A return to Samoa after nearly 40 years

The last week of January found me heading to Samoa after many, many years. You can suppose that I was excited to be returning.

Samoa was lovely and beautiful, if a bit hot. If you don’t think so, then look at these photos. After the view of the temple from the grounds of the Church School at Pesega (above), I’ll start with a photo of a sunrise one morning. We were staying at a small resort near the school called the Savai’ian (on the island of Savai’i).

I suppose I should try for some chronology. We arrived Sunday evening and spent Monday at Pesega Middle School teachers pre-service meetings. Pesega is located in Apia on Upolu. For some reason, I didn’t get my camera out there to take any photos. The teachers and school leaders had some good discussions of test data and other current needs in the school. I did some training on the new resources that were coming soon (perhaps they are sitting on the dock?). These are mostly books we have ordered for the students and teachers–English graded readers, dictionaries, and so forth.

As we left of Upolu for Savai’i on Tuesday morning, I took this photo on the left. The color of the ocean was stunning.

In the the next photo, the island of Savai’i can be seen on the horizon. It is the land on the horizon, mostly covered with clouds. The ferry crossing between Upolu and Savai’i took about an hour.

As part of the trip to Samoa, the team from the Pacific Area Office both participated in and led training sessions. Here are some photos of the teachers at Vaiola at one of their in-service gatherings. The room is the school library.

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Above are some photos of the outside of the Church Schools in Vaiola on the island of Savai’i. In the photo on the right, the hill behind the buildings has a nice sign with the name Vaiola spelled out. There are over 100 stairs up to the sign and I have heard the view from up there is magnificent. We all planned to hike up there before we left, but as you might be able to tell from the photo, it was raining very, very hard when we got out of our training session. We didn’t climb the stairs!

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Above are some scenes from Pesega, the church schools near the temple in Apia. They have the typical “Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve” that is on many of the Church Schools, including the campuses of BYU. In the photo on the right, Jonathan Warwick is conducting some training. He is the employee over curriculum and instruction for the Church Schools whom I work with on a daily basis.

Finally, after hearing about another place in Samoa for many, many years, I made it there–to lovely Sauniatu. President McKay visited here many years ago (1921). He loved the place, called it one of the “first temples”, and blessed the people that lived there. As you can see, the place is beautiful, spectacularly so. Enjoy a few photos. It was hard to only chose a few. The first row are campus shots. Notice the waterfall down the cliff behind the buildings, which appeared after another hard rain. Also, notice how they have decorated the flower beds with coconut husks.

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I’ll end with photos of the stream that runs through one part of the village. On the upper part of the stream (nearer the school buildings) is one of the bathing pools. A little farther down, there is a nice waterfall. The rock face is covered in green plants and moss, too.