Life in Samoa

We arrived on a Thursday afternoon, got new sim cards, a key for the rental house, ane the bare minimum of food.  Friday morning we walked down to the National University of Samoa campus (about 10 mins) and met with a few people about what Marc will be doing.  Following that we headed to the institute building which is just across the street and down a bit from NUS.  We were asked to teach institute and they were so excited to have us come.  Monday we returned there after finding out what Marc's schedule would be and the class they wanted us to teach fit perfectly in his schedule.  We are teaching a brand new institute class called cornerstone classes.  The one we are teaching is called Teachings and Doctrine of the Book of Mormon.  You can find it on the church website under "serve and teach" and then "institute".  It is taught by topics or themes and not in sequential order.  We teach Tues/Thurs at 9 am.  We really like the course so far and method for teaching the priciples of the gospel.  Tuesday morning we had five students and Thursday we had about 7-8.  The students are so incredible.  Many have graduated from the Church high school (called college) and are at the university now. 

Here is a picture of the institute building.

The director was so happy to have us there that they gave us our own office.  It belongs to the senior couple assigned to the institute, but they have not had a couple assigned to them for about a year.

We don't have any internet at our house and so we are so grateful to be able to have this office to prepare our lessons.  There is internet, but it is very very slow!!!  On Thursday after teaching we were in the office prepping for next week's lesson and surfing the web, when a student came in and asked if we wanted some Samoan gravy.  We asked her what that was and she explained that it was gravy with herring in it and served with rice.  We were excited to try Samoan food for the first time!  She came back a little later with two plates like this.

It smelled so good!  We started eating and this is what it looked like partly eaten. 

The gravy part was probably made with onions, broth, some garlic, and a thickener.  The herring was really yummy!  I think even Kirsten might like it as it didn't taste fishy at all.  We couldn't eat all of it.  Marc ate most of his, but I had at least half of my rice left.

Monday night we went to a FHE presentation for the senior missionaries about the route Lehi and his family would have taken when they left Jerusalem.  It was really interesting!  Prior to that we took some pictures of the temple.  The Church has a huge area next to the temple which has the senior couples housing, the church middle school and college (high school), mission home and offices, service center, distribution center, and some housing for the school staff.  It is awesome!

Here is one of our favorite pics of the temple!  People from many islands of the South Pacific come here to go to this temple.

We are so blessed to be able to live here!