Friday, January 31st
It rained hard all night and there was a strong wind. As a result the rain fell sideways and we had to close the windows on one side of our house. That is not good when it is so hot and humid! When we got up this morning the rain had stopped, but that was only a brief respite. By the time we were ready to go into work it was pouring again. As we drove into town we saw flooding everywhere. The Chinese are great to help with road work here but for some reason they don’t seem to know much about drainage. They create more problems than they solve. They build the roads up but they don’t add curbs and gutters. The water flows off the side of the roads and directly into yards and homes. It is tragic!!
I spent the day today working on things that other people needed done. I wrote a newspaper article for the Tongan newspaper about our closing ceremony at Ha’api for Ana. I itemized the list of supplies that we need for our emergency container for Silongo, so that he can send it out for bids. I put together the February calendar of events for Alan so it will be ready to hand out at FHE next Monday, and I wrote up a report, complete with pictures, of the Ha’utu closing ceremony to send to Elder Reynolds in the Area Office. Everything took longer than I had planned and we had lots of interruptions, so I didn’t get some of the things done that I really wanted to do. I am behind on that blessed spreadsheet of expenses for Ha’api and I wanted to take care of that, plus I really want to post some more information on the blog. I am so far behind!! I also need to write the letter to our family and friends. Hopefully we will have a calmer weekend and I can catch up a little bit.
The water man from Ha’utu came to see us today. He brought us an envelope full of cash, $2,500.00 to be exact. That is their part of the project. Every village has to commit to doing their share in order for us to submit their project. This village has been wonderful and so dependable. It took them over 6 months as a village to raise that much money. We took the money from him and then Alan told him that we would use that money to buy diesel fuel for their new engine for the next 6 months. I wish I would have had my camera ready, the look on his face was priceless. Through his tears he expressed his gratitude. He just couldn’t thank us enough. When their old machine was working it took over 6 hours to fill their tank. The new one can fill it in 1 hour and 15 minutes. The deisel fuel we buy them may last longer than 6 months.
We really needed to go shopping today. We are running out of food! We haven’t had time to stop and pick things up so we have just been getting by with what we had at home. It rained so hard that we didn’t even try to buy groceries. Our parking lot was totally flooded by noon and we left for home at 1:30. We had things that needed to be done at Liahona, so we will have to try to go shopping tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will be a little better.
We haven’t been able to wash all week. Partly because of time and partly because of the weather. We washed tonight. We will just have to hang things in the house and turn the fan on. I draw the line at wearing dirty clothes!
