Tongan Update, September 7, 2007 Flea Market, Captain Cook, Service Project

Tongan Update, 07 September 2007, Flea Market

My sister, Julie, would love this place. There are flea markets in almost every village on the island.

The Tongans get packages from their families in America, and then they set up shop and sell the items. There are even deals along the roadside where tables are set up with the wares the Tongans are trying to sell, from vegetables to American clothes. (No one wears Tongan-looking clothes. Everyone dress like Americans. I even saw a Bob Marley t-shirt, a little outdated.)

We met with the senior missionaries on Friday. We call ourselves the Twilight Zone. Get It? (The Mission is divided into zones. Our zone is the Twilight Zone). I think it makes us sound rather old. Anyway, we had pizza and a movie. The pizza was home-made (delicious), and the movie was the McMurray’s video. Mom, you would have liked it. It was “the Inn of the Sixth Happiness" with Ingrid Bergman. Hey, we liked it too.

On P-Day we toured around the center of Tongatapu (name of the island we are on). We came across Captain Cook’s landing place.

There is a monument there. When Captain Cook landed here in the 1700s, he called the place the “friendly islands” because all the people were so kind to him and his men. Little did he know that the Tongans were planning to kill him, but he had left for the high seas before they could exercise their plan. (Luke, what does a pirate say?)

This morning our English speaking Tongan ward did a service project. We met at 6:00 a.m. and picked up trash along one of the roads in downtown Nuku’alofa.

John and I arrived with our rubber gloves and garbage bags. The Tongans arrived with their brooms made out of some kind of bush. We picked up trash, they swept. Either way the road looked a ton better when we got done.