And now we are here..

We have survived our first week in Fiji!  I will be honest, there have been some very tough moments.  But God is unfailingly good, and for every discouragement we encounter, He seems to be waiting with a reminder of how blessed we are and how much He is working for our good.

It felt like kind of a relief to get on the plane last Tuesday after the preceding weeks of (sometimes organised) chaos with moving out of the house and packing everything up and making last-minute preparations, often late into the night.  The flight itself was somewhat of a triumph, with Reggie and Lucy about as well-behaved (and quiet!) as one could ask of them.

We emerged from the terminal with our thirteen items of luggage into the torrential rain and soggy heat characteristic of this time of year.  Reggie fell asleep bolt upright next to me in the 4WD on the way out to Fulton College.

We were delivered directly to our new house, and picked our way through the sodden grass and fat raindrops to the front door.  Brent and I looked around, looked at each other, and kind of went ‘ohh.’  I was left to contemplate the forthcoming cleaning and maintenance work while the kids slept and Brent went straight back to the airport to collect the boxes we’d shipped.  (At one point, he texted me to say ‘They might have to open every box to give an evaluation of the goods.  But pray they don’t.’  So we did, and exactly three minutes later he texted again to say ‘It’s all sorted.  Love, God is awesome!!!’  Apparently this is a process that often takes hours.)

I am pleased to report that a week in, we’ve made plenty of progress in the cleaning department, mostly involving scrubbing of walls and benches and cupboards.  Tony and Lesley very kindly took our kids to their place for a few hours one morning to allow us to get stuck in, and Kris and Daph have taken us on plenty of trips to town to get the bits and pieces we need to, for instance, connect the washing maching.  (Tap adapter required – the placement of our washing machine means we can now only open the back door about thirty centimentres, and it drains through a literal hole in the floor.)

I’m yet to tackle the bathroom, which I’ve been putting off, so that’s my job for this week.  It’s basically just a tiled room with a showerhead and sink and inexplicable pools of mouldy silicon.  Nothing comes out the cold tap and cold water comes out the hot tap.  Reggie and Lucy bath in a bucket and Brent and I wear our jandals.

But.  We are constantly reminded that we have so much to be thankful for.  Registration began this week, and with it, the advent of formalised worships.  Our closest neighbour is the chaplain and his family and he told the story, during worship the other night, of his own arrival at College to study with four children at the time and no house available.  They ended up living under the church, with no proper kitchen.  They now have seven children in a house just like ours and we couldn’t wish for sweeter neighbours.  The pastor came over to check on us the first night and brought us a mosquito coil (AMAZING things) and Reggie is completely enamoured with this whole family of children.  Their baby, Delilah, is a month younger than Lucy, and they seem to go up about every three years from there.  Ten-year old Laité (not sure of the spelling, going phonetically here) is amazing with Lucy, and Reggie (completely innocently) calls her Lightning.  It seems everyone on campus knows Lucy’s name – you’ll be walking along and someone will shout ‘Hi Lucy!’ – and she’s constantly being taken off us for cuddles.

The landscape here is stunning.  There is a most majestic mountain behind us which looks particularly glorious with sunset colours in the sky.  The detail you can see is extraordinary – it reminds me of when I first got glasses and went ‘wow, I can see the leaves on the trees!’.  I love looking at the mountain.  Out our front door is a big coconut tree loaded with coconuts.  At night, the frogs come out.   Some are so tiny (~1cm) that at first I thought they were insects of some kind but they have that distinctive frog-hop.  Others are more regular size but what they have in common is their unpredictability.  Usually, animals run away from you when you approach, and some of these frogs do hop away.  But others hop toward you, and some remain completely still so that you’re always terrified you’re going to step on one by accident.  Maybe their vision is not that great – they frequently hop into a wall, bounce off, and hop right back into it again.  And there are dozens of them; walk five metres and there are five frogs in your path, sometimes more.  I told Reggie the story of the Egyptian plagues last night but I don’t think he quite got the point because he thought the frogs were fabulous.

We went to Lesley and Tony’s for dinner the other night.  Lesley had made roti under the direction of her neighbour and it was very good.  We sat outside on the grass afterwards and prayed together, and we all just feel so confident that God is going to do something powerful here this year.  Home is constantly in our thoughts and prayers and we ask that you continue to pray that God will reveal Himself here in a mighty way, not only to us but to everyone on campus.