Tonga!

Thursday, May 16^th

We are doing a Hygiene program along with our water project. It will be taught to all of the people within the Stake boundaries, not just the people of the Lavengatonga village. That is over 8,000 people but we won’t reach all of them. We are hoping for about 3,000. The challenge now is getting the program translated into Tongan. I wanted to start this a long time ago but couldn’t because we didn’t have any money to pay someone to do it, until the project was approved. Now we will have to sit around and wait until it is done.

Today is election day in Tonga. Every village is voting for new town officers. We are grateful that the town officer in Lavengatonga is running unopposed. He is a good man and we wanted to be able to work with him.

We had a meeting with Howard, the Service Center Manager this afternoon. It was about the Navy Ship that will be here in June. We need to all be on the same page when the advance team comes the end of May to finalize all of the arrangements for their 10 day stay on the Island. I knew this would happen. We went all that time waiting for something to happen and now everything is happening at once. June will be a huge month for us.

This afternoon it was hot again and I was simply drained. I don’t know if it was the heat or the relief of having this project passed, but today I have been exhausted! It could be the fact that I am not sleeping well. The Area 70 who is staying next door to us snores like a buzz saw! Everyone sleeps with their windows open and these houses are quite close together. It reminds me of when we went to Martin’s Cove and slept in tents that were maybe 3 feet apart. I’m a light sleeper and it was a chorus of snoring all night long. It’s almost laughable when the person living next door wakes you up because he is snoring so loud. Oh well, he is a great man and he has a lot on his mind. As long as he gets a good nights sleep, hopefully I can catch up on mine next week when they go home.

We went to the airport to see Elder and Sister Fellows off this afternoon. I am so sad. We love this good couple and we will really miss them. When we went to the temple tonight we really missed them being there. They were temple officiators in Australia and they have been doing the English speaking session on Thursday evenings. We hope they will be happy when they get back home. I’m grateful that we got to know them, they are so unique and lovely.