Transitions: No More Kids at Home!?

Sage and Joy, walking toward school

Joy, like all NZ kids, started school on the first weekday after her 5th birthday.

Joy's first day at school

What will I do without any more little kids at home during the school day?  

Day 1, go up the mountain with Sue for a hike:

first snow just a few days later

But since my hiking day, I feel like all I've been doing is family secretarial work!  If I wait to get caught up, I might never do anything but manage paperwork/scheduling with my "new" time during the school day! 

Like all major transitions, it seems surprisingly normal to have Joyce go off to a full-day of school.  

Graduating from high school, getting married, Mike leaving for Afghanistan, my youngest child in school...these were all BIG days that loomed in the future ahead of me, but which seemed more normal than I expected once they happened.  Not that they weren't wonderful days . . . just that I was still the same "me," I guess....  More normal than I expected!  

I hope dying will be the same kind of transition someday.

Book of the Week:

Girls and I enjoyed this read-aloud 

Tonga: Singing, Snorkeling, Fed by Toi, Part 2

Walking home from church in Vai Malo

Joyce, walking home from church in Vai Malo

The big church in the Neiafu

closer look at the churchgoers

Boys spent a morning on Pia's plantation.

playing Uno with some neighbors

hiking the tallest point in Vava'u

Goodbye to Mike, a day before our 20-year anniversary

Another relative of our NZ friends.  She has 5 sisters working on postgraduate education around the world, her mother was principal at the church school, her parents currently mission presidents in Papua New Guinea.
She's home running the family business.  

Sage gets to drive the boat.

Swallow's cave

These aren't my pictures, but this is what it looked like when we were there.

Mariners Cave

Toi's Monday night dinner - a complete roasted pig

The relatives who took us back to the airport.  Lena, husband, and baby Mosalina.

Lena's house

Ride back to the airport.  Goodbye to Toi.

Every person got weighed so the plane could be well-balanced

watermelon hit the spot, back on the mainland

Toni

Goodbye, Tonga

Sunday:
I went to 4 different churches to hear the people sing!  A highlight for me.  We listened to another 4:30AM singing-devotional while in bed, but I'm not even counting that.  First, we attended the LDS church with the YM from the campout, where the bishop asked Mike and I to share a few words.  People laughed in the right places, so at least some people understood our English!  Secondly, we attended a big church in town; thirdly and fourthly, little churches in our little village.  We spent the rest of the day relaxing at home.  In the evening, we "climbed" the highest "peak" in Vava'u.

Monday:
Another 4:30AM singing-devotional!  I get goosebumps on my arms just thinking about it!  Mike came over a little later than I, and got bit by 2 dogs on the way - scary!

We had gotten to know a man named Pia, a Tongan who had worked for many years as a schoolteacher in New Zealand.  He took Danny and Oak to work at his plantation in the morning, while I took Mike to the airport.  The boys helped build a fence out of coconut tree trunks.  Mike had to fly back a couple of days early for work, causing us to spend our 20-year anniversary in different countries.

After dropping off Mike, the kids and I went out on a boat to some off-shore snorkeling.  It was a real highlight!!!  Swallow's Cave - where we swam through schools of hundred and hundreds of fish, an off-shore reef, and then Mariner's Cave - where we got to swim through an underwater tunnel to reach a cave.  The view back out to sea was surreal.

We returned home to a roast pig dinner from Toi.  She had to go home before we ate, so Danny did his best to figure out how to serve our meal!  We asked Toi before she left, but in her broken English, she just laughed and said, "Take the knife!  Cut the pig!"

We also laughed eating dinner because a living pig was snorting and snuffling around outside the window.

The entire day was a real privilege.

Tuesday:
Did a first-rate job cleaning up our beautiful little house, and then drove to our local airport and flew back to the mainland.  We got picked up by Toni and taken to his guesthouse for the night.  I couldn't believe how civilized and wealthy the mainland looked after being in Vava'u!  The roads, cars, houses - everything seemed so rich!  One of the kids said, "It seems like we're back in New Zealand already."  Toni's guesthouse was delightful, and we were amazed at the clean sheets, the warm shower (already mentioned in an earlier post), the microwave, the entire kitchen, the electricity flowing into every bedroom, etc.

Toni was a real talker.  He'd come from England to Tonga in his 40's, and hadn't gone anywhere since.  He was laying out zinger-quotes right and left, with complete seriousness.   For example, he told us about how the new king of Tonga had allowed archeologists to do some work in Tonga and how the archeologists had re-written Polynesian history based on science.  He said, "The oldest residents of Polynesia were in Tonga.  When it got too crowded, they shipped all the mean ones to New Zealand, all the big ones that didn't want to work were sent to Samoa, and all the effeminate ones were sent to French Micronesia."

He yarned on about Tongans, based on experiences with his Tongan wife and his wife's extended family....  (Robin - It was interesting to hear that the HEFY kids stay at Toni's Guesthouse when they come to Tonga!)

Wednesday morning:  Toni drove us for one last play on the beach, and then we flew back to New Zealand.

After 9 days in Tonga, I don't pretend to know much about Tonga or Tongans, but I know a lot more than I did a couple of weeks ago.  I'm thankful for that.  I LOVED our visit to Tonga!

We got home and enjoyed watching "The Other Side of Heaven" with Amy Benton.  Now I noticed the kava drink, the LDS school uniforms, the beaches and coconut trees (even though it was filmed in Rarotonga), the Tongan harmonies during the singing.

When we landed in Auckland, Oak got on another domestic flight to Napier/Hastings to compete in orienteering finals.  The rest of us drove home to a local concerto weekend.  Here's a link to Danny's performance, for anyone interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IySmSe-QKek&feature=em-subs_digest

Link to Sage's school blog:
http://sagesfrankleyblog.blogspot.co.nz/2016/05/sages-video-on-friday-13-may-2016.html

Tonga: Singing, Snorkeling, Fed by Toi, Part 1

The drum across the road.  Drumming called people to church.

View of Vai Malo.  We stayed in the house on the left, with green roof and window frames.  The sea is at my back.

View of road into Vai Malo.  Our house is coming up on the left.

Toi, Sepa's sister, met us at the house
and helped us get some coconuts and breadfruit for dinner.  

Another neighbor brought over a papaya

kitchen stove

Joyce said, "It doesn't seem like they are being very NICE to that pig!"

Neiafu 1st Ward YM Campout.  Hosea, the leader in the red T-shirt invited us.  

Toi's Friday night dinner

group of missionaries getting on a boat for another island
We ran into missionaries every few hours in Tonga!

more missionaries

Mike backed into a pole, but in a rental like this, you'd never notice.

Toi's Saturday night dinner!  Toi and her granddaughter are 2 of the 4:30AM-singers.

Inside the banana leaves:  clams and coconut in one, ham and coconut in the other.

That's all the pictures...

Friday:

The next morning, or in the middle of the night - depending on how you look at it, I woke up to a drum beating across the street.  And then. . . singing!  I jumped out of bed, and crossed the road to a little chapel there.  A bunch of dogs surrounded me and started barking loudly, but I wasn't worried because the dogs hadn't bothered us the day before.  (Mike, however, got bit by two dogs in a similar situation a few days later!) Someone in the church heard the racket and came out and found me, and invited me to come into the church.  I felt very under-dressed!  Despite the time of day (4:30AM) everyone was in their Sunday best.

The singing was AWESOME!!!!  There were about 30 people in this little one-room church, all ages, many of whom I recognized from the previous afternoon.  Now they were in white shirts and lava lavas (boys and men) and nice dresses and hats (women).  They sang from the heart and from the gut - in multi-part harmony, with no music, for about 30 minutes.  Then their preacher lead them in prayer for a bit, and then they sang some more.

I loved seeing the abandon with which they sang.  Each person seemed completely unselfconscious of the dramatic volume of each of their voices.  Their singing was similar to what I would call yelling!  (Who knows what they would call my kind of singing?  Pale, at best.)  I think it would be very cathartic to gather with members of my extended family 3 or 4 times a week and yell out our favorite hymns in beautiful harmony.  It would be a good way to start the day.

The next day we got a ride into town and rented a car (classic experience, in itself!).  We bought some food and then went to a beautiful beach and played and snorkeled!  So fun!

While we were in town, I happened to start talking to a guy, Hosea Hefi, who had just returned from his mission to Australia.  He was taking the YM of his ward on a campout that night, and invited us to come along.

That night, we followed a busload of about 15 YM and 2 leaders as it drove about 20 minutes outside of town.  On the way, we stopped at the house of one of the leaders, where they shot a pig and brought it along in a bucket.  They ended up at a gorgeous beach, playing rugby, swimming, fishing, roasting their pig.  The girls and I went back to our house for the night, but Mike and the boys (the palangi) slept in a tent.  The Tongan boys didn't sleep much at all, but when they did, they slept on the sand or on the ground under a tree.  Nobody had sleeping bags or mats or camping clothes or any packaged food.  Just grab a couple of tarps, a pig in a bucket, and a rugby ball, then rent an old bus to drop you off on Friday night and come back to get you on Saturday morning...

Well, I'm sure it was more involved than that for the leaders, but that's how simple it seemed to me!

One boy, Alifeleti, told me, "It's the first time I meet Palangi members of the church."  I guess he'd seen palangi missionaries, but never a whole family.  We definitely stood out wherever we went.

The YM president, Tomasi, had moved back to Tonga with his family a year ago from Hurricane, UT.  Interesting family!   His wife, Liz, knows Aunt Lolly and Uncle Lou.

Mike said that some teachers from Saineha High School (the local LDS high school) showed up on the beach about midnight and stayed up until 3AM singing LOUD karaoke.  So that's another experience with Tongan singing altogether...

When the girls and I got back to the house, Toi was there with a fresh fish dinner.  Wow!  What a day!

Saturday:

I picked up Mike and the boys and we went to another amazing beach and LOVED the snorkeling.

We got home to another generous dinner from Toi - clams and ham baked in coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves, and fresh papaya in coconut milk.  We start to feel a little more comfortable in a new place, starting to know our way around.

Looking forward to lots of great singing on the Sabbath!

To be continued...

Tonga: Crying for a Hot Shower

Tunitau and Sepa - they sent us to Tonga with the keys to their house

After a couple of hours of scrambling and expensive taxi rides to the Tongan Embassy, we were able to resolve the problem.

Tongatapu International Airport!  Small!  A baggage claim and a couple of customs desks

Airport welcome

2 nights in a village called Houma

Something cool to drink

Kava, feeding coconuts to his pigs

We got our first taste of local Tongan generosity and kindnesses.



We also got our first taste of drinking coconuts instead of water, breadfruit, lu, and even "horsie."

one door is the toilet, the other door is the shower

Kitchen.  The freezer/refrigerator is in the foreground.  The next picture is a look inside...

chicken and coconuts

bedroom

Joyce on a swing in the backyard.

Backyard from a different angle

We drove around the entire main island in a day, seeing some of the main sights.  You pass 36 LDS church buildings, 2 LDS intermediate schools, 1 LDS high school, and an LDS temple on the main loop around the island!

outdoor baptismal font

Green school uniforms of the Liahona High School

Random people on the street

We enjoyed talking with this missionary couple, serving at Liahona.

Lunch stop.  Our boys and Villiami in the truck.

Breadfruit and fish

Remind anyone of the story about Great-grandpa Miller?

Villiami came with us for the day.
He'd been sent home from Liahona because his hair was too long.

cemetery 

That's all the pictures - now there's just writing...

I have never found myself crying before, because of a hot shower.  But, there I was, warm tears running down my face and mixing with the warm water of the shower in our 1-star guesthouse on the main island of Tonga.  We had just spent 8 nights staying with local Tongans who use outdoor showers, and the warm shower made me feel sad that our adventure was almost at an end.  We were just hours away from boarding our flight back to New Zealand.

The idea for this trip started a couple of years ago, when Elder Hamula, our LDS area authority was at our house for dinner following a local conference.  He has visited every corner of the South Pacific as part of his responsibilities.  I asked him what he would recommend to me as top destinations in the South Pacific, keeping in mind that I have more limited time and money than he's had.

His answer was, "Go to Tonga to hear the people sing, and go to Papua New Guinea, because it's so different than anywhere else in the area, it's unlike anywhere else on earth."

So, the idea for our Tonga-trip was planted in my mind.  When we had a two-week school break, and no big commitments; I took a leap and bought tickets to Tonga!  Although it was expensive, it felt cheap to me, because it's so much cheaper than flying to Tonga from the States.  It's a 3-hour flight, and cost about $370 per person.  My plan was to take our backpacking tents, swimsuits and Sunday clothes, and make the flights our main expense.

It turned out so much better than expected!  When we mentioned to Tongan friends from our branch, the Leas, they connected us with people all along the way!  Most significantly, their parents, who live in Auckland most of the year, offered to let us stay in their home in a little village on one of the Tongan Islands (Vai Malo, in Vava'u).

The first part of our trip was the 5-hour car drive to Auckland.  The Lea's parents house was just five minutes from the airport, so we stopped there to meet them and pick up the keys to their home.

John Lea has been a good friend to our boys, and even stayed with us for about a month at the end of the last school year.  His mom got teary-eyed as she thanked us for helping to take care of him.

I remember thinking their Auckland home was quite humble - quick construction, small, hodgepodge flooring.  How my perspective had changed by the time we returned from Tonga, and stopped to drop off the keys on our way back home!

Our first adventure was checking in to our flight, and being told that our little Joycie would have to stay behind!  Her passport expired in less than 6 months, so they wouldn't let her check in with the rest of us.  They asked if we didn't have friends or relatives that could come and pick her up from the airport!  Of course we weren't leaving her behind, but Mike and I started coming to grips with the idea that one of us might be staying home with Joyce.

After a couple of hours of scrambling and expensive taxi rides to the Tongan Embassy, we were able to resolve the problem.

We arrived in Tongatapu airport, the main airport on the main island of Tonga.  This airport seemed the same size as our local airport in New Plymouth!  One major difference though.... SINGING!  A small welcoming group of men was sitting on a bench and belting out a song in that wonderful Tongan-style harmony.

Kava and Vaiua, a young couple, met us at the airport.  Kava served his LDS mission in our area, so it was especially great for us that he spoke English.  They took us to their home for two nights and showed us around the main island.

Their 2-year-old boy was staying in Auckland with relatives, but they had 7 or 8 (?) other kids staying with them, who were relatives or friends of relatives.  Teenagers, Lupe and Villiami, were especially keen to practice their English with us.

We got our first taste of Tongan generosity and kindnesses. We also got our first taste of drinking coconuts instead of water, breadfruit, lu, and even "horsie."  We had our first experience with an outdoor kitchen and outdoor bathrooms.

Villiami came with us for the day.   He'd been sent home from Liahona because his hair was too long.

Kava took the boys to play volleyball with some friends in the evening, while Mike and I went to the temple.

The next morning we boarded a little plane for the island group, Vava'u.

We landed and were picked up, once again, by a friend of friends.  She dropped us off at Tunitau and Sepa's house in the village of Vai Malo.

John had told us, "It's like a New Zealand house."

Well, true in some ways.  It had paint on the walls, a roof which was not made of banana-leaves, and it had a couple of sofas and 4 beds.  Many of the houses around us didn't have sofas, chairs, beds OR front doors.  Outdoor kitchen and bathroom/shower now seem more normal to us.  It was a beautiful setting!  A tiny little village, next to the sea, no facilities.  3 little churches and a school.

We didn't have anything to eat when we arrived, and nowhere to buy it, so neighbors helped us get some coconuts and pull down a few breadfruit from a tree.  Dinner!  They helped us string up one light in the kitchen, and another light in the main house, and pull out the tank of gas that powered the stove burners.  I have to say, at this point, we wondered what, exactly, we'd gotten ourselves into.

To be continued...