Tonga!

Tuesday, August 6th

Today was Ana Ika’s birthday. She still has family here for the wedding of her nephew. It will be this Saturday in New Zealand. They did all of the Tongan wedding traditional stuff this last week and all of Ana’s relatives, who have been staying at her house, will be leaving on Thursday. She was not going to the wedding because it is just to much money. This morning she woke up to find an envelope on her pillow. Inside was a ticket to New Zealand! Her sisters and cousin bought it for her. She is thrilled to be able to go. She has two sons that live in New Zealand and she will be able to spend some time with them. We are really happy for her, but she will be gone a week so things will slow down a lot in our work. We use her a lot to talk to people that don’t speak much English. Alan has remembered a lot, but he never knew the language of water projects, wheelchairs, dental clinics or hospital supplies!

We went to the Satellite broadcast from New Zealand today and it was interesting. It was set up to introduce us to the newest member of our Area Presidency. The connection was so slow that the speech was all broken up and we missed a lot of what was being said. The picture never did work, but we did get to hear the last part of our new Area Presidency councilor’s talk. Fiber Optics still isn’t here and it looks like it will be awhile. MERCY!!!

When I went back to the office after lunch, we had an email from Bryan. He and Lisa had come back from a visit with the Stake President. Bryan is the new 1st Councilor in the Bishopric. REALLY!!!??? I wonder if Heavenly Father thinks it will be easier on us if Bryan and Jake are both sustained and set apart on the same day instead of drawing out the misery. THIS IS REALLY HARD!!! I called Alan, he was meeting Elder Maile and going into town to buy supplies for the MQ’s. He felt exactly the same way I did. Stunned that such important events are taking place and we are half a world away. We are not surprised that Bryan was called, we knew the Lord had something in mind when he was made a High Priest. Missing that ordination was very hard on Alan. We know that everything happens in the Lord’s time and that it is always right, but somehow that doesn’t make it any easier to not be there. We know we are where we are suppose to be, doing what we are supposed to be doing and that our children are being so blessed because we are here. I guess this is a part of our sacrifice that we just hadn’t thought about.

We are so proud of Bryan. He will be a great influence for good in this calling and we know the Lord will bless him and his family while he serves. We also know that having this important spiritual responsibility will be the perfect balance for the stress he has to deal with at work. The Lord works in mysterious ways, his miracles to perform. Despite being frustrated that all of this will happen without us, we are sooooooooo grateful for the amazing family that has been sent to us. Our children, their spouses and our grandchildren are amazing! Heavenly Father certainly took a chance on us when He entrusted them into our care. We will continue to try to set a good example for them and live worthy to have them for all eternity. (I guess that means that I should stop murmuring.)

After dinner we went for a nice long walk. We talked about our family, how much we love them, how much we miss them and how somehow it seems harder to be away from them this time. Hopefully we can both get a good nights sleep and then get up, forget about ourselves and go to work!