Papua New Guinea Boys - New Shirts and Tupenos

Liahona High School has students from around the Pacific. We had a fun experience getting to know the boys from Papua New Guinea.

At church Sunday, Malachi Kioa (stake high counselman in our ward) spoke about ministering...  becoming like the Savior as we serve everyone. At the conclusion of Malachi's talk, he mentioned that the Papua New Guinea boys have only one white shirt and one school uniform called a tupeno. Each night they wash their clothes and the next morning iron them.

As Monte and I walked to our home from church, we both wanted to help these PNG boys. We decided to tell our senior missionary couples the story of these young men and ask if they would like to join us in purchasing shirts and tupenos for these boys. Elders Heiner and Coombs asked about the boys in the other Liahona ward, did they need the same? Of course they must! So we decided to include them as well.

Kelly, Jack, Livingstone, Zachariah, Mandela, Eddy (Alfred not pictured)

I called Malachi and he gave us the names of the 1st Ward boys and their sizes. Monte and I went shopping Friday on our way to work. We  called Malachi when we got home and asked him to have the 1st Ward boys come pick up the shirts Saturday morning.

Saturday, we passed out the shirts but were short 2 shirts from 1st Ward and had not shopped yet for 2nd Ward as we did not get their sizes until Friday night.

Ben, Izekiel, Clement, Francis, Jack, Jeff

The 2 boys who were without shirts came shopping with us so we could find their sizes, and they helped us purchase the 2nd Ward clothing. We had to go to many stores before we were able to get the right size shirts for all the boys. --- Welcome to Tonga, there are not department stores like at home. Each store has a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It took several hours to shop for 9  white shirts. Tupenos were all purchased at one shop, however.

Livingstone and Zachariah

Before starting home, we asked
Livingstone and Zachariah if they liked ice cream --- BIG SMILES --- YES!

They had a bit of trouble deciding which flavor among so many choices. I think they both ended up with Hokey Pokey... vanilla ice cream with toffee bits.

It was a very fun trip to Nuku'alofa. These boys are so fun and good to the core.




To show how great these boys are, they came to our senior missionary Family Home Evening Monday to thank us personally for the gift - genuine heartfelt thanks with tears and smiles intertwined. True gratitude.

As a side note, the couples asked how much to contribute. We told them whatever they felt they wanted to, we would make up the difference. The money collected (plus what we planned to contribute) totaled the exact cost of the shirts and tupenos. Circumstance or divine design?

kindness is the essence of greatness ... it softens hearts and molds relationships that can last lifetimes.
                                                                     elder joseph b. wirthlin