Tonga!

Sunday, Feb. 16th

Church was good today as usual, but it was so hot that we could hardly enjoy it. These last few days have just been awful! I am wishing February away. March and April are the rainy season and we will have to deal with the mold and mildew, but at least it will hopefully cool things down a little. I am worried about March though. They tell us that is the prime time for cyclones and this has been such an unusually hot year that the locals are really worried about it. There is just nothing left on this island to fill our emergency container with, so I am praying that we won’t get hit with any severe weather. I just can’t imagine what we would do.

Our Sunday School class was great and Relief Society was a lot better today. Not one person got up and walked around or caused any commotion. (This is if you don’t find mothers nursing their babies in class distracting.)

Our teacher today was Ungatea. She is in her late 20’s and the mother of one baby boy. The lesson was about families and Ungatea went through the temple for the first time last week and then she and her husband and baby boy were sealed as a family yesterday. She has such a sweet spirit and she did a beautiful job with this lesson. It really is amazing how the Lord put her in this calling, last month, so that she could teach this lesson that will be such a blessing in her life. She expressed how grateful she was for all she learned from it.

We ran home from church so we could get to our singing practice. We are learning two more songs that we can sing at the musical firesides. Having these choir practices every Sunday afternoon is hard for us. Everyone else goes to church at 9:00 in the morning but we go at 11:00, so we barely make it home in time to go.

Our President’s Dinner was really nice tonight. The food is always good, we have great cooks. The Cutlers, the new dentists who are working here for 6 weeks, came and introduced themselves. They are really wonderful people and they will be a great blessing to the people of Tonga. Before they leave, a missionary dentist and his wife will arrive. They will serve for 18 months and that means that we will have a full time dentist here as long as we are here.

President Tupou talked about what is happening in the mission. He talks about ‘Hastening the Work” at the musical firesides that we go to and he also has worked on that principle with the Stake Presidents and Bishops. They set goals in each ward of how many baptisims they will have. At the first of the year wards talked about maybe 25 baptisms. After being encouraged to “Hasten the Work” they now are going for 60 -- for each ward! It will be exciting to see the work move forward here in the next few months.