Canoe races, snakes and more visitors

Hi all, today is an exciting day as Phillip turns up for the school holidays.

In the garden right behind out house, some children were climbing a tree to get across to come coconuts and came across a snake. We first knew of this with a whole lot of yelling and excitement. Look at the photo, kids throwing rocks, coral, branches and coconuts into the tree and as you can see. Finally with a mixture of fear and excitement – the kids had their prey.




What was interesting was how everyone was scared of the snake. It took ages before anyone picked it up. Sheila (the student in the middle of the photo where two guys are holding it) would run away even if the snaked took a breath or winked an eye. Watching the students and children was more interesting than the snake……what with the shrieks and how everyone was so jumpy.




It was fascinating – especially since no snakes in Vanuatu are dangerous. Someone would touch the back of another person and they would jump – even if the snake was 10 meters in front of them.







The kids put the snake in a box, hoping it would be around the next day when Phillip arrives from NZ . Well – in the morning when they checked the box the slithery fella had escaped. So somewhere, out there is an angry snake. Often with their teasing of it it would lift its head and bare its teeth.



















SIL were here for the first two weeks of the term teaching students how to translate from Bislama to their own local language. So it meant less lecturing for me which was handy for getting paper work and more items for the new staff house sorted. The middle weekend they were here the Santo Students held a fund raiser down at Najingo, one photo is Ross from SIL taking a short devotional talk. The day included many canoe races from Najingo to Tangoa. I was not keen cos if things went wrong – I didn’t want to tangle with any sharks – when asking students why they didn’t race – they didn’t want to become shark kai kai either!





Last weekend was Talua Sunday. It’s the Sunday when all Talua students and staff preach in different churches around Santo. We went inland to Vunavos village. A bush mission student Helen came with us. She led the service and I preached. It is quite away inland so I took the motor bike to save us walking too far (carried us halfway there as the Talua truck took the others the first half and we all came back on the bike. It’s up hill as well as inland, we had some great views on the way.











take care and God Bless
Jon