September 17, 2013

September 17, 2013

I don’t know about you, but it seems like time is like the wind in Rexburg and it is truly flying.  There is so much going on with so many things happening that it makes it really hard to keep up with what I need to write.  Because of all of the happenings with grandpa, I’m not sure where to begin.  Maybe I’ll start with Monday, so that I can keep, my thoughts organized.  Humm… we had a really fun home evening with the Senior missionaries.  Elder and Sister Dassler, who are from California, by way of Germany had prepared a game using the new info on the presidents of the church on their website.  I had been at that site earlier in the day, but because of the speed of the internet here, I was unable to get to see much, but I was impressed with the information.  Anyway, we divided into groups, then had to answer questions about the prophets.  It was very information and fun, but I couldn’t name the prophets in order of their, hum, all I can think of is reign, but anyway, I couldn’t think of the song from Primary but luckily Elder Webb was able to sing it.   We also met with the administrators of Liahona High School, to discuss what they felt like the needs were.  It was good to get their perspective on what the future plans for the school was.

Tuesday we had a busy day visiting teachers and classes and writing reports to the area directors.  We also spent a lot of time of the phone, trying to get updates on dad.  I do know that Tuesday night when I was reading my scriptures  I felt like dad came to say goodbye to me.  I looked around the room to see if he was there, which he wasn’t.  During our evening prayers, I knew he was getting ready to go, and was awake early the next morning.  Now you have to remember that my day is one day ahead of yours, so my timeline is a little different than yours.   Tuesday evening, we helped prepare the food and feed 34 new missionaries at  the mission home.  Holy Cow, those young men and one set of sister missionaries were hungary.  They ate piles of food and they said they “loved Tongan” food.  Little did they know, they got very little Tongan food, since they had fried chicken, cole slaw, rolls, Papaya, rice and a drink.  I can’t remember if we fed them dessert.  They did put away a lot of food.  It was fun watching them, but they were really tired.  Now for the fun part of this day.  Before I went to the mission home, I decided that we needed some dessert.  So remember, I don’t have any recipes, but I thought I had all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies.  Only problem, 1 egg.  I found a recipe on the back of the chocolate chip package, and since I had only 1 egg, I cut the recipe in half.  Next problem, no Crisco, that is a pretty rare commodity here, but I did have enough butter since I halfed the recipe.  Again, no problem.  However, there is no such thing as a mix master.  So a fork would have to do, which I did pretty good whipping up the egg and the butter.  Sugar is non refined, so it had to do for the white and the brown sugar.  Last of all, no cookie sheets, so the cookie became a bar cookie.  Worked ok and so we had a little dessert after we were finished for the day.  That was a mile stone, because now I knew I could cook and so I started to experiment.  So far so good, nothing too terribly bad, but not so good either.  So if anyone would like to send recipes via email, that would be great.

 Wednesday, again another day at the school.  I went over to the mission home again to help with breakfast to feed this hungry group of young people.  They put away piles of pancakes, sausage, hash browns, fried rice because we had a ton of rice left over from the night before.  Again, they ate heartily. I washed a lot of dishes, to keep Sister Tupou from having to spend all morning doing dishes.  I had forgotten that she has a housekeeper who comes in daily to help her in her home.  They have so many meetings, that she doesn’t have time for a lot of meal preparation, and it is a job for Lani.  Just before I was ready to go home,  Sister Tupou asked if I could play the piano for a musical number at the mission meeting at 9:30.  So I hurried home, got a little washing done, which is something that never goes away.  When we got to the Nauvoo chapel, Sister Hamblin informed me that we had 2 musical numbers instead of the one I was aware of.  So again, my years of training came into good use.  It’s amazing how often I have been asked to accompany the mission president, his wife and Brother and Sister Hamblin.  It’s a pretty amazing experience to do that, since they have wonderful, beautiful voices.  I love to listen to them and the spirit they have when they sing.  They sound like angels.   When Steve and I were taking a walk that night, I had a teacher from the school stop and ask if I would talk to a ward relief society group on Friday night.  She thought maybe a good topic would be health and hygiene, about 7-10 sisters usually attended. So no big deal.  We arranged for her to come pick us up, since we don’t have a car and I have a disposition to getting lost easily.

Thursday morning, I was awake early, about 5:15, and had the thought that I needed to call home.  I tried to call Sally, but she didn’t answer and that was about 6:30 our time.  About that time, I got a brief call from Cyndee, who told me to call Sally.  I had a devil of a time, getting the phones to work, but finally was able to talk to Connie, who gave me the information about dad, and the happenings of the day.  Again, we tried to call kids, but the phone wouldn’t work and the internet here, sometimes goes onto snail speed.  Thankfully, everybody there was communicating and got the word.  I know there was some confusion, but I am grateful that Sally, Connie, Amy and David were there to help mom pick up the pieces.  Steve and I  got a car and went for a ride by ourselves to the blow holes that are close to us.  We spent an hour or so, just watching the waves come in and go out.  It was the closest place I could think of to just have time to think about dad.  It was peaceful and healing.  That night we had many of our neighbors check on us, what a thoughtful group of people.  It’s surprising how fast the word gets out and how many kindnesses were offered.

Friday, the big day of the relief society meeting, got my talk ready, felt pretty good about it.  But  during the morning, Sister Hamblin called and needed to set up a practice since another musical number is needed for the Tongan national radio again.  The only time we could pack it in was 6pm, just before our ride would come at 630.  We got the practice done in good time, when we were asked if we would like to go to the beach on Saturday with the Hamblins and the Tupou’s.  Well, of course, who wouldn’t want to go to the beach at 7am and spend the day.  When we got to our relief society meeting, we sat down and the “honored” guests, and I mean honored.  The relief society president promoted us both to Dr’s and I was going to talk to the sisters about nutrition and weight loss.  This wasn’t so bad, but from the time we walked in the building, the sisters kept bringing in food.  And not only was there 7 sisters in attendance, there was also the bishop and 12 other people.  I just about died, not only was I not a Dr., but I was not prepared for nutrition and weight loss.  I could wing that a little, after stammering for a few minutes, but I could tell that these poor sisters could not understand 1 word of English.  Luckily the sister who had escorted  us to the meeting was bilingual which was good for us.  We were treated like royalty and the sisters certainly had a feast fit for the King.  I was really embarrassed though when the sister told us that they would not get up to take any food until we filled our plates,  so we ate a little bit of everything except the raw fish, which they seemed to relish.  I can’t remember the name of  sister who asked that we talk, but after we left, she took us into Nuku`alofa for ice cream.  She was very gracious and even though I didn’t do my part, the sisters at the Malopa ward were very kind and grateful that 2 palangi’s(white) visited their ward.  It was certainly an experience.

Saturday was a wonderful day on the beach.  We got a lot of pictures, it was nice to be able to reflect.  Our friends were gracious and we enjoyed the morning.  As you can tell from the pictures, the water was so spectacular, the sky was clear so the sun was warm and always there was a light breeze that kept it from being too hot.  However, we did come home  with our share of sun.  We finished off the day at the market and a dinner at a new Chinese restaurant in town, which was really good.

Sunday, we had a dinner with the Tupou family and the senior  missionaries .   I even made a chicken/rice curry that was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself;  just a nice quiet day, with a few phone calls.  We had a spiritual feast at church, so we just reflected.  It was good.

So now we are in another week.  Steve was asked by the mission president if he would consider looking at a piano that needs to be restored, that belonged to Queen Salote, who was a very talented musician.  We went to look at it today and it is in pretty bad condition.  It will take a lot of work and we aren’t sure that it can be done.  Steve will have to get on line to see if he can even get any parts, its from the late 1920’s and hasn’t been taken care of very well.  The mission president is really hoping that something can be done to restore it, but we aren’t sure if the strings or the sound board is in good enough condition to restore.  Steve will give it a try, but we aren’t sure at this point if it is possible.  Oh well, another thing to pray about.  Somehow, things that Heavenly Father wants to get done, somehow get done.  We just need more faith.  Time to quit,  so  I’ll just have end this lengthy epistle.  We are happy and loving our mission.  We pray for you and love you all.  Ofa `atu.