The week in photos!

This one is for Braxton and Boone to dream about.  This is Lolo, he's in our ward and teaches welding at Liahona.  He wanted "speed" for his bike, so he bought the accessories, added them to his bike and now he has a motor bike.  He says it will go 65 km/hr!

This is Alipate, he is the drafting teacher.  As you can see we

 gotten really close to all the teachers.  He is a Bishop in his ward and wants us to come to the beach
with his family for a Tongan feast.  We drove by his home last night when we went for a ride and it is very humble to say the least, but they still want to do things for you!

The electronics teacher with a couple of students.  The light is powered with low voltage power.  Everything here is 240 volt.  He is a convert to the church and left a  higher paying job, with the power company to come work for the church at Liahona High School. 

 

Tomatoes are sold in bunches, you can't refrigerate them, so SALSA is the answer.  I am the salsa king!!!!  We took some to home evening along with cake and ice cream, (some combo) They foundered on it and we came back with an empty bowl.

I got assigned the papaya cleaning also.  Mom makes the best

jam with it....

This is the local Tongan bus system...it's only about half full, no one's on top and only one is hanging out...we are waiting for him to turn around.  

Saturday we found a new shopping mall to go to.  This one specializes in clothing!  I was able to find two lovely shirts for 5.00 pa`anga each.  That's around $3.00 each!

This is a real super market.  I would take some

pictures of the inside, but you would probably request that we come home early!  Mom loves grocery shopping, as you know, so this is really a special treat.  It takes 5 or 6 stops just to find the necessities each week.   Broulim's will be too easy when we get home!!!

 This is a common picture of the roads here.  It is really beautiful to drive around and I'm getting acclimated to the wrong side of the road.  The narrow roads are something else though, barely fits one car, let alone two.  At night it is complicated by people walking down the road and they seem to always be wearing black.

At Kolovai the bats all congregate in a few trees.  There are really 100's of these Fox Bats in the trees.  They are fun to watch as they land and swing down and wrap their wings around their body.  Hanging there, they are probably at least 18" long. 

We are softies for the local art.  This was carved by one of the Bishops who is a full time carver.

 Oh, I finally got out my stuff and carved a piece of wood I brought with me.  Finding a little paint was whole other story.

Viliami teaches woods and is one of our projects!  Their quality leaves a lot to be desired, but he is

very willing to learn.  Everything they make here has to have a domestic use.  They don't waste anything and do a lot with recycled wood and metal.

 

So much has happened already this week, but we had a memorable experience on Tuesday that we want to write about.  We were set apart to work as ordinance workers at the Temple by President Hopoate.  We were told things that he had no knowledge of, about our mission here on the island, teaching the students, inspiration that we would receive regarding that work.  He blessed Steve that work that he was doing was very important to the students at the school and that they would become part of our family, which our work would carry on long after we were gone from the island, our names would be blessed.  I wish that I could remember the exact words, but I did cry through most of it, because Tuesday morning we were again given another big assignment, to present a program to the student body regarding the TVET work that we are doing and to showcase the students that were involved.  Next year, all students will be taking a vocational class as part of their graduation requirements, and our program is to introduce TVET to the students.  Our principle, Fehi, is such a wonderful lady, who has a great vision for Liahona, together with the HOD, head of department, came up with the idea and gave us the word. Our heads were spinning with a thousand thoughts when we went to meet with the Temple President.  He had no idea of what was happening in our lives.  He blessed us with the understanding of the deeper meaning of the temple ordinances, and that many would rejoice and meet us when we reached the other side, both our family at home and our Tongan family.  He also blessed us that the worries and anxieties about our family would no longer be a problem and that we could get on with our work.  I can’t even begin to tell a tenth of the wonderful blessings that we were given, but we were so overcome with the spirit of prophecy that President Hopoate had, that it was hard to contain our feelings.  After the blessings, when we were just visiting about our job at the temple, President Hopoate told us that during the time he was blessing us, 2 scriptures kept coming to him, D&C 23:3 and 130:2.  He felt a very strong impression of our family as he was setting us apart.  He also stated that he knew we would have an eternal family and friends from both Home and Tonga.

During the time we were talking to him, there were 2 earthquake tremors that we –felt, and he said, “isn’t it wonderful to be in the temple when that happens, where We are safe.  When we talked to some of our neighbors who felt the tremors at the school, they said the tremors were about 5.7 on the ricktor(can’t think of the correct spelling) scale, which is pretty average for Tonga.  I didn’t know they had earthquakes, so another new experience.

So, now we have worked many hours on a Power point presentation that will be given on Monday morning at an assembly for the students and the teachers.  We have about 45 slides now, with more to add tomorrow.  We have learned many things about the computer and especially about power point, it’s been quite a learning curve.  We are finally very comfortable with our computer, but realize that we still have much to learn.  One of the IT guys who has helped get us set up on the church employee site, told us to use our computer, not the one the church had for us because ours is much better, faster than theirs, with more power.  So thanks to Blake, we are ahead of the game and are set with great potential.  We have even learned how to move pictures from the camera to the hard drive, to power point, from other computers.  We are getting pretty savvy about our work, however, we definitely are not up to speed with the capabilities of our computer. 

I am learning more new songs to play for my friends.  I was given a piece to play that I haven’t played for years and when I saw it had 6 flats, I just about croaked on the spot.  I haven’t played anything with 6 flats for years, so I’ve had to practice again and again and again, and again.  Kids remember what I said about practicing.  You can never practice enough, but even at my age, practice is still super important.  I did learn something new from Sister Hamblin though that has been very helpful.  On the piece that I am playing, there are also a lot of 16^th notes.  She told me to play the 16^th notes as a chord and that would help my fingers remember where they needed to be when playing them separately.  It does help and gradually my fingers are remembering where they need to be.  It was a good lesson.

We also found out after the radio broadcast, that we have been given permission to start on the restoration of Queen Salote’s piano.  We just about passed out on that one, because we figured that with the cost and the complexity of the project that it would be abandoned, but no such luck.  We are not sure how that is going to happen.  We are going to need lots of prayers, faith and blessings to get that one going.

We ended up doing our power point presentation to the teachers Friday morning, we also had more pictures come in, that had to be added.  We are still trying to finish the production for Monday, we are not sure what time that is happening. We are currently working on the bells and whistles, with the zoom in and out kind of thing. 

Thursday night was our first night serving as ordinance workers at the temple, it was a huge session, every seat taken, plus a few extra seats.  There was enough that we had to have a second couple help.  It was great to be back in the temple as ordinance workers.  We met one of the sisters who works in the office that served in the Pocatello mission, I think in 2012.  She had fond memories of Idaho.

I got to teach a lesson in relief society today, which was different.  A lot of the older Tongan sisters don’t understand much English so they took naps.   The ladies are basically very shy and don’t say much, so some of the lessons just don’t work very well.

We went to a ward function, which was a high priest, elder’s quorum activity that was supposed to start at 6.  We were late because I was too tired to move myself,  we showed up about 30 minutes late.  We were told it would just be an activity, we ate a hurried dinner.  So ….. we started on Tonga time, about 2 hours later, with a lot of fun, lots of laughs and of course, a late night snack, fried chicken, manioke, hot dogs, chocolate cake.  I took a piece of cake, a small one, then the bishop told us, that was not enough, because we didn’t have ice cream and we had to have ice cream.  So what do we get, a huge helping each of ice cream and cake again!  Finally, at about 10, we were told we probably needed to go home because we needed our beauty rest.  We certainly agreed with that and left.

Hum…  this informational review is getting much too wordy and much too long.  Time to quit.  Everyone enjoy conference, we won’t get to see it until next week.  Have a good week.  Love to you all.  Ofa`atu.