January 12, 2015

January 12, 2015

I have writers fog of the brain today.  I can’t think of anything different we have done since our last blog.  However, I just remembered that I had written a letter to mom, that didn’t get sent, so I just reread that and thought maybe there would be some things that I need to write about.

However, the only thing that I can think about right now was our experience feeding the missionaries yesterday and today.  We have 3 sister missionaries who are Tongan who live on different islands in Tonga.  It is surprising how different the cultures are on each island although they are all classified as Tongatapu.  These sister missionaries were hilarious.  You would have thought they had never eaten by the way they ate.  I fixed a Tonga style Turkey dinner, with mashed potatoes, gravy, green salad, fried zucchini.  They had never eaten Turkey before, and the one sister, Sister Lasalosi just about foundered on the mashed potatoes.  She didn’t like the gravy though, liked the potatoes plain.  Of course mashed potatoes are not plain, they had butter, milk etc. in them to really make them good.  They kept saying, ‘this is so yum” then ask for more.  They didn’t eat as much though as the former set of missionaries.  I also made a huge macaroni salad with chicken, olives, carrots, onions, tomatoes, apples and craisins topped with mayonnaise, ranch dressing and mustard mixed together as a dressing.  Again, it was a put together what you have for an evening meal for them.  I made a batch of corn bread for them which was also a new experiment for them.  This morning, we feed them pancakes, scrambled eggs etc.  As they were eating, they told us this was only the 2^nd time they have had pancakes and they were again ‘yum’.  They also took the leftovers from this meal with them.  I put the extra pancakes in a baggy and Sister Lasalosi put syrup all over them so she could eat them later.  This young lady is pretty skinny and she could put away a lot of food, but they all hunkered in when it came time to eat.

Today was Preparation day and the missionaries do laundry by hand in a bucket with a stick to stir their clothes.  Doing laundry the old fashioned way is a lot of work, but they had finished their laundry before they came to eat at 10.  It was fun watching them eat and the expressions on their faces when they tasted a different food.  Our kitchen is so small that it is almost impossible to have that many people in it, but we managed.  It got hot really quick and luckily I had most of the dishes done before they got there.  So clean up was fast and easy. I was ready for a rest after I finished the wash, made breakfast and cleaned up. 

I am reading a book right now that I love, “Our Glorious Mother Eve” by Beverly Campbell.  I have been looking at it when I had done some shopping on Deseret book and found a 2-1 e book bundle.  I have been debating about purchasing it, but after talking with Annie last week about some questions she had, I decided to get it.  I started reading it Saturday and I can’t seem to get to read it as often as I would like.  It is an easy reading book, with a lot of research and thought behind it.  I am loving the information, the thought provoking questions and answers that Sister Campbell has tackled in writing a book about Eve.  There are many resources that I would also like to read, but I think these books are a must read for everybody.  I think all the new films that the church is using for the endowment session has really made all of us think about the endowment.  So, this book is helping me with my own questions and I am grateful to have found it.

We have finally gotten some rain, and the grass is starting to green up again.  We have had rain on and off for the last week, which really helps with the heat situation.  It just means now that the humidity is higher though, so we are still hot.  We have even turned on the air conditioner at home when we are there, day and especially at night.  I still sleep though with just a sheet, I get much too warm, especially my feet.

We spent Saturday with the Hamblins and Holbrooks in our shopping expedition, went to lunch for Sandy’s birthday and then had movie night with the other senior missionary couples.  We watched a movie that Sister Holbook found on You tube about a young boy in India with a learning disability.  It had subtitles so we were able to follow the story line.  I would recommend all parents watching that one, just to understand more about dyslexia and how hard it is to go to school and not be able to read.  Sister Wood, at one point in the movie exclaimed, ‘is this little boy going to get some help’?  The movie was extremely touching and we all went away from the movie with a new appreciation for good teachers.

We are now at the point that we need to start thinking about our release date, travel arrangements and etc.  We also have way too many things to bring back with us that are wood.  Can you even imagine that we would have this kind of a problem?  We have even gone to a shipping company to find out what we need to do to ship stuff home.  Steve will probably still get more pieces of wood to take home to his already over loaded supply of wood.  So because we are thinking about home, we  are making inquiries about flights, some down time in New Zealand since we may never get back this way again and possibly another layover somewhere to break up that incredibly long flight from Tonga to anywhere.  That flight was bad enough that I do not want a repeat of that.

Steve is preparing for next school year and what he wants to do is to get the teachers better prepared for the year.  Of course, his goal is to get them off the old British system of, ‘I talk, you listen, you write, you take a test, regurgitate what you’ve memorized stuff’.  He wants them to think outside the box, get the students involved with projects and bring back the love of learning to the classrooms, but then you have to have teachers who also want to really teach, not just sit behind a computer and face book all day.  Unfortunately, Tongans who have access to the computer also spend too much time on Facebook.  So there are many things that still need to be done.  And sometimes, we just have to get on with life and realize that we really are not going to get a lot of changes made in a culture that is so layed back.  We just have to love them and let them get it figured out, which they will do eventually.