September 2008

Dear Family, Brethren and Friends
Greetings in the name of Jesus.

September 10th: we left Tulsa International Airport with 9 bags (5 extra) on Southwest Airlines headed for Pheonix and then Los Angeles. We arrived in LA only to find out that the Air Pacific flight we were to take to Nadi Fiji had been cancelled because the plane was due for maintenance. We called their 1-800 number and were assured that we were booked on the flight for Thursday night. So we spent a night and day in LA with Air Pacific paying for it.
We boarded the Air Pacific flight Thursday night at 11:30 pm. The plane was full but an uneventful flight. Full of tourists headed for Fiji, Australia and New Zealand!
Touchdown Nadi Airport, Saturday morning, September 13, 0530.
Cool (70's) but humid. Only about 12 of us were in the returning residents immigration line so we got through that line quickly and then down to baggage pickup and customs. 8 of our bags came out on the conveyor within 10 minutes but the bag with the 22" computer monitor took 25 minutes. However it finally came out. They run the bags thru an x-ray and then asked what you had. Though I did not declare anything we were sent to the customs "to pay" line. They flagged the monitor and we had to pay $140 FD ($100) customs on the monitor. They didn't charge for the large amount of used baby clothes, golf balls, ink cartridges, the 17" monitor and the Wii game. I had prayed that customs would be easy on us and the Lord answered my prayer. The customs man apologized but he had to charge us something because we had so much luggage for only two people. Since I had the invoice for the monitor that was what they charged for. He was sympathetic to the school because he was a deacon for an apostolic church group. Customs was only $30 the rest was government GST tax. (It was cheaper for us to take items as extra baggage then it was to mail them. All mail is airmail and is $6.50 per pound (good luck getting it sometimes). Excess baggage worked out to $2.40 per pound and it came with us.)
Nobody met us with our car so I walked out of the airport and about a 1/4 mile to the Tokatoka Hotel we had stayed before we left and they said they would give us the special rate of $75 FD ($46 USD) per night for a room. So I went back with their shuttle van and picked up Kathy and our bags and went back to the hotel. The special room was not available but they put us up in another room until ours was available. So we cleaned up, ate a real breakfast (as compared to an airplane breakfast) read the local paper and took a bus down to Sabeto (3 miles) to Bola's house where our container is stored. Lowata was home so she called Josua who was at someone's house who was sick. After he finished there he came with the car. Our cell phones were in the car as well. Mine was still charged up and had some time on it. (It took us several days to find the chargers but I finally found them the last place I looked!)
We drove to Nadi with Josua to look at some houses for rent and then back to Lautoka to buy some minutes for our cell phones. My first stop in Lautoka was the car dealership where we had bought the car to buy new plug wires because the car was cutting out. This was happening before we left but they did not have the proper wires then. They had them now and they cost $100 USD for the set. Let me tell you when you have a three cylinder car and one cylinder is not firing there isn't much pickup and go available! This weekend is 2 of 1 for Vodafone minutes and buying $25 got me $50 of talk time. After that we went to Josua and Anna's house where we caught up with the rest of the family and I changed out the plug wires on the car. Anna has 6 more weeks before the baby is due. We sat around and talked for awhile before heading back to Nadi and the Hotel. The car performed much better with all the plugs firing. We went into Nadi to the grocery store for some items and picked up a watermelon for Sunday lunch with the brethren.
We got back to the Hotel mid afternoon (I know it seems longer but we did land at 0530 in the morning). Our room was ready so I shifted all the luggage from room 64 at the back to room 8 in the front. I then spent sometime sorting stuff so we had the clothes we needed available and the other stuff stacked up out of the way. We dragged ourselves over for fish and chips for dinner and barely made it back to the room and in bed by 7:00 pm. Sunday morning: Breakfast. Kathy had eggs on toast and I had a "fried" omelette. (Not my favorite way of eating an omelette, however that's just how they fix it here.) After breakfast we drove to Nadi to the store for bug spray (Fiji's equivalence of a six shooter. You need a can in each hand sometimes. Take that buckoo!). The bug spray is because Kathy has averaged over 10 mosquito bites everything we go eat and dengue fever is epidemic this side of the island at the present time. That's even when she puts on repellent which I don't because I figure it just attracts them!
Early Sunday morning after breakfast at the Hotel we headed for worship services at Sabeto. It was good to be back with the Fiji brethren. I was asked to resume my teaching duties (which I did) and afterwards we had a common meal together and sat around visiting. We had visitors from Australia, two families who are on vacation. The visitors from Australia have common friends we know in Australia and it was good to catch up on what they were doing. It has been several weeks without rain in the West and we are in the middle of sugarcane cutting season. However this morning while I was teaching the rains arrived and before we left to return to the Hotel after lunch we had over 1/2 inch of rain. The forecast is for several days of heavy rain. Welcome back to Fiji!
In the next few days we will be looking for a house or flat we can rent so we can get settled back into the work.
Monday we called a few people who had advertised houses for rent in the Saturday paper. We looked at some houses in the Nadi area but the prices are high because it is close to the International airport. So we started looking at houses in Lautoka where we lived before. We called several but most were higher than we wanted to pay or didn't have major appliances. We have beds, dressers, table and chairs but none of the major appliances. We finally called a lady who had a furnished three bedroom and it was located at Vuda Point just outside of Lautoka. We went by to see it and arranged to view the house that afternoon. The rent is half of what we were paying before, which is good.
RECORD BREAKING WEEK (Narritive style)
We located a house on Monday (15/9) and this is Friday night 19/9). We had the shed delivered this morning. Well, I had to go help load it on the truck. I built the shed for forklift pickup but the only truck next door was with a hoist. I went with the driver to pick it up. So I was the one on top of the shed strapping it down and hooking the strap on the hook, cutting the tree branches, raising the phone lines and power lines so the hoist would not snag them all the way back to where we are moving. I was wet as a fish when we finally hoisted the shed over the fence and into our yard. During the process the beams of the roof were damaged and several of the pieces of roofing iron were bent. The humidity made it a four shirt day! After we went to town to buy groceries and stuff for the house we had the container delivered at 6:30 tonight and we will be moving out of the hotel and into the house tomorrow. Except for internet connection (which was promised this week) everything was done in under a week: lease signed, electricity, water, Sky Pacific satellite TV. We already had our cell phones so at least we have communication devices for local communication. It was a treat to receive a phone call from Stephen Felix in Vanuatu saying "welcome home".
The house is across the road from the entrance to the Vuda (pronounced VUNDHA!) marina and is about 7 miles out of Lautoka. Yachts from all over the world call in here. The marina is halfway between Lautoka town and Nadi airport. The congregation at Sabeto where we worship and work is only about 10 minutes drive from us.
We have been going to the Marina cafe for breakfast for the past few days while working on the house. (At the hotel where we have been staying breakfast costs twice what the Marina cafe does and that's with instant coffee. No Denny's or Granny Shaffers here. The Marina cafe has plunger coffee!) Until the internet is connected at our house I will be going down there and using their WiFi connection (for a price of $6.00 per data hour). Yesterday I painted the kitchen, shower room and the toilet room light blue. The house is owned by an widow Indian (dot - not the feather) lady who lives in Australia. The colors in those rooms was dark ukky. I put down some cheap (and I mean cheap which is all the sell) lino in the kitchen as the old lino had been taped together and had ant dirt under it. There is evidence that we will be spraying for ants continually! The office already had a new coat of paint - BRIGHT BLUE!
The house is made of cement block and wood. It is a three bedroom (one small, one medium, one medium large), a large office and slightly small dining room, kitchen and living room. It has a large yard with many many coconut trees, many many banana tress and several mango trees. We even have mongoose all around. They land the myna birds like the fallen mangos! The mosquitoes are legion and Kathy will probably have to wear a full bee keeper suit to hang out clothes. She sprays but still get bitten!
All the drains except the toilet just flow out into the yard from pipes sticking out the walls. The ground is very porous and soaks up the water very quickly though. Rent is half what we paid in Lautoka. ($300 per month) We are the only house in the area. (There are more houses on the 1 1/2 miles road leading in from the main road and way further down the road which runs along side of our house but none in sight of our house. We are down on the coast at the Marina where they have the storage tanks for all the fuel (gas, diesel, kerosene) for the western region of the island. The propane storage area for this side of the island is right across the road with a police post on the other side of the road leading to the Marina. Next to us is a transportation company called "Gecko Transport" where they store the Mobil fuel tankers and repair heavy equipment. It looks to be a fairly secure area with security and police everywhere around us. We also have vacant land behind us which belongs to The First Landing Resort group but with the unsettled government situation they are not building anything right now. So we are going to ask if we can plant veggies and crops for the school and the brethren. The sugar train tracks are between our fence and the road so we get the train pulling long carts of cut sugarcane to the factory for processing with its whistle many times of the day. The main bus from Nadi-Lautoka-Nadi comes down by our house several times each day to drop off and pick up workers from the various companies which surround us.
Kathy and I have decided that we will not be moving this stuff AGAIN. We are getting too old for this. Kathy had her birthday - 59, September 4th. I had my birthday - 60, September 17th. When I sat down after working I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to get back up. Might not get up - they will bury me with the chair. We bought a couple of Australian made recliners - bearly get your rear end in them and the back is about 3/4 the height of the US ones. Better than nothing! Like a cocoon! Comfy coffin!
Early Sunday morning 21 Sept. This sugar train is going to get old. They ran till late and the first train came by just now, 7:00 am. At least this morning they didn't start and keep blowing their horn for a quarter mile before they cross the road a 50 yards from our gate. I feel like a bulldozer ran over me. You know what they say "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger". Can I say I am strong enough?
Kathy is setting up the house - I am setting up my office. We finally got all the pieces to her china cabinet out of the container and put together. One of the glass panels in an upper door was broken so I have taped it together and will try and super glue it later. The glass panel had a pattern in it.

You will notice all the coconut and banana trees in the back yard. The back of the house shows how all the drains just dump out into the yard, except the toilet.


There is no continuous hot water. There is a small "hot water on demand" unit in the shower. Kathy has to heat water in a kettle to wash dishes. (My cheeky son said we should go ahead and wash the dishes when we shower!)
We are back to the land dust, of full-time ants, gechos and jumping brown spiders. The ants will show you when you have not cleaned up, gechos run around the walls eating bugs and pooping on everything and the spiders hide anywhere and jump out when you don't expect them. Like around the toilet bowl - yep that was a fright for Kathy!
Monday (22/9): The myna birds like to bath EARLY morning in the gutters of the house. I went to Lautoka to the newspaper office to ask why the WBS ad was not in last weekend as paid for (they were sorry - not their fault, a computer glitch!); In the afternoon the telephone people came by looked and left.
Tues (23/9): Mail! Some of the books I mailed just before we left arrived OUT OF THE MAILBAG, a mess! Late afternoon after calling the telecom people the installers arrived and had the new lines to the house installed by 7:30 pm. (Lines not signal yet!)
Weds 24 Sept: Went to Lautoka to check mail and went by Josua's and picked up the DSL modem for the internet hookup. We had let them use our internet line while we were gone because it would have cost more to close it and start it back up when we got back. Called telecom and they said they had to program the line and muttered something else about we should have a connection sometime before Christmas. At least that was how I heard it! Surprise of surprises the phone rang by 3:00 pm. It was Telecom saying the line was active! Then not a minute later Telecom called to see if the line was working, dah - what?
Friday 26 Sept: went to Nadi to buy a ladder and see what the grocery stores had there, dropped the ladder back at the house and on the Lautoka to check mail and go to the hardware store for some bedside lamps.
It has been two weeks since we arrived back and we are finally getting our sleep cycle back to normal. There is a 17 hour time difference between Joplin Mo and Fiji. We are 17 hour AHEAD of Joplin. Most of the needed things that were in the shed and container are now in the house. We are getting back into the noises, smells and customs of Fiji as well. I have had sinus blockage and allergies since we arrived and Kathy is suffering with the diesel fumes from the buses on the highway. Both of us are feeling totally exhausted by mid afternoon everyday but a power nap helps!
We want to thank all of you again for your prayers and especially those who hosted us in your homes (even when you were warned we were coming) and those you have been and continue to be financial partners with us in the Oceania Outreach work. We ask for your continued prayers for finances for the building and establishment of the Bible Training School here in Fiji. The American Dollar has been gaining strength against the Fiji dollars in the last few months and that means funds now given for the school will go further toward the needs we have. We firmly believe that the Lord wants this school here and that it will happen when HE deems the time is right. Recently two of the Fijian brethren pooled some money together and planted several acres of crops which will be sold when mature and then given to the school account for the future school. This is faith brethren!
God bless and look us up if you happen to come to Fiji.
Vinaka.
Your servants because of the cross of Jesus
Tobey & Kathy --
Dr. Tobey & Kathy Huff
Mailing Address: PO Box 4615 Lautoka, Fiji Islands
Residence: Lot #1 Vuda Point Road Ph: (679) 664-5808 Mobile: (679) 938-2808 Web Site: http://cibs-fiji.fiji.com/CIBS-Fiji/Index.html Sponsor: Mt Hope church of Christ 2830 Mt Hope Road Webb City MO 64870