Tonga!

Monday, March 17th

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!! Alan and I got engaged 40 years ago today!!! Wow, how the years have flown by!

I got up this morning to a great case of the Tongan Crud. I couldn’t believe it. We had our closing ceremony today for the Lavengatonga Water Project. We have been working on that project for our whole mission and today I had to miss the closing ceremony. I was so frustrated and just plain mad! How did this happen?? I don’t know if I ate something that didn’t agree with me or if I got the bug that the seniors are passing around. Either way, it is just the worst possible day to be sick. It about killed me to stay home when Alan left for the office this morning. I have only missed 3 days of work while we have been on our mission, why did today have to be one of them???

Alan called a couple of times, hoping I would be feeling better, but I didn’t dare leave the house. Lavengatonga is on the far eastern coast of the island and it is a very poor village. There are no bathrooms that I would want to go in over there. I just stayed home and felt sorry for myself.
When Alan got home he brought Ana with him. She had a car full of food that the village had given to us. She wanted to make sure that I got everything I wanted. It was all I could do to even look at it today. I didn’t want any of it, but we took some so that her feelings wouldn’t be hurt. We gave the rest of it to her and to our secretary, Tiamani, who went to the ceremony to help her today. The village also sent gifts to me. Tongan fans and Tongan plaques for Alan. It was a huge sacrifice for that village. They were very generous and very grateful for all we had done to help them get their new stand and water tank. That has been a long and often difficult project. We are truly grateful to have it to this point and be able to close it.

I had some chicken noodle soup and a little bread pudding for dinner tonight. It went right straight through me. I hope this doesn’t mean that I will have to stay here again tomorrow. This house is starting to close in on me!!