Tonga!

Thursday, January 23rd, 2014

We were able to pretty much finish up moving into our office today. They have finished all the painting and we have new blinds on our window. Our carpet is nasty, but they are going to replace it in 4-6 weeks. That should be fun, we will get to do this all over again!

I was able to get everything filed that has been stacking up on my desk these last 2 weeks. That felt good!! I can see my desk again. I now have a million emails that I need to go through and put in folders, delete or respond to. That will take me several hours.

On the way home for lunch today, we asked our secretary, Tiamani, what she likes to eat for breakfast. She told us that she never eats breakfast or lunch. She comes from a poor family and they only eat one meal a day. We often give her treats at the office but we never knew that that was all she got to eat during the day. She would never complain and she donates all of her time to the Lord. She works for us - as a volunteer - in the mornings and then she spends most of her time in the afternoon at the temple. While the temple has been closed, she has been helping one of the teachers at Liahona get her room ready for the new school year. This young woman is amazing! She will make a wonderful missionary, but she is so shy, we are worried that she will have a hard time at first.

When we got back to Liahona, we went to the FM department and met two men from the village of Fo’ui. We have been working for months to get them some desks for the students that they help in a night school they have there. They tutor the students who are having a hard time to make sure that they can pass the state tests. We were able to give them 30 desks that Liahona is getting rid of. They aren’t new, but they are in pretty good shape and they will be so much better than sitting on the cement floor! That was a feel good project. I am so happy that we were able to finally make it happen.
After lunch I went over to our Liahona office and started sorting through the paperwork I keep there. Having two offices is hard but we love being able to be close to home in the afternoon. While I was working we got a call saying that they were taking the new machines to Ha’utu. We jumped in the car and ran out there to take some pictures. Quite a few men from the village were there. They are all excited to have the new equipment. We found out that they have not had any water in their homes, except rain water, for the last 3 weeks. Their engine died and could not be repaired again. This new one and the pump got here just in time for school to start. Without water, they could not start school out there. The installation will be done tomorrow so we will go back out and take more pictures. This is the fun part!

Alan had to drive back into town to pick up more chemicals to clean the floor at the Central Pharmacy. We bought them once, for $325.00 and the man who was supposed to do the cleaning took off with them. He used them on another job and has no way of replacing them. We have waited over a month for him because he kept lying to us and saying that he would get it done. This last week we found out that he had used them. Alan was so mad and disappointed. The Bishop that worked with Alan on the pharmacy has talked to the man’s Stake President and we will just let them take care of it. It has been sooooo frustrating! Today we had to buy more chemicals and go a different direction. Alan left two men doing the work and it should be finished tonight. We will be relieved to close this project out!!!
I went back to the office at Liahona and updated some of the journals on CHAS. All of our projects have had to take a back seat while we worked on the cyclone relief. Now we need to get them back up and going. We have a lot of work to finish up here. I also put some more information on the blog. Hopefully I can put some of the pictures of the cyclone damage on this weekend.

It’s Thursday and the temple is closed. We really missed going tonight.