Malo (hello), today is my second day in Samoa! It is beautiful here, and the view is of the surrounding mountains and palm trees. So, some basic info about what it is like here:
-Where do I live? In a fale, which is has a big room on a platform that is open with no walls, but then has rooms and bathrooms attached to the back. Some fales do not have closed rooms attached. Emily and I share a room with a Fijian named Leba. We sleep in bunks under mosquito nets.
There are several fales on the base as well as some shipping containers that have doors and windows cut out.
-What have I eaten so far? For breakfast, a chocolate soupy mixture with rice and then dumplings. For lunch, noodles with egg and cassava or taro root (starchy root veggies). For dinner, noodles, cassava, taro, and laupele greens. And the others ate meat at dinner. I have also had starfruit and papaya, which grow on the base, along with coconuts, guava, bitter melon, cassava, taro, eggplant, pumpkin, sweet potato, bread fruit, pineapples, sasalapa fruit, cucumbers, and tomatoes among other things.
There is a little less than 30 people on this YWAM base, and most of us eat together and have worship and prayer together in a big fale. This morning we had worship, which was in Samoan and English, not only for my and my friend Emily's benefit but also for the Fijians and Tongans.
There was even a few songs in English. Worship includes dancing, clapping, and whooping. When they pray, they pray all at once out loud so the prayers just wash over you. It is beautiful.
Being with Emily is wonderful and she is doing really well, which is good to see with my own eyes :-). I am also preparing to start surveying people in the village for my research. The Samoans gave me a Samoan name (Emily's is Emele). Genevieve doesn't translate too well, so they chose Alofa, which means Love, my middle name.
Please pray that I regain all my energy without getting sick and get over jet lag. Also for my migraine because there is a lot of music and spontaneous singing that does not always agree with my head.
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