Tonga!

On Tuesday, Alan and I went to another Government meeting. It seems like once we started showing up at these meeting, now everyone invites us. The one today was with Lord Viea, the Minister of Finance, the Ambassadors from Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand and the Commissioners from France, Germany and Finland. There are no Ambassadors or Commissioners from America over here. Go figure! Half of the population of Tonga lives in America! Anyway, this conference was all about how to qualify to receive money from the Government through grants. We were just invited to the opening of the meeting. We don’t get our funding through grants that other countries give out. Once the big guns gave their speeches and the group picture was taken, we had some refreshments and left, along with all those mentioned above. We are happy to represent the Church at these events, but we don’t really do anything, we just flash our badges and shake hands with the people. Now they are very friendly to us and even come up to us and start up a conversation. Little by little the Church is starting to be recognized by the officials here. We would like to see Tongan’s, that live here and will be here for a long time, representing the Church at these functions but for now we will do whatever is asked of us to help pave the way. Pa’langis, especially Americans, are treated with a lot of respect here and we know that is opening a lot of doors for us.