Tonga!

Wednesday March 26th,

We went into our office in town today, to try to catch up after not being there for two days. The first thing we always do is check our email and today we got one from Tiffany. Suddenly I had the strongest desire to call her --- so we did! It is always good to talk to Tiff. She sounded great and everything is going well at home. Tomorrow is Cade’s birthday and we needed to set up a time to call him. She said that it was 65 degrees in Smithfield today. That’s perfect!! Can’t wait to get down to that temperature again.

I started working on closing out some of our projects on CHAS today. It will be good to get that done and all of the reports submitted. There is a lot of busy work on CHAS. I guess that the information needs to be there in case anyone needs those details, but I really doubt that anyone ever reads it. But since being obedient is a Christ Like Characteristic, I will do it.

We had the closing ceremony for Nukuhetulu this afternoon. The town officer’s mother died and he had a funeral that most of the village went to, the Bishop and the Stake President both have good jobs, which is WONDERFUL!, so we didn’t have the ceremony until 5:00 PM. I spent the whole day praying that it wouldn’t rain. It was nice this morning but it clouded up this afternoon. The Lord heard and answered my prayers. We did the whole thing with no rain but it started raining on our drive home and when we got to Liahona we could see that it had been pouring there. Another miracle!

The closing ceremony turned out to be lovely. The village had set up a shelter and they put down mats and a beautiful tapa cloth. Then they put two chairs in there with mats on them, just like they do for royalty. It was for us!! We were embarrassed that they had gone to all that trouble but we felt like the king and queen throughout the ceremony. The Bishop conducted, the Wesleyan Priest gave the opening prayer, the water master talked, Alan talked, Ana talked, the Stake President handed the project over to the village, they started up the engine so we could all hear it running, the town officer accepted it and the district officer was the concluding speaker. There were lots of village people there and everyone was so happy and grateful for all we have done. The radio station ran a report on it and the TV station was there to cover the ceremony. All in all, it turned out great!

A few interesting things happened during our time in Nukuhetulu. During the ceremony we heard 3 gun shots. Someone was killing dinner. Right behind the Stake President, as he was speaking, a coconut fell out of one of the trees. It didn’t hit anyone but that is the first one I have seen fall all on it’s own. It happens all the time here, that is why so many cars have huge holes in their windshields.

The best part of the afternoon was after the ceremony I was talking to some of the people and I met the Bishop’s wife. She has a baby boy that is 6 months old. I was tell her how cute he is when he reached out for me. I picked him up and it felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD to hold a baby. ( It was a tender mercy for me to hold a baby, since I can’t hold Hendrix.) I tried to give him back to his mother but he didn’t want to go, so I just held him as I walked around and talked to other people. Everyone decided that he should be my Tongan grandson, so now I have two! His name is Sione, but they nick named him Sione Webby. I love it!! I gave him to his grandmother and he reached back to go to me. I kept him with me until it was time to go. It felt so good to feel him snuggle up to my neck. I miss my babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When we left, they loaded our car with bananas, oofie, sugar cane, papayas and coconuts. We have so much food to give away! It was another good day in Tonga.