Tonga!

Monday, July 29th

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I went to bed thinking about the baby blessing and I woke up at 4:00 on the dot. That would be 9:00 on Sunday morning at home. I prayed that everything would go perfectly, shed a few tears and tried to go back to sleep. It didn’t happen. I was a little sad today.

We had a lot to catch up on this morning and then we had a meeting with Howard Niu. We went over our trip to Vava’u with him. He is the first person in our up line so we need to keep him up to date on what we are doing. He pretty much agreed with everything we are trying to do and told us to move forward on our plans to help the hospital. Then he told us that the Area Authorities wanted us to look into doing dialysis in Tonga. I’m sure that is because there is so much trouble with diabetes here. Ana had received an email from the Area about it and she had done some research. She said that it would cost over a million dollars just to get it started and then at least half a million dollars a year to keep it going. They tried it in Samoa but they couldn’t sustain it. She feels the same thing will happen here. There is no chance of getting a kidney transplant here, so really, what is the benefit? Her suggestion was, “I don’t think this is a good idea. When people get to the point that they need dialysis, we should start teaching them the Plan of Salvation.” You have got to love that woman!!!

Sister Mitchell was in charge of FHE tonight. She did a great job. She asked everyone to share a spiritual experience that had had a real impact on their lives. It was a very spiritual evening and we got to know the other