TONGAN UPDATE 01 JULY 2008 MAN'S BEST FRIEND

Tongan Update, 01 July 2008, Man’s Best Friend

Man’s best friend…we’ve missed our own little girls, Chica and Sierra,

so we’ve adopted some substitute buddies here in Tonga.

First to become “our best friend” is Robin Hood, the neighbor’s dog who stole our missionaries’ bag of sandwiches and devoured all of them. We fed him some left-over morsels the other day, and now he hangs out on the missionary complex’s driveway waiting for more.

His side-kick, Little John, has also made the scene.

He seems to enjoy our left-overs also. The other night three additional puppies showed up.

Now we are serving Robin Hood and all his merry men, NOT VISA VERSA!

Secondly, John has acquired a couple of “best friends.” They are faithful and want to follow him everywhere. They jump at Elder Thompson’s beck and call and try to obey his every command. Their names are Makai and Karratti, the new office elders.

Makai’s home town is Spanish Fork, Utah. His father, as a young man, smuggled himself onto a cargo ship cruising from Tonga to San Francisco. He was discovered while the boat was at sea so the captain made him work on board to earn his passage. Eventually he made his way to Utah, was converted to the gospel, married a nurse, became Stake President of a Tongan Stake, and now has a missionary son named Elder Makai.

Karratti’s home town is Orem, Utah. His father is originally from Hawaii, went to BYU Provo, met and married a co-ed, and now he has a missionary son named Elder Karratti.

Tonight as we came home from Family Home Evening, Robin Hood and Little John welcomed us on the driveway with wagging tails.

We opened the door to the complex, and there were Makai and Karratti welcoming us with, “The couple is home. We’ve been waiting for you!”

Man, isn’t it great to have “best friends?” The elders don’t wiggle their tails, but they certainly act like they are happy to see us! They are both great missionaries trying to do the right things for the right reasons. Good boys!

Elder Makai and Elder Karratti are teaching the gospel to a young woman.

They came bouncing into our apartment the other night full of smiles and high fives. She wants to be baptized this Saturday! They reminded us of Ammon, a great missionary from the Book of Mormon. “…my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God.” (Alma 26:11) These are Ammon’s words explaining his feelings after bringing many Lamanites “into the fold of God.” The Office Elders were feeling that same kind of happiness. They confided with us how they cried when their investigator bore her simple testimony to them, how they felt the spirit, and how it strengthened their own testimonies. (This was one of those priceless moments for us.). Elder Thompson did the baptismal interview and says she is delightful. She is really excited. Last night she and a cousin came to the mission office. We showed her and her cousin “The Testament” video. After the video we just talked. It seemed like we talked for hours. When they left they said. Sorry we stayed so late. Now you can go to bed. It was 8:30pm. They were so funny. We will participate in the baptismal service Saturday.

These Elders are fun to work with, however, Elder Thompson and I rule when it comes to the marble game,

but the Office Elders keep coming back for more punishment. Nice elders!

‘Ofa atu, John and Diane

P.S. This is absolutely the last dog email!

TONGAN UPDATE 22 JUNE 2008-WAKE UP LITTLE SUZI

Tongan Update, 22 June 2008, Wake up Little Suzi

We’ve come up with another “new” idea. It’s called “Wake up, Little Suzi.” When we were young, the kids in our neighborhood would put on theatrical programs for anyone who was nice enough, kind enough, or crazy enough to come watch. For a minimal fee they could see a bunch of seven or eight year old children sing, dance, and whatever. The only song that I remember us singing was “Wake up, Little Suzi” because I was lucky enough to play the role of Suzi, and during practices I had to keep acting like I was waking up over and over and over as the rest of the gang sang. Now back to the project at hand. It’s the perfect title for our “new” idea—the Garretts, Thompsons, Sister Kinikini, and Sister Vuki are visiting each of the missionary companionships between 7:30 am and 9:30 am when the cute missionaries should be up, dressed, and doing their individual scripture studies and then their companionship studies. The senior troops are going to do early morning scriptures reading with the young missionaries. We tried it last week, and it was really fun. The seniors had a prayer with the younger missionaries, read together with them, and left them a treat.

So why call it “Wake up, Little Suzi?” You probably can guess—many of the missionaries were still sleeping when we arrived.

Somewhere along the way, they haven’t been trained on what it means to STUDY the scriptures. Maybe it’s more inclusive than that—they don’t know what HARD WORK is…

Not only are we throwing in a little “Wake up, Little Suzi,” we are also adding “Whistle While You Work.” (For those who don’t remember that project, it was super cleaning the missionary houses.) The missionaries will earn points for cleaning this time. The zone with the most points receives a “Free Zone P-day.”

In my college days, a professor of mine drew an analogy on how to get children (missionaries) to work compared to how to get a donkey to work. You can push, pull, or ignore the donkey. Or you can dangle a carrot in front of his nose. We are trying the carrot approach.

“ Wake Up, Little Suzi” and “Whistle While you Work” are the “carrot” approaches. We are hoping to improve the cleanliness and spirituality of the missionaries with rewards, then hopefully they’ll eventually do it for the Lord instead of a treat.

We have also had Zone Conferences with the four zones on Tongatapu. John prepared a power point presentation about “Houses of Worship.” He showed pictures of the temple and discussed the sacredness of the temple.

He then showed pictures of several chapels and discussed their spiritual worth.

Then he showed pictures of some of the missionary houses that we have inspected, and they weren’t a pretty sight.

It was an eye opener. Pictures are worth a thousand words. He finished the presentation with quotes from prophets and other church leaders. The final slides showed missionary houses that are kept clean,

then chapels,

and then the Tongan temple.

Two weeks ago the same presentation was given to all the Stake Presidents in the Kingdom of Tonga, but instead of focusing on having missionaries maintain their houses better, it was directed to parents. Stake Presidents were challenged to teach parents that they need to teach their children how clean a house, how to respect the property of others, particularly church property, and how to care for personal belongings. So many of our missionaries were not taught how to do these things when they were growing up, therefore, the challenge of teaching, has become ours.

Hey, we’re trying! ‘Ofa atu, John and Diane

TONGAN UPDATE 16 JUNE 2008- REALITY CHECK

Tongan Update, 16 June2008, Reality Check

Reality…viewing things as they really are—corrective confronting of reality in order to counteract one’s expectations. (Webster's Dictionary)

Sometimes the cold harsh reality of life is a bummer. For example, I wanted to sail through this mission bug-free. Well, here I sit with fungus on my arm, scabies (egg-laying mites) under the skin on my neck, a small infected wound on my thumb, and some kind of bug bite on my face. Yikes! How is that for the “real thing?”

We just completed our monthly inspection of the missionary houses. The reality of it all is… we took two steps forward with our Super Clean Day, and now we are back to square one. Most of the houses are a mess again.

One set of Elders lost their key so they just broke down their door ripping out the door frame.

At another house it looks like the neighbors have moved in with the Elders.

Their washing machine is on the porch of the missionary home with the electrical cord threaded through the window and plugged into the socket of the missionary house. The neighbors have hung up their wet washed clothes on the Elders’ clothes line so when the Elders return, they will walk under the neighbor’s drying shirts, pants, and underwear. It also looks like one of the neighbor’s kids has been sleeping on the floor of the missionary house.

He followed us from room to room to see what we were doing during our inspection, meanwhile declaring his total innocence. The door lock had been broken on this house so anyone can exit and enter at will.

We went to inspect the house in Folaha at 1:45 pm in the afternoon, and we woke up two sleeping missionaries. No, they weren’t talking a nap after a morning of hard work. They just hadn’t quite got up out of bed yet—this is for real!

So we won’t become totally frustrated, Elder Thompson and I keep saying to ourselves, “Remember Hoi!”

We inspected the Hoi house at 8:00 am. The Sisters were dressed, reading their scriptures, and had a clean house—bless the Sisters.

The national champion Highland High Rugby Team from Salt Lake City flew into the Fua’amotu airport the other night.

We were welcoming back to Tonga a senior couple who happened to arrive on the same plane as the team. (Elder Jensen returned to Logan, Utah to have his pacemaker replaced. After a month of recuperation, the Jensens were returning to finish the rest of their mission.) These boys had an aura of confidence about them like they knew all about winning. Later we found out that there was a reason for that --this team had never lost a game—23 to 0.

We kept bumping into these boys. (You couldn’t miss them. There were about 50 people in their group being driven around the island in two buses.) They were at our branch dance which was held on the tennis court adjacent to our church building. They swarmed the court in their white shirts and ties asking the Tongan girls to dance with them. I have to admit, they were friendly and fun. Next they showed up at church on Sunday filling our little chapel. Wow, there were a lot of white faces!

By now we were kind of bonding with these athletes so we decided to go to their game—Tupou High School vs Highland High. It had rained all morning so the stadium field was wet and muddy. The cute USA team had brought brand new uniforms for this occasion, and it was quite amazing how quickly you couldn’t even see their mud-coated uniforms as the game began.

The Tongan crowd roared ferociously for their team as the few Highland supporters cheered their champions. Thank goodness, Ryan’s coworker’s husband coached the team, and she explained the rules of the game to us. (She also had some nice things to say about our son, Ryan.)

Tupou High scored first…then second…then third. Finally Highland touched the ball over the end zone. Then Tupou High scored again—the final score—28 to 5—the first defeat for Highland. Cripes…time for a reality cheCK.

Reality can be a bummer. Here is a quote from President Thomas S. Monson: “Life is full of difficulties, some minor and others of a more serious nature. There seems to be an unending supply of challenges for one and all. Our problem is that we often expect instantaneous solutions to such challenges, forgetting that frequently the heavenly virtue of patience is required.” (I’m not sure this quote applies to the afore mentioned situations, but it’s a good quote from Preach My Gospel.)

Here is a quote from us: “Remember Hoi!”

You know, Tonga would be a good place to film one of those TV reality shows. ‘Ofa ‘atu, John and Diane

PS Mom, don’t worry. Sister Garrett, the mission nurse, is treating all my little ailments.

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TONGAN UPDATE 12 JUNE 2008- GOD'S MAGIC

Tongan Update, 12 June 2008, God’s Magic

What can be more magical than the birth of a baby? Today Mandy Diane Thompson stepped through the veil and has joined us on this earth. She weighs seven pounds and is seventeen inches long.

Dusty, the proud dad, said she has dark hair and is beautiful. She’s our eighth grandchild, and our third granddaughter. What a blessing!

We waited all day yesterday to get the phone call about her arrival. It didn’t come! We knew Melissa was going to have this little gal C-section on June 12. Where was the phone call? Needless to say, Ding-dong Diane forgot to factor in the time difference between Utah and Tonga. But Mandy is here now and all is well. New life is not only magical, it is a miracle when you consider how cells divide, multiply, organize, and define body limbs and parts.

We’ve had other incidences where God has worked his magic.

One of my responsibilities of being the mission secretary is recording the information on new converts onto a computer program and then submitting that information to the Salt Lake Church Head Quarters. One of the new convert’s card was not complete so I could not file this person’s baptism and conversion. I tried several different means to get the information that was required, but no luck. I was getting discouraged and was trying to come up with a new game plan when the bishop of our newest Church member called on the phone with the information I needed. I was able to submit the information and now this individual is officially on the records of the Church! That was pretty good timing you’d have to say!

Whenever Elder Thompson has to speak in church, he has this cunning ability to look over his audience and adapt his talk to meet the needs of the congregation. To me that is magic. I like to follow my script, and I don’t diverge very far from it.

Last week I attended a branch leadership meeting where everything was spoken in English. I understood what was being said and was very comfortable. At the same time, John was in a stake meeting where everything was spoken in Tongan…everything, except the talk he was to give. Instead of being calm like me, he was nervous and worried about his talk delivery. A silent prayer was offered before standing at the pulpit, then, he began his message. After giving the talk, he learned that most of the congregation understood what he said. How is that? It is magic.

I went to a wonderful Stake fireside sponsored by the Young Women Organization of the Church. About four hundred sisters were there. The decorations were amazing, the use of technology was incredible, and the speakers were excellent. Sister Shumway, the temple matron, was the main guest speaker.

The whole evening was uplifting and spiritual. Then it was my turn to say the closing prayer. I usually say very simple prayers, but this night I really wanted to end the evening with the spirit that the others had radiated. I said a little prayer to help me to find the words that would be meaningful and appropriate. Oh my…I gave a beautiful prayer. You would have never guessed it was little old me…because I had a lot of help.

You can see Heavenly Father’s magic all around us in the beauty of the land-- the sunsets,

splashing ocean waves,

and swaying coconut trees.

You can feel the magic through the smiling Tongan people, the faithful members,

and a reverent temple session. ‘Ofa ‘atu, John and Diane