An historic church located near Fiji’s National Sports Stadium has an adjacent meeting hall with antiquated kitchen and toilet amenities. The church offers a hospitality ministry for the continual bookings for their hall so that sporting and cultural groups travelling from around Fiji can come and stay there while competing in tournaments at the stadium.

The church hall is their ‘marae’, the visitors home away from home, as it’s the only free accommodation option available that allows them to travel to Suva for their competitions.

The Church welcomes them and provides a safe, homely and loving place for them to stay.

Sadly, their kitchen has a leaking roof and rotten floorboards, and toilets are a ‘little worse for wear’.

Golden Oldies are keen to support their vision to upgrade their facilities so their church hospitality ministry can continue.

St Christopher’s Home continues to provide loving Christian care for children aged 0-18 years old. Many volunteers provide support with donated goods and funds supplied, yet their needs continue.

A new boy’s home has just been officially opened and the boys are moving in during the Spring, with new Home parents to care for them.

Another possibility being explored by Golden Oldies is education scholarships being promoted to help the children with their studies and vocational dreams.

A Church Primary-High School is centred in the heart of surrounding squatter villages. The children reluctantly attend the school because no other school will enrol them. The school is their only choice for these students to get an education. It struggles with truancy, drugs, student low self-esteem and societal bad stigma from attending the school. That was yesterday.

Today, due to the inspiration of a Principal, Chaplain and teachers, the school is becoming a school of first choice.

Golden Oldies continue to provide educational and sports equipment for the school, and now are investigating the creation of a trade’s academy within the school, that could lead to the real hope of jobs for senior students.

Moving into this village last year, a young couple built their own house with tin and sticks.

“We’ve planted a garden and go fishing, but my husband has no job. Is there a seasonal job in NZ for him?” The outside cook stand is used even during the Suva monsoon rains. After these rains, all their worldly possessions from their one suitcase are usually wet and they have to constantly dry their belongings outside when the sun reappears.

Golden Oldies have a dream to see if over time, their home could be upgraded to a mud-brick house, along with some small business ventures for jobs that will support their village and church.

Fiji Corrections claim to have the lowest recidivism rates in the OECD. Their transformation of prisoner’s lives is through education, trades training, officer-prisoner collaborations and post-release support programmes.

For the first time ever, Golden Oldies were invited to meet and converse with the prisons own Golden Oldies inmates. Tears flowed as the prison ‘Golden Oldies’ within their barbed wire compound were able to chat, be encouraged and pray with the team.

Following this, the Prison brass band and cultural war-like dancers, comprising of officers and prisoners together performed and then mingled with Golden Oldies. A moving experience.

Donated goods totalling 300kg consisted of medical supplies and equipment, bibles and Sunday school story books, educational materials, sports equipment and shoes, bras, linen, and guitars, all destined for the schools, hospitals, villages, churches and squatter settlements that Golden Oldies would be visiting.

Strictly restricted to 30kg checked-in weight, the team donated some of their allocated weight to allow a pre-packed box of these donated goods to be assigned to them to max out at 30kg/person.

Team members arrived at the airport with variable weighted suitcases and were matched up with variable weighted boxes to meet the 30kg allowance. The result?

Miraculously, every suitcase somehow had a matching box to make 30kg and the entire 300kg was checked-in with 0kg to spare.

We had a divine dispatcher overseeing our on-boarding freight nightmare!

Strictly restricted to 30kg checked-in weight, the team donated some of their allocated weight to allow a pre-packed box of these donated goods to be assigned to them to max out at 30kg/person.

Team members arrived at the airport with variable weighted suitcases and were matched up with variable weighted boxes to meet the 30kg allowance. The result?

Miraculously, every suitcase somehow had a matching box to make 30kg and the entire 300kg was checked-in with 0kg to spare.

We had a divine dispatcher overseeing our on-boarding freight nightmare!

82-year old on Mission

Alison our ‘Golden-Golden’ Oldie returned for her 4^th Golden Oldies Mission.
“82 is only a number” she says,
and she never missed a beat throughout the 11-day mission!

Our first mission since covid lockdown, we had 20 Golden Oldies from around NZ with the average age of 71-years.

Oh yes, our ‘Junior’ Golden Oldie was a 25-year-old school teacher coming on her first overseas mission too!

Farewell and Vinaka (Thank you)

The Golden Oldies Mission team has partnered with the Anglican Church of Polynesia to help brings Gods love to all the people they met. The Golden Oldies came from all over NZ, from a variety of Christian denominations, and we even had some ‘Junior’ Golden Oldies to provide wonderful support as well.

The team visited remote squatter villages, schools, hospitals, an old people’s home an orphanage, a prison, and a variety of churches.
Over 30 bags of donated goods including books, stationery, sports gear and medical equipment were distributed throughout the mission.

Some of the 30+ bags that were distributed during the mission

New Vicarage and Sign

The Golden Oldies and supporters have been contributing to the construction of a vicarage in a remote Coastal Village.

This will allow a full-time minister to live in the Village. It is being built by the Men’s Group each Saturday, and has created a new sense of identity for the men, from 3 workers to now 30-40 helping out on the Saturdays.

The old church sign

At the same time the Church community have wanted a new sign and now they have one  which brought everyone out for the blessing and official opening.

Another Church AND Kindergarten sign

The final visit was to a church that runs a kindergarten during the week within the church and its grounds. Its full to overflowing with children, but they have felt very embarrassed by the state of their sign.

It was a great honor to be able to prepare a new sign for them and this is being installed by the local volunteer fire brigade this week.

The old sign

The old and new sign

The team with the church members showing how the new sign will look when installed in place

Its a long trek

The Golden Oldies traveled down the largest river system in the region, through the mangroves to arrive at an isolated fishing village. The Primary School had spent much of the week preparing their speeches, songs and cultural dances for the team.
“Its a wonderful opportunity for our students to proudly display their culture to our very nice visitors” remarked the Senior Teacher.

The team spent time talking to the men, woman and children about life in the village. Songs and stories from the Bible were shared and the children singing grace as a group prior to lunch was very moving.

Diabetes Clinic

A Medical Clinic was held for the adults of the village to test their diabetics status. Diabetes is a major health concern in Fiji with an amputation occurring every 12-hours. It was very encouraging to discover the Village people were in excellent health, having to live off the sea for fish and their crops surrounding them.

Youth Fishing Boat

The trip also created discussions for micro-enterprise opportunities by looking at a partnership to support the youth of the village to purchase their own fishing boat. We look forward to seeing this progress over the next few months.

The Youth are keen to purchase a boat and motor like this to help them generate income for themselves from fishing and transportation on the river

School

Entering the Church School

Golden Oldies share their testimonies

This Church School faces many challenges. The Government appoints all the staff for every school, and then also determines their length of stay there. It means teaches arrive at Church schools with no passion to share the underlying values of the school. In fact it appeared many teachers there may not subscribe to the Christian that the School was founded on.

Currently one Sister from the Anglican Sisterhood acts as the Chaplain for all the 900 students. It is her role to provide ‘Religious Instruction’ to the entire School.

The Principal appreciated the visit of the Golden Oldies to bring the story of the gospel in song, drama, skit, poi and testimony.  It was well received by the junior and senior students. The team also presented gifts of donated books, stationery, and sports equipment, all things very scarce in existence.

The press up challenge!

Junior Golden Oldie Hannah-Jayne shares her testimony

It is a credit to the teachers of Fiji for the efforts they are making to educate their students with limited resources. And also a credit to the Fijian Government who have prioritised education as their future, by resourcing it with free education and transport for all.

Yet there is still a long way to go, and it is good to know that the Golden Oldies contributions can make a small difference for the good of the Fijian children at the same time.