February 9, 2014

Wow, what a week! We met so many wonderful people during training this week, I almost hated to see the training end. We made some great new friends. The training days were long and intense; most days we spent 10-12 hours in the center learning background and procedures. It was interesting to meet area managers and SR (Self Reliance) missionaries such as ourselves and learn about the different areas covered in the Pacific area. It’s interesting to me to note that a few of the missionary couples are from Idaho! One couple, the Youngburgs from Weiser, are working in Kiribati, a small island group up north. They were not at this training; only the area manager was, so we didn’t get to meet them this time around. Another couple, the Roos, are from Idaho Falls. They are serving in Samoa. They have some unique problems in that, due to the extreme poverty in the islands, the people they work with have very little Internet access. Since so much of the SR program relies on Internet, it makes it very hard for the people they work with to easily participate. The job portion of the program (LDSjobs.org) relies totally on Internet access to register an individuals’ portfolio and for potential employers to advertise jobs as well as look for potential employees. Another aspect of the program allows individuals to work toward a four-year degree through BYU-Idaho’s Pathways program, but again, Internet access is required. For those who, for whatever reason, don’t fit the qualifications for jobs or education, there are PEF loans available to begin a business, but again, the application process requires Internet. Elder Roos said they travel through the islands introducing the programs and have quite a bit of interest in the various programs, but lack of Internet outside of the main cities is a major handicap for many. Candidates must make a long bus ride to the city to do the Internet portion and find someone, usually a relative, to give them a place to stay while they are there. Once they leave the city, the main means of communication with these people is by texting. Hardly anyone can afford to have a cell phone with minutes or data, but text plans are affordable, especially since what most people do is go in with someone and share the cost of the phone and the text package. The islands are actually the tops of old volcanoes, so it is difficult and expensive to install cell phone towers and internet capabilities, because the land is just a tall mountain sticking up out of the ocean. The islands just have one paved road going around the perimeter of the island, about a two-hour drive, and that’s it; the people all live in little villages off the main road. Short of physically going to the village to personally contact someone, the only option the Roos have is to text them and wait a day or so until someone finds the person and has them reply, or the person catches the bus and comes into town. I guess I never realized what part geography plays in keeping people poor. There aren’t a lot of jobs in island nations like Samoa, at least not good jobs, and poverty keeps people from developing some of the skills, like the Internet and computer skills, needed for many jobs.

Samoa

Tonga is another area in our mission.  The area manager was in training with us, but she doesn’t have any missionary couple to help with the work right now, the missionary couple assigned to the islands of Tonga have gone home.  Tonga has many of the same issues as Samoa and the rescue tasks can seem overwhelming I guess. I really liked the Tonga manager, she is originally from Tonga, but was raised mostly in Hawaii, but has returned to Tonga to help the people there.  She was an amazing person.

Fiji, Tahiti, Vanuatu, and the Marshall Islands are also in our mission area. Those islands all have missionary couples working there, but we didn’t get to meet them because only the area managers for those areas came to the meeting. Those couples have all been serving for a while, so they have programs in place. These islands, too, also face the same obstacles as Samoa, extreme poverty and lack of basic services the rest of the world takes for granted. Many people are immigrating to Australia from these areas in order to get better jobs. These are the people we will need to find once we get to Australia.

Map with most of the islands in our mission, I can't find a map with all of them!

The area manager (no SR couple assigned yet) for Papua New Guinea (called PNG) is only 33 years old. He is originally from Colorado. He served a mission in Russia and then went to BYU-Hawaii, got his Masters degree at University of Hawaii, and is about half-finished with his Doctorate. Besides Russian, he speaks a couple of the island languages; I just can’t remember which ones. He was a professor at BYU-Hawaii for several years and then took this job. He is married to a native PNG woman who is half white and half PNG. He taught history and geography of the islands at BYU-Hawaii. He was such an interesting person to talk to. He reminded me of Adam with all his history knowledge. Adding geography along with the history made the Pacific area come alive; I wish I’d been able to take a class from him! Adam would love to be his friend; there are lots and lots of WW II history and geography in this area of the world! Sadly, we didn’t have much free time to talk, so I didn’t have time to learn more than surface information. His work assignment is interesting in that it’s so dangerous. He and his family have to live on a compound in PNG because it’s so dangerous there. The fact that he’s white makes him a target for robbery right off the bat. Killing someone for their watch or for money is a reality there. It reminds me of Ben’s experiences in Angola and the other African nations he’s been to. I’m glad we’re not working in PNG!!

I feel fortunate we will be in a first-world country. Apparently, the population we will be working with mostly in Sydney will be Polynesians, mostly from Samoa and Tonga as well as random other immigrants from other islands and farther away (like Vietnam etc). Australia is much like the US, poor people from many countries come there to try to get a better life. Hearing the stories of the poverty in the Pacific islands and the search for a better life reminds me of the immigration issues the US has. Australia has a pretty stiff immigration process; we will have to learn exactly how it works once we get there because apparently, we will be working with people who are in Australia to try to escape the poverty of their home country and may or may not be there legally. Interestingly, the main source of money in Tonga, Samoa, Fiji etc. is money sent into the country from people working outside the country. I have always known that many of the Hispanics in Fruitland send money home to relatives in Mexico, but I never understood how common that practice is worldwide. Family is everything to the Islanders and they give and share with one another in a way that puts most of us in first world countries to shame. Their lives are more about helping one another than about getting ahead of one another.

There is no SR program at all in any of Australia, so we will be building the program there from the ground up. We have much to learn about the country and it’s laws and services as well as learning about the university requirements and job situations and such. We will have to search out people in need of the job program and training we have to offer since there’s no program there yet, hence, no referrals! Needless to say, the first while we are in Sydney we will be just getting a feel for the area and finding the areas of the city where our services are needed. Our area manager has been hired, but he is currently a mission President in Samoa, so he won’t be back in Australia until July. We are on our own to get the program started. His name is John Leota. He was born in Samoa, lived much of his life in New Zealand, and moved to Australia many years ago. He will be a big help when he arrives, but for now, it’s all up to us to get things going. We will truly be building from the ground up. 

President John Leota

Dancers at the celebration

The Dougalls 

We had a great day Saturday. The training is over, so we got to get out and do a little sightseeing. The Dougalls, the missionary couple we will be job shadowing Monday and Tuesday, have been awesome! I feel like we’ve been friends for a long time. They will be a good resource for us once we get our program to a point we’re ready to begin. We left early this morning to go to the temple; its about an hour and a half drive from Auckland. We stopped in at a little church museum on the property and spent a little time looking at the history of the area. They were having a celebration for Elder Glen Rudd an emeritus apostle who served many years in New Zealand. The people put on a song and dance performance for him (see above picture). I love the spirit and friendliness the island people have. They all seem to be musical and their culture is fun to participate in.



For the Grandkids:    Kiwi Nation

I thought you might like to learn some interesting things about New Zealand. We love it here and we will be sad when we leave on Wednesday. One thing I’ve learned about while I’ve been in New Zealand is that, over here, there’s lots of meanings for the word ‘kiwi’. First of all, a kiwi is more than just a fruit over here.

 The national bird is the kiwi. Look at the pictures of the Kiwi bird and the US national bird, the Bald Eagle. Which one would you rather have as your national bird? Why do you think the New Zealanders chose the Kiwi? 

 
The United States money is known as the US dollar; the New Zealand money is known as the Kiwi dollar. The Kiwi bills are different colors for the different amounts of money, in the US, all the money is the same color. Which do you think is better? 

The last kind of kiwi is a person… a person from New Zealand is called a Kiwi. You hear people say things like, “He’s a Kiwi living in Australia.” Everyone who is a New Zealand citizen is a Kiwi, no matter where they are living. Many of the Kiwis are part Maori. The Maori are the original island people who were living on the island of New Zealand when the white people came. They were brave and strong and very nice to the new people who came to New Zealand. They have their own language, it’s called Maori, and they have their own kind of music and dance. Today there are no pureblood Maori people left. Because so many people from other nations came to New Zealand, the Maori people married them and, over a long period of time, eventually there were no more full-blooded Maori. Here is a picture of a Maori warrior. Tattoos are still very popular with Maoris. 

One thing New Zealand is well known for now is its rugby team, the All Blacks. They are very good and win a lot of games. In New Zealand, boys don’t play football like in America; they play rugby. You have to be really strong and tough to play rugby, it’s kind of like playing football without pads. Rugby is starting to become popular in the United States too, but it won’t ever be as popular as football. I’m glad that my boys didn’t play rugby. It’s a tough game. You can see a story about a rugby team in Salt Lake if you watch the movie, Forever Strong. That team, like the New Zealand All Blacks, does the Haka, a Maori war dance, before every game. You can watch them doing the Haka here:

They like to end the Haka by sticking their tongue out; for some reason they think it is scary!

One of New Zealand’s famous rugby players from long ago was named Sid Going.  He is in the National Hall of Fame in New Zealand.

Sid Going is the one in front with the ball.

He is still alive and is the New Zealand Temple President right now. We saw him at the temple yesterday and I was surprised to see that he wasn’t a great big man. He is not very tall. He was small and very strong and fast. We have met two people who played against him when they were college age. He wiped them both out! Here is a video about him and his choice to serve a mission:

Another LDS rugby player who is famous now is named Jonah Lomu. He was just on TV yesterday because there’s been a big world tournament in a new kind of rugby called, 7s. They play with a smaller team, only 7 guys, and the game is shorter than the normal game. Jonah played on that kind of team when they first started it. There was a world 7s tournament in Wellington New Zealand (where Aunt Jessica’s brother is serving a mission right now) just this last weekend. The New Zealand team was in the play-off game against South Africa last night and New Zealand won. Here is a little video about Jonah. He is retired now because he has a kidney disease.

The people in New Zealand and in Australia talk a lot like the people from England.  They have a different accent from ours and they use different words than we do. Instead of saying that someone is their friend, they say "He's my mate." Yesterday I heard someone say, "I'll flick you that report straightaway."  What do you think they meant?  I will tell you next week.