Once upon a time on the outskirts of Nuku’alofa, there was a small LDS church.
This white with blue trimmed, religious structure was surrounded by a modge-podge of buildings—a Methodist church on the west with its live Sunday band,
the Digitcel store with its red pillars and red awning across
a Chinese take-away on the north,
and the fish market on the east.
One Sunday a special investigator walked into the chapel of the little church and announced to the congregation that she was there on a specific assignment.
She was to find the “Children of God”, band them, and label them.
The agent’s eyes scoured the audience as she asked, “Where am I going to find the “Children of God?” To her surprise a young girl, who was sitting on the third row, jumped to her feet and boldly proclaimed, “I am a child of God.”
The investigator quickly called her to the pulpit and the child explained why she was a “Child of God.” She had lived with her Heavenly Father as a spirit child, and then she explained the Plan of Salvation. The first child of God had been found and was quickly banded and labeled.
Now….who else? Out of the congregation boys,
then girls, then families,
missionaries, Tongans, Chinese, and Americans came up to the pulpit and expressed their reasons why they were all children of God.
Every person got a wrist bracelet imprinted with “I am a Child of God”, and every person had a glittered sign placed around their necks expressing the same thing. Each group sang songs to further emphasize their reasonings for fitting into the “Child of God” category.
It didn’t take long for the investigator to figure it out…everyone is a child of God. Therefore, the Primary children (who by now were all standing behind the pulpit) went out into the congregation and placed “I am a Child of God” bracelets on the arms of everyone in the chapel, and then in unison we all sang the Primary song “I am a Child of God.”
That was our Primary Sacrament Meeting program.
You can’t have a Primary Sacrament Meeting program without the “big practice” prior to the program. Saturday, the day before the program, we had our “big practice.” It was pretty funny. Our Branch does not have a piano which is OK because we don’t have anyone in our Branch who knows how to play it anyway. But we did arrange for a pianist to play for our program, and she came to our Saturday big practice. We were able to borrow an electronic piano so all was well…until the power company decided to shut off the electricity to our church and the surrounding buildings at the same time as we were holding our practice.
Fear not…the Tongans always have a Plan B because Plan A seldom works. The Branch President rounded up a generator, hooked it up to the battery in his car, strung a cable from his car through the parking lot, across the grass, into the church window, and plugged in into the electronic piano. Now, all of this took about three hours. So what were the Primary children doing all this time? We went through the entire program once, then twice, then three times. By the fourth time, the kids were running up and down and round and round… AND... they had completely lost interest in the program. But the Relief Society saved the day. They brought corn dogs and ice cream for our rowdy, hungry children.
What’s the best thing about a program?.......…it’s over!
‘Ofa ‘atu, Elder T. and Sister T.
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