Tonga!

Thursday, Feb. 6th

It is Kimi’s birthday in Tonga, but we will wait to call her on her birthday in America. I am thinking a lot about her today and giving thanks that she is part of our family. She has brought such joy and happiness into all of our lives. We are so grateful that she is finding that same joy and happiness in her own life now, with Mike and Grace. It is amazing how life comes full circle.

A lady came into our office today to ask for some help with office supplies. She is from Ha’api and her office was severely damaged and all of her equipment was ruined. She told us that she rode out the cyclone in a cupboard in one corner of her office. She stayed in there for hours, praying that she would not die. She was all alone and scared to death by the noise. She couldn’t see it, but she could hear things hitting her building and then parts of it just blew away. That had to be terrifying! She works with family services up there and is trying to organize a youth group to go out and help with the clean up. She said that people are just sitting around waiting for someone to come and do it for them instead of standing up and doing the work themselves. She is a little disgusted about that. We told her about our missionaries and she is going to try to organize some youth to go out and help them. We talked to her for most of the morning.

On the way home we stopped for a doughnut. Yummy!!! It is not good that they opened this business. We let that suffice for lunch and then I fixed pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. I am going to have to go back to the store and see if there are any pork chops left. They were really pricy, but they have tasted sooooooo good to us.

We went to the temple tonight. It was so good to be able to go back to the temple. It has been closed for two weeks for cleaning and they laid some new marble floors. They are beautiful!!! We were wishing and hoping that the new film would get here, but didn’t really think it would happen. No one seems to know how long it will be before it is translated into Tongan. We are really anxious to see it.