Tonga!

Thursday, March 20th

I started working on the Niua project again this morning and faced the same problems as yesterday. No matter what I did I couldn’t get it to save on CHAS. Finally, after trying for 2 hours to find a way, I emailed Elder Reynolds and asked for his help. I really hate to bother him, he is soooooo busy but I didn’t know what else to do. Bless that man!!! He called us right up and asked Alan if I needed a counseling session. I think I might, I could go crazy before this is over! He was very sympathetic and said that he had experienced the same problem. He had to call Salt Lake to get help. The problem is that we have an old browser. I had the CHAS installed on Yahoo and some of the new changes in CHAS aren’t recognized there. MERCY!! Elder Reynolds explained to me how to install CHAS on Google and now everything works fine. By the time we got all that worked out I didn’t have time to enter the project. Oh well, we’re in Tonga, I’ll do it tomorrow.
Elder Reynolds also told me that he had given the church travel the OK to book our tickets home. I’m glad that someone will take responsibility for us. Then he told me that he explained to them that we wanted to extend for 5 more months. (That is when he and Sister Reynols will be going home) We should hear from Salt Lake soon. It will be interesting to see when we are scheduled to leave!

After dinner we went back into town to a Fahoko for Brother Walters. It was just like the other ones we have been to, only they held it at the hospital instead of at their home. They keep the bodies in a cooler at the hospital, because they don’t embalm people here. It will take a week to 10 days for all of his family to get here so the funeral won’t be for awhile. There were 3 fahokos going on at the same time, two were outside on the lawn and ours was inside a small chapel at the hospital. People gather to sing hymns, hear a spiritual thought and pray. In Tonga the people always sing really loud. It is hard to hear the spiritual thought when the 2 other groups are singing on either side of you. It is a lovely custom, but much more effective when it is held at the person’s home.