Tonga!

Our Sacrament meeting was really good today. Brother Hamala spoke. We were surprised, because he spoke a couple of weeks ago, but the clerk must have been inspired when he called him on Saturday night and asked him to speak today. Brother Hamala had an experience this last week that he shared in his talk. He drives a big front end loader for a road construction company here. He took a load of dirt to a man’s house and drove to the back to dump it. When he got to the back of the little house, the front tires on the loader started to sink in some mud. When he put it in reverse the back tires sunk too. The tires are about 4 feet high and they were ¾ of the way down in the mud. Even with 4 wheel drive he could not get it unstuck. They worked for an hour, with chains and other big equipment trying to pull him out but nothing worked. He was so worried that he was going to lose his job. Finally he closed his eyes and said a prayer. He said that he had dark glasses on, so no one would have noticed what he was doing. As he prayed, he said he felt like he was in a little box. There was no noise, no outside interference, just him talking to the Lord. When he was finished he felt like he should try just one more time to put it in reverse and back up. This time the wheels didn’t spin. It just backed right out of the mud, no problem. As it moved, he heard a voice in his head saying “everything is going to be alright.” He was really nervous because he had several of his co-workers there trying to help him. He was waisting time, man power and desiel fuel. When the loader was back on the road his boss walked over to him and simply said, “go back to work”. He was quite emotional as he told the story and it was evident that it had really strengthened his testimony of the power of prayer. It was an experience that he will never forget.

Brother Hamala is in our Sunday School class and he has been working hard at getting back on solid footing in the church. He has made some mistakes in his life but now he is setting things right and I can see that the Lord is preparing him for leadership responsibilities in the future. He is very faithful about coming to church and now he is bringing others with him. He and his wife are the ones that brought the young mother and her live in boy friend to our class. She was there again today and he came with her. Our lesson was on the final judgment, which is a little deep for someone that isn’t a member of the church. Vince is a little hard to read. Sometimes he seems to be right with us and other times he looks around like he isn’t paying attention at all. Brother Hamala says that he hears everything and then asks a lot of questions when they are alone together. We are really hoping we can reach him and help him see the importance of joining the church and getting married to the mother of his daughter. They are both crazy over that baby and she deserves to have her parents married to each other.