Tonga!

Friday, March 14th

When I got up this morning my hip still wasn’t feeling right. Sometimes it is fine and then other times it hurts again. It seems to change with how I sit or how I walk on it. I didn’t see any reason to sit around the house, so I got ready and we went into work. I was planning to work on the Niua water project that we need to submit, but Elder Tukuafu called and wanted us to work on a different project. He has heard about a man that lives here that has leprosy. He has been in the hospital for 3 years and now the Red Cross is going to build him a small house. Elder Tukuafu would like us to partner with the Red Cross and see what we can do to help. Evidently the man is a member of the church. He has 2 sons, one is 17 and the other is 15. They both have the disease too, but are being treated with medication so they are doing well. Just the fact that they are infected has kept them out of school so they are working for a man who took pity on them. They live behind his business in a van. It is so sad!!! Where has the bishop and the stake president been through all of this??? Elder Tukuafu will get to the bottom of that. We had decided not to start any more projects, but when the Area Seventy asks you to do one. You do it. We won’t be here to see if finished, but we will do our best to help where we can.

I got my hair cut today. Baby, the lady who cut my hair when we first got here, is back and she cut my hair today. It feels good to have it short again. When we were done there, we stopped at the church to help get the food ready for our Relief Society Birthday Party tonight. There were plenty of people there already working so they didn’t need my help. I was grateful, I really didn’t want to stand there all afternoon. We went home and I was able to rest for a couple of hours before we left for the party.

We had our RS Birthday Party at the Warf. It was fun to go a little early and watch the sun set from the Warf. We didn’t have a great sunset tonight but we did get to see some of the fishing boats come in. We made a real point of the fact that we were going to start this party at 7:00. We were there, we got the food there on time, but there were only 6 people there at 7:20. We should have just started to teach them all that we meant it, but we didn’t. Most of the ward showed up at 8:00 but the bishop and the councilor in the RS who was conducting, didn’t come until 8:30. We did start without those two. We ate about 20 to 9:00, way too late for us!!! We had sword fish, which was good, but would have been really good if it had been hot. The macarroni salad had been out in the heat for 2 hours. I really don’t know how these people don’t get sick. I was afraid to eat most of the food on my plate. When we got home we drank some coke to kill all the bad stuff. MERCY!! I guess we just have to realize that we are not going to change these people or their habits. That was probably our last party so I am not going to worry about it any more.