The Pacific Post

  Week 33 Solving Water Problems in Tonga and Collaborating to Improve Health Care in Tonga  30 March 2025 Hello Everyone. It's hard to believe we are closing out March and beginning April. Time is flying somewhere, I'm not sure where. We thought we would share a couple of the articles we posted on the Pacific Church Newsroom last month to show you what we are asked to write. (This maybe a boring post, but hey, it's what we do.)  This style of writing is very different than what most people learn in school. It has been an education and we often require a few drafts to get it the way our Area Newsroom manager requires. We decided to take a road trip to Cathedral Cove to celebrate our Birthdays. Kelly doesn't splurge on dessert very often. As we were walking around the town by Cathedral Cove I saw this sign. So appropriate, I had to take a picture. We got caught in the rain and had to hide in a little cave until it slowed to a drizzle. We ended up hiking up and out 40 min...

 Week 32 Brown Hymn Book Birthday Wishes and Croquet 22 March 2025 Hello Everyone, Time is flying by. It's still beautiful outside but the evenings are cooling down. We are just heading for fall. It's funny.  I saw an Easter initiative banner with spring flowers. It should have fall leave over here. They don't even blink an eye because they are used to the US determining things like that.  90 percent of the worlds population lives in the Northern Hemisphere, so it's understandable. This is Jasmin our intern wishing me a happy birthday. We are going to miss her. She goes home in 2 weeks and will be married in 4 weeks. We have 2 interns coming in May. I don't know what we are going to do with 2. We don't know what we are doing with ourselves. The best birthday song ever!!! OK, maybe this one was a little better. This singing group is called The Brown Hymn Book Choir. I have no idea why, maybe Kelly does. (The first hymn book for the Church was brown.) For those of...

 Week 31 Recovering Back in the Office 16 March 2025 Dear Family and Friends, Our big events are done and we are back at the office doing our normal responsibilities: answering national communication questions, communication budgeting, JustServe, articles, managing the Area social media Facebook page, working with the humanitarian missionaries, encouraging national Easter inter-faith dinners, and MEETINGS. Those were our activities this week. This is the communication and public affairs teams gathered to hear Elder Natress who sits on the executive communication and public affairs committee for the church.   He gave a wonderful overview of where the church is headed and how our department is playing an important role in spreading the gospel. Elder Soares is in the Pacific for 2 weeks. He was with the Area Presidency all day Friday on our floor and then will travel the rest of the time. I was amazed at the preparation for an apostle visit. That was the responsibility of th...

 Week 30 Area Communication Seminar 9 March 2025 I know we said we were busy last week, but we lied. This week topped last week. We have been working for three months to plan, prepare, and pull-off the annual communication/public affairs seminar. That means arranging for the flights of 30 people from every Pacific island, helping them process visas, negotiating with a venue for all the rooms and convention services, planning the program, swag, meals for everyone, and assigning topics to panel members and presenters. Thankfully, with the Lord's help, it all worked out great. Mostly because the people who came are wonderful, faithful, and committed saints. We started the week by bringing the Area communication leaders together for a "Team Building" trip to Rotarua . We went to an elevated redwood tree walk, (bridged walk ways between redwood trees), Maitai cultural experience, gondola ride and yes, for the third time in seven months, Hobbiton. These are such great people. W...

  Week 29 Temple Open House Media and Invited Guests 2 March 2025 This week was amazing! We feel very blessed for the experiences of this week. It was beautiful to watch  what "The House of the Lord" (instead of temple) can do for the members, the community, and media. We have been working for months on the temple open house committee to insure this last week went well and gratefully the Lord mades things happen in His timing and in His way.     Monday was media day. There is always some excitement when working with the media because you never know exactly what you are going to get.  We had media from all over New Zealand come. We also invited media from Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea who will have temples dedications next year. (We wanted them to experience and prepare for what is coming to their islands.) You cannot imagine how much coordination it takes to arrange all the flights, visits, interviews, etc. We spent weeks leading up to the event arranging fo...