Tonga!

Sunday, March 9th

Sister Mitchell and I went in to church early for our presidency meeting today. We planned our Relief Society Birthday Party for this next Friday night. We haven’t had any activities this quarter because of the weather, so the Bishop is giving us a huge budget for this party. We are going to have steak and fish with Kamala, Tongan Yams, a salad, rolls and dessert. We are having it down at the Warf, looking out over the ocean, so it should be fun.

Lopete, the 2nd counselor in the bishopric, came to our meeting to talk to us. He has found 4 young boys that he wants us to help him with. They live somewhere close to him. Both of their parents have died, I don’t know how. They are living with their grandfather, their aunt and her 5 children and 5 other people. I don’t know if those last 5 are relatives or not, just that there are 14 people living in this house. The oldest boy, who is 14, is trying to take care of his little brothers. He has dropped out of school and he goes from house to house every day looking for jobs to do to earn some money to buy food for them to eat at lunch. The aunt takes care of her children but she doesn’t pay any attention to these boys. Lopete asked the grandfather for permission to bring them to church and to provide an education for them. He agreed because their parents were members of the church and he wants them to follow the path their parents would have wanted them to be on. All the rest of the family is Wesleyan and that is part of the reason that no one pays much attention to them. The bishop is trying to get the oldest one into school at Liahona and we are trying to help them with some school uniforms and food each day for lunch. We met them at church today and they are darling young men. It is just the saddest situation. It about broke my heart to hear their story and see the sad look in their eyes. We will also try to give them all the love we can while were are here. Alan and I both just can’t get them out of our minds. We will do all we can to help them.

There weren’t a lot of people at church today, I don’t know why. But our meetings were good. Our Sunday school class was small but we had a great lesson and we have developed such a love for the people in our class. I can’t even think about leaving them.
We came home to choir practice, we have a fireside on Tuesday. Then we ate dinner------------- we were STARVING!!!! And then relaxed for awhile and went for a walk. It was a good day.