Tonga!

Saturday, March 22nd

We had to get up early and get going today because we had a new missionary couple to meet at the airport this morning. We hurried and got ready, ate breakfast and put a load of wash in and then took all the food that the senior missionaries had donated, over to the new couples house and put it in the cupboards and the fridge. We hadn’t been able to take it earlier because there were still people in there cleaning and getting it ready until last night. Today I was shocked! In the bedroom, there was a bed and that was it. Not one hanger in the closet, not a night stand, a lamp or even a dresser! This will never do. They have to have a place to put their clothes. I will talk to Supi at church tomorrow and get her to help us find some more furniture for them.

Almost all of the senior missionaries went to the airport to meet the plane. The Moons are the new auditors that will be working with the Dasslers in the Service Center. They are from Salt Lake City. It was fun to meet them. They were so happy to see everyone there to greet them and they are a great couple. They will fit right in here and we know we will love them. We just hope they have enough to do to keep them busy. No one knows why they have sent a new set of auditors to Tonga, the Dasslers are complaining that they don’t have enough to do. But the Lord knows why they are here, so we will just have to wait and find out.

We had Movie night tonight. The room was packed! Almost everyone came tonight but we do have a couple that are sick so they didn’t venture out. Even the Moons came, which we all thought was amazing since they had been up since 2:00AM to catch their flight to Tonga. They are very friendly and it was fun to get to know them -- a little. We watched, “The Other Side Of Heaven” tonight. It has been a long time since I have seen it and it is so much more meaningful to me now. Even though it wasn’t actually filmed in Tonga, our island looks just like the one in the movie. The thing that was eerie about it, was the cyclone and the damage that it did. Here it is, 60+ years later, and the damage was exactly the same as what we saw in Ha’api. Even the shacks with tin roofs haven’t changed in all those years. At the end, when he was told it was time for him to go home, I began to realize just how hard it is going to be to leave these islands and these people. I don’t want to think about it.