Work Hard - Play Hard

Another busy week of eye exams, with long line ups and having to turn people away at the end of the day.  We get the feeling that we could spend another 5 or 10 years here and still not see everyone who wants an eye exam.  Oh well, you can't say we don't feel needed here in Fiji.

When we arrived this morning, we found
there were already about 70 - 80 people waiting
to be seen.  We usually give out 85 numbers per
day, so we were pretty much up to our quota
already.  I have never had so many people just
begging me for glasses, or asking to squeeze
them in.  It is heartbreaking for me!!  But of
course Rick can only see so many in one sitting!

Here I am informing the Bishop's wife, who
was my helper for the day, that we just couldn't
fit any more in that day!

 Checking another patient in.

Here is one of the young girls getting her
eyes examined.

Now it's time for this young boy.

"Which is better, number 1 or number 2 ?"

...Explaining to this father that
his daughter 'really' needs glasses!

There are several patients who come in with
completely scarred over corneas, causing
complete blindness in that eye.  

This girl was quite happy with her new glasses

This boy needed glasses, as well.

This sweet little girl didn't need glasses.

After an extremely busy week, we drove up to the far
north part of the island to stay over night
at the "Wananavu" Resort, near Rakiraki.
"Wananavu" is Fijian for "awesome", and
it truly was an awesome resort.  

This is the last part of the road to get to the resort

We passed this galloping horse
on the highway on our way there.

Nice turquoise ocean water at the marina part of the resort.

The beautiful white sand looked so nice
with the turquoise water in the background.

It was "wananavu".

This is the area where we snorkelled.

A "wananavu" view from our Bure.

We took our friends, the Greenburgs (a missionary couple)
with us to the resort.  The Fijian in the middle,
named Ebeloni, became our friend.  We sat
down with him for over an hour while he told
us all about different aspects of Fijian culture.

This is the nice Fijian band at the resort.

 Just finished snorkeling right at
the beach.  There was amazing coral and
fish to be seen right there in the ocean.  There was
lots of jellyfish too, which really scared me!

We enjoyed swimming in this lovely pool.

We enjoyed dining together at the resort.
The food was "wananavu".

The Tandori Chicken was "wananavu".

I so enjoyed my pork medalions.

Here are two of our "wananavu" servers.
They treated us so well.

Someone spent a lot of time wrapping
all the poles in palm leaves.

This was the back wall of our bathroom, also
shower.  I have never seen anything quite
this cool!  It was like you were outside when
you were showering!

We stopped on the way home to take this
photo of a real Fijian house/Bure.

There were a number of interesting
mountains on our drive.

Another stop at a
waterfall on our way home.

What a "wananavu" view....

We found it interesting to watch some of
the local Fijians swimming in the water
hole, and cliff diving from the high rocks.  They
climbed those rocks like they were nothing!

We stopped to take a photo of this very skinny
cow.  We see a lot of these along the roadside.

The cows are like us humans, looking for
a place to cool down in the summer heat.

Now that we had a short break to relax on the weekend, we are ready to get back to some more very busy days, I think in order to do this kind of a 'mission', we have to 'play hard' as well as 'work hard'.  What a treat it is to have that freedom!

We now have two months left, and some exciting weeks ahead of us!

Marata Village, followed by a Short Break

After a very busy week of doing many eye exams, we spent a  Saturday (without even a lunch break) seeing exactly 100 patients in the Marata Village, not far from our apartment in Tamavua.  It was once again extremely hot, and we came out of there, just drenched in sweat.  Many of the patients expressed their gratitude for our service.  It sure makes us feel needed, and loved, and makes it all worthwhile. 

This is Rick's "Big" friend, Ropate 
from the Marata Village.  His mom was the stake
Relief Society President and stayed the whole
day to help us out wherever needed.

Just one of the 100 patients
examined this particular day.

Although I am typically busy,
I can sneak in a few minutes here and there to
read or work on bracelets for the kids

This 4 year old boy, Mateneh, really needed 
glasses badly. We gave  him -7.00 glasses, 
which is very high prescription for anyone, 
young or old.  It's difficult to believe that he was 
functioning without wearing any glasses, whatsoever. 

This past week, we took a few days and took a ferry over to one of the Mamanuca Islands just west of the main island of Fiji, and spent some time exploring and enjoying yet another island before we hit it hard again this coming week.

This is the Mololocat Ferry we took.

This is the Bure we stayed in, right on
the ocean front. A stunning location,
but so very hot, with no air conditioning.  
We borrowed a fan from the laundry lady to 
put beside our bed, allowing us to sleep at night.

These next 3 photos are the view from our Bure.
It was great to wake up to that in the morning,
and to watch the sun set in the evening.

The ocean was beautiful but most of the time felt like
a bathtub and did not give us much relief from the
heat.  There was also a pool on site, which felt almost
like a hot tub!

It was a beautiful little harbour with boats
coming and going a lot of the time

We went on a couple of different amazing
snorkeling trips while we were there.

This was the boat we used to get us to this
little sand bar to snorkel.  This little sandy
island actually disappears at high tide,
so we had to time our trip just right.

Getting ready to leap out of the boat.

Here are some photos showing some of the amazing
fish, starfish, and choral we saw under the water.
It was simply remarkable!

Such an amazing variety of colors.

Stunning Blue Starfish!

We were surprised to see that someone
was having a real wedding on this
sandbar out in the middle of the ocean.

They had Fijians singing & dancing for the wedding

This was the boat that carried the
wedding party to and from the sandbar.

We attended a Fijian Cooking Class.
We learned to make Kokoda, which is an
amazingly great tasting raw fish salad.

We now have a nice shell collection.  I have
never seen so many shells when the tide goes out!
The grandkids would love this!

Rick's dad used to love to carve
so Rick took the opportunity to try it.
It's early in the process, so we will have to
show you the finished product, later.

We finally had a cloudy day, that was cool
enough for us to go for a walk around this
small island.  There were some spectacular
views from the top of the hills.

Stunning view of the resort area

There was even a small church on the island.
We were told that if the tsunami siren went
off, we were supposed to run up the hill
to this church.  We're glad we never had
reason to do that while we were there.

It was a fun few days in these islands to renew ourselves.  

We are now we are ready to hit it hard  again!   It is so nice to be able 

to schedule ourselves so that we can work real hard and then be able to 

explore and play in this beautiful area of the world!  We feel so blessed!!