Tongan Update, September 9, 2007, The Mission Office, Elder May, Pictures of Tonga

Tongan Update, 09 September 2007, "The Mission Office"

Right now it is winter in Tonga. The temperatures run from around 70 to 75 degrees. It is perfect, but everyone says wait until December when temperatures are expected to rise! We’ve had a little rain, but not much.

Well, what do we do in the office from 8:00 until 5:00? Keep Busy! John is doing a lot of financial things, and I’m doing things that concern the missionaries—like getting their mail from home at the post office and sorting it, putting stamps on their letters to home, making files for new missionaries, taking care of flight plans for missionaries that leaving, keeping all the young missionaries healthy, etc.

Font of the Mission Office in Nuku'alofa, Tonga

Inside court yard of the Mission office

Keeping the missionaries healthy is fairly interesting since I have no nursing training. But we have a few items in the office to help with the minor problems.

Elder May has had a unique experience. He was angry with his companion. Instead of hitting him, he hit a wood post (neither one was too smart). He didn’t break his hand, but he tore open the skin. He now has an infection which is slowing been moving up his arm. We took him to the hospital, and he has now been there for four days and still counting.

We have been to visit him one or two times a day taking him food and water. This hospital is nothing like the hospitals at home. I pray I never ever need to go there. The new part of the hospital is not so bad, but the old section is frightening. You expect a hospital to be clean and bright. Well, this one isn’t. Missionaries with extreme problems are sent to New Zealand for treatment.

Another part of our jobs is to inspect the missionary homes. (We all need to count our blessings for the homes in which we live because the missionary houses are some of the nicest in Tonga, and they are in a world of hurt.) My, these are small (really small), two bedroom places with a tiny bathroom.

The bathrooms are hard to keep clean because of the high humidity, and there is only cold water. We take the missionaries cleaning supplies and check to see if repairs on their houses are needed. The sister missionaries have cute embroidered pillow cases and nice things hung onto their walls. The elders just exist in their places. Most of the houses are located in back of the church buildings which are beautiful with lovely landscaping, but there are some that are not the best places for missionaries to live in. We are moving them to other places.

The Church keeps the church yards so pretty and maintained. They certainly set an example.

You definitely can tell all the church-owned properties on the island. The properties have fences around them to keep especially the pigs out. Every chaple stands out as a place of beauty.

Oh, the pigs!

The come in all sizes

They run around everywhere—in town, out of town, in yards, on the side of roads, etc. The big pigs are “interesting”, but the little ones are fun to watch. They play with each other like puppies. They jump on each other and chase each other. It’s cute.

We saw some pigs rooting for food on the beaches where the tide had receded.In this same area the people were looking for shell fish and octopus. The people keep what they need and then sell the rest of the shell fish etc. at by-the-road shops or tables.

I had my first experience of driving on the opposite side of the road. (John made me!) I did OK, but it surely seems strange. John is always opening the door to the car for me because he has gone to the wrong side. I’m always going to the driver’s side, and John wants to give me the keys so I can drive. John is turning on the wipers when he goes to signal to turn because it is on the opposite side he is used to. You can tell the new drivers because their wipers are going! (We’re mixed up!)

Last Saturday we were invited to two little girls’ (Joanne and Tiki) baptisms. The fonts in Tonga are outside in a small court yards, and they are elevated. You climb up and in instead of down and in.

They were dressed in fancy, white dresses, not the usual jumpsuits. It was a simple, but very humble affair. After the baptism there was a dinner. Boy, these people know how to “bring on the food”! This next picture is at a zone conference, but a similar thing occurs at baptisms. It is a major party.

This reminds me of James who I wrote about in my last letter.

He works at an Australian pharmacy and actually lives in the back section of the pharmacy. His employers told him to stop talking to the Mormon missionaries or they would make him move out of their housing and threatened his job. So things have gotten a little tougher for James as far as the gospel goes. What do you think he will do?

On our P-Day we toured the east side of the island. We came across a white sand beach.

To get to it, we had to walk through a cemetery.

Their cemeteries are different than ours in that the Tongans don’t dig into the earth; they build a mound over the body. Then they decorate the mound with flowers, lava rocks, quilts, and beer bottles. Yes, beer bottles. They turn the bottles upside down in the sand so you see the bottom glass. It adds a sparkle to the grave site.

Oh, talking about the dead…we accidently got into a funeral procession. We thought we were in a parade or something because there seemed to be a float at the front of the long line of cars which were being driven down both sides of the road. All on-coming cars were yielding the right-of-way to this procession. When all the cars turned into the mortuary, we realized what was happening.

The float turned out to be a pickup truck with the body in it. The people had put a canopy over the bed of the truck with streamers hanging from it. The next truck in line was filled with the mourning family. There were about twenty people standing in the bed of that truck. The rest of the cars followed into the dirt parking lot of the small, blue mortuary (falemate).

We were told that this had to be a well-to-do family because they had actually gone to a mortuary. The common people do not go to the expense of embalming their dead.

Well, we had a picnic breakfast out in the courtyard with a few missionaries this morning.

Diane, Elders Fine'isaloi, Lauaki, Finau, Holloway

I even put flowers on the table. It looked pretty official. The poor Tongan Elders (Fine'isaloi and Lauaki) were intimidated and didn’t want to come. With a lot of coaxing, they came and seemed to eat just fine. (Our communication skills are lacking, but it’s was fun to try to figure out what everybody was saying.) We also baked cookies to take to our Tongan neighbors. Only one family was home. After they called off their two attack dogs, we had a semi-nice visit. Their children came over later and said the cookies were good!

Life here in the mission field is great!