Much of our time this past week was spent visiting the homes of
missionaries, delivering needed household materials and checking on the
cleanliness and safety of the mission-owned missionary houses. Some of their houses are a wee bit less than spic and span, as in, "How can they live this way?" We find a lot of illness due to mosquito bites. Some missionaries develop boils. It is our job to help improve the health and living conditions of the missionaries.
Fifty years ago we did not have indoor plumbing, and I think
things were much more sanitary.
Back then we bathed at the village pipe outside, or in a river, and we
used the outhouse back in the woods or out over the ocean. I would rather bathe under a public shower
pipe with water coming down from the mountain top than stand in a moldy shower
stall inside a tiny missionary house.
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| Elder McBride 1963 |
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| 1963 |
The other day we took a team of three sister missionaries
and four elders to clean two houses.
Alicia and the sisters took one house; I took the four elders and we did
the other. It is not our job to clean houses, but we do instruct and supervise the young missionaries on what they should be doing. (One of the elders is a son
of a BYU football coach. I leave out
names here on purpose, out of privacy considerations.)
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| Sister McBride and Team |
Afterwards, we thought it proper to take this team to
lunch at a nearby beautiful little place, “Seabreeze Resort.”
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| SeaBreeze Resort |
The food was good, and the chocolate milk
shakes were great. It was a little pricey, but worth it. Almost all of it was
new, having been rebuilt after the 2009 tsunami.
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| Dining at SeaBreeze |
Just around the corner from the resort was a scene I
remember well from 50 years ago. It is a
burial chamber – I guess you could call it a sepulcher -- built on a tiny islet
about 100 yards from shore. It is about 10 feet in height. I realized we were still in my old first
proselyting area. (It was a cloudy day; picture could be better.)
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| Sepulchre near Vavau |
We had one more delivery, one which took us to the south
west side of Upolu. As we drove along, we
passed by several LDS chapels. It was so
nice to see that the gospel has continued to spread since I was here. I was not
sure what the names of the various ward houses were.
We came to one chapel where a man apparently dressed for a
church meeting was standing out front.
He wore a white shirt, tie, black lavalava, and sandals – standard dress
for a Mormon here on Sunday, but this was Saturday. It turns out that that weekend was their
stake conference, and he was on his way to a priesthood leadership meeting.
I asked him the name of the village we were in. It was Lotofaga (“lo-to-fong-ah”), which was
my last proselyting area and where I was district leader 50 years ago. Things look so different now.
I asked him if a missionary house had once stood where the outdoor
basketball court now stands. He said
yes. I asked him if the river in which
Elder Peter Hardman and I had bathed almost every day was still there. Of course it is.
Then he asked me if I remembered the names of anyone in that
area back then. I tried to remember the
name of the branch president. I couldn’t, but I described him to the man. “His eyes were a bit droopy; it was as if he
were always sleepy,” I said.
The man grinned.
“That was my father,” he said proudly.
I was sorry to learn that he passed away some years ago.
I can’t express how thrilled I was! Not only had my friend stayed strong in the
Church, but he had gone on to become the stake president. And now his son, born about 10 years after I
left there, was in a leadership position in the area.
We usually put in 10 or 12 hours a day in our calling. The
other day, for example, we had an 8:00 a.m. meeting with President Hannemann
and his assistants; then two trips to the nearby Falealili Airport; two trips
to a local gas station (for two cars); a trip out to Lufilufi to pick up the
belongings of a sister who is being transferred; then did downtown shopping for
supplies for missionaries; took a car in to get it washed; and even spent a few
minutes doing paper work in the office. We got home at 8:00 p.m. Another very full day! Another wonderful week!
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