June 6, 2014

June 6, 2013

Again we have had a week of opportunities singing as a missionary choir which has been a little on the unusual side of normal.  We first sang a musical fireside in a village, that seemed like it was in the outer most regions of the mission, which it was.  The chapel was small and I think the missionaries filled in about a third of the chapel.  We sang “Love One Another”, Garth and Sandy Hamblin sang, “ Jesus, Redeemer of My Soul” which is an absolutely beautiful number that was written for the production, Joseph Smith, The Prophet, which I absolutely love.  The words were written by Orson F . Whitney and put to music by Rob Gardener.  It is a slow reflective piece of music with a lot of passion in it. It makes me think about the persecution and hardships that Joseph and Emma endured at the hands of the enemies of God.  I think I will include the words so that I don’t forget if I can’t get this music home .

                Savior, Redeemer of my soul,  Whose mighty hand hath made me whole, Whose wonderous power hath raised me up And filled my sweet my bitter cup!   What tongue my gratitude can tell, O gracious God of Isreal.  Never can I repay thee, Lord, But I can love thee.  Thy pure word, Hath it not been my one delight, My joy by day, my dream by night? The let my lips proclaim it still, And all my life reflect thy will.  Overrule mine acts to serve thine ends, Change frowning foes to smiling friends, Chasten  my soul till I shall be In perfect harmony with thee.  Make me more worthy of thy LOVE, And fit me for the life above.

This piece is so beautiful.  It has a very tricky spot in it that is fairly involved.  I got so caught up in listening to them that I almost forgot the hard spot, actually got through it better than I thought I could.  Unfortunately the audience that we were singing to didn’t speak English so they didn’t understand the words, I hope they felt the spirit though and could understand through the music.  President Tupou and his sons, with Lori playing and singing at the piano sang another inspiring piece of music, with Thomas the youngest son singing a solo at the beginning.  You have to imagine Thomas though with horns and a halo slightly askew as he is an energetic 12 year old who can sing like an angel.  I did notice though that Jesse had to leave during the meeting.  I found out later that his mother had given him the look that said leave before  I come get you and escort you from the meeting look.  He and Thomas can get pretty rambunctious when mom and dad are sitting on the stand because they have been assigned talks.  They are good kids though and have been involved in some pretty amazing mission baptisms.

We were notified sometime Monday that we had been asked to sing at a government meeting, Tuesday morning.  Because of where it was, the choir had to sing without the piano,( I can’t spell acapella my word speller is not picking it up today or I am really off with the spelling )and ended up singing 2 songs per the request of whoever was conducting the meeting.  We also found out that the singing was shown on TV.  Steve said the audience was very receptive to the spirit of “I Am A Child of God” and “Love One Another”.  He said there was a few times that he even felt goose bumps up and down his arms, so he figured the spirit was working overtime on just him.  However, since that time, we have heard from others who were singing and those from the audience about how beautiful the songs were.  They didn’t know until they got to the meeting that the focus of the meeting was on children and children’s issues.  President Tukuafu, who asked the mission president to invite us to sing, is a member of this committee and is also the regional representative for this area.  I didn’t go because I had an awful allergy attack on Monday and have been down for most of the week.  Last night I got started on antibiotics and mucinex.  I have coughed so much my ribs hurt.  I haven’t had this kind of attack in a very long time, but I think I am now on the mend.  I lost my voice, so I had to call to get someone substitute for us at the temple last night, which made me sad.  We really love going to the temple and meeting our friends there.

Thursday was the parade that celebrated the opening of parliament.  All of the schools participated, with their marching bands, uniforms, etc.  It was about a 4 hour ordeal.  When Steve got home, he had lots of stories to tell and many pictures, plus sore legs and back. He even got a little sun, thankfully it was a fairly cool day, low 70’s I think. Steve said the whole parade was about 3 miles long, they had to wait for a long time to get all the groups organized; he didn’t walk that far, but was on his feet for that period of time.  He said it was pretty interesting that the organizers of the parade kept lining the parade route with people to keep it looking like there were a lot of people in attendance.  They had the little children waving flags and banners.  Liahona looked and played good.  Of course we have watched and listened to them on campus and I have been really impressed with their talent.  When the band started at the beginning of school, I didn’t give much hope for them being to be able to play a recognizable melody but they fooled me.  I got enough pictures when they were practicing playing and marching around campus, so I didn’t feel too bad that I didn’t get to participate.  Apparently, the senior missionaries marched and again were on TV and that was also broadcast last night.   But we didn’t watch it because most of the programing is in Tongan and Chinese and I guess we weren’t that curious about what was happening on the news.  We didn’t know that it was going to be televised or even shown on TV.  The missionaries have gotten some interesting news time in the last week or so, or maybe there just isn’t any  news on.

I just read another book called “Divine Signatures” by Gerald Lund, a good read.  It’s the kind of book that had a lot of good thoughts about some happenings that people sometimes label as coincidences, nobody calls them miracles anymore, but I really like his writing.  There was lot to think about in it.  I had a few ah hah moments I had never thought of in the way he presented his material.  I loved the fact that he had a lot of true life examples in the book.  I don’t think I have grown up because I love a good story, especially one with a good ending.  Because we have watched the Hobbit movies, I also want to read the books, so I am on a quest again for books for my Kindle.  I am also going to download the Chronicles of Narnia books by CS Lewis.  I got to read one while we were in Vava’u that I thoroughly enjoyed.  I thought maybe the grandkids would like that series, they’ve probably already the books though.  Sometimes grandma’s are a little slow on the uptake.

Liahona high school just finished up with their ‘Liahona has Talent’ show.  We were pretty well entertained with the 10 top finalist today(Friday).   I especially liked the drum core and the number they performed.  These kids like to show off and the audience just lapped it up.  There was a variety of entertaining numbers, dances, singing groups, trumpet solo which was pretty amazing, a very funny routine with four girls doing a tae Kwan do dance number.  There was a young girl who performed a musical number from form 3 which be the equivalent to grade 9 who sang a most amazing solo with a voice that sounded much older than she looked.  We found out later that we have heard her before and that she is the daughter of one of our TVET teachers, Sula.  Wow she really had the audience in her hands.  It was my first time out in a week and it was a nice break from the four walls of our apartment.

Steve has been working nonstop on budget items for the TVET team.  Somehow, he has got to get the teachers to take ownership of their jobs and the need for equipment and supplies.  Now he is going to have to redo some of it because budget items are being requested in the wrong place, where there isn’t money allocated for what they need.  It continues to be a long process.  We have got to get past that because we need to knuckle down to preparing the presentations that we have to give in Fiji the 23 of June.  We are both presenters and I am still squirming about my topic and I am certainly not going to talk for 45 minutes.  Steve is coming up with good thoughts for his topic but it changes about every 2 days.  We have got to get serious about this.