Tonga!

Monday, July 22nd

We had a very interesting and frustrating day in the office today. We received a call from Elder Reynolds in New Zealand. He had Elder Brown, the church attorney, on the line. Elder Brown had a few questions about the Lavengatonga Water Project. He is reviewing the contract for us. Alan was out of the office when the call came in so I talked to them, only they didn’t let me say anything. Elder Brown would ask a question and then Elder Reynolds would try to answer it. In the end Elder Brown agreed to send us his questions in an email and then we would try to sort it all out.

When the email came, I just smiled but Alan got angry. It was obvious that this attorney had no idea what a water project was all about. The questions that he sent to us had nothing to do with what I had heard him talking about on the phone. I was kind and tried to be patient, since he hadn’t seen the project and he has never done one of these before. Alan, on the other hand just got frustrated. To him it is just one more stumbling block on the way to getting this project finished. It was approved in May and we still haven’t actually done anything! Alan got on the computer and answered all of the questions and I sent a picture of our project and so he could actually see what we were talking about. Alan also emailed Elder Colson to get his support. I spent the rest of the day trying to get Alan’s blood pressure back down to a safe level! He has got to learn to relax and be more flexible.

After dinner we went for a nice walk and Alan was still talking about that contract. He just couldn’t let go of it. I sure hope tomorrow is a better day!