I looked out the window of our bedroom early one morning
to see the full moon over Veitongo Beach.
Mike and I spent the last ten days with my parents, my five siblings and their spouses in the land of my childhood, and I keep thinking about how much this place changed while somehow staying exactly the same.
Most of my work as a family historian focuses on tracing names through records that go back generations. This trip flipped that. Instead of searching for the story, I walked back into where it began.
Fifty-seven years ago this month, my parents, younger sister, and I left the United States for a small island in the South Pacific. My dad had just finished his bachelor’s degree in English, and his first job was teaching at a private school on the island of Tongatapu, Tonga. My parents packed up our belongings, gathered my younger sister and me, and flew away from family and everything familiar, stopping in Hawaii and Fiji along the way. This is the place where I first learned about God and first felt Him.
House number nine on the Liahona campus became home. It was the only home I remembered when we left three years later. I had the freedom to roam the campus with my friends. I spent my first three years of elementary school at Liahona Side School, right there on campus. The beaches were our playground, and the water was clearer and bluer than any I have seen since. We spent Sunday sunsets at the Blow Holes or at Makeke Lookout, watching the light change over the ocean. The Tongan people, beautiful and humble, became my family.
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In front of house #9 on the Liahona campus. So many of my happiest childhood memories were made in this little home.
Fifty-four years had passed since I left the island as a child, but walking off that plane ten days ago felt like coming home. The sights, the smells, the sounds. All of it was familiar in a way I did not expect. |
Our first morning together on the deck of our Airbnb
looking out over Veitongo Beach.
The warmth of the Tongan people met us again, even after the years away. Strangers welcomed us like family before we said a word, and the vendors treated us like old friends within minutes of meeting us. That kind of welcome is rare. In Tonga, it seems to be everywhere.
Ha’atafu Beach, the playground of my childhood. The 2022
tsunami changed the topography here on the western shore and
stripped away the foliage. But the white sand and clear water
of the coral reef lagoon are still as I remember them.
The nine days in Tonga were a gift none of us expected. We toured the island together.
Aki, the owner of Hamala Tonga Tours, became an honorary family
member. He took such good care of us during our time in Tonga!
Ha’amonga, also known as the Stonehenge of the Pacific. This massive
coral limestone trilithon is thought to have been built around 1200 AD by
Tuʻi Tonga Tuʻitātui. Its two upright stones weigh an estimated 30
to 40 tons each. The name translates roughly to “The Burden of Maui,”
reflecting the legend that Maui carried the massive stones.
Its original purpose is uncertain; theories include its use
as a gateway to the ancient royal compound at Heketā and as a
marker of the sun's position at the solstices.
We swam with whales in water so clear we could watch them swim under and alongside the boat.
Whales swimming alongside the boat. I did not zoom in
to record this; they were literally this close.
We experienced two umu, watching the food disappearing underground and coming out hours later, cooked the way it has been done for generations.
Tai and Tima, the caretakers of our Airbnb,
preparing an umu for us.
We watched native dancing, including fire dancers who lit up the night.
Fire Dancing at Katea Resort. Watching the flames against the dark
brought back memories I had not thought about in years.
We wandered the local market, bargaining over vegetables and trinkets. And we navigated the challenges that come with travel in a developing nation; somehow even that became part of the story we will tell. New memories layered over old ones, this time made with the same people who shaped me the first time around and those who have joined the family in the years since.
Dinner at The Top Restaurant in downtown Nuku’alofa. The food was fabulous and fresh. The chef graciously accommodated our food allergies.
One of the best parts of the trip was watching my dad in his element. He asked everyone we met if they attended Liahona when he taught there. Faces lit up with recognition. He was known across the island as Semisi Bondi (Tongan for James Bond) because the Tongans thought he looked like Sean Connery. He received government mail addressed that way, and once even a traffic ticket issued to Semisi Bondi. We visited the Liahona campus for Sunday services and returned Monday for their homeroom assembly. He was then invited to visit the English classrooms to speak with the students. His face told the whole story.
My dad helped build the Matangiake LDS chapel across the street
from the Liahona campus. He suffered a severe sunstroke after a day
installing the roof. At the time, there was not an EKG machine on
the island, so the Tongan doctors sent him to Fiji, thinking he would
die. What happened in Fiji changed the course of my
dad’s life and career and, consequently, mine.
Attending Sunday services brought back many early spiritual feelings and memories for me. The hymn singing carried a depth and power most congregations in the States do not reach. High school boys said the sacrament prayers with such reverence that they brought tears to my eyes. Several high school students, boys and girls alike, stood and bore testimony with a conviction beyond their years. Youth and adults alike shared personal testimonies with humility and sincerity, without the thankimonies, travelogues, and sermons I often hear back home. Several shared accounts of miracles that day, each one echoing what my parents experienced and witnessed during their years on the island.
In front of the Nuku’alofa Tonga Temple the day my sister and her husband were sealed.
The temple was not there when we lived here; it was completed in 1983.
It sits just east of the Liahona campus, on land previously owned by our stake president
and my dad’s good friend and mentor, Tonga Toutai Paletu’a,
who is buried in a private cemetery around the corner.
A Wednesday evening sunset from Makeke Lookout.
Sunset at the Blow Holes. The experience changes with the time of day
and tides. This is one of my favorite places on earth and exactly as I remember
from my childhood (other than some safety features added over the years).
Some things have changed, of course. The fales in the villages of my youth have given way to block homes. The buses and saliotes have become cars. Tonga has moved forward, as it should. But some things have not changed at all. The Blow Holes still whoosh the same way they did when I was small. And the ocean. The color and smell of the water are unlike anything I have found anywhere else in the world. And the people … the beautiful Tongan people.
From the first time I sang the hymn How Great Thou Art,
this is what I have always seen in my head. The videos I took
capture the sound of the wind more than the Blow Holes
themselves, but in this one you can faintly hear the whooshing
sound of the holes at the end.
Maybe you have a place like this. A childhood home you can still smell if you close your eyes. A landscape that shaped you before you had words for what it meant. This is family history too. The kind that never fits into a pedigree chart or family group sheet. My mother wrote a book about our first years on the island, preserving those memories for our family. Stories only stay alive if someone writes them down. Now it is up to us to capture this chapter.Tonga is exactly as beautiful as I remembered, and now it holds even more meaning for our family. This is where my testimony began and where my foundation was built. Tonga will always be my first home.
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