Fri.
The AP’s and Zone Leaders picked us up and we met President and Sister Tukuafu at the dock. It was a small boat with two motors that we took off in today. We had a boatful, 4 elders, the president and his wife, us, the branch president from one of the outer islands and his family, the driver and a plumber we were taking to fix a sink at the MQ. The AP’s really wanted to go with us but there just wasn’t enough room for them.
It was an amazing day! It was like going to Disneyland multiplied by 1,000 because it was all real! The ride out was a little rough. Once we got out of the bay and into the ocean we hit some pretty big waves. The missionaries were laughing at me because I was taking pictures with the boat bouncing up and down but I didn’t want to miss a thing. Besides, I was laughing at them, they were in the back of the boat and they were getting soaked. Alan and I took a pill before we left and we both did fine.
We went to 4 different islands. The first one we stopped out was the farthest out. It took us about 50 minutes to get to it. The name of the island is Hunga. Alan served there for 8 months. As soon as you get off the boat you start hiking up a steep hill to get to the village. When we got to the top Alan remembered that he would hike up that hill and then go straight down the dirt path to get to his grass folli. We walked down that path and he could remember the area where he lived, although it is all different now. The grass follies are pretty much gone. Now there are wooden shacks that are so dirty. He liked the grass follies, they were natural and fit in with the surroundings. We did find a couple of them still being used and he is right. I took pictures of both.
The elders played a fast on one us as we got to their MQ. We had given our presentation at Zone Conference so one of the elders ran ahead of us to clean up the MQ so when we got there everything would be in order. We were so impressed with how clean it was and what a good job they had done taking care of it. We made a real fuss over them and when the Mission President got there we told him that it was the cleanest MQ we had seen so far in the mission. He smiled and said, “It had better be, it is only one month old.” The elders had a good laugh until I said that we would be back one day and it had better look just the same!
It was a little sad to get back on the boat and then drive away leaving those two elders alone on the island, waving at us. They stay out there for months at a time, working with the 2 to 3 hundred people that live there. Now I can understand what Alan felt like when he said that he would look out and all he could see was ocean. It’s hard to imagine that there is land out there somewhere, it is so far away.
