For January 22

After church this morning, a community meeting was announced. When the announcements were over, Benjamin hurried to change clothes and go to the kitchen to take out the lelenga. Our big tray made enough to share with six other families and still have plenty for us. We started working on the pizza (our traditional Sunday afternoon meal) to get the dough rising and the peppers chopped, then we enjoyed playing a few rounds of hearts before Aaron left for the meeting. He came back a couple of hours later with Hiva, and the two of them sat on the porch drinking coffee and working out the schedule for the translation project for the next couple of months.

After lunch was cleaned up, the kids went to swim, Aaron headed out to find transportation so he could pick up a package from the Kosko, and I went to look for Kiko to visit for a little bit. I found her with her sisters and mom sitting in the hammock and visiting. Rain began to fall, sprinkling at first, then coming down in torrents, so they handed me an umbrella and shuttled me off to Kiko's house. She told me some more about her cousin's recent death, and according to her, he was killed by sorcery. Kiko is a strong Christian, she loves to read her Bible and knows it well. But she also knows that sorcery is alive in the Solomons and can be very strong.

While we were talking, we heard a big SPLASH and saw kids running to the beach just behind us. I hopped up to see what was causing the commotion and found that a coconut tree had fallen over into the ocean.

The kids were scrambling for the green coconuts that came down with the tree, and our kids each came home with one. (Sarah later told me that Benjamin rescued three geckos from the leaves of the tree that were just barely sticking up over the water.) Kiko shook her head and expressed concern about the eroding beach that caused the tree to tumble. Her house sits just a few yards from the fallen tree.

The four o'clock bell rang, the bell to “go swim” letting everybody know to get clean for church. Kiko's sister, Daisy, had asked me to come and doctor her foot. She stepped on coals last week, so when the bell rang, I hustled up to the house to get the “band-aid bag” and made a quick trip to her house to tend to her foot. Soon, everybody was home, and I had a big pot of hot chocolate waiting on the stove since it was raining and we were pretending it was cold. Aaron spent the afternoon waiting in the rain for the Kosko, which finally came around 4:30 to bring us some meds we forgot to buy in Honiara before we came. We are so thankful for our SITAG colleagues who help us out and put things on ships headed for Marulaon.