A Weekend to Remember: Cyclone Winston

Our week started out calm, but ended up with Fiji's worst Cyclone in history (Winston).  In this photo below, we are on the Ferry (from our two weeks away visiting other islands), having just stopped at the beautiful harbor at Savusavu, before travelling onward through the night to our home in Suva. We were on the ferry for a total of 24 hours!  It felt good to return to our Fiji home.

After lunch, we then drove for 3.5 hours to the west side of the main island of Fiji, to prepare for our week's work doing eye care on the that side of the island.

We checked into this interesting,
but nice resort called, "First Landing".  

Just off the coast of where we were staying
is this cute little island, shaped liked a foot.
It's called "Big Foot Island".  We had fun
walking on it, and snorkeling off of it.

The outdoor restaurant has the same name.

It was pretty at night.

Here's a few photos
of the resort.

This week, we worked at three different churches on the west side of the main island; one in Tavua, one in Lautoka, and one in Nadi.

There were line ups again, at each city.

We had to, unfortunately, turn
people away at the end of each day.

We saw almost 100 patients each day.

My faithful assistant, and wonderful wife,
is kept busy checking everyone in.

We both loved this young girl.
Fortunately she didn't need any glasses.

This 74 year old lady, said that she had been
praying for us to come, and that her prayer
had been answered.

At the end of the day, I had time to arm wrestle
this rather strong Fijian.  He had heard that I had
beaten a fairly big guy a couple of months ago,
and was up to another challenge.

I found out he worked in bar, and has
never lost an arm wrestling match.

Although it looks like I'm winning here,
his record remained intact, as he finished
me off in the end.

These two young boys really wanted to help
us out carrying our boxes of glasses back to
our vehicle at the end of the day.

He still had enough energy to carry our
boxes even after our arm wrestling match.

On Saturday, the youth of our church from all the surrounding islands came to put on a cultural celebration in Suva, for the opening of the newly renovated LDS temple.  

It was quite an extravaganza.

Saturday started off fairly normal but as the day

progressed, we heard more and more about the

onslaught of Cyclone Winston.  Because of a curfew

put out and stores, transportation, etc. all closing, the

cultural celebration was cut short and we headed home,

and saw on our way, that things were getting worse.

 After getting home, we hunkered down for a long dark night and listened to the howling of the wind and debris hitting our house.  Our power had gone out so we sat in the dark and waited till bedtime. We had water coming in through our windows and ceiling.  The winds howled all night and the rain came in sheets, it was very scary at times, but the winds started to subside early in the morning.  When we awoke we assessed our damage...

We lost our beloved banana tree!

Another of our trees went through
our fence and onto the road.

Crews were out early, clearing off the roads

This used to be a roadside market.

As we drove around we saw more
 damage on every street.  

When we arrived at the LDS temple, we
 found it to be safe and unharmed.

This weekend has been one we will never forget.  Fiji was hit with worst Cyclone that has ever hit the southern hemisphere, with winds gusting up to 325 km/hour, uprooting trees, tearing off roofs, and flattening some houses and complete villages, and causing some deaths.  We felt blessed and fortunate to be personally unharmed and protected during this crazy storm.  We are currently without power and water, and don't know how long it will be until it will be restored.  Fiji has continually provided us with one amazing adventure after another, so I guess this will just be added to our list.