Change in Direction - Our Last English Class

After all the intensity of our island travels where we work directly with people, it is sometimes difficult to adjust back to our role as office support missionaries working on reports and staring at a computer much of the day from  8:00 AM to 4:30 PM.    We know the office work matters too, but it is a big switch I sometimes struggle with.

One of the things that has continued to keep us feeling excited and engaged has been our Tuesday night English class with Chinese immigrants.   Oh how we have loved those times!

However, things had changed recently. The core group of people who used to come have moved on.  Some had left the area. Others simply found other things to do.  As they develop more proficiency with the language, our advanced students no longer need to rely on our class.  So attendance had dwindled quite a bit in recent weeks.  Also, as the young missionaries from the Chinese Branch who we partner with to run this class go through transfers, different new people coming in have varying degrees of interest in keeping it going.  

Besides the change in dynamic of how the class was going, our biggest issue was the fact that our travel schedule is really ramping up.  With no reliable substitutes to fall back on when we are in the islands, it just didn't make sense to continue to juggle this class with everything else we needed to be doing. Teaching this class was never a part of our assignment.   It was something we had volunteered for as extra service.   We are very thankful for the chance we had to be involved with it for the months we have been going. But after some careful reflection and prayer about it,  we came to the decision it was time for us to move on.

Then, when we showed up this week for our very last class, we had a whole new group of students to teach.  This came after weeks of only two or three people being there.  Our last session was actually one of our best ever. It almost made us want to reconsider our decision to back out. 

 We had fun teaching them names of various body parts (eyes/ears/nose/mouth, hand, foot, arm, leg).   Then we went on to reviewing names for containers one would find in a grocery store.   We differentiated between  a Carton (eggs, milk, yogurt),   a Box (cereal, macaroni, tea, dry soups),  a Can (vegetables, soups, beans, soda or beer),  a Bottle  (juice, soda, oil, wine)  a Jar (pickles, peanut butter, jam) a Package  (noodles, or biscuits - the name here for cookies) or a Sack (flour, sugar, rice).   

 Sister Lee would draw each item on the white board as we described it.  She turned out to be a terrific artist!   Then we would have each student in the circle practice saying a sentence using the word.  "I bought a jar of _____"  or "I bought a box of _____".    If they needed help we would tell them something that would be a match for the container we were talking about in that round of the exercise.  About half of them were able to come up with their own ideas.   There was much laughter and praise throughout the exercise and a good time was had by all.  I am grateful we got to end our service with that class on a high point.

Some of the Sister Missionaries who worked with the English class for Chinese speakers:
Sister Skankey, Sister Lee, Sister Henderson, Sister Howell, Sister Yang
Sister Lee was our artist who made our last class so much fun.

We will miss the good times we had working with the English Language classes.  Even with the occasional frustrations and disappointments,  teaching these dear people from China has been a true high point of our mission experience.  

As we transition away from this weekly teaching language classes, I can't help but wonder what other opportunities for community service we might find next. We were told in the MTC that as Senior Missionaries we would have quite a bit of flexibility in how we used our time.  To a large extent, it really is up to us what sort of mission experiences we want to have.   While it IS appropriate to take some days to rest and to explore this beautiful country we are serving in, we do want to be actively engaged in doing good without having to wait for an assignment to fill all our time.  Some of that will be helping people with family history, but we look forward to finding other things to do too.

Kauri Glen

The first few days after our return from Tonga I was totally wiped out.   Utter exhaustion wore my general strong resilience down to a nub and I ended up sick in bed for a couple days.  I hoped just getting some rest would get me back on my feet, but that didn't do it.  I wound up with a nasty case of bronchitis and needed to go see a doctor to get on meds in order to kick it.  Fortunately, once I had a couple days of antibiotics and a course of Prednisone in my system, I felt much better.  So Larry and I had a chance to get out for a hike and a bit of geocaching to enjoy New Zealand beauty before having to leave all over again.

We continue to be amazed by the many pockets of native bush that have been preserved all around Auckland.   There are MANY hectares of reserves that are open for hiking all around the city.  They have beautiful trails and places for picnics.  This was our first time at Kauri Glen.  We enjoyed it immensely.  After being stuck in bed feeling sick for a few days it felt absolutely wonderful to be back to my old self and to be able to be up and around again.

That got me thinking a lot about the role of adversity in our lives.  Sometimes we wish we could avoid the struggle and hard times that come our way.  But it is through the hard times we learn, grow, and come to appreciate the good.

While recovering from my broken wrist I had a lot of pain.  Even more than my hand itself, the complications I had with my frozen shoulder really gave me a lot of problem.  Most of the time we were in Tonga it was still hurting a lot every morning when I would first get up.  Generally after I got moving around and did my exercises as instructed by the physiotherapist I had gone to, I would begin to get some relief. But those first couple hours of each day could be pretty miserable.

How we choose to respond to the pain and problem in our lives really does define the quality of what our lives are like.  EVERYONE gets some sort of hardship - some more than others.  But we all have our hearts broken.  We all have to deal with sickness to one degree or another.  We all have disappointments or injustice that happen. People we thought we could trust let us down.  Opportunities we thought were just within our grasp go to someone else.  We have losses of all sorts to cope with.   Life just plain hurts in so many ways.

But it is just as true that there are things to celebrate and be grateful for.  There are miracles and beauty and things that can bring us awe and wonder.  We choose which we will focus on.  We choose which images, feelings, experiences we will hold onto, what we will ponder on, what will be the focus of our day to day lives.  We can stay stuck holding on to our pain or we can endure it with grace while putting our main attention on all that is good.

Easy to say - hard to do when the pain is calling out for our whole attention.  But I have truly come to appreciate the fact that this world is built on opposites and that in their own way, the trials can bless our lives ever bit as much as the prizes and celebrations.  It's all a matter of how we choose to respond to them.

When we have days like today when we get to wrap ourselves up in happiness and beauty I remind myself that I am making important deposits into my emotional/spiritual bank account.  I have no doubt there will be days in my future when I feel utterly bereft, or when I want to howl with misery.   When those times come I hope I can call up these blessing times and suck on the memories - transporting my focus back to how good I have had it right now.  When the final balance comes I may not have any control over whether I got more happy days or more struggles. I may not get to pick how deep the wounds life brings my way are going to be.  Sometimes we are left with the wreckage of other people's choices or with whatever freak events happen in this crazy, random, mortal life.  But I do have control over which experiences I will play through my head the most often and how intensely I pay attention to what I am currently experiencing.

I don't have to put on rose colored glasses when things go wrong. I can acknowledge the bumps and be honest with myself when things are a complicated cluster of angst, confusion or hurt feelings.  But I don't have to let it own me.  I can put it in perspective along side of days like this when I feel so fully alive and am experiencing peace, beauty, and love in such abundance.   And that can make all the difference.

Abhor Evil

As I have reflected on our time in Tonga, I remember one other significant lesson I learned there that I never want to forget.  It came from a conversation between Sister Piatau and her mother the day we worked together in the Family History Center.

Her mother lives in New Zealand, but had traveled home to Tonga for a visit.  While she was there she was spending time going over various aspects of their family boat rental business which was being managed by Sister Piatau's brother.  The business had struggled over the past year, so Sister Piatau's mother was trying to find ways to make it stronger.  She was considering such things as possible advertising, refurbishing of the boat, or hiring different staff to manage the accounts.  She asked her daughter's opinion of what the best thing might be for getting the business back to its former glory days.

Sister Piatau did not hesitate for one instant.  She adamantly insisted the only way for the business to be successful would be for all of their family to put away iniquity.  Now, she was not saying that anyone was doing some terrible sin.  What she WAS saying was that all blessings come from God and that in order for us to be blessed, we must be obedient to the commandments and have our hearts in the right place.  She made it very clear that rather than relying on business plans and marketing strategies, their first step must be to humble themselves and seek out the Lord in prayer to know what it was that He wanted them to do.

I was deeply impressed by the unshakable faith of this dear woman and her clarity about what is truly important.  I hope that in my own life I will be able to follow her example.

Trees in Tonga

There are many flowering trees in Tonga, plus the usual tropical fare of  palm trees, banana trees, papaya, breadfruit and other food source trees.  But what surprised me the most were the pine trees.  This is a short article I posted on LinkedIn talking about that, with a few photos added.

Changes in latitudes...changes in attitudes  

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I recently returned from a two week assignment to the Kingdom of Tonga.  One thing that very much surprised me there was seeing pine trees all along the driveway of the campus where I was staying.  

Having traveled throughout the Pacific for the past nine months, I've become somewhat familiar with the typical flora of this region.   I had expected, of course, to see lots of palm, papaya and breadfruit trees.  It never occurred to me that on a tropical island in the South Pacific, there might be the same kind of pine trees I would find growing back in America.

There is an ongoing trend of reforestation throughout the Pacific.  Various types of trees have been planted for fuel, as well as for "erosion control, wind protection, shade, multipurpose construction and handicrafts,..and food."  I am well familiar with the pine chipping plant that operates in Latoka, Fiji.

The pine trees I saw lining the driveway of the  Liahona campus on the island of Nuku'alofa, however, were different from all that.  Built in the 1940's by LDS Service Missionaries, this campus was probably adorned with pine trees as a way to give men and women from Utah  a sense of familiarity, a taste of home.

There is nothing new about people in far flung lands wanting to recreate a sense of the familiar.  Famous writer Robert Louis Stevenson had redwood timbers shipped all the way from California to Samoa to panel his wife Fanny's bedroom for that very purpose.

Having visited the Stevenson home in Samoa (Villa Valima), and then seeing this long row of pine trees in Tonga, made me reflect on how much we all carry seeds of our past experiences and bring them forward to our new environments.  In what ways does that serve us?   In what ways might it be detrimental?

I grew up in Arizona, a place that used to be touted as one of the best environments for those with respiratory ailments.   "... in the late 19th century,many thought the arid climate was the answer to breathing problems.  In 1881, the territorial government created an immigration commission, much like today's Tourism Department. Its first commissioner had tuberculosis. His mission: Make Arizona a health destination.  An 1890 map gushed about the Valley as a health resort: "The many people cured here of diseases of the lungs and bronchial tubes, considered incurable elsewhere, are living proofs of the remarkable healing powers of the climate."

However, those who went west for their health found the desert landscape of Arizona to be harsh and offputting.  So they planted lots of trees and grasses to make it feel more like the green lands they left behind.  That change in the landscape defeated the very reason they had come there.  According to Paula Voorhees writing for Tucson Lifestyle Magazine,  "As a result of these attempts to enhance the desert paradise, the Grand Canyon State is now overgrown with full-blown allergy centers. Arizona, in fact, has twice the national average of respiratory allergies".

Trees and grasses are not the only ways we change our environments when we move from one place to another.  We spread ideas.   We bring new technologies.  We promote values and social practices. The proliferation of large franchise chain stores has not entirely eradicated unique locally owned shops and services in the US, but it certainly has changed the way many view what it means to go out to eat or to find a store.  Globalization has carried many of those companies all over the world.  When I traveled to Egypt in 2006, I was only mildly surprised to see McDonalds in Cairo.   

So as I continue to travel around various parts of the world, I often wonder about the changes in the physical and social environments that are taking place... both deliberately and those subtle shifts that occur without the catalysts of change even being aware of  them.  Many of the island people I meet who may or may not own a pair of shoes carry cell phones.  I have found it quite common to hear American music coming from radios all over the Pacific.

I believe it is naive to think we can or should walk through this world without making changes.  The trick, for me, is making every effort I can to be respectful of the places I visit and to try my best to be sure that whatever changes I leave behind will be honorable.                                                          ####

More Trees from Tonga:

Buildings, Businesses and Homes in Tonga

The town of Neiafu is the main population center on the island of Vava'u.  It has an emerging infrastructure that is largely supported by the tourist industry as people come from all over the world for whale watching, diving/snorkeling/sailing, deep sea fishing, and enjoying the amazing beauty of the place.  With all the many little islands that make up the group there is much to explore in Vava’u.

Once you get away from town into the villages things are quite different.  Traditional bush plantations are seen everywhere with people cultivating tapioca, manioc, cassava, taro and other crops.   In town, however there is a hospital and a clinic, several banks, shops and assorted hospitality based businesses.

Prince Ngo Hospital

Street in Neiafu

There are actually quite a few business opportunities for sale or lease in Vava'u

There are a number of lovely vacation homes on Vavau that can be rented by the day, the week or the month.

There are also a lot of houses that would be considered marginal by Western standards, especially when you get further away from town.

However, what impressed me most about my time in Tonga was how much material things were not that important.  It didn't really seem to matter if someone lived in a fancy houses or a shack in the bush.  People interacted along traditional lines of honoring family and mutual support of the village community.  A person's honor was based on his or her integrity, not one what they owned.   I liked that a lot.

Some from America have asked me "did you see a lot of poverty in the islands?"    I suppose we did.  But you would never know it when you looked into the eyes and the smiles of the people.  I am not kidding myself. They have plenty of struggles and problems to cope with.   And, as more and more people there see images of western lifestyle on TV and Internet, I imagine it will affect their sense of what it means to have so few material things.  I was struck by the people I saw who seemed to be right on the cusp of cultural change - barefoot digging in the tapioca fields but carrying cell phones.

I don't know what the future of Tonga is.  But the time we spent there was powerful, such a blessing.  We found the people to be welcoming and the island of Vava'u absolutely beautiful.

Animals in Tonga

Without question, the most prevalent animal to be found in Tonga is the pig.  There are pigs EVERYWHERE.   They simply wander about, in the streets, in people's yards, along the beaches at low tide.  During our first trip to Tonga I posted a different pig picture each day on Facebook.  I didn't do that this time around, but it was not for lack of opportunity.

                                     

When I asked who certain pigs belonged to, I was told "everyone".   It did seem that some pigs were specific to particular yards so I think there was specific "ownership" of the pigs....maybe the explanation I had been given was based on the fact that everyone has pigs.  I'm not sure.  Sometimes the differences in our language made understanding each other a bit of a challenge.

Other animals we saw included cows, horses, sheep and goats.

                                 

                                 

                                

                                 

A major business in Vava'u is Whale watching.

Photo Credit: Jason's.com

Perhaps one of the most interesting animal in Tonga is the fruit bat, known locally as "flying foxes".  According to Gilbert Grant, a visiting professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, in the summer of 1996 he counted "seven major roosts with a total of nearly 3,600 bats. These numbers do not include the many nursing babies I saw, nor the bats hidden in the dense foliage of mango and strangler fig trees, where it was impossible to see them well enough to count them" on Tongatapu.  When looking further among some of the outer islands he found even more:  "At the end of the day, we had seen nearly 6,000 bats in 25 roosts on 13 islands. Unfortunately, bad weather and time constraints prevented us from visiting all the islands with reported bat populations."

Photo Credit: Virtual Tonga

The first time we saw these flying we thought they were huge birds.  They had a wing span of two to two and a half feet.   Larry saw quite a few of them and we were driving in the evenings.   I have lousy night vision so I would often miss them, but I did get to see some going from tree to three.

I asked people in the islands if they had eaten bat, and I was told by several people they had.  However, what I see online reports that they are protected, considered property of the King and cannot be hunted.   Not sure what the actual story on all that is.

There was only one animal that I saw that was not welcome - and that was just because it crawled across me in my bed.   I'm really not scared of lizards when I see them scurry up a wall or sunning themselves in a windowsill.  But having one scramble across my arm as I was relaxing to go to sleep sort of freaked me out.  I screamed like a little girl.   Such is life in the tropics.

Faith in Tonga

Tonga is a strongly Christian land with many different denominations.  While there is some animosity and antagonism from other churches toward the LDS faith, the Church is well established throughout all the islands that make up the Kingdom, with a higher percentage of the population here being LDS than any other country in the world.  

Just how many people in Tonga are LDS depends on how you count them.  According to Wikipedia:

"The current membership of the church is 60,680, which represents 57% of the population of Tonga.  As of year-end 2007, the LDS Church reported 54,281 members, 16 stakes, two districts, 125 wards, 39 branches, one mission, and one temple in Tonga. The claimed membership total represents approximately 46 percent of the population of the kingdom.

In 1996, the LDS Church reported about a third of the Tonga's population to be members. However, according to 1996 census data, 14 percent of the population self-identified as Latter-day Saints at the time. LDS Church membership statistics are different from self-reported statistics mainly because the LDS Church does not remove an individual’s name from its membership rolls based on inactivity in the church.^"

However, another website reports "Today more than 90 percent of the Tongan population practices some form of Christianity as a result of missionary settlements from the Free Wesleyan Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Mormon Church over the last two centuries. Christian churches are abundant on Tonga, an island in the South Pacific, but traces of indigenous religious and cultural beliefs still remain, evident in taboos and beliefs rooted in spirituality and animism."

Vava’u has the largest concentration of Mormons (18.5%) whilst Niuafo’ou and Niuatoputapu have the lowest (only 4% or 59 people). The village with the largest Mormon concentration was the village of Matahau in Tongatapu with 400 of its 628 residents identifying as Mormon. The LDS church is also predominant among the Tongan diaspora in the United States.


The Church makes a deliberate effort to be good neighbors and endeavors to get along as best as they can with the other faiths.  Here are some of the churches we saw while we were on Vava'u.  

  
              
For more info on other topics about Tonga see Encyclopedia.Com