Day 52

Sunday 21st June 2009

Nuku�alofa Harbour

I was woken around 23H55 last night to the sound of sirens and vehicles close by and jumped up to check what was happening. All I could see was flashing lights and a raging fire just a few boats along the harbour wall from where we were tied up. Everyone else was snoring soundly, so I woke the skipper and we watched for a while trying to work out what was happening. We had thought that if the wind direction changed, bringing the smoke any closer we might have to quickly cut our ties, up anchor and head out of the harbour. However, the smoke did not come too close. It looked as though they were allowing the fire to burn itself out, as long as it was contained to the one location, we later saw firemen boarding another vessel and hosing it down, we think that must�ve been to keep that vessel safe. This morning we took a look at it, the fire was a bit further along the wall than we had thought, but had completely destroyed the wooden superstructure of a vessel that was owned by one of the churches and had just undergone an upgrade, and they had obviously hosed down a neighbouring vessel to protect it.

Vatuni kindly came to collect us at 8am this morning to go to Liahona High School 1st Ward along with his family. We discovered there are two wards that meet at the high school and that the boarders are divided between the two wards. Emma and Matt thought this was great as there were so many youth attending church. We enjoyed the best sacrament meeting ever! The whole of Vatuni�s family of seven, the Fifita�s, spoke and sang, along with about four other youth. They all spoke on the principle of tithing and it was wonderful. As it is an English speaking school, the service was all in English and it was great to be able to understand everything! The children all enjoyed their lessons, as did Charles and I. As we have experienced every time we�ve attended church, no matter where we were, the children were warmly welcomed in their classes and made new friends.

Vatuni�s wife, Fehi, had kindly made us a delicious lunch of roast chicken, carrots, yummy purple Hawaiian sweet potato with gravy, salad and watermelon, which we enjoyed with their family. It was soo good and they were excellent hosts. It was so good to chat to them and discover more of the challenges and blessings that families face here in Tonga. The children enjoyed the company of their children: Abraham, Palu, Junior, Tutoe and Melemoala.

They came back to the boat with us and we were looking forward to showing them around on board, only we discovered that the windward stern mooring line (that had been tied on by a nameless member of the crew), had come adrift! We found our vessel about to nudge the vessel on the leeward side and our dinghy up on the rocks against the wall. We left our guests on the shore, while the Skipper, aided by Tom, Emma and Matt, along with two other boaties in their dinghies powered with little 2hp engines, who attempted to act as tug boats to assist us to re-anchor and turn the boat against the wind to pick up our stern lines again. Skipper�s ego took a big hit, having previously done this twice before faultlessly and unaided! Oh, where were the onlookers then?!! Skipper will be providing remedial knot classes for the crew in the near future!! We brought our guests aboard and showed them round while Matt made hot chocolate for everyone. We enjoyed chatting some more and thanked them for making our Sabbath very special. After they�d left, Charles went walking along the embankment to thank again those that had helped us re-anchor, we�d had the tropical rain cover on since yesterday hoping for rain to fill our empty water tanks, however, despite being cool and overcast today, we didn�t see any rain. As always, keeping his eyes open for every opportunity, he spotted someone filling their water tanks and was advised that they had collected it from the custom�s office water tank. They kindly offered to lend us their water jerry cans and Matt and Charles did a couple of runs until we too have full water tanks on board. See, the Lord did provide! He�s continuing to provide too, as, since we�ve filled up, it�s started to rain � now we�re excited, we might even get a freshwater shower tonight! We are now trying to use as little as possible so we can have enough food and water etc to last us for two weeks til we get home. Abby and Rebekah had a little play with the children from Wellington that were on the boat that lent us the jerry cans, a 54ft chico called Soulmate built by Keith Eade for himself, the same boatbuilder as built our boat.

Joy