Island Tour and Stories

 

We went on a Tour of the Island with the Senior Missionaries. Our bus driver was Peni Tonga, the father of Kaloni the girl in the Friend article on Tonga.  Our tour guide was Lopeti, he does tours for the Cruise Ships when they come in here. He is a counselor to the Bishop in the Ward we attend. We started with a picnic at the gates of the Palace as our guide talked about the King and his kingdom.

 Then we loaded on the bus and the sites we saw were, the King’s Palace from the outside, the Royal Tombs, Captain Cooks landing - below

 The Ha’amonga Arch - Lapaha, where time begins as Tonga is the first to see the sun rise each day based on the International Dateline.

Lopeti has some fun interesting stories. When he left for his mission and  arrived in SLC no one came to pick him up so he hitch hiked to Provo. He rode with a farmer who was not a member of the church. Lopeti couldn’t pay him for the ride so he offered to work for him to pay him back. The farmer took him home to Spanish Fork and he worked for a couple days then he was dropped off at the temple.  He was a very good worker and he was able to tell the farmer about the church a little bit. He forgot his book of Mormon in his room and the farmer picked it up and read it. A few weeks later he went to the MTC and asked for Lopeti. He wanted him to be baptized. Lopeti’s first baptism was in the MTC before he even left the MTC.

Lopeti was a missionary in California. He noticed that people hired out the trimming of their palm trees and he could climb up those trees like a monkey so he offered to trim trees for people for free if they would listen to his companion teach them a lesson.  He was pretty good at shinnying up the tree barefooted and trimming the dead limbs.  One day he raced a tree trimmer who used shoes and a belt. The deal was that if Lopeti lost, he owed the tree guy $100 but if Lopeti won, the trimmer had to listen to the lessons. Lopeti won. He said he had four baptism from that project until the Mission President heard and told him to stop as it was too dangerous.