This past Wednesday Elder’s Fullmer, Gubler, and Johnsen worked at Sister Paz’s home cutting and installing six inch baseboards around the edge of her bedroom and her living room. She had been having problems with rodents (of unusual size) entering her house and making themselves at home. After we put up the baseboards, Sister Paz called us the next morning and said that she got her first good night sleep in over a year because she knew she had no worries about the rodents.
That got us thinking about movie quotes from the Princess Bride.
Inconceivable! (You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means) But Elder Early made his departure from Palau and safely boarded the plane for Guam with his final destination in California. His Micronesia Guam mission has come to an end, but with his amazing knowledge of the scriptures, his leadership abilities, and his testimony we know he will have many more opportunities for service. Because the flights leave at 2:10 A.M. we all stay up and take the departing missionary to the airport. We didn’t get to bed until 1:30 A.M that night!
As we were leaving to take Elder Early to the airport, Sister Johnsen saw an apparition in the heavens that night—there was an unusually bright object near the constellation of Orion. While the rest of the missionaries only saw a bright white light, she saw a pulsing red ball surrounded by green rectangular rays. Later that night when we arrived back at the apartment, she again spotted the object and also found six more similarly bright and colorful orbs in the midnight sky. Since none of the Elders could discern what she clearly reported, all that they could say was: “Inconceivable!”
Thursday we got a lot of extra work done because we didn’t have our regular district meeting. We visited Malee so Elder Johnsen could ask her to speak in church next week. We got to see her new baby fruit bat that was hanging on an old diaper, and sucking food from a cotton ball. (Sister Johnsen is not that comfortable around bats, babies or not).
But Sister Johnsen was happy to finally see the twins girls that our member, Pauline Jerry, had a few months ago. Here she is pictured with one of them. Pauline was grateful for the box of baby clothes that Jocelyn shared from our storage area at home and had mailed to Palau.
We also managed to hand out balloons to some cute little girls in a neighborhood where we were searching for a branch member. They were just too cute not to get a picture.
Later on Thursday the elders got a call that Elder Marshall was indeed returning to Palau after being away for 8 months. We also found out that he would be our new Zone Leader. The elders went to the airport at 8:30 P.M and then found out that the flights now come in at 9:10 P.M. Then they found out the flight had been delayed and it was around 11: 00 PM when it finally arrive. By the time Elder Marshall had collected his bags and come out it was about 11:30, and the elders had been at the airport for three hours. We have a tradition of welcoming the new elder to Palau, but it was so late, and we already knew Elder Marshall, so we had to decide whether to have the elders stop up at our apartment for a few minutes when they dropped Elder Marshall and Elder Pauga off. We thought we better stick with tradition and we since also had some left over poke and pour cake (Elder Early’s favorite-from the night before) we had then come up and we visited for a few minutes and then said goodnight. We got to bed at 12:30 that night!
Sunday morning the branch had their annual primary program. President Kesolie leaned over and suggested that Elder Johnsen be prepared to speak because they had always needed to speak at these programs. Elder Johnsen assured President Kesolie that neither one of them would have to speak because Sister Johnsen had helped the primary write the program, and it was long enough this year. It was so long that 3 of the scheduled adults didn’t even speak. The children (about 8 of them) loved singing the songs and doing their parts. We were very proud of the entire effort.
After the program Elder and Sister Johnsen parted ways to teach the gospel doctrine lesson to their respective classes. The lesson this week was “How could you have departed from the ways of the Lord?” and has the quote by Mormon, “O ye fair ones…” Sister Johnsen got a particularly interesting insight as she retired to bed the night before with the question on her mind, “Why would the Lord require two righteous men, Mormon and Moroni, to live in such a wicked environment. Why didn’t he protect them? Why did they have to see the entire destruction of their civilization? “ She awoke feeling like she may have the answer: “The Lord needed witnesses to testify of what they had seen.” It’s interesting how some of our best insights come in answer to questions.
Elder Johnsen got some good discussion as his youth SS class discussed Mormon 5: 18 “But now, behold they are led about by Satan, even as chaff is driven before the wind, or as a vessel is tossed about upon the waves, without sail or anchor, or without anything wherewith to steer her; and even as she is, so are they.” Our students in Palau know quite a bit about boats and wind, having power or being adrift in rough sea without an anchor. For example, the students knew that boats drift sideways and can be in danger of swamping in heavy sea but a sea anchor will cause the bow to swing into the wind greatly lessening the danger of capsizing. So it is in life we are much safer sailing in the turbulent sea of life under power (with sail) and able seaman at the helm (steering) and with an anchor handy if power and steering are lost. Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me over life’s tempestuous seas!
Inigo Montoya: You know, Fezzik, you finally did something right!
Fezzik: Don’t worry. I won’t let it go to my head.
We feel like we might have done something right this week too, and we promise, we won’t let it go to our heads either!
Our most time consuming project this week was getting ready to go to Girl’s camp. We cooked, prepared for a First Aid lesson, learned and reviewed how to do at least 7 dances, (the Macarena, the Bunny Hop, the Limbo, the Twist, the Stomp, the Cotton Eyed Joe, and the Hokey Pokey.) The girls loved it, and Sister Johnsen discovered that she can no longer do the limbo, which seemed so easy when she was younger-much younger! (A big thanks to Andi Cook for getting the music to us!) We prepared lots of games, which we never played because of the rain.
This girl’s camp couldn’t be more different than the one at home. After a spiritual campfire program, we watched two movies the first night, 7 Brides for 7 Brothers (Every time there was song, half the girls got up and left to do something; just like we do when there is an advertisement on TV at home. We weren’t sure they were coming back the first time they did it, but as soon as the song was over, they all came back.) Then we watched Princess Bride, and Sister Johnsen fell asleep on the hard wooden bench (she was “only mostly dead,” but true love brought her back and had her sleep on the air mattress we brought). Saturday morning when we were supposed to play games it was pouring rain, so after the discussion of patriarchal blessings all the girls went back in to watch A Walk To Remember, which turned out to be their favorite movie of the 3. Afterwards they kidded Elder Johnsen because he cried just as hard at the girls did. Just as the movie ended the sun came out, and the rest of the day was beautiful—we were on the beach, the food was great, and the afternoon turned out to be wonderful! A perfect day!
Since we were on the beach we learned about swimming Palauan style! Don’t change your clothes; just go straight into the water! That was a new idea to us.
When Elder Johnsen taught First Aid he started out talking about what to do with a cut or open wound. The first thing he emphasized was to “Stop the bleeding.” After he went through the steps (stop the bleeding, clean the wound, use antibacterial ointment, and put on a bandage, etc.) he then got off on all different ways that step #1, “Stop the bleeding” could help us in our lives. He suggested that if we have a credit card debt that is out of control, we need to first “Stop the bleeding.” If our lives have become full of misdeeds or mistakes, “Stop the bleeding.”
Apparently this one phrase made an impact because throughout the rest of the day, we heard people telling each other to “Stop the bleeding!” in all kinds of different situations. Good idea! First, stop making the problem worse; then, clean up the mess.
Speaking of cleaning, we finished cleaning out the church storage shed last week. During that cleaning we found that there were rotted holes in the back wall of the shed. As you might expect there was another huge pile of junk behind the shed’s outside back wall; so we tackled that this week. When we actually got to the bottom of the pile we discovered a huge colony of ants. No wonder the shed had an out of control ant problem. Elder Johnsen found lots of ant killer in the shed, and thoroughly enjoyed dousing them with spray. After pulling all the debris away from the shed, we saw why the inside of the shed was losing materials to water damage, the back wall had rotted away and so water was getting in. We felt that we “Stopped the bleeding!” and we were happy about it! Now we can concentrate on fixing the problem.
We managed to finish one more senior conference presentation this week and with only 8 work days left we still have two more to prepare. We have a full week coming up and need to work on our upcoming CES back-to-school activity which we are super excited about; we also have to help with youth conference. Elder Johnsen and Rodney, the YM President, came up with the idea to reprise something we did in Cypress Stake some years ago and use the theme “Preparing for the Battle of Life.” The plan is to travel to Peleliu, tour the WWII battle ground, and use those sites to discuss various spiritual applications.
This week was our priesthood service night. Elder Johnsen has prepared 8 different routes containing about 20 families each. He made copies of the First Presidency message, and then sent out the priesthood brothers to deliver the message to the families and see how they are doing. It is actually possible for one team to see about 20 families in 2 hours. Of course the problem is getting 16 priesthood holders to come help with the routes. This week Elder Johnsen went out with 3 different partners on 3 different nights to get as many people visited as possible. We are determined to insure that all these members that we’ve found are never lost again—on two of the nights it was pouring rain and he came back soaked—but very happy! When it’s raining, people are home! Now 3 other priesthood brothers know where these families live—we’re just trying to “stop the bleeding”. Before we started priesthood service night there were less than 10% of the families in the branch being visited by home teachers; now we’re getting a message into about 70% of the homes, and seeing at least ½ the members every month.
The work is never finished, but sometimes we get to handle a problem that “Stops the bleeding” and that makes us happy!
