Tonga!

Sunday, March 16th

As soon as we were finished with breakfast, I ran over to the school to check the internet. Dave and Alisha are having their baby today. When I got there, there was a note from Dave telling me that they were at the hospital. I responded and then checked a couple of more emails. By the time I checked back there was a note from him saying, “He’s Here!! Mommy and baby did awesome!! Just as I read that, Alan walked in and we called Dave on the Ipad. We were able to see our beautiful new grandson and his gorgeous mother. I couldn’t believe how good she looked right after having a baby! He was just about an hour old, all cleaned up and sucking the daylights out of his fingers. SOOOOOOO CUTE!!! This is when it gets really hard to be so far away from home. My arms ache to hold him and love him. Babies need to know their grandmas!! I’m glad that Julie will be there to love him for now.

After we talked to Dave and Alisha, we had to hurry home to get ready for church. I was speaking in Sacrament meeting today ---- or so I thought. When we got there they told me that it was High Council Sunday and they had other speakers. If they had time I could bear my testimony. WHAT!!! Could they not have told me that sooner?? I was to talk about the Relief Society. The birthday is tomorrow, not next week or next month. Why did they have a member of the Stake Primary Presidency come and talk about the primary??? Sometimes things just don’t make sense to me over here. In the end I didn’t talk.

In the midst of all that madness, the sister who was to give the Relief Society lesson today, didn’t show up. I am the first councilor, who is over the teachers, but no one bothered to tell me about it. Alan and I taught our Sunday School class and when I got to RS, I found out she wasn’t there. The president and the other councilor got together during Sunday School class time and asked someone to teach it. It all turned out well and we had a good lesson, I just wondered why I went to church today. Everything was totally crazy!

On Friday, we gave some money to Lopete, to help the 4 boys who have lost their parents. The oldest 2, the 14 year old and the 11 year old, came up to us at church and thanked us for helping them to have food. Alan and I just looked at those boys and I hugged them while Alan asked what else they needed. It about broke our hearts! They don’t have shoes and they only own the clothes on their backs. We are hoping that some of the moms and dads in the ward who have young boys will donate some clothes for them, but if not we will go buy them some. They don’t have shoes, they don’t have anything. I just want to hug them all the time, so that they know that somebody loves them. They are such sweet, humble young men.

When we got home from church I finished the sweet and sour meatballs and made some rice. I barely got it finished before it was time to go to the dinner. That was so frustrating! I wanted to call Dave and Alisha again.

Our President’s dinner turned our really nice. We had tons of food and all of it was yummy. We had the new dentist and his wife introduce themselves and then the Vai’nuku’s said a few words. They have been serving in Ha’api and they were there during Cyclone Ian. They didn’t talk about that, they will do that at a FHE. Alan told everyone that we had a new grandson and people wanted to know how many grandchildren we had. When we said that we had 12, Elder Vai'nuku, who served his mission with Alan and is our age, told us that they have 45 grandchildren with one on the way and 9 great grandchildren. Holy Cow!!! Greg had better get his act together, we have a long way to go!!!