2015 Christmas in Tonga

We were so thankful for our wonderful little Christmas tree that our children sent to us.  It is made out of cut out hand prints of all our grandchildren, with pictures of each grand child on Christmas balls to put on the tree.  All the other Seniors thought it was great.  We also had snowballs made by a very special lady so that we could have a snowball fight in Tonga, an Elder Frosty, and many wonderful letters and pictures from home!  Through this time of year a lot of people leave the island for holiday, so our office slows down a bit, but the activities with the Seniors did not.  We had some special times with them that helped us through the Christmas Season as it is hard to be away from family at this time of year.  Hope you enjoy all the photos of all our activities!

Our beautiful Christmas Tree, snowballs and Elder Frosty!

Here it is with the lights on!

Here the Seniors went to dinner together at a new restaurant in Nuku'alofa, Victor's Cafe.  Pretty good food, but we over whelmed them with all of us there at once!

It was  a lovely night out, such wonderful company!

We had to wait quite a while for our food, but enjoyed visiting with everyone!

This little girl was helping us remember to be reverent in church the Sunday before Christmas.

Here the Seniors are busy putting together 12 boxes of food for 12 needy families that Elder and Sister Va'enuku have been helping and trying to bring into the church.  We all pitched in purchasing the food to fill the boxes.

Here we are filling bags of flour for each box.

These Elders are filling bags of sugar for each box.

This is some of the items that we put in each box.

It was wonderful all working together on this project.

This is Elders Radmacher, Deakin, and Va'enuku playing Christmas carols for us while we were filling the boxes.

We ended up with two boxes for each family. On the one box we had a letter to them with a nice bow.

Here the boxes are loaded in the van and we headed out to each family to deliver the boxes.

This is Elder Murdock and Elder Edwards carrying two boxes to this little humble home.  Elder Va'enuku said that half of the time they have no food in their houses!

This is Sister Va'enuku wishing this elderly lady a Merry Christmas, as you can see how humble the house is!

This little house was made from palm leaves and tin roof.  There is a mother with 7 children living here.  Her husband left her and the children so she is trying to provide for them the best she can.  Our hearts were aching for her and the children!

This is inside the house, kitchen and one mattress on the floor for all to sleep.  Clean but very humble!

This is the mother holding her little one and is drawn to tears for the boxes of food we have brought to her and her family. We so wish that we could do more, but the problem is there are hundreds more just like this here in Tonga.  How do you help them all??

Here we are gathering for our Christmas Eve dinner, feeling guilty for having so much to be thankful for!

We even had a roasted pig with our meal, along with turkey and ham.  It was all so American and wonderful!

We all enjoyed the wonderful meal.  Following we had a wonderful Christmas Social prepared by Elder and Sister Murdock, Elder and Sister Clarkson, and Elder and Sister Radmacher.  It was a wonderful evening!

Christmas morning we had a wonderful Christmas devotional put on by our District leaders Elder and Sister Holbrook!

We even had Mr and Mrs Clause visit us, Elder and Sister Edwards - what a great couple!

Christmas day we all headed to the beach for a hot dog roast.  It was a beautiful day for the beach.  Thanks to Elder and Sister Van Den Akker for going early to save us a shady spot, as there were a lot of Tongans with the same idea!

We all enjoyed ourselves.

We had our walking sticks as it was wading in the tide pools.  It helps so much to have good people to spend Christmas with when you are so far from family and home!

"Christmas gifts should be in memory of the divine gift, the life of Jesus Christ.  His gift gave us eternal life; our gifts should enliven with joy those who receive.  His gift was the sacrifice of his earthly life; our gifts should represent personal sacrifices on our part."    John A. Widtsoe