Please Don't Be Mad!

So we love you so much and we know we promised not to get a tattoo, but we just had to. Once we learned about the tattoo and how much it means to the culture we made the decision to get one together. The word tattoo comes from a Samoan word, and the tattoo first came from here in Samoa! There is a lot to the history that is hard to explain so if you want to do your own research about it you can, but I will try. In the certain villages there are different types of chiefs or matai's. It showed that these people were important and was the start of a tradition for many years to come. The chiefs would get a tattoo called a patei (note: spelling could be wrong on many of these words), and it was from the waist to mid thigh for girls, and from the waist to the knees for guys. We asked Wilson, who did our tattoo how long one of these tattoos would take and he said about 7 days. I'm sure that it would have taken a lot longer when they would do it the original way. Marci and I have just experienced so much while we were here, and we never wanted to forget it. I know this is just one reason, but we can tell you all more about it when we get back. By the way we're on our last week here and we have VBS the whole week. We know that it's going to be really hard to say goodbye to everyone. After church this morning I was playing with a girl named Juliette. She ended up in my arms and we were spinning in circles and all I could do was smile really big. I told her ok, I bet you need to go now, while I tried to get her off me. This is just an example of the meaningful relationships that we have formed so far.

This last Friday, we went to a pre-show of the Pacific Arts Festival that is going to be held here in a few weeks. This included lots of different groups and schools performing sivas (dances). This was so great for us to be able to watch and it was so fun. The Samoans are so graceful when they dance, and all of the different moves that they do are things that relate to their culture. We even watched girls do a sword dancing routine, which was pretty impressive. They even gave us free sodas.

We don't know if a lot of the kids from the Tafuna church where we are at will be able to come to the VBS since a lot of their families do not have cars. But we plan on having about 40 kids. This whole weekend has been spent watching Gilmore Girls episodes and getting all of the crafts ready for 40 kids. One of our favorites that Marci and I worked on was the fruit of the spirit necklaces. We bought the off brand of Fruit Loops called Tootie Fruities. We decided to give each kid 40 fruit loops to put in a ziploc bag. The problem with the Tootie Fruities was that a lot of them were stuck together, so the kids would not be able to string them on a necklace. Marci and I spent about an hour and a half cutting apart tootie fruites. Thank you to anyone who has ever helped with a VBS or with kids, we can finally relate to all of the hard work you've done. We continue to ask for your prayers as we start on our last week here.

Tonight we met upstairs for a short devotional and we sang lots of great classic church of christ songs. Marci and I felt like we were at Cemetery working or at Aunt Nunny's house. And yes, we have still not yet quite matured yet because we got our tickle box turned over while we were singing. Just some great memories that we were reminded of tonight.

P.S. We really didn't get a tattoo, so please don't call the Willis' mom and dad, don't worry. It was just a little joke, but our friend Colleen did get one. Ha Ha. We had a good time watching here get one though.