Pancakes for Dinner

Bula!

It is Tuesday afternoon here in Suva. The last few days have been enjoyable as we have explored and settled in to this new city. The city of Suva is much bigger and cleaner than Lautoka and has more traditional retail and restaurants. The hotel where we are staying is very modest but we have a great unit with a living room and two small bedrooms, plus a small kitchen. It is the first time we have been able to cook for ourselves in over 4 months! Last night we had homemade pancakes for dinner. Yes!

While the hotel has been relaxing, we have confirmed our plans to leave the hotel and go live in the mountains with Homes of Hope (HOH). We will leave tomorrow and be there until we head back to Kona on November 19th. The Homes of Hope property is absolutely beautiful and is situated on a ridge that overlooks a valley and other mountains in the distance. There are a couple main buildings, a handful of small houses for the mothers, and a guest house where our family will be staying. We had a nice surprise when our friends Nick and Jen came back from the outer islands early and decided to go with us to HOH. So, our two families will be living together in the guest house and ministering together to these lovely people.

Homes of Hope takes in single mothers, some with unborn children, and gives them a home and training to help them provide for their families and break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness that traditionally accompanies single moms in Fiji. From what we understand, we will be spending the bulk of our time helping in the preschool, tending the large garden, playing with the kids, etc. Angie will be able to fulfill her desire to use her nursing skills in teaching the women proper care for their babies, teaching hygiene, and helping with other health issues. Also, the women bake fresh bread every day to sell to the markets, so we will enjoy being able to help with that (by helping, I mean tasting!).

We are so excited for this opportunity to really engage our family with these people in such a big way and to build relationships with the mothers and staff living on the property. We are pretty sure they do not have internet there, but we will be driving in to the city once or twice a week and will update the blog with pictures of the property.

Till next time!

The Suva harbor from our hotel













From another angle













The Tropic Towers apartment/hotel where we have been staying the last few days













Our room with a kitchen!














Having breakfast with our new friend, Sadi, in the Tropic Towers "coffee lounge"

Bula from Suva

Bula from Suva!

We had a wonderful mini family vacation as the four of us spent several days at a hotel between Lautoka and Suva. The hotel was so cool as it was really geared for families and had activities all day for adults and kids. Sam and Katie would take off in the morning and stay busy almost all day with egg throwing contests, crab hunting and crab racing, ice cream eating contests, crafts, feeding the fish, etc. It was just what we needed to get refreshed and re-energized for the rest of our work here. So, now it is back to reality. We arrived in Suva yesterday and got settled in to the hotel where we are staying. Suva is on the rainy side of the island and it has been raining here for five weeks straight.

Today we drove out of the city, literally into the jungle, to the top of a mountain ridge where there is an organization called Homes of Hope that is building a little community where single mothers live and where they educate them on caring for their children and train them in various skills in order to support their children. The property is absolutely beautiful. We immediately felt like this would be a perfect place for our family to work for the remaining time here. In fact, the tagline for their organization goes something like "providing a hope and a future for families." You may remember from an earlier blog that the scripture verse that Angie has been reflecting on daily during this whole adventure is Jeremiah 29:11:

"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

While Angie has been reflecting on this verse in a personal perspective, we now realize that God may also have been preparing us to help provide a hope and a future to others. Also, as Angie and I have been praying together over these months about what our plans will be once we return to Seattle, we have felt a desire to have some kind of family ministry to unwed mothers. All of this has felt like confirmation that the Lord has been preparing us for these next three weeks in the mountains with this organization. In fact, it seems likely that we will leave the hotel and go live there for the next three weeks so we can be really effective in our work there and in building relationships.

So, please be praying for us. If we go, we will try to update the blog once more before we head to the mountains. God bless!


Katie getting her hair braided by some of the local Fijian women














You've got to love those faces!














Hmmm, I think Angie is smiling a little too big next to those Fijian men!














Katie, the underwater mermaid














Future Olympic swimmer?













Sunset in Paradise

Leaving Lautoka

It is Friday afternoon here in Lautoka. This week has gone well as we have continued our ministries in the hospital, the after-school kids program, and the disabled school. Sam and Katie are doing an amazing job of connecting with the children.

Some have asked about the practical details of how we are living. For food, we have a pretty light breakfast and lunch in our hotel room usually consisting of peanut butter and jelly, crackers, fruit, and ramen noodles. We have become pretty creative with what we can prepare with only a hot water kettle. For dinners we meet with the whole team at one of two restaurants here in town. We have been pretty lucky with food we are used to which has included baked fish, fish and chips, Chinese food, and even pizza! Angie has been amazing to me as she has done all our laundry in the bathroom sink and then hangs the laundry on the ceiling of our hotel room. What a woman! The weather has been pretty mild and mostly overcast and rainy. All in all, not bad living conditions.

Sam and I took a bus trip to downtown Nadi on Tuesday to hunt down a new power cord for our laptop, which had burned out on the higher currency. It was a memorable experience traveling through the town and country villages together by bus and turned out to be quite a scavenger hunt once we got into town as we kept getting referred by one store to another store to another store in search of our part.

We have also met part of the reality of living here as a couple people in our team have contracted scabies. It can be pretty contagious, so we are praying that our family will be able to avoid that.

Most of our team will be leaving for one of the outer islands this weekend for two weeks to live in one of the remote villages there. Our family will instead be traveling to the south side of Fiji to take a break for a few days. We will then meet up with our team leaders in Suva on Thursday. It will just be the six of us for a week and a half and we will be helping them lead a youth conference and a women’s conference as well as laying the ground work for when the rest of the team rejoins us on November 6th. From what we can tell now, our work in Suva will include orphanages, hospitals, and single mothers’ home.

We are currently right about at our halfway point for our time in Fiji with four more weeks to go! Since this is the last entry from Lautoka, I have included some pictures of the city below as well as more pictures of our ministry times.

God bless!


An outdoor market in Lautoka














One of the main streets in downtown Lautoka














As is probably obvious, the fish market














One of the shops advertising Diwali, an Indian holiday that is celebrated this Saturday the 21st















One of my favorite places, The Hot Bread Kitchen. Mmmm, mutton pies!


















With our team and some of the students at our after-school program














Sam and friends at the disabled school














Angie and friends at the disabled school














Katie, Kuma, and Yeji













Angie and Kuma, a very sweet deaf girl at the disabled school

Week #3

We have just finished week #3 here in Fiji. This week we continued to go to the hospital to visit with the patients there. It is especially difficult to visit the children’s ward as many of the kids are very sick. But, all of the patients have been very thankful that we have visited and prayed for them.

We also were grateful to discover an additional ministry we can do with the kids. We visited the Lautoka Special School which is a home for disabled children, which includes physical deformities, deafness, and other disabilities. Despite the hardships these children are facing, they were some of the most joyful kids we have met so far. We sang songs and because some of the children are deaf, one of the hearing children helped teach us the signs for the songs. Even though we know some American sign language, they use Australian sign language which is totally different. I let the deaf kids put their hands on the guitar and strum the strings so they could fell the vibrations they were creating and they loved it. Sam and Katie did crafts with the kids and had a great time. The hit of the afternoon was our digital camera. They loved to take pictures with the camera and then look at the images. It was just the kind of experience we wanted to expose Sam and Katie to on this trip. Later that evening when we were putting the kids to bed, they had so many questions in their minds about the things they had seen that day. “Did Jesus make those children? Why did Jesus only give that girl two fingers? Can the deaf girl hear herself talk? Can she hear Jesus talk?” What a great opportunity to discuss tough questions of life and for them to see how blessed they are to have their health and so many comforts of home.

On Thursday, I went to a village outside of town that sits right next to the garbage dump. It is a very poor village and, because of the dirt and disease that is there, Angie chose to keep the kids back. My friend Nick and I led an afternoon of songs, games, and bible stories with about 30 kids ranging from age 5 to 14. It was a very different dynamic from the kids we have been working with at the after-school program here in town. Apart from the obvious poverty they are living in, there was a roughness to the way they interacted and behaved with one another. It was another great experience and opportunity to share God’s love with these children who were born into such a tough environment.

We have one more week here in Lautoka until we head off to our next town to minister in. Have a great weekend!


In front of the school for disabled children














Sam playing with shapes with one of the deaf girls














One of the deaf girls playing the guitar














Little Lemani (the girl with two fingers) showing us her bed














The village by the dump














Two of the boys helping me lead songs














Playing "Simon Says" with the kids













The boys of the village

Road Trip to McDonalds

It is Wednesday afternoon in Fiji. We have our good days and bad days as far as our family morale goes. Some days are really enjoyable and rewarding and some days are a mental exercise in determination just to get through the end of the day. Strangely enough for Fiji, except for the first few days we were here, it has been cloudy and rainy every day. But God is giving us the strength to get through each day.

On Saturday we took a trip to the Nadi McDonalds. Our Fijian friend Tress went with us and recommended we take a van-bus for the 30-minute trip. We took a taxi to the bus station and then crammed into the 15-person van with about 20 people. Then, the driver was apparently in a race to break his personal record for making it to Nadi in the shortest possible amount of time. This included passing as many cars as he could on busy and narrow roads and also seeing how close he could get to the cars in front of us without crashing into them. I think Angie and my blood pressure reached a new high during the drive. It was quite a memorable ride. However, the Big Macs and Happy Meals made the whole trip worth it. Nevertheless, we decided to take a regular bus from the McDonalds to the Nadi Airport (also a good excuse for Angie to get a coffee at the famous Republic of Cappucino at the airport) and then a taxi back home to Lautoka.

On Monday, we went back to the hospital and visited the children’s ward. They allowed me to bring the guitar in and we sang songs to the kids, gave them comic books and candy, and prayed for the kids and their parents. Angie and several other of the moms on the team were able to really encourage the parents that were tired and depressed sitting at the bedsides of their sick children. It was a very moving time.

We have been continuing to lead the after-school program and are really enjoying that. Sam and Katie particularly look forward to those times.

Time is short to update the blog, so I’ll finish with just a few more pictures. God bless!


On the sugar cane railroad tracks in Lautoka














Creative ways to entertain Sam and Katie with cartoons on our iPod














Outside the coffee mecca of Fiji at the Nadi airport with our friends Tress and Courtney


















Singing to the kids at the hospital


















Courtney and her new friend at the hospital



















Sally and Jen praying for a sick child

Week #2 in Fiji

It’s Friday afternoon and we have made it through another week! Thank you for all your prayers. We have really felt them. Sam and Katie have been much better the last few days and we attribute most of that to prayer.

Our first full week of ministry has gone well. We have been spending the afternoons leading an after-school program for some of the local children. We meet at the home of a local contact we have here named Vini. We spend about 45 minutes helping the kids with their homework. Because there is not enough money for textbooks, the children must write all the homework questions (including English, math, etc.) in their own notebook and then go home and answer them. They are all quite smart and it is fun to help them. For the next hour we walk up the hill to an open field and play some games outside with them. Sam is loving being able to play with older boys again. After game time, we walk back to the house and have about 30 minutes of singing and a Bible story. Both Sam and Katie have really been enjoying hanging out with all the kids and have already made buddies with several of them.

Today, Angie and I went to the Lautoka Hospital with several other members of our team to talk with and pray for the patients there. It is amazing to see the hospital conditions here but it was extremely rewarding and enjoyable to spend time talking to the men and women and encourage them and pray for them. Our new friend Tress goes with us to interpret for those people that only speak Fijian. On Monday, Angie and I will go back and spend some time in the children’s ward. I’m hoping to convince the hospital to let me bring my guitar in and sing with the kids.

It has been kind of fun getting used to life here. We walk a lot and take taxis anywhere that is too far to walk. We pile as many people into a taxi as possible to save money, but most rides are only a couple Fijian dollars. Tomorrow we have the day off and may take a taxi to the city of Nadi (about 20 minutes away) to go to McDonalds for dinner! Can you say Big Mac?!!!

Thank you to everyone who has been emailing us words of encouragement. Because our schedule is busy, I don’t have time to respond to each email. But, please know that every email has been special to us.


Sam making paper airplines with his buddies Jerome, Shiva, and Ronit














Walking to the play field. Taito in the lead giving us his greeting!














The girls walking to play time.














Game time with the kids














Katie playing "Duck, Duck, Goose" with the kids














Song time!














Angie and me at the Lautoka Hospital














Katie laughing with her friends Suji and Christian as we wait for dinner oustide a street cafe.

Giants in the Land

It is Tuesday afternoon here. We’ve had probably our most difficult few days ever as a family the last few days. The kids’ behavior has been very difficult, stressful, and exhausting. The environment is hard to get used to. We would love nothing more than to pack up our stuff and come home. But, we know that our work is not finished here and we are committed to seeing this through. We have been clinging to God’s promises and His faithfulness to get us through one day at a time. Please continue to pray for us and especially the kids.

On Saturday night, we went to the Marine Reach base in town and were treated to a traditional Fijian dinner by some of the students and leaders there. After dinner they put on a show of Fijian dancing and spoke to us about the work they are doing. It was a great night. The kids were most impressed by a young man in the group who is a real life giant. He stands 7'8" tall!

On Sunday, we went to a local church as a group. The Koreans in our group stood up and sang a traditional Korean blessing song to the congregation. Then our leader, Bobby, gave the sermon. He did a great job.

This week we are digging in to our first full week of ministry. Our family and another family will be organizing and leading an after-school program on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And we will have our first taste of visiting the prisons, hospitals, and the villages by the garbage dump.

Here is the scripture verse that has been getting us through the past few days:

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Bobby with Kali, the Fijian giant!



















The Fijians dancing for us















Outside the church on Sunday morning.














Team Wicks after church (with a glimpse of the sulus)














Sam and his evening cup of Ovaltine (hey, you have to have something to get you through the night!)