Do you remember the old western TV show “Rawhide”? The wranglers in this serial would round up herds of cattle and drive the bellowing beasts along the Chisholm Trail to various small railroad towns. The theme song to the show went like this: “Head ‘em up, move ‘em out, Rawhide. Through wind and rain …something…something…something…Rawhide.”
It’s transfer week and that’s what we’ve been doing—head ‘em up, and move ‘em out...missionaries using vans,
buses,
planes,
and boats
to travel to their new locations for the next six weeks…and it’s always interesting!
Let’s start with the vans. Elder Karratti and Elder Lyon were delivering Elders to their various houses on this island by van.
They were stopped by the local security for “speeding”. The policeman told them he was giving them a ticket, but there was a little problem. He didn’t have any more tickets left in his ticket book. Therefore, the ticket would be delivered to the mission office in December (transfers were Oct 07), and once we received it, we would have to drive across Tongatapu to Mu’a and pay the fine. (I guess the ticket books won’t be arriving from New Zealand or Australia until December.) How’s that for delaying of payment?
The mission rented two buses to help shuffle missionaries to the west side and the east side of this island. The buses picked up the missionaries, brought them to the Ha’ateiho Stake Center where the Elders exchanged house keys and picked up new companions, and then the buses delivered the missionaries to their new areas. One of our new New Zealand MTC elders jumped into one bus, then left his luggage as he departed off the bus and went on his merry way. It took two different vans to track down the bus with the wayward bags because the AP (Elder Itekau) who was on the bus didn’t have a phone so we couldn’t communicate to him about the problem. All’s well that ends well. The Office Elders rounded up the missing luggage and got it to its rightful owner.
“Keep those doggies moving, Rawhide.” Transporting missionaries by air has gotten a lot easier. We have a new airline for domestic flights—Chatham Air.
It is more predictable and stays pretty much on schedule. The previous airline, Tonga Air, was owned by the royalty of Tonga and was operated on the Tongan tradition of royalty allowed on the plane first, then the nobles, then the common guys, and then the missionaries. (It didn’t matter how early you bought tickets or how early you arrived at the airport) If all the seats on the plane were filled, those who couldn’t get on were bumped to the next flight. Sometimes the missionaries could be bumped for two or three days. That could be very frustrating especially when parents were waiting with balloons and umus (underground dutch ovens) cooking, while their return missionaries are stuck at the airport.
Now the boat…
OOPS WRONG BOAT
we were expecting nine missionaries to arrive on the Olovaha (a four hundred passenger boat of terror—old, dirty, smelly, and wretched) from Vava’u on Thursday at 1:00pm. The voyage usually takes about eighteen hours. While at sea, one of the engines of the Olovaha broke down so the boat had to limp along on one engine. Instead of eighteen hours, the delightful trip (I’m being sarcastic) took thirty-six hours. Needless to say, that threw a wrench into the transfer schedule. (Hmm…how would a cowboy say that?)
Anyway Buckaroos, all the missionaries have been corralled and now the work can move forward!
‘Ofa ‘atu, Elder T. and Sister T.
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