June 2009

Dear Friends, Brethren and Family

Ni Sa Bula from Fiji land.
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Greetings from the windy South Pacific. 
I apologise for the delay in this report (usually around the 20th) but when we arrived back from our teaching trip to Vanuatu late the 23th I had a lot of correspondence to catch up on with Bible Correspondence courses and replies for the Letters to the Editor in the local paper. I knew you would understand!

There were times the past month that I thought I would be able to wave to you as the wind was blowing past North America from the South Pacific. If it had been cyclone season it would have been cyclonic winds. Right after the last report we received some strong southerly winds and driving rain for a couple of days. One night we went down to the marina for dinner and when we got back I realized that I had picked up the car key and not the house key when we left. So when we got home I spent 20 minutes breaking into our house. We have burglar guards on the windows and I could not jimmy the door open so I had to remove a burglar guard using a socket wrench (which I had in the container) and then stick my arm through the louver glass to unlatch the front door. Less then a hundred yards away is a police post and a policeman came outside and watched me the whole time but never came down to see if it was really the owner breaking in. This was when we found out that our puppies are also "watchdogs", they watched me the whole time and didn't say boo!

Vanuatu Teaching Trip

It has been an exciting month. We were invited by Port Vila Christ's church to come and teach. Kathy and I did indeed travel to Vanuatu where I taught for two weeks every evening for 2 hours using powerpoint presentations. The first week I taught a series of lessons on The Road to Maturity. It was geared to help the brethren understand that maturity is not something that just happens but one must have a mindset and work toward maturity. The second week I taught on the Sabbatarian misuse of Daniel, Revelation and Matthew 24 in teaching their doctrine that Jesus will be coming back (3rd coming) very soon (because of the signs of the times) to set up his earthly kingdom. They are using their doctrine to frighten people and getting them worried about the signs of the end times. After explaining the context of the scriptures and the SDA misuse of these scriptures the brethren are better equipped to teach the truth. They better understand that Jesus is indeed coming back but it will be a time nobody knows (no signs) and that we will meet Him in the air with no earthly kingdom being established. I will probably be teaching this series here in Fiji as the SDAs are very active here. I still have several articles a week appearing in the local paper refuting the SDA claims. I have had many people in the area say they follow the discussion in the paper closely. I even had the taxi driver who took us to the airport for our flight to Vanuatu give me some suggestions for letters to the editor.

That Being Home Feeling

It was like being home. From the time we landed to the time we left to come back to Fiji we were family. We understood the language and everywhere we went we were met with friends. One of the downers here in Fiji is that we do not know the Hindi or Fijian language. So when we are out and about people are speaking a language we not inclusive with. Even though English is one of the official languages here in Fiji, when groups get together they tend to talk their cultural language. We were thinking it was us and we had a mental block with the Fijian language but in Sunday's paper there was an article about an English man who has been here almost 30 years and he said he has not learned Fijian as it has so many hidden sounds. We know the feeling. Fijian is not a phonetic language like Bislama and Pidgin.

Brush Arbor Vanuatu Style

We held the teaching in Port Vila; the first week under a tarpaulin in the back yard of Steven & Rose-Anna Felix and the last few days inside their living room due to daily rain and the rain flowing through the tarpaulin. While we were there the nightly temperature dipped into the 60's and the wind blew constantly. We averaged 25-30 with many coming in from Eton village to attend. We also had three of the brethren from Ambyum Island for the two weeks. This is where the church had the youth camp last month. The Port Vila brethren had paid their boat fare in so they could attend. Morris and Rebecca Felix from Eton were in Port Vila as well. Morris had an infection in his left foot and the hospital failed to note that there was a piece of glass in his foot the first time they treated him. The second time the infection had gone up his left leg and it was swollen. They did surgery and found the piece of glass but they also severed some blood vessels to his toes and they had to amputate one of his toes when it turned black due to lack of blood. When we arrived he was staying and recovering in a guest house behind Steven's house and there was a local clinic worker treating him and changing the bandages daily. Please keep Morris in your prayers for continued healing and recovery!

Under the Tarp - Steven leading singing

Children's class

Abu Tobey teaching


Teaching in the cooking hut - Kathy trying to stay warm!

Allergy - Cold

Before going to Vanuatu I was having allergy problems because the mango trees were in bloom all around our house and the country. So I arrived in Vanuatu stuffed up and it just got worse. One night when the winds were blowing and the rain was misty I taught in the shelter where they have their cooking fire. The smoke from that fire was blowing in my face and I breathed it while I taught. The last night of teaching I could hardly talk and I finished with a squeak. Kathy also caught a chill and arrived back in Fiji with a hacking cough (not swine flu, thank you). We are getting better but the weather is not helping. It changed from cool night's and warm days back to warm and humid nights and hot days.

Camping out Missionary style

Before we traveled to Vanuatu I was able to reprint the Bislama/English song book that we first put together in 2001. I took 50 copies with us. I knew we would be overweight because of the song books so I asked Air Pacific if they could help us out some and they said no. However when we arrived for check-in our baggage was 80lbs overweight and they did not charge us any extra. We also took an airbed with us because we knew we would be staying in a government house which didn't have any furniture in it yet. Steven Felix is the Chief Magistrate in Port Vila and the government gave him another house. They are supposed to fix it and furnish it but have not yet done so, so Goman Mesa had been fixing it up. When we got there we stayed in the "new" house and used one of the bedrooms where we put our airbed. We took sheets but had to buy some cheap Chinese blankets and pillows. The next day we bought some more cheap Chinese pillows so my head would be off the bed. We also took a shower head which heats the shower water when you turn it on. Most of the people in this part of the world do not have hot water heaters and use on-demand hot water systems if they have any. Most of them take cold showers! It took me a day to get all the connections I needed to hook the shower head up but on the second day I was able to get it installed. So Kathy and I only suffered through one cold shower. Well, that is not entirely true. The electrical systems in the houses in Vanuatu are based on your deposit which determines the amount of amperage you can get. This house is on the minimum deposit so they can only pull 10 amps of power. The shower head I installed had two settings high (23 amps) and low (10 amps). When I first installed it I wired it to the light in the bath area, which meant when the light was turned on, the shower head could be operated for warm water. So I turned on the light, jump in the shower, turn on the shower and with warm water flowing soaped up my hair, more like my head (which I had not washed the first night with only cold water available). Soap, soap - light goes off- shower goes cold! The shower heater blew the main breaker. So I hurriedly washed out the soap, threw on a towel and went out to the breaker box and reset it. The next day I bought more wire and rewired it to a power point box thinking they have a bigger breaker. I thought the breaker was thrown because it was through the light circuit. This should fix it! I then tried taking another warm shower using just the low heat and as I was ending my shower I threw the switch to high heat where after about 5 seconds it tripped the breaker again. Then I realized I had forgotten about the limitation of amps in the Port Vila power system. Slow learner! We kept it on low hear the rest of the trip and enjoyed warm showers! When the Felix family move into their house they will increase their amperage because she has an electric stove and because she works for the electric company and they get free power. Their kids love me for the warm showers now!

Use of Our "spare" time while in Vanuatu

Steven has some young men who do odd jobs for him and they stay in the house to guard it. Until the government furnishes it only then will Steven and his family move into this house. There was no refrigerator and no cooking facilities so Kathy and I ate breakfast every morning down at Jill's Cafe in town. We also ate a late lunch in town because we have tea and bread after the teaching in the evening. Steven also graciously loaned me his truck while we were there. He has use of a government car. I was able to repay the hospitality by fixing the village generator which had been struck by lightning earlier that month. The lightning had fried the box where you plug in the electrical cables. They had brought it into town but had not taken it to a repair shop yet so I was able to buy and replace the connection box and the generator works again.

Cleaning up Port Vila

While in Port Vila we also collected a number of used monitors and computers and Apple Mac stuff which Island Property no longer had use of. The laser printer they gave us was a great help as it allowed me to print copies of all the classes I was teaching and give the notes to the brethren. Thank you so much Kaye for the laser printer. Otherwsie I would have had to find a photocopy place and pay for the copies. We also visited with an old friend Maurice who had upgraded his Mac computer and gave us all his old zip drives. So when we traveled back to Fiji we were overweight again and this time had to pay $48. Before we left Steven's front porch looked like a used computer shop.

Back to Fiji

It was good to get back to Fiji. We arrived at the airport in Port Vila for our flight but found they had changed the departure time by 4 hours. So Steven drove us back to Port Vila were we had a final hamburger at Jill's Cafe and then back to the airport for departure. (The meat in Vanuatu is second to none however the beef here in Fiji I suspect is considered "aged" when it falls over dead and then they process it.) We arrived back in Fiji at 10:15pm and the taxi cab driver from Vuda Point met us and took us to the house. The wind was blowing up a gale. The people who has been staying in our house for the two weeks had chained the front gate and gone back to their boat at the marina. So I had to crawl threw the fence and get the extra set of keys hidden in the (I'm not going to tell in case someone reads highjacks this email) and opened the gate and doors. The next day both of us had a hacking cough and Kathy was running a fever. There were coconut branches all over the yard and coconuts everywhere. I had to go to town to check mail and get stuff Wednesday afternoon then Kathy and I both went into Nadi for shopping on Thursday. Two of the yachty families we befriended have left both sailing toward Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

Yesterday (Sunday) I resumed my teaching on Romans 12-14 at Sabeto and we enjoyed the fellowship lunch with them as always. We have over 60 BCC students now and several are considering obedience to the gospel. We have had a great interest in the new series of courses that we are getting ready to offer through "The Christian Institute of Biblical Studies" extension school.

The many areas of service that we have open to us here keeps us busy and we continue to solicit your prayers that we will have the strength necessary to enter all the doors that the Lord is opening. The interest is still high here for a Located Bible School. Please continue to keep this need in your prayers as well. 

Thank you especially to those who continue to faithfully provide the support that we receive to allow us to remain here to assist in the work. We know you could contribute your funds to any number of works and you have chosen us, thank you!

Your seed-sowing brother and sister.

Tobey & Kathy