Dear Friends, Family and Brethren
Ni Sa Bula Vinaka!
We have been here two months now and still have our sanity. We are slowly getting things put into place and settling in.
(Pic - up our driveway, we live in the very top flat)
We went to view some land last month for the siting of the Bible School.
It is out past Nadi toward Suva by Bavu village. Currently the land is planted in Pine trees which is due for harvest this year. When or if it is harvested the land owners have asked that it be returned to them and not replanted. There are several hundred acres and they are willing to let us have up to 50 acs. The area we looked at has a small creek for water with rolling hill side and a large flat area. It will be good for crops.
We have thought to have the Pine Corporation sell the trees to us and then we will use them to build what we need (log cabin type). The village chief also said they had some other freehold land (30 acs) which was currently planted with sugar cane. We did not go look at this property because it was off the road a few kilometers. Other people have said they have land for us to look at but have not come and seen us yet.
What we do not know is how much this will cost us initially. I have been told that we can buy the pine trees from the corporation and then give the land owners a "good will" payment of several thousand dollars and sign the land lease with the government and then pay a yearly land lease, determined by the Land Board. I don't have a clue on costs. As the way things stand we don't have ANY FUNDS in any account right now to negotiate the land deal but I have faith that when we need the funds they will be available somehow.
I will let you know how things progress and in the mean time pray that funds will be available when we need them.
On Sunday mornings I have been teaching the "Spiritual Gift Class" to the Sabeto junction congregation. We hope to get some type of weekly class started in Lautoka later this year along the lines of classes we will teach when we get the Biblical Institute up and running full time. It will depend on finances and what we can rent to hold the classes in.
The end of June we were looking around for a small car and found one in Nadi. We had been waiting until we sold our truck back there in Joplin before buying but thought we really needed to be getting one so we used the funds we had in savings. Our new/used car is a PERODUA/ Kancil. Made in Malaysia (http://www.perodua.com.my/index.php?section=ourcars&page=kancil) 2002 model 660EX, 659 cc, 32 liter (8.5 gal) gas tank, 12 inch tires. It gets over 40 miles per gallon. I am trying to find out how often we will have to replace the rubber bands.
Kathy and I took a week long trip July 6-13 to Vanuatu. We went there to see the brethren and to check on the printing equipment to see if it was in shape to be shipped back here for use with the Bible School when we get a place for the school and get it started. The printing equipment is in pretty good shape for being in storage for over 5 years. When we find a place to put it here and the funds to ship it we will send for it. It will probably cost about $1,000 to get it packed and shipped here. The local brethren in Vanuatu have been going through some difficult times lately with visitors who come in the name of the church and the local brethren have decided that anyone coming to work in Vanuatu with the church needs to clear their plans with the local brethren before they come.. Instead of what happens now, where American workers come and hold classes and whatever whether the local brethren know they are coming or not. The attitude from the visitors is "it doesn't matter what the local brethren in Vanuatu plan or do, if it is not the American way it must be wrong". Many baptisms but few conversions!!!!!!!!! Most have not been incorporated into the local body of believers. More have left the fellowship than have been incorporated into the family due to the work of American visitors and missionaries.
We arrived back in the land of BULA (Fiji) July 13th at 8:30am. It was great being with the brethren in Vanuatu and we spent the day trying to speak Bislama to the people here. Funny they don't understand what we are saying. One of the more frustrating things in the Fiji work right now is we do not know Fijian and other than my classes on Sunday everything else in the worship service is in Fijian. We are trying to locate some of the Fijian/English song books I compiled for the brethren so we can at least alternate singing in Fijian and English.
When we got home on the 13th I had 153 emails, (39 spam). Just as we were opening the door the shipping company called to say our container had arrived early and we needed to come pay the clearing charges. The next day, Friday (14th), our container was delivered and I had to work with the Army, customs, quarantine and the shipping company. Somewhere between Joplin and here someone had hit the back with a forklift, splitting the seam at the bottom and leaving a hole as well as hitting the front corner with something and folding the steel in and twisting the door a bit. It took a bit to get the door open and a bit more to get it closed. I was not expecting it until Monday or Tuesday the next week. I spent the rest of Friday and Saturday unloading most of the bedroom & kitchen stuff. Nice to sleep on our own bed again! We have a wittle bitty car and it took many trips to get the boxes up to the house. Sunday was a worship and rest day. Monday I got back into it and shifted the boxes which will be needed for right now. A lot of the stuff will stay in the container until we have a place for the school. Right now it is just good to have my office shaping up and getting our clothes out of trunks.
American
paper goods on right Fiji on left
comparison of local paper goods to American paper goods
After we got some of the stuff unpacked from the container we thought it would be wise to go to Suva and see what Cost-U-Less had in stock as well as test drive the car on a longer trip. Cost-U-Less is a large bulk buying store with American roots. It has many American goods and also goods from Australia and New Zealand. There used to be a Cost-U-Less in Nadi but it closed after the 2002 coup. It is 290 kms (170 miles) to Suva. The national road speed limit is 80 kms (50mph). We left Lautoka around 9am and arrived back home at 6:30pm. We went to Cost-U-Less and right next door stopped at the new MCDonald's for lunch. They are both right outside the entrance gate to the University of the South Pacific there in Suva.
They have Crisco ($9.99F/$6.30USD), Cereal (44oz Malt-o-Meal/ Frosted mini wheats/Cherrios etc=$13.99/$8.82USD), BCroc cake and brownie mixes ($3-4.99/$2.50-3.15USD), US (soft) toilet paper ($1/.63¢US per roll), Bounty paper towels ($4F/$2.40USD per roll) , Dried blueberries (20 oz=25.99/$16.30USD), Dried cranberries (30oz=$13.45/$8.50USD), Tollhouse chocolate chips ($11.99/$7.55USD), Hershey miniatures (40oz=$19.99/$12.60USD), Microwave popcorn (24 count=$28.00/$17.64USD), pretzels: snack bag(75grams=$2.59/$1.68USD), corn chips (500grams=$6.99/$4.40USD), raisins(6 x 1.5oz boxes=$2.99/$1.88USD), M&M's (14oz bag=$6.99/$4.40USD), Dixie paper plates (110=$10.99/$6.93USD=.63¢ per plate). The plates may (are) seem expensive but they have a plastic coat on them and I can use them several times before they hit the trash bin!
So you can see we are no longer sacrificing in most areas. We can get cereal, cake mixes, crisco, paper towels, US TP, and other stuff just as cheap here when you factor in the mailing charges. The US Postal system no longer has surface mail and with it costing about $6 per lb for Priority Mail, WOW!
We got just over 43 miles per gallon with the car. There were a couple of close calls with trucks and taxis driving thru downtown Suva. BUT WE MADE IT!!!!!!!!! =-O We felt like the mouse and the elephant!
The MCDonald's here has a $2 ($1.24USD) menu which includes ($2 per item): a cheeseburger, a regular sundae, one piece of chicken, regular fries. They have just added McFlurry which costs $4.65 ($2.92USD)
This past month we got hooked up with Yahoo Messenger Voice. At first we were just chatting with each other but decided to go for the whole ball of wax and have been able to use our web cams and talk and see with Jason, Mel, Jonah and Morgen and with Terasa, Chris, Ragan, Harrison, Jackson, Taylor and Truman. Couldn't get a word in edgewise with Truman talking all the time. (He is 4 months.) . It has been great! No long distance charges! If you have yahoo you can contact us by signing on to my yahoo address (tobeyhuff@yahoo.com). If you don't have Yahoo you can get an address for free and the software for free and call us for free! How can you beat that! We are 17 hours ahead of you.
I played golf the morning of July 24th. It was cloudy (86 + 80% humidity). I played either 7 or 21 holes depending on how you look at it. I really only played seven of the holes but I played three balls best ball. There are no signs as to where the greens or fairways are. No yardage markers. I only lost one ball down in some banana trees. The fairways run between gardens and banana trees. The fairways are only cut on Friday for Saturday players. The greens are like the fairways at normal golf courses. Forget fine greens. What bunkers they have are only an inch of sand spread along the edge of some of the greens. You can really give the ball a wack when putting. If one is getting ready for the British Open this is not a course for preparation. The tyres on my golf trundler rotted and I had to wrap them with black tape to keep the tubes from bulging out. One of the local rules for the course here: " On the mown area of the course, a ball laying on or so close to rock or stone as to interfere with swing or endanger the club or player, in contact with dung, a crack or on a footpath or wheeltrack, may be lifted and dropped within one club length not nearer the hole without penalty." This is the home town of Vijah Singh.
It is cool season: night temps around 71 and daytime temps in the mid to upper 80's. Humidity in the 70-80's. It has been dry. It is the start of sugar cane harvesting season. We did finally have a couple of days of light rain the last week of July.
We received some good news: Gasoline prices actually went down 7 cents a litre this past week. That's 17 cents a US gallon. Now unleaded is only $4.64 per gallon.
When the military coup occurred Dec 5th, 2006. The civil servants all took a 5% pay decrease because the finance department said it was running out of reserves. However over the past few months the interim Government, run by the military, have given sporting bodies over $800,000 for different sporting events of World event status and bought a whole fleet of new ministerial vehicles. Of course this has angered the civil servants (rightfully so I say) who gave notice to the government that they wanted their 5% pay back. After much discussion the nurses and doctors union went out on strike 10 days ago and the School teachers union went out on strike August 2nd.
Nine weeks to the day of our arrival in Fiji we finally got a key for the post office box. Friday was definitely a red letter day.
We wish to thank all of you for your prayers and those who support our efforts here. We ask for your continued prayers that we will secure support to go-ahead with the acquiring of land and buildings for the Biblical Institute. Also support is needed in regard to getting the printing equipment shifted over here from Vanuatu ($1,000). If you can help personally or can get this need into the hands of those who can help we would appreciate it very much!
Vanaka