Monday, April 21st
Today is Easter Monday in Tonga. It is another holiday but some of the Chinese stores were open today. All of the main businesses were shut down and there was no school. We decided to stay home and get some work done. We scrubbed the floor, finished the laundry and cleaned the house. Then we headed to the office here on campus to check our emails and send some out. We heard from Morgan and Alli today. It always makes our day to find an email from the grandkids. It made us miss them and since today is Easter, we decided to call all of them and see how their day was. We face timed Greg and he was home with Dave. We got to see Parx and Hendrix and talk to Greg, Dave and Alisha. Then we called Bryan and caught them in the middle of their Easter egg hunt. We got to see all of the kids and watch a little of the fun. Bryan sent pictures of the ribs he cooked for dinner. He’s KILLING ME!!! Addy promised that he would cook some for us when we get home, so I can live with that. We couldn’t get through to Kimi and Tiff wasn’t home, so we couldn’t facetime with them.
We had the Johnsons and Sister Mitchell over for dinner tonight. I like to invite people to dinner just before they leave, so they don’t have to worry about cooking or keeping food around. We had a great visit with them tonight. They have been here for our whole mission and we will miss them. We will be the next to leave and Sister Mitchell will leave two months behind us.
After dinner we went into town to have FHE with Lopeti and the boys. It was an amazing experience. Lopeti and his wife don’t have any children of their own. He is 30 and I’m not sure how old Luciana is. They took in a 20 year old young man who was kicked out of his home when he joined the church. Pahulu has something wrong with his leg and he has been to New Zealand for treatment twice since we got here. He will be going back one more time and then hopefully leaving on a mission. Then Lopeti is in the process of trying to adopt the 4 boys that were baptized a few weeks ago. He also has a 3 year old nephew living with him. So he has “6 sons”. Those young boys sat on the floor and read scriptures, bore their testimonies for us and thanked us again for all we have done to help them. They really are quite amazing young men. The 13 year old has won a math competition for all of the islands of Tonga and now will compete with others his age in Australia. Lopeti helps them with their homework every night and is trying to teach them English. They learn some English in school but he wants them to be fluent. He has it figured out that in 7 years Pahulu will be home from his mission and the boys will all be old enough that Pahulu can take care of them and then he, Lopeti, will be able to go back to school. Until then, he will just put his education on hold, work at the hospital to provide for his family and take care of all his sons. He and Luciana are the most selfless people I have ever met. We are thinking about doing some kind of fund raiser when we get home so we can set up a trust fund to help with the boys education. There has to be a special place in heaven for Lopeti and Luciana.
