The Pacific Post

  Week 69 Travel, Training and Christmas 14 December 2025 What a great week! December is a wonderful time to serve a mission. The opportunities to talk about Christ are endless. Read Alma 7:10-11. Alma talks about Christmas and then Easter back-to-back. I am eternally grateful for the life of the Savior, Jesus Christ. This is New Caledonia.  I suppose most of you may never have heard of the country.  It is North of Australia and South of Vanuatu, a small island in the middle of the Pacific.  It has a population of about 300,000 people and about 2,500 members.  A temple was announced in NC at April conference. Not easy to get to.  It took us 13 hours to get to the country from Auckland.  That included a 6 hour lay-over in Brisbane.   It is a French territory and so everyone speaks French, so this trip included more pointing and one word sentences than most.    One additional item we learned is that cell phones don't work in NC withou...

 Week 68 Christmas Spirit and Crucial Conversations 7 December 2025 If variety is the spice of life then we had a spicy week.  One of the things you have to get used to as a senior missionary is that you never know what will happen from day to day and what you will be asked to do and thus learn in the process. You just go with the flowwwww!  2 projects this week without pictures- 1. We had two sets of missionaries leave and two arrive and so we coordinated their housing, cars, computers, phones, and access cards.   2. We are planning the annual training seminar for our Public Affairs department which involves brining 40 people from  the islands to New Zealand.    Let's start the week with the Christmas tree. Charley Brown would be proud of this tree.  For the younger generation, look up Charley Brown's Christmas and watch it.  A classic that tells a wonderful Christmas story. The above three pictures are from our training seminar this we...

 Week 67 Messaging the Good Word 30 November 2025 Our walks to work and home from work have become very memorable. This is our walk to work. We usually talk about what meetings we have and how we are going to prepare for them. We talk about who we are going to minister to and help. Then we pass by the French bakery and commit to one day stop and buy an almond crescent for breakfast. We talk about what we are posting on Newsroom Facebook that day. Lastly Kelly tries to tell me my badge is straight when it is crooked.  Next week we will tell you about our conversation walking home. This was by far the best part of the week. We figured how to watch a BYU basketball game was during lunch.  We walked down the street to Scotty's Sports Bar and ask the owner if he could put up the game.  He was happy to when we order food.  So a two hour lunch produced a BYU basketball game victory.  Now that is what I call spreading the GOOD WORD, bringing the Church out of obscu...

 Week 66 Attitude of Gratitude 20 November 2025 Hello Everyone! A couple of valuable lessons learned this week. 1st lesson-- When posting on the Church social media pages, you need to make sure everything goes through correlation unless it is word for word from CHQuarters. Correlations takes forever!! I learned I don't have to correlate what has already been correlated from SLC. That sounds obvious but the Church takes this stuff seriously. If it has the Church logo on it, it has to be approved. I wouldn't trust me either!! So many great announcements lately!!! 2nd lesson--C heck google maps to see how far your AirBnB is from the town. It said 5 minutes. By road is was an hour but by a little tiny skiff boat is was 5 minutes. 3rd lesson- -Others are waiting of their temple work--During our sealing session as we were working through the names, Elder Jaggi slowed way down for one name and was so meaningful in how he handled one sealing.  At the end, he simply said, "I was im...