Sunday, March 30, 2014

Today is my first entry with my very own laptop, and that is pretty exciting since I wasn’t sure I was even going to get it considering it was sent to Tonga.  The mail and delivery system here isn’t the greatest and sometimes things take forever to arrive.  We only had to pay $100 pa`anga’s duty which was a bargain for here. It started out at about $850. But Steve was able to talk them down when the gentleman at the post office realized what we really had then received permission to cut the duty down.  We were really excited about that.

Today has been another busy Sunday.  I was called to help with the music in the primary but when they sustained me, in addition to playing the music, I was also called to be a music instructor, which is a little hard  to do when you have to play the piano.  But I’m not sure how to play the piano for primary if there is no piano, so I am in a double jeopardy situation at this point.  The wards here have a real problem with finding people who can play any music.  However, our ward is luckier than most because we have 2 missionaries who can play and one self-taught music teacher who was just put in as the stake young women’s president.  So in essence that really means that Sister Aland plays lot for Sacrament meeting.

We had our missionary choir practice this afternoon for an hour, then a fireside tonight where we performed 2 numbers, which by the way were very good.  I ended up playing the music for the opening and closing hymns, since there are no piano players in the Nuku`alofa 10^th ward either.  They were delighted to be able to sing with a piano, if you can call what I played a piano.  It was actually a Clavinova, an old one at that, but it worked.  The keys and the pedals were strange, but I got along ok.

Life continues to amaze me in the things that we are learning.  We continue to find new jobs, new lessons to learn with the new jobs.  We are working with people who are so willing to learn, visiting with them and getting to know them better.  We are finding that we are a small cog in the grand scheme of things.  Heavenly Father certainly has his hand in what is happening in the world.  We have had another piano recital which certainly is exciting.  We have found however, that because of the volume of people who want lessons, we need to focus on those people who want to hold a music job when they complete our 8 week course.  Those of us who have had years of experience playing, know that 8 weeks is only a very small period of time to learn to play the piano.  We do however have those who have a great desire to learn, so they really put their hearts and minds to learning everything they can and pay the price to practice.  We have a husband and wife team who are learning in another stake.  She is the primary president and I think he is in the bishopric.  He has great big hands that almost don’t fit the keyboard, but they are really dedicated.  I think that probably we will award a keyboard to them.  Several of the younger students also want to learn, but don’t put forth the effort to practice, partly because they don’t have the availability of having a keyboard to practice, partly because they don’t understand English.  I suppose that is a universal problem, they just don’t want to pay the price to be able to play.  The Tongans are, as a whole, very musical, but they have gotten by without a piano and  some don’t see the need for the piano. I guess though we will just plant the seeds and hope that someone can pick up and the ball and run with it.

At a recent home evening, a couple who were serving their mission in Ha`apai and now transferred to Tonga, gave a slide show presentation showing what happened during cyclone Ian while they were there.  It was quite an eye opener.  They were afraid for their lives.  The roof on their house was torn off and they had many inches of water in their house.  They spent a lot of their time after that cooking to try to feed the multitudes of people in Ha`apai who were left with nothing.  I think they also had to live in the church for awhile until their home could be fixed so they could move back in.  Another couple, the Mailei’s who were working here, were transferred to Ha `apai, so they could help with the building effort.  The church is now working on the plan to build 179 homes for the members who live on the island.  In the process they will also teach members how to oversee the construction of 9 homes, then when completed, each of them will then oversee the construction of other homes.  The church is trying to teach some of the people a trade, but also want the people to take a vested interest so they can sustain themselves and others after the church pulls out.  The home evening was a very emotional event for the Va`enuku’s.  They have been extra hard workers in teaching and training their friends.  They originally came from Utah, but have family here in the islands.  We have certainly loved getting to know them.

We are looking forward to conference, but we get the sessions a week late.  However, Elder Hamblin is going to download them and possibly we will be able to view conference earlier.  We did get to see the women’s conference, which was really good, with only a few technical difficulties.  We also got to see the priesthood meeting.  I was certainly impressed with that meeting, especially liked Elder Oaks talk on the priesthood.  I just read a book by Sheri Dew, “Women and the Priesthood” which was exceptional written along the same lines as Elder Oaks talk.  I really loved it and have read and reread it.  It’s well worth reading and pondering over.