Tonga!

Jan. 9th, 2013

When we got to the office today, we met with 2 men from the hospital. They came to pick up 13 wheelchairs. They take them back to the hospital, assemble them and then give them out to the people who qualify for them. It was great to see some going out. They have been in storage for a long time and only 30 have been distributed. That is not good. With the 13 we sent out today we also had a request from a Bishop for 4 and we have two more individuals that we are working on. That will be 19 since we got here two weeks ago. We are praying that we can keep things going and get them out to the people that really need them. Then we will be able to order more.
While we were in the office, Tara told us a little more about the funeral of the man who died last Saturday. In Tonga, if a member of your immediate family dies, it is a custom for the family to go to the cemetery and stay at the gravesite for 3 days, (24x7). That means that his poor widow and her children were out all night in that terrible rain storm Sunday night. It just hurts my heart to think about it. They also have very formal mourning here. Those closely related to the deceased will wear black for a year. Friends will wear black for as long as they want, usually several months, to show respect. Because he worked with the FM group, the people we work with, everyone we saw today was dressed in black.
We spent some time working on our presentation for the new missionary orientation tomorrow. We will talk to them about their housing and keeping it clean and neat. Our Mission President has a power point presentation that he wanted us to use. It is all in Tongan and it took me a LONG TIME to type up some handouts in Tongan. He had a copy in English on a CD that he gave to us and we looked at it while we were over at the school. When we put it back in to go over it tonight our computer ate it! It is stuck inside the computer and we can’t get it out. I’m sure that he will be very impressed with our skills when we meet with him tomorrow. Good Grief! How could that have happened?