We had a new couple arrive today, the Alands. They are from St. George but he used to be a principal in Duchene, and she was a teacher there. They are ITEP missionaries and they will be working with the teachers here. We went out to the airport to meet them. It is always fun to have new missionaries. We have a great group right now but we will start losing one couple a month pretty soon. Dr. Williams and his wife leave the end of October and then the Beans leave in December. Both of them are being replaced so our numbers will stay about the same.
On Friday afternoon there was an assembly at the school. The principal had asked our kids to do the puppet show for the whole student body. They were a little nervous about doing it for their peers. It is meant to be done for young children and they were afraid that everyone would laugh at them. They didn’t! In fact, they were a great audience. They responded to all of the humor and the puppets responded to the audience reaction. There was some adlibing going on, but it was all in Tongan so we don’t know exactly what they said. The Liahona High School principal was sitting right next to us and she loved it, so it must have been ok. Once again it was a huge success and the cast came away feeling very good about their experience. At the end of the assembly, some of the cast members explained where they had been with the show and how amazing the experience had been for them. It was a perfect ending to their time at Liahona. They take their final exams in the next couple of weeks and then they will all graduate.
We are so grateful for their help with this project. The problem now is that we are getting calls from schools all over the island wanting us to come and bring the puppet show. WE WOULD LOVE TO!! But these great kids can’t do it again. There is no more time. They have to prepare for their finals. We are going to have to work something out for the next school year. We have to get this message out all across the island.
The kids in the cast and their teacher have all come up to us and thanked us for giving them this experience. We keep thanking them, they did all the work. But they tell us that they will always remember this experience. Some of them want to go on to be teachers now and other teachers at Liahona are talking about using puppet shows in their classrooms. YES!!! I feel sooooooooooooo good about how this all turned out!!
