A WEEKEND IN TONGA

Had a cool experience yesterday.  We were invited last week from another ward to join in their ward welfare and missionary project.  They have a piece of ground on the edge of the bush where their chapel will be built some day.  In the mean time, they decided to farm it by having one active family team up with one less active or part member family or non members and work about 5 rows of crops together as a team. There about 20 pairings on about 2+ acres of ground.  It isn't too far out of our way to town so we will be watching it for the next year to see how their crops come along. They promised to give us a call when they harvest so we can be there for that too.   Mom has some pictures to give you an idea of what  I'm trying to describe. The harvest should be in March so, if Ty’s family times it right, they just might get to dig up some yams, taro, pele and ufi.  

 

Treats and balloons for the kids who were helping

We had our first real, all out, for sure Tongan dinner today after church.  They had about 7 dishes for the 4 of us.  It was all very good, actually, and mom even liked the raw fish (red snapper).  No roasted pig, however.  We did have one dinner w/pig last weekend at a live show we went to that is a very mini Polynesian Cultural Center production.  Anyway, the bishop was in to the center this past week helping his wife on the computer and they invited us to come to their ward and then dinner after.  We did have to "sing for our supper", however, in that we had to bear our testimony after the sacrament in sacrament meeting.  Cool family, he's a meter reader for the power co.in the village and she is applying for a loan to go back to school.  He's been a bishop for almost a year and their ward was really quite big for the small village they live in.  They don't live too far from Liahona.  About a 10 minute drive through the bush.  It just seems that every ward we go to there is some opportunity for us to make contact in some way that is related to our mission.  There just happened to be two missionaries who returned home to the ward yesterday from foreign missions.  Those are the ones we don't really know about and don't get the opportunity to approach about their future plans.  It was a sister returning from the Philippines and a brother returning from Oakland, CA. (Tongan speaking), yes, in Oakland.  Oh, and get  this, we had a recently returned missionary come in last week who served in the middle of Australia among the aboriginies!  They lived in a truck with a camper shell that was their home and transportation. I keep getting off the subject, we had a chance to talk with both of the RMs and commit them to coming in this week to talk with us about furthering their education to get a better job in the future.  Hope they do.

We also had the chance to talk about the self-reliance initiative and what it is all about before the Sunday school class lesson got started. This is all new to them.  They keep wanting to associate it with welfare, which is not all wrong, but not how we want to approach it. 

Traditional Tongan Dancing and Feast