Tonga!

Saturday, January 18th

We slept in until almost 7:00 today and we were so glad to have a day off. WRONG!!! I did one load of wash and then we went into town to Office Supply to buy more supplies for the hygiene kits. We did some quick shopping and then headed to the office to continue the printing. Just when I got a good start, the phone rang. It was Ana. She was working at the fair and couldn’t leave her booth. She got a call from Howard Niu. He and the Reynolds and Steve went to Ha’api on the plane at 7:00 this morning. They were calling to tell us to put 500 loaves of bread and some butter on the 2:00 plane and send them up to Ha’api. We got the call at 11:30 and it is a 45 minute drive to the airport, let alone gathering 500 loaves of bread!!! Another impossible task. We called the largest bakery here and they started gathering bread for us. They also have cases of butter. They said they would call us back when they knew if they could meet the order.

In the meantime, I kept printing the hygiene kit information. Just as I was running off the last 3 pages, Ana walked into the office. One of her good friends, that often helps her at the fair, came to the fair and offered to help her. She didn’t know why, but she just felt that Ana might need help today. (She is a member of the church and thankfully she is in tune with the Spirit). That made it so Ana could come and help us with the bread. We got a call saying that the bread company had enough bread and butter and they would deliver it to the airport. We just had enough time to meet them and get it on the plane. (by this time my last 3 pages were copied)

We left immediately and stopped at a couple of stores along the way to pick up boxes that we could put the bread in at the airport. We all arrived at the airport about the same time and started assembling boxes and loading them with bread. I had taken tape and a marker so we could label the boxes. There was a young sister missionary going on that flight. She was returning home from her mission in Fiji. Her family does not belong to the church but by some miracle, their house was not destroyed in the cyclone when everything around them is gone. There was some damage, but it is still livable. She has already explained to them that it was a blessing because she was serving a mission for the Lord.

We had a few loaves of bread that we couldn’t get into the boxes. We taped them together and she took them with her on the plane. She held them on her lap for the flight. She was given the responsibility of making sure that the bread was delivered to the missionaries and no one else.

Once the plane was loaded we went back to the office, dropped Ana off , picked up the hygiene supplies and then headed back to Liahona to assemble the kits. We took everything to the Service Center and put them out on the large conference table. There are 6 lessons and all but two have at least 20 pages in them. We walked around that table at least 100 times, until we were not only tired but also DIZZY!!! Dr. and Sister Coons, the dentist and his wife, saw what we were doing and they helped us for the last ½ hour. We were so grateful! When we got home there were no leftovers to eat so I cooked some pancakes and eggs and we called it good. I made a cake for the President’s Dinner tomorrow night, we brought in the sheets that we had washed this morning and made the bed. While the cake was baking I wrote in my journal. Once the cake was cooled and frosted we FELL INTO BED ---- EXHAUSTED!! Once again I thought, how did we ever get all of that done?