Michael,
Row Your Boat to Shore
We work in the mornings across the street
from the ocean in a part of Tongatapu called Ma’ufanga Toliki. We arrived one morning and were about to pull
into our usual parking space when we noticed an Evinrude outboard motor, gas
cans, oil cans, boots and old clothes right by where we park. There is 24 hour guard service at the
facility because of the computers and being a somewhat remote site. We asked the guard what that was all
about.
Sister Wixom, the Primary General
President and Sister Burton, the Relief Society General President of the Church
were in Tonga
for firesides and leadership training.
There is a branch of the Church on one of the little islands north of
the main island. The only way to get to
the mainland is to get in a boat and make your way there, which is a 30 minute
trip in good weather. The Branch
President had loaded all his leaders in his boat and drove to the mainland,
landing not far from our office. They
were picked up by other members and driven to the leadership meeting, and then
spent the night with family members/friends.
Since the motor is worth about $6,000 Pa’anga( About $3,500 USD ), the
Branch President hauled the motor and other stuff to the secure area of our
facility so it could be watched. A
couple hours after we were at work, the process was reversed and the motor was
gone. I was impressed with those
islanders.
Huh!
We get three channels on our TV. Of course this is Tonga, and two of the channels show
the exact same programming, which is usually a minister preaching in
Tongan. Oral Roberts comes to mind
here. The other station shows some news
on a network called CCTV, which stands for China something TV. At least it is in English. They show segments from around the world, but
with a certain bias to their opinions.
Anyway, they cover the weather in China and then show pictures of big
buildings and temples from around the world while giving the temperature
there. They go alphabetically, and when
they have the temperature for Atlanta, USA, they show the Church’s Atlanta temple. I think that is amazing.
Get
Around to it
About a month ago, I noticed that the
counter in our morning office, held up by brackets screwed into the wall, was
coming loose. Since we had two PC’s and
a large printer on that counter, I thought it a good idea to notify the
facilities management people. I sent an
email and waited for a response. I saw
the FM guy a couple of days later and said it would be good to get someone down
there soon, like ASAP. He said he’d have
someone look at it the next day.
The next day we walked into the office,
and there on the floor was the counter.
The security guard had been in the building sweeping the floor when he
heard a loud noise. He rushed into the
area where the counter was and just in time rescued the computer and printer by
getting them on the floor before the whole counter came down. Anyway, they re-secured the counter and got
it back up that afternoon. It is so humid here that you can’t tape
anything to a wall. The wall is just
wet, and the tape loses its stick so why bother. The counter had been secured by screws in the
grout. The grout gets soft and down
comes the counter. They used bolts after
that.
Oil
Change, Tonga style
We got a new car when we arrived here, a
Toyota Yaris. At 5,000 km you get your
first oil change. We called the crack FM
people and asked how they wanted to handle that. There are no Jiffy Lubes here, so I knew it
would be a bit more complicated. They
said to bring it in that morning, but we were already in Ma’ufanga so we agreed
upon that afternoon, Tuesday afternoon to be precise. They would give us another pool car to use
and we’d switch back as soon as the oil was changed. The switch was made, only we got the biggest
van they make. We parked it for the
night, but when we were on our way to work the next morning the gas warning
light came on. That’s right, it was
almost out of gas. Since it is 14 km to
our office we had to stop and put some diesel in the van. When we called about switching cars back that
day we were told the oil change had not been done yet. Tomorrow.
Thursday morning here comes an FM person
with what we had hoped would be our car just as we are leaving our place. Unfortunately it was not. She said the mission needed the van today and
she was bringing another car for us to use that day. “ When will our car be
done,” we asked? “Hopefully by the end
of the day,” was the response. We
transferred cars and headed to work. We
hadn’t gotten very far when the gas warning light came on. That’s right, another car out of gas. We had to stop and put gas in that car too.
And, when we called to swap cars they told us the oil had not been changed
yet. Later that night we ran into a
sister from a neighboring ward who asked us if we got our car back. We said no.
She indicated that she had been driving it and FM wanted it back that
day. So, FM took a mission car( our car)
and loaned it out. Great!
Friday morning we called FM before
heading to the office in town. They said
our car would be ready by 10. Since we
could not afford to sit around for 2 hours waiting, we said we’d pick it up in
the afternoon when we got back from town.
We got our car at 4 pm Friday afternoon. Quite a bit of our gas had been
used. That was a Tuesday to Friday oil change, two loaner cars out of gas and a
lot of phone calls. I will never
complain about Jiffy Lube taking an extra 10 minutes ever again.
Wake
up please
To apply for a PEF loan it takes about
60-75 minutes on the computer with the appropriate information at hand. But, before you can start, you need an LDS
account. If you have never had one
before, it is really easy to get one. It
takes maybe 5-10 minutes online. If you
have had a PEF loan before, you have a username and password. Before we arrived, a secretary did all the
entry work for all previous students including getting their usernames and
passwords. This year, we are working
with the applicants in helping them apply online. The renewing students need their username and
password to reapply. Of course, none of
the renewing students know their username or password because someone else did
it for them last year. We asked if
anyone remembered any of them, and the secretary tried to come up with the
information sometimes. To put it mildly,
retrieving the usernames and passwords was a nightmare. In order to get them in the first place an
email had to be attached. Most of the
students either did not have an email, or couldn’t remember it, or closed the
account. The Church will only send the
information to the attached email when requested, it can take days to get both
username and password as we had to get new emails and communicate that to the
Church, etc.
We finally make it all the way through
the renewal season. We had threatened
suicide more than once if another renewing student walked through the
door. When, in walks the secretary, with
a big notebook. She says, “Look what I
found, all the usernames and passwords.”
Mom and I counted to ten, thanked her for the information and ground our
teeth as she walked out of the room. All
we could do was laugh when all was said and done. We would have loved those notebooks early on.
A
Petrie Dish
To say it gets humid here is probably an
understatement. Summer runs basically
December through mid-April. It never
gets over 85-87 degrees. But, the
humidity is usually over 90% and often reaches 100% making it feel much
warmer. We went through a stretch in the
last week of February through the first two weeks in March where it rained
every day, sometimes very hard. I mean
buckets, roads flooded, schools closed, mud and goo. Thank goodness for air conditioning, which we
used a lot. It was like living in a
Petrie dish for those 3 weeks. For the
Elders, anything in the closet that you didn’t wear much got mold growing on
it. (My suit is still at the
cleaners.) I take a few pills every day. OK, a bunch of pills every day. I have a pill box I fill up once a week on
Monday. By Wednesday I noticed that my
multi-vitamin pill was starting to grow mold on it. So, like so much of our stuff, that pill
lives in the fridge for now. We are starting
to get a day here and there where humidity is not a big deal. By mid-April things should moderate pretty
well. The rest of the year is really
quite pleasant. We’ve made it through
the worst weather. And, no cyclone this
year!
Seahawks
A rather large young man came into our
office a few weeks ago. He was looking
for a church bookstore. There used to be
one in the area. He asked where we were
from and he lit up when we said Seattle. He said his brother played for the Seahawks
this last season, but was now with the Steelers. Just then an even bigger guy came through the
door. The brother named Hebron,
who played for Seattle. He played his college ball at USC. Said he was looking forward to playing with
the Steelers as there are two LDS guys on the team, Kiesel and another
guy. He seemed like a very nice
guy. We wished him well except if they
ever played the Seahawks.
We scheduled an English test for a young
man who just came back from his mission in the US.
He served in the Washington Spokane Mission. One of the visiting dentists here now is from
Spokane and
actually had the young man in his home for dinner a few months ago. Anyway, he knew we were from Seattle after we visited with him the other
day, so he showed up for his test wearing a Seahawks jersey. Never mind that it was Aaron Curry’s
number. It was pretty cool. He knocked the test out of the park by the
way. The highest score we’ve seen since
being here. The test is required for
entrance to BYU Hawaii.
Only,
I mean, Only in Tonga
We were in our afternoon office one day
when a friend came by to say hello. Mom
asked him if he knew about the Family
History Center
office located in our morning office.
Mom and Elder and Sister Webb had been in that
office looking for some supplies. When
they pulled out a drawer they found some name slips that looked like they were
ready for the temple. Since that office
was now closed, mom wondered if those names should be retrieved and taken to
the temple. Our friend knew the country
family history director and he suggested we contact him to see what to do with
the names. We said we’d call him, but
our friend suggested we just go to his house. We may have mentioned that there
are no addresses in Tonga. There are almost no street signs, and no one
has a number on their house. Directions
are generally given by landmarks.
These
are the directions he gave us:
Take the road out in front of Liahona
until it comes to an end and then take a right onto the road to the
airport. When you get close to Vaini,
look for a large mango tree (Large mango trees are everywhere.) There will be a horse tied to it. That is about 150 meters before you get to
the Vaini Stake Center. If you get to the Stake Center,
you have gone too far. His house is just
2 houses up from the mango tree, next to a Chinese store. (There are Chinese stores everywhere on this
island. They are like locusts. They are Tonga’s version of a 7-11.) He said
you will recognize the house because his first wife is buried in the front
yard. We laughed so hard we hurt. We look for the horse every time we go
through Vaini. So far, we haven’t seen
the horse, the 1st wife’s grave, or the house. Perhaps they sold the horse. Now we will never find the house.
Where’s
the Beef?
On November 27, 2012, Bob and I returned
from our morning office at 1:30 PM. We
usually have lunch at our house and then go to our afternoon office across the
street. We were just sitting at our
kitchen table, polishing off the last of our peanut butter sandwiches, when we
saw a few trucks hauling calves drive down the street in front of our
house. (The Church has a cattle ranch
not far from our house.) There is a very
large speed bump in front of our house.
One of the trucks was going a little too fast over the speed bump and
the gate on the trailer popped open.
Three young calves suddenly found themselves in a very exciting
situation. They were no longer fenced
in!!!
Two of them dutifully headed back toward
the cattle ranch, but one adventurous cow didn’t want to let this opportunity
pass. He took off running down our
driveway and began anxiously exploring our back yard. Bob told me to grab the camera quickly, which
I did. I was still wearing my apron,
when I ran outside to capture the excitement on film. The young cow was having the time of his life
running all over. Elder and Sister Coles
rushed out of their house and began chasing the calf. Elder and Sister Johnston came out of their
house to join the round-up.
Remembering that the hot Tongan sun is
not good for my fair skin, I quickly ran back in the house to get my hat. I must have looked very funny wearing my
apron and my baseball cap, but this kind of lunchtime aMOOsment was not to be
missed! Elder Coles grabbed a rope and
tried unsuccessfully to put it around the calf’s neck. (If he had watched as
many John Wayne movies and read as many Louis Lamour westerns as Elder Bean, he
could have done it easily.) It was very
humorous to see Elder Coles, Elder Johnston and Elder Bean, all wearing their
white shirts, ties, and missionary badges, try to capture the calf. The young cow had no trouble outsmarting the
3 city slicker missionaries. I’m sure
the calf was laughing as he watched the would-be steer rustlers running every
which way. I got some fun photos and
wrote a poem about our lunchtime excitement.
“Hey Diddle Diddle,
The cat and the fiddle.
The cows jumped out of the trailer
The missionaries laughed to see such a
sight,
But their rescue attempts were a
failure.”
