Thursday, March 28th
We got up early and met Ana Ika at the mission home so we could head to the far east end of the island. It is about an hour drive from our house. When we got there we had to find the water man, but he came and showed us the project. This village really has it’s act together. They have two water stands and tanks donated by Australian-Aid, a water pump donated by LDS Charities, a pump house donated by European Aid and 3 beautiful solar panels donated by a Rotary Club in the states. They gathered money as a village and bought an electric pump as a back up pump. They have all of their bases covered and they always have water. It just takes a couple of educated men living in the village and a few relatives in the states to get things done. We were impressed!
We struck out after that. On the way home we were trying to look at two more projects but we couldn’t find the men in charge. Tomorrow is Good Friday and all of them were in town getting ready for the holiday.
We had to be back to the Nauvoo Stake Center by 12:30 to do a presentation to the new missionaries. We had 16 new ones come in today. They look like a great group. Those of Tongan decent, either from Tonga, New Zealand, Australia or the US seemed fine, but those white boys from the US looked like deer in the headlights. They put the Tongan “skirt” on them as soon as they get here and then do a lot of the training in Tongan and it is a real shock for the first little while. They are always thrilled when we show up and start speaking in English.
We went to the temple tonight. It had rained a lot today but it cleared enough that we were able to walk over and most of the way home before it started up again. My temple dress still isn’t here and now Alan has ordered white suspenders to wear with his pants. I don’t know why he bothered. They have one pair here and no one else ever uses them. It was a good evening.
