Mark had 30 in class today.  He always does a great job.  I fed them lunch today because we are playing the chimes and singing for another Welfare Hand Over Ceremony at the Service Center at 2:00.  This is our 2^nd singing assignment in two weeks.  Pretty soon we will be asked to do a concert in Votaphone Arena. You just wait and see.   At 4:30 we have been asked to host a Fireside here at the Center for a motivational speaker from Samoa.  I’m not sure what she is speaking about, but she has been all over the country speaking at functions and she is here in Fiji and so they asked us to host it.  That will last until 5:30 – 6:00 and then we can go home for the night.  See what I mean about being busy.

Ok, it is now Friday afternoon and we took a P day, so after going on a beautiful hike, I am sitting down to try to finish this blog.  I never thought in a hundred years it would be so hard to have enough time to write a blog.

Well, we had the Fireside and it was a huge success.  The speaker Ruby was amazing and the kids really liked her.  She spoke about knowing who you are and that Heavenly Father knows who you are and that you can do anything you set your mind to.  I gave a lesson on goals and time management on Tuesday, so this was great to hear.  Ruby is the girl on the back row second from the left.  The blond girl is her friend and she is from Farmington.  They are traveling around for 6 months speaking and interviewing abused women for her blog.

       We go through so much bread around here.  We feed them every Tuesday but  today was a special day.

            This is the store that we buy all the bread.  It is hot, delicious, and cheap.  Fifty cents for one loaf (25 Cents American).

This is the Hand Over Ceremony that we sang for.  The Humanitarian Department donated 450 wheelchairs and other walking devices,  All together, it was over $200,000.00 Fijian money.  Pretty great.  

This picture made the Fiji Sun newspaper.

A week ago today, we had our Hand Over Ceremony for the Rubbish Bins that the Humanitarian Dept. donated to the Suva City.  This was the service project that the Tennis's (the couple that we replaced) held just before they left to go home.  

Willie, one of the YSA's wanted to have a service project in conjunction with a dance and fireside for the end of the school year activity.  He spear-headed this project.  It was his BABY.  He called the Humanitarian Missionaries, the city council and the City Waste Manager and got it all started.  The YSA's went down to the sea wall park Nasese Park and cleaned up rubbish.  They had around 100 YSA's participate.  Then the Humanitarian Department donated $10,000.00 to Suva City where they had 10 huge rubbish bins made with the YSA's name on them and they will be placed around the sea wall.  Here is a picture of them.

This is Willie.  He is an amazing 18 year old and is 100% Fijian.  He doesn't look Fijian, but he is.  He says he is the "white version" of Fijian.

So, last Friday we had the Handing Over Ceremony to present the Suva City with the Rubbish Bins.  We had to plan this part, but it went really good.  We had great food, the kids played and sang two songs with the chimes.  Willie spoke about the project and boar an amazing testimony to the whole group which included many city councilmen, assistant mayor and several stake presidencies.  He was amazing.  The city council men were very impressed with his spirit.

This is the picture that was in the Fiji Suns newspaper last week.

Tuesday's are our busy days.  We go to the temple to do baptism for the dead at 10:00.  We go back to the Institute and we feed them.  They hang around all day for the 5:30 institute class which I teach.  I have a hard time seeing them just hang around, so I decided to teach a cooking class.  Last week was chocolate chip cookies.  Most of them had never eaten cookie dough, so I made them all try it.  They are hooked!  They love chocolate chip cookies, but the chocolate chips are way too expensive here so they love it when I make them.  Jamie and Scott sent us 2 huge packages of CC from Costco, so they were much appreciated.

Wednesdays are pretty quiet until afternoon when the kids come to Elder's Peterson's class, The New Testament.  They come early to play pool and get cooled off.  It's fun to have them around.

Thursday's we have Mission Prep at 10:00a.m.  Mark teaches that one too. I don't know how he gets two lessons ready with all the interruptions that happen during the day.  The Kids always come first though and they are in our office a lot.  When one of us not there running errands or busy otherwise, they always ask, "where Elda Petterson or Sista Petterson"  We love it.

Friday we usually take our P Day, but that doesn't always happen.  

Saturday night we have Activity Night or Movie Night.  We usually get around 40 or more kids to that.  Remember, I am making treats for every class and activity night plus feeding them lunch once a week.  Yeeeek.  Saturday was activity night and we played games, pool and volley ball.  I made my homemade hot fudge.  We bought two huge cartons of ice cream thinking we would have some left overs.  NOT!  Look at these pictures and you can see why.  These boys took the last carton into corner and devoured it.  Notice the hot fudge in Abrahams bowl. He was drinking it! 

Anything chocolate is a hit.  Never any leftovers.

We were the envy of all the missionaries this week because of the packages and letters we received.  The other senior couples are so jealous.  Thank you all for the letters, cards, and packages.  We hang every picture up that you send.  Your emails have been so wonderful and we are so happy that all is well at home.

  We love you all so much and are constantly praying for you while we are away.  We feel of your prayers everyday as well.  We feel the Lord leading and guiding us to people and places where He needs us.  We have been traveling to the wards on Sundays to let the YSA's know about the institute and to give them a schedule.  Last Sunday we went to a ward in Lami to hear two of our YSA's speak.  We had decided to stay in our own ward for they remainder of the meetings since we didn't think we would make it in time to another ward. 

That's not what the Lord wanted us to do.  After the kids spoke, we felt like we needed to go to Willie's ward.  He is the one who planned the Rubbish bin project.  We have become very close to him.  We put the peddle to the medal and made it to his ward in time to be at his YSA's class.  We could see that Willie was upset about something.  I asked him if he was ok, and he said no.  I took him out and he told me his grandpa passed away the night before - and, just after Willie had given him a blessing.  His grandfather was not a member.  He started to cry and I hugged him and ask if wanted Elder Peterson to give him a blessing.  He said yes and he found us a room to use.  I went and found Mark and when he came into the room, Willie hugged him and sobbed and sobbed.  Mark held him for a long time, and then gave him a beautiful blessing.  What if we hadn't listened to the spirit and stayed to our plan.  We would have never known about Willie's grandfather until after everything was over.  We went to the viewing and Willie was very grateful to us.  We will report at a later and more appropriate time on the viewing.   In this, we had the opportunity to learn more about the Fijian customs regarding the death of loved ones.  

This is work is true.  Our Heavenly Father knows who we are and what we need.  We are so grateful for this opportunity to serve Him in whatever capacity we are able.  

Well, this is the last two weeks of our life.  Tomorrow is Saturday and we are going to find a BEACH :)

Moce, Sota tale