August 21, 2013
Dear Family,
Never again complain about how slow the internet is, we have
found the slowest in the world. Tonga
now has fiber optics here, but the school can’t sign in for it for a
while. In the meantime, the whole island
is on turtle speed. We went to our
office to start getting organized, but since we don’t have anything except
computers, it was difficult to get anything started.
Life is good here in Tonga.
The temperatures are warm, but a breeze keeps it bearable for us. The natives are wearing jackets, we are
just right, a little on the warm side for us.
We arrived Tuesday, after a short flight from Auckland 3 hours. I say short because nothing can be as long as
the night we spent on the plane flight from LA to Auckland. I wouldn’t recommend it for anything. It was a long miserable night, too hot, too
cram packed, but it didn’t last forever
like I thought it would. Going through customs in Auckland was interesting
and we did a few stupid things, like get lost, but all in all we made it and we
are loving Tonga so far. Auckland had rain and much cooler temperatures. 2 million people live there and they are
crazy drivers who drive on the wrong side of the road. Wow that was different with all the
turnabouts. Busy city with lots of
people. Elder Jacobsen picked us up from
the airport in Auckland, took us to a hotel to get cleaned up, then we met with
the TVET people for a couple of hours.
We got a brief rundown on what our job descriptions may be, met the
people that we would be coordinating with.
We ate lunch with them at restaurant from India which had the most
fantastic food. We could have been
starved at the point, but I’ve never had such a tasty lunch, divine as Sally would say. Lucky for us, the folks that we were meeting
with were well aware of how tired we were and let us go back to the hotel for a
nap. I died, I’m surprised at how tired
I was. We then had dinner with Elder and
Sister Jacobsen the night at a Mongolian BBQ establishment, which was also
good. When we got back to the room at
about 7, we just went to bed. We had to
be up by 4 to get to the airport, for our flight to Tonga. Unfortunately, we were awake, by 3, so we
were ready and had time to start hformulating our thoughts in regards to our
mission call. So excited!!
The trip to Tonga was a piece of cake after what the 13
hours we had spent on Saturday. We were
tired, so we slept as much as we could sleep on the flight. You know how restful that is not. The island appeared much bigger than I had
imagined. Warm ocean breezes, trees and
lots of green greeted us as we stepped of the airplane. We had a crowd of missionaries at the airport
as well as the mission president and his wife who greeted us. What a kind loving group they were. It was so fun getting acquainted with them. The mission president, Elder Tupou and his
wife, Lori were wonderful, enjoyed lunch with them. President Tupou was born in Tonga, then moved
to Alaska until his move back as a mission president. They also sang a song for us before we left
which was amazing. Both had beautiful
voices, a little like being in heaven.
Wow! The next door missionaries
fed us dinner last night which we thoroughly enjoyed, but we were ready for bed
by about 9. I had a good night sleep,
Steve didn’t. spent a lot of time thinking about what we had seen in meeting
some of the teachers on campus. We have
spent the day trying to get our apartment organized. Home sweet home, certainly isn’t like home we
used to know, but it’s part of our adventure. Small but adequate.
We had a good visit with the Jacobsen’s in New Zealand,
found out in part how we managed to get sent to Tonga. The church education department is trying to
get Tonga education up into the 21st century, its probably almost
back into the early 20th century, just try going back 50 years in
time, that’s what is happening here. The
teachers have very little education other than graduating from Liahona and are
trying to make do with little. The
Tongans are a warm loving people, they love their children and are trying to
make the best of what they have. We have
taken pictures, but until we can get the internet working better, they and the
blogspot will have to wait until we can get on the internet. We are waiting for one of the missionary
couples to take us shopping. Steve had
to go take a nap, so I am trying to get caught up with my writing. Elder Webb just checked in so we will go get
some shopping done. That’s important
when there’s no food in the fridge and I have lots of cleaning that I want to
get done. So bye for now.
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