The first missionary discussion with Dr. Wang didn’t go as planned.  On Sunday we had invited him and the sister missionaries to dinner for Tuesday evening.  An hour later I had gotten a call about a sick elder in Fanafo.  Marjorie and I made a quick run there, and brought the elders back to Luganville.  Elder McCain was a very sick young man with a raging fever, a racing heart (193 beats per minute), diarrhea, and a sore gall bladder.  Through intravenous rehydration and medicines, Dr. Wang had him stabilized and on his feet by evening, but we had decided to keep him in our care.  I gave his companion to another set of elders who needed him, and Elder McCain became my companion for the next couple of days.  Our Tuesday evening dinner appointment had thus grown to a party of six.

At the appointed time, Dr. Wang called to say that he was involved with an emergency patient at the hospital.  We told him we’d wait.  Elder McCain and I picked him up an hour and a half later.  Dr. Wang had been studying his Book of Mormon, and excitedly asked many questions.  He quickly ate his meal, but was clearly preoccupied by the patient he’d left at the hospital.  “No cooperation,” he explained.  “She rips out the intravenous lines.  Very depressing.  Makes me sad.”  After the third time that his phone rang, he apologized, and said that he’d have to return to the hospital.

“That woman in the hospital is just like what we encounter as missionaries,” Elder McCain observed.  “God offers His children a lifeline, and they rip it out.  Dr. Wang is just trying to help.  So are we, but some people won’t accept the help that would save their lives.”

The next morning I deemed it appropriate to take the elders back to Fanafo.  Elder McCain and I got Marjorie’s keyboards set up in the high council room so that she could walk down to the church later and have her day of piano lessons.  We went to pick up Elder Nipikou, Elder McCain’s companion.  Elders Ross and Keapi were grateful to have had Elder Nipikou to help them teach their new contacts at Tanavoli.  The 14 new families that they’d found to teach had grown overnight to 30.  They did a group discussion on the Plan of Salvation with the newcomers, and then taught the other families one-by-one.  As one family finished, another would take their place.  The elders stayed in one place, while the people came one family after another.

“How did you get this going?” I asked Elder Ross.

“It was a prophecy that the area chief made back in the 1940’s,” Elder Ross explained.  “He told the people that the other churches that were on the island were good; but that in the future, another church would come.  It would come from America.  It would be the true Church.  It would have another book like the Bible.  Tanavoli is the hub of the wheel.  These people are coming from all the surrounding villages.  One man walked two hours so that he could be there for the group discussion.  We taught the Plan of Salvation, and had them repeat back what they’d learned.  They understood it all, and they’re excited.  The chief of the area is on board, so the thing is growing.”

I bought a new refrigerator for the Fanafo elders, and we headed back to their area.  Nothing is happening in Fanafo because of the fallout from the recent disfellowshipment of the branch president.  I sensed that the elders were a little disappointed to have to return to their dull area.

The elders helped me find the young man in Fanafo that I needed to see, who will soon be leaving for his mission to Guam.  I needed his signature so that we could get a visa so that he could enter New Zealand for his training at the Missionary Training Center there.  I was enchanted by the water collection system that had been set up at this young man’s house.  A tin roof had been erected on a new, sturdy bamboo frame over the existing concrete cistern.  The gutters to collect rain from the roof were made from 4-inch-wide, hollow, bamboo cut in half.  The gutter fed into another bamboo trough that redirected the water into the cistern.  There has been no rain, and the people were running out of water.  But we’ve been praying.  There have now been three big storms.  The cistern already had a couple of feet of water in the bottom.  Another cistern that I keep my eye on, that had dropped three feet, was back up to the top.

I deposited the elders and the new refrigerator at their house and began the long, bumpy trip back to town.  I kept track of the distance and time.  Twenty-three kilometers took me an hour and five minutes.  The “roads” here are just a series of chuckholes and huge craters.  As I bumped along, I puzzled and prayed over what could be done to bring the Fanafo area alive like had happened in Tanavoli.

Ten or a dozen men were descending a steep pitch in the road ahead of me.  I stopped, and invited them to climb in.  Four squeezed into the cab with me, and the rest gratefully jumped into the back of the pickup.

“What are you doing here?” they asked.  “How long have you been here?  Do you come from America?  What part?  How old are you?  How many children do you have?  Tell us about your church.”

I pulled out the Bislama Book of Mormon that I always keep handy, and handed it to the man beside me.  I explained what it was, and told him it was his.  “Could we get more?” the men asked.

“Sure, I’m going to Palon tomorrow.  My wife and I could come back through Fanafo.  How many do you need?

“Seven.”

“How would I find you?”

“I’ll be waiting along the road at 12:00.”

“Where?  What if I turn right at the cell phone tower?”

“The LDS Church will be on your left.  Keep going past it until you come to the blue shop on the right.  Could you bring music and activities?”

“I’ll think about it.”

One of the men in the back knocked on the side of the pickup.  That was my signal to stop.  We were in the middle of nowhere.  They were going to march off through the bush toward the Sarakata River.  I was dying to go with them, and see what they were doing.

“You come next time,” they assured me, and carefully recorded my contact number and name in the cell phone that one of them carried.

Before I got back to Luganville, I received a call from a potentially ill elder on Ambae that I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to reach.  “I’m not doing well,” he told me.  “My right ear is throbbing, the right side of my neck is swollen, and there’s white stuff in the back of my mouth.”

“Is it an emergency?  If so, I’m to get you a flight here to Santo, and put you on a plane to Port Vila.”

“No, it’s not an emergency, but it’s not getting better.”

“I’ll go see my Chinese doctor friend in a few minutes, get some medicines from him, send them to you on the next plane, and call the area doctor in Australia.  Call me back in an hour, because I’m never able to reach you unless you’re in just the right place for phone reception.”

The phone rang again.  It was Sister T.  “Elder Kerns, could you take us to the airport?”

“Yannick is coming home today isn’t he?  Yes, I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

Dr. Wang asked me to write out the elders’ symptoms on a paper.  He invited me into his flat while he studied the paper.  He wrote out three prescriptions, and gave me the medicines from his own bag.  I then called the Church’s doctor for the Pacific Area to describe the sick elder’s symptoms and the medicines that were prescribed.  “There’s a lot of overlap in the medicines Dr. Wang prescribed,” Dr. Brown said, “but I see what he’s trying to do.  Go ahead and give it a try.”

I put the medicines in a box, filled the extra space with candy bars, enclosed a letter of instructions from me, a letter I’d received by email from the elder’s mother, and an envelope containing 3000 vatu for Dennis, the transport driver.  I called Dennis and instructed him to meet the 11:20 plane at Walaha, to take the package to Elder Sutton at Lolotinge, and that the elder would pay him from the contents of the box.

I picked up Sister T. and her family.  Lots of people were at their house.  They’d arranged a big meal and celebration for the return of their son from his mission to Australia.  At the airport they went to wait for the plane’s arrival.  I went to the cargo window and checked in the package that I was sending to Ambae.  When I went back to them, I found them disappointed.  The plane from Port Vila had been delayed by two hours.  The big welcome-home plans had to be put on hold.  Ultimately Yannick’s arrival only happened after two cancelled flights, and a third trip to the airport after dark.  It was a very tender moment to see Yannick finally walk off the plane, into the airport, and into his parents’ arms.  Yannick is a husky, black boy, with one eye, and speaks good English with an Australian accent.

“What are you going to do now that you’re home?” I asked him.

“I’d like to go to BYU-Hawaii.”

“The deadline for registration is February 1st, so you’ll have to hurry.  You have to register online.  The only good Internet connection is at my house.  We have to be in Palon tomorrow morning, so why don’t you plan to come use my computer tomorrow afternoon.”

I still had two more rescue missions to perform that night.  A pair of sister missionaries had locked themselves out of their apartment.  They had to sit on the steps in the dark at the other sister missionary apartment until I could finish with Yannick’s family and find a key to their place.  Finding a key required a call to Elder and Sister Williams in the Solomon Islands.  I let myself into their apartment, found a key for the sisters, picked them up, and got them safely home.

The last problem of the day was a call from the two elders who had spent the day teaching the multiple families they’d found at Tanavoli.  They had driven to a village way up in the bush.  “We were coming down the road,” they said, “and a big truck is stuck and blocking the road.  We can’t get by.  Do you think you could come get us, or shall we spend the night in the pickup?  We have to be back here again in the morning, and the zone leaders have given us permission to sleep in the pickup.”

“Well, I have appointments in Palon and Fanafo tomorrow morning, so I wouldn’t be able to take you back out to Tanavoli in the morning.  I have no idea where you are, and I have no desire to drive unfamiliar jungle roads on a dark night.  I think you’re just going to have to spend the night there.”

Elder Ross is a cowboy from Washington.  His district leader companion is an island boy.  I had no worries about them, but Marjorie worried over them all night.