Monday, April 29th
I had a special experience at our Monday morning devotional today. The man who gave the
spiritual thought really touched my heart. His name is Ed. I don’t even know his last name but he works for the Service Center as the locksmith. He used to live in the United States but he was deported back to Tonga and told that he can never return to the U.S. Evidently he was in a gang and involved in some sort of shooting. When he came back to Tonga he joined the church and turned his life around. Now he is so trusted that he is the locksmith for all of the church properties on the main island. His devotional was about turning your life over to the Lord. Knowing his story I was really touched. We love him! That’s what I love about the people here. They are willing to forgive and then help others to move forward with love and support. It is wonderful to watch.
Then we went into work and met with the man we are trying to help in the Village of Hofoa. He was the one who took us to the school where there were so few books in the library and no computers. He stopped by to see if we had been able to find any surplus computers for his village. While he was there he started telling us about his family. His father was the village chief and also the preacher in the Church of Tonga. Our church was having some water problems and a member of the Stake Presidency had been fasting and praying for help. He saw the village chief ride by on his bicycle and the Spirit told him that that was the man who would help him. The chief did help him and they developed a relationship but he would not let the missionaries come to his house. He sent them away and told the members of his church not to talk to them. Then one day something happened to change all that. It was a rainy day and one of those terrible thunder showers hit where the roads turn into rivers in a matter of minutes. The chief was in his house with his oldest son and his wife when they realized that the one year old grandson was no where to be seen. This was the chief’s favorite grandchild and he went to the door just in time to see two sister missionaries scoop the baby up out of the water that was rushing down the road. He invited them into his home and everything changed from that day on. Soon the member of the Stake Presidency asked him to be baptized and he agreed. It was in the 1980’s and in that day the village chief was highly respected by everyone, especially his own family. He told his family that they would all be baptized and even though they didn’t know much about the church they obeyed him. The next Saturday morning his whole family, dressed in white walked down the road of the village, passed the Church of Tonga (where he was the preacher) to the LDS chapel where they were baptized. The chief continued to lead the choir in his old church because there was no one else to do it, and then he would attend his meetings in our church. He knew that there were several members of our church who were going to the Church of Tonga because their families had pressured them to come back. The chief went to them and told them that they had been baptized into the Mormon church and they were to go to church there. You didn’t disobey the chief so he was able to get all of the inactives back into the church. Also, many of the people in the village began to wonder why he had joined the church and that brought in a lot of converts.
The chief’s son, the man we are working with, is now the village chief and the Matapulu, or spokesman for the King. If anyone wants to talk to the King, they have to go through him or one of 4 other Matapulus here in the islands. They speak the language of the King, which is elevated above the language of the people. He told us that he could get us an audience with the King but we are not sure we believe that. It would be fun though!
We spent the afternoon working on our new credit card. Wow, it is a pain to charge anything to the church. You have to fill out forms and have three different codes and then at the end of the month you have to account for every penny. Charging things for the mission and for humanitarian makes it twice as much work and it all has to be done on the computer with different passwords etc. I am too old for this! We like to do our budget on a spread sheet with a pencil!!! I can’t imagine how Bryan keeps track of all the money he goes through with his business. I’m glad that I grew up in a different era.
We were able to talk to Bryan for a few minutes today. He and his family made it safely to California and are starting a fun vacation to the beach and Disneyland. We also talked to David. He and Alisha are safely home from Hawaii. He said it was a dream trip. Everything you could want a trip to Hawaii to be. We are glad they had such a good time.
It got really windy and stormy tonight --- so no walk. DARN!
