FIJI BEACHES

THE UPRISING

One of the many things that I was looking forward to was some time on the beach. We live in Idaho, so beaches don't exist here. Anyway, we were able to spend some time at a place called the Uprising. This place was amazin. It was right on the beach and you practically live on the sand and watch the tide come in and out all day long-I can do that ALL DAY LONG--no complains here. Once again my sister is good friends with the manger at the urisingthere so we got to have some time of to ourselves and enjoy what I have been missing for 5 years. This little hut was definitely a place to relax and to get your thoughts together about importance of life.

Now why would someone in their sane mind want to leave a place like this and move to IDAHO of all places. Well, I am pretty sure you all have thought of many reasons why-my reason is-I'll go where you want me to go dear Lord, over mountains or plains or SEA....you get the idea.

Even though sometimes-like right now when it is 35 outside--I want to rebel and go back. But i will just look at our bank account and say maybe next time.

TIRI ECO VILLAGE

Our last day there, my sister and her family took us to this exclusive ECO hidden in the rainforest of Fiji to spend some more time with her family on the beach. Weather was nice but a little windy, which to the people of Fiji was cold, but for us PERFECTO. After a lot of coaxing Josh got me convinced to go snorkel, it was cold and windy but the water was or so warm and clean and blue. This place was peaceful and very serene. Noone around for miles just us, the kids and the beautiful beach. We played there for a whole day, they even had a pool that we got to enjoy as well, even if the ocean was better then the pool.

Me and sister Sharola, a very amazin view and fishys in the sea having our left over lunch.

Kids all dressed up for the swim, Komal and Kevin. Josh and Colin using one of the plates that we ate on as a frisbie. Their older sister Sonam joined in and decided to turn their brother into a woman.

Josh teaching the kids how to swim, me just happy to be there, and Josh Snorkeling.

If anyone of you are planning to visit Fiji, call me I will be your personal tour guide and take you places you won't get to see if you do this alone. Hey all I ask for is for you to take me there, pay for my flight and I will be your guide--:)

My Family

My sister has been doing really well. She has a Pizza Place that she is patterns with her boyfriend, who seems to be a great guy. He takes good care of her and her children, and my sister seems really happy and content with her life.
She has two daughters, Sonam 14, Komal 11 and one son Kevin who is going to be 10 soon.

They are really good in school and are wonderful kids to their mother. Sonam takes good care of her sibblings and is a very kind, loving and responsible little girl.

Her boyfriend Colin is from England who has another Restaurant close to the Pizza place. They have been together for 3 years and seem to be doing well together.

One of my brothers, who is second in age, has two kids, they are Corban and Peytons age. Him, his wife and kids, together with mom, moved to New Zealand. Enock has a nice capenter job there are excited to embark in the new lifestyle.

My oldest brother is doing okay. He seems to have lost his way, hopefully he will find it back soon. He has 4 beautiful daughters. Then there is my sister and then me.

ZIP FIJI

Friday, day after the funeral, I couldn't stick around any more, things started to get difficult to bear and I had a constant heavy heart feeling that made it hard to breath. My sister has a pizza business so she knows a lot of people with other business' and gets great discounted prices. Josh and her sensing my mood decided that we needed to go do something fun. Sister knows the Gentleman who started the the Zip-Fiji and within the hour we were on our way to ZIP-FIJI. For more information please visit zip-fiji.com. When we got there I realized that i still had the heavy feeling in my heart, but this time it was purely another reason for it--the fear of heights. Yup I am terrified of heights and some for these zips were 45 meters high and 200 meters long and reached the speed of 60km/h. That is high, and really fast. My sister naturally being a very competitive person challenged me to go down one without the screams and closing of the eyes and yelling -I'm gonna die....!!
That is all I needed. It took my sister about 1o minutes of coaxing to get her to jump off the platform, attached to the zip line. Took me 9.99 minutes--yup less than her. But, she screamed, and kept breaking with her palm, me, once I was off the platform, all fear was gone, I realised how safe and unscary it was. It was actually exhilarating. There were 10 platforms that took you from one station to another. It required a little bit of walking to the next platform, but nothing to strenuous. You didn't have to be muscle strong, just strong in heart to take part in this adventure. Thank goodness. We were allowed to go through the 10 stations twice. "The ZIP LINE COURSE consists of traversing from treetop to treetop with specialized climbing equipment over a series of ten thrilling horizontal cables that are connected between the jungle treetops." I felt like a monkey flying from treetop to tree top and the experience was pure fun, exhilaration, thrill, moment of forgetting all your troubles.
Caution--If you are of weak heart, please bring an extra pair of underwear.
This is exactly what I needed. A little bit of fun and a chance to see the natural beautiful side of my birth country Fiji.

FIJI

As many of you know that my Father past away on September 27th. We were outside all day taking the GMC apart, at the end of the day Josh came in to bath the boys and get ready for dinner when the dreadful phone call from my sister was received. We have been wanting to go visit my family for quite some time now, but it seems that everything always gets in the way.

Last year when Dad kept getting sick, and started to have heart problems, I knew that I needed to go visit him soon. Well that soon never came and the last time I was there was 5 years ago. My conversation with my sister lasted all but 2 minutes. After the intial shock, I realized that there was no way I was going to make it to the funeral--we were flat broke. First phone call I made was to my friend Julia. Both Josh's and my head was not right, we could'nt get anything out, let alone try to figure out what to do next, and Julia was the name that came to my mind.

She and her husband came over later that night and we came up with some ideas on what should be the next step. I am very grateful for a friend like that who dropped everything in a moments notice and came to my aid, when I needed her the most. Thank you for all you two do for us!

The worst, and seeming impossible task was getting me a US passport so I could get to Fiji. I got my US Citizenship last June and haven't applied for a passport. Then the next was coming up with $5000.00 to make this trip. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to handle this trip alone so Josh had to come with.

MONEY

Well the next morning-Sunday the 28th, Josh had a meeting with our Stake President, he decided that the only way they could help us out will be to ask for donations. So the Stake President started his journey to visit as many wards as possible in the Stake to ask for donations that needed to be put together in one afternoon. The Funeral being on Thursday, and because of time change, we would loose two days getting to Fiji, so the only way we could make it to the funeral would be to leave on Tuesday and get to Fiji on Thursday-funeral day.

Sunday night President called us with a bright ray of hope, to inform us that the members of the church had donated enough money to get us both to Fiji.

Our friends had Delta Airline vouchers that they gave to us without hesitation-to get us to LA and back--(to fly to Fiji you have to fly to LA and get on a Fiji flight) two separate flights.

PASSPORT

Josh, Julia and I did some research on passports, and thankfully, found out that we can get a passport in 1 day--in LA. You see how things are falling into place here-since we were to go to LA in the first place. Josh was able to get us an appointment with the Federal office in LA for Tuesday at 7am and Grandpa gave money for the passport . We decided to leave Blackfoot by shuttle to SLC on Monday afternoon. We spent the night at another friends house for Monday night in a place called Velencia just outside of Burbank, we made it to our passport appointment at 7am the next day. ( Jace and Michelle-thanks for looking after us and being such awesome friends).

KIDS

What do we do with the kids-well actually that question never came up, our friends and family made a plan for the kids for us, before we even asked. It was decided that the boys stay at Julia's for a couple of days, Bobby Jo's for few days and Grandma's in Soda springs for a week.

They both love and get along with these families well so--no worries there.

THE JOURNEY

Sunday night we booked the flights, we made a big mess at making reservations for them.. We made reservations for flying out of SLC and coming back into Idaho Falls. We decided to drive to SLC and leave the car at the Park N Jet, around two in the morning I realized that we were coming into a different airport--what about the CAR!! Thats when the necessity to taking a shuttle instead, came into play. We packed up one suitcase, got the kids to Julias and Julia dropped us to the shuttle. Shuttle left Blackfoot at 3pm, our flight leaves at 6.30--plenty time to make it one time--right--WRONG!!

We get to Pocatello and the driver realizes that he was supposed to have a extra row of seats in the back of the shuttle, but no-one ever installed the last row, so theres a lady with a baby in car seat who has no place on the shuttle. After much delibration the nice lady decided to find a ride and the driver got her arranged for a refund, by this time is 4pm!! Fear kicks in that we were going to miss our first flight of 7 that we had to make in the next 2 days. I gently leaned over and informed the driver that our flight leaves at 6.30, he says--I will try my best, we made it on time with 29 minutes to spare. Except the baggage check-in computer was upset with us that we were checking in 1 minute too late and said that our bags might not make it to the right plane-there was a lot of angry beeping involved.

Well it was wrong, we made it to Las Vegas where we connected to another flight to Burbank where we stayed the night.

Jace and Michelle were great hosts who can ask for more. The next bright and early morning Jace took us to LA. We were taken right in, 10 minutes later I was raising my right hand to swear that I was who I acclaimed I was on the papers and was told to come back at 1pm to get my passport--WAIT A MINUTE, CAN IT BE THAT EASY!!! YAH RIGHT--

just kidding, it was that easy. :)

We hung out with this wonderful family for the rest of the day, checked out California and headed back to get the passport where we waited maybe about 2 minutes and I had my PASSPORT!!

That night (Tuesday the 30th at 10.30pm our Flight to FIJI took off, at 11pm I was out like a light and didn't wake up till it was 1 hour before landing (thanks to sleeping pills--I highly recommend it for nervous flyers). After flying for 10 hours and 20 minutes we landed in Fiji on October 2nd Thursday-Funeral Day ( international date line cross through Fiji so time changes makes us loose 2 days). We landed at 6am. We had a connecting flight to another airport, that was closer to my home town at 7am. As we stood there waiting for our baggage, we realized that if we didnt get our bags soon we were going to miss our connecting flight. I hunted down a worker and told them my dilemma and they assured me that no flight will leave without their passenger and that I had nothing to worry about. Our bags were the last ones out. We hurried to the other side of the airport to re-check in and was told that OUR FLIGHT HAD LEFT. I explained to the officers at the counter about what I was told--and of coarse they denied that we were ever going to be told any such thing. They got us seats in the next fligt at 8 am. Few minutes later the original flight we were supposed to be turned around and came back for something--guess what--they wouldnt let us in the flight still because!!!!----we were assigned in the next flight--but this is my original flight people!!!! 20 minutes later we are told that our flight has broken down and we can't leave till 10am. WHAT! Another 20 minutes later the flight was fixed--yup--Heavenly Father is aware of our hearts desire and prayers. We were in the plane and 30 minutes away to the next airport. Sister was there to pick us up with her boyfriend Colin. And begun our 1hour 30 minute drive to her house. We drove for about 1 hour and the car just stops in the middle of the road in the middle of no where!!! GIVE US A BREAK!! WE ARE TRYING TO GET TO A FUNERAL HERE!! Well we hitch hiked for about 1.5 minutes and were on the way again in the back of a van with spare tires as seats, and Colin left behind with the car. We got to the funeral--30 minutes late. Funeral was done in Hindu traditional way, Dad was cremated and I said my goodbyes with a heavy heart and a sense of huge loss.

Every one who met and helped by along the path of this journey, we are forever grateful to you. Your act of kindness and charity will be in our hearts and in our book of memorabelia for all time and eternity. Thank you for watching over us and at the same time teaching us the pure and life changing lessons of life. Your love for us is going to be felt in our lives forever. This is home!