Jan. 27th, 1013
It rained HARD all night!! I didn’t get much sleep, although it was nice to have it a little cooler. It was still raining VERY HARD when it was time to go to church. Even though it is only about a block away, we drove over today. It was my first day in the relief society presidency. I think I am really going to enjoy this calling. The sisters are wonderful and once I get to know their names I will feel more comfortable. The only problem is, these names are really hard to remember, although they are beautiful. Many of the sisters are teachers at the high school and they speak English very well so it shouldn’t be hard to communicate with them.
Next we met with our new Sunday School class. We thought we were teaching the 17 year olds, but it turns out that we are teaching the 16 and 17 year olds. Not all of the students are back at school yet, they will keep trickling in for the next two weeks. Today we had 30 kids in our class. 30!!! The Tongan youth are very respectful of adults, but it is not their culture to talk in class. The teacher just tells them what they need to know, but they never know if they learn it because they don’t answer questions. We didn’t know that. No one bothered to tell us. Alan taught the first part and no one would answer his questions. He looked at me like, “What am I doing wrong?” Then I taught the next part and they were very attentive but they wouldn’t answer my questions either. How are 17 year olds going to prepare for missions if they can’t express out loud what they know about the gospel? This is going to be a little harder than we thought. We will have to come up with a new plan.
We were all prepared for our talks in Sacrament Meeting until we got there and found out that the Area Authority was there to talk to the returning students. We both cut our talks DRASTICALLY, but it turned out alright. The Area Authority is a wonderful, humble man and he did a great job talking to the students. He told us old people to just go to sleep while he talked but we didn’t, he said some very wise things. It turned out to be a very spiritual meeting.
We spent the rest of the day packing and I made a quick trip to the school to post some things on the blog. It was still raining so no one else was using the internet. I got a lot on today and really fast. That was encouraging.
We said good-bye to Tara and her family tonight. We are leaving at 5:45 in the morning and we won’t see them again. They fly out for America before we get back. She gave us a whole box full of things for the kitchen. She has been so good to us and made our living so much easier. We will really miss her, both in the office and as a friend. What a blessing to get to know her and work with her. We hope to be able to keep in touch with her and her family in the future.
