The Eldares, a group of missionaries who served here 42 years ago returned for a reunion and have been entertaining all week, culminating with a missionary fireside tonight. They are recording tomorrow and will leave on the weekly Monday night flight to the USA. We have attended a couple of their events this week and have really enjoyed their spirit and fun personalities. One of them, Randy Broadhead is from Raymond and it has been nice to acquaint ourselves with him. These are the fellows who wrote the songs "Masi Samoa" and "Koko Samoa" which have played on the radio in Samoa for decades. As well this week, was a performance at the LDS Church High School by a group of young people, a polynesian review that is really well done. They have put it on for 4 nights already and will do it for another 4 nights this week. There is a lot of time and talent that has gone into it and the energy of those young people is amazing.
Along with this we went to Sauniatu with the Smarts for the young kids sports day that included traditional samoan games and competitions like coconut husking, weaving, fire starting, etc. It rained but those kids just kept going and had a grand time.
Now, to the thing that has kept us busy and will keep us busy for the next two weeks - the South Pacific Games. We are aiding the missionaries with their responsibilities in ticket sales, etc. for the actual activities. We have attended meeting, been issued with uniforms - these are unbelievable - hot polyester golf style shirts in turquoise, lime green and yellow all in the one shirt with navy shorts for the men (the women are wearing navy or black skirts in keeping with the missionary dress code). The best part is the hat - yellow to match the shirt and would you believe, we even have a cord that comes under our chin if we wish, or it can hang down our back by the cord while we are inside. It is almost a smokey-the-bear style. I know, when you see them you will all be jealous and want us to bring one home for you!
We attended the opening ceremonies last night at Apia Park. We had paid $20 Samoan Tala for each seat and were a little unhappy that they wanted us to take tickets. It ended up that we didn't take tickets and were able to sit in our seats. The program was really quite good - a thousand young people alone made up a human samoan flag as they were dressed in appropriate colors and let off helium balloons. There were traditional dancers, hundreds, fire dancers (and this included the little girl from Sinalei and they did the pyramid with her at the top). The music for the program was done by some soloists and a choir and it was something to make Samoa proud. The only thing that was a little out of place was at the end of the marching in of all the countries' teams, some Samoan came in dressed like Jesus, dragging a cross. We really don't know what it was about but to me it seemed like it was taking the name of our Savior in vain to do such a showy, public display. Anyway, it was a very long program and by the time the speeches were done, we were happy to leave, only to find the buses taking all the teams back to their housing were behind the van we came in. We waited for a long time and I (Kathy) decided to check things out a bit and found some portable potties - these were very clean, probably because no one knew where they were, and we were all very relieved, yes, the pun is intended!
Besides all this, Roy and I did our regular shift at the temple on Friday, gave talks in church today, Roy gave the Sunday school lesson, we had dinner at the Macbeths and attended the fireside tonight. After, we gave a ride home to a fellow who is in our sunday school class. I won't say a young man as he is 37 but is really needy, emotionally. He wanted to come to our home so we visited for an hour or so and then Roy drove him home. A lot of these unattached young people really have needs to associate with each other and us, as their spiritual parents. If we can be any help to any of them, that is what we have been called to do.
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