Tonga!

Monday, June 10th

We had a devotional this morning with Elder Watson of the Area Presidency. Before he became an Area 70 he was the secretary to the First Presidency. He worked with 7 prophets! The devotional was wonderful. He told us stories about some of his experiences with the prophets, how he was called to be a Stake President and how he was called by President Monson to be an Area 70. He and his wife are delightful people, so down to earth and easy to be around. He is turning 70 this month and will be released from this calling in the next General Conference. He will be heading home in 2 weeks and before he leaves he wanted to come to Tonga and thank the people here for all they are doing to keep the church running in the islands. He also reorganized a Stake over the weekend. Alan made the comment tonight that the people in Tonga see many more General Authorities here than we ever do in Utah. It really is amazing how many we have seen in the months that we have been here.

After the devotional we went to our office and still had no internet, no phones and no printer. Moving to Liahona has stopped our work completely. We couldn’t do a thing today.

We were in charge of FHE tonight and I had to have Sister Bean run the information off for me. It is soooooo frustrating! We won’t know how to act if things ever do start to work.

Our topic for FHE was The Blessings for Senior Missionaries and Their Families as We Serve Missions For The Lord. We got off to a shaky start as one of the dentists and his wife came in and started ripping on the Tongan people because they were frustrated about a couple of things. But we sang “Count Your Blessings” and had a beautiful prayer and they Spirit came. The lesson went over well and every missionary couple shared at least one blessing that they have seen come into their family as they have served. It ended well and we were pleased with the evening -- also really grateful that it was over. We have been stressed about it. I made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches for the treats and they were a big hit.