June 13th - Sabbath Day in Tonga

Sundays in Tonga are very sacred, therefore it is very peaceful. Everything closes, there is no music on in cars or many cars on the road for that matter. Also, starting as early as 4 am bells start ringing. Many people do not have watches or clocks and so the bells ring to wake people up and call them to worship. I think Sundays were one of my favorite days while there.
After attending the 3 hour block of church we returned home for lunch. About an hour later we attend more church meetings, a baptism and sacrament. The baptism we attend was of a family. The families' father is a Noble on the island of Vava'u, it's about a 2 hour plane ride away. A Noble means at some point in time the ruling sovereirgn of Tonga appointed a male member of his family to be in charge of the land on Vava'u. Nobles are members of parliament. In the history of the LDS church in the Kingdom of Tonga no Noble has been baptized. We later found out the following Sunday in a meeting with the Noble and his family that his great grandfather was paramount in bringing the first LDS missionaries to the Kingdom of Tonga.
The Tongan people love parties. They look for any excuse to gather friends and family to roast a pig; weddings, birthdays, funerals, births, and graduations. So after the baptism there was a big feast, in the picture above you can see the roast pig.

At the feast the was a cute Tongan grandmother that demanded that I have many coconuts, she kept handing me them. She took one and cut it with a huge knife and handed it back to me and told me to drink. This coconut was young so the juice was bitter but, good.