An Act of Love and Charity

We know that Lord has told us let not the right hand know what the left hand do, but we have to write about last experience.  We write not to brag or be puffed up in pride, but for us to remember the thoughts and feelings of our hearts.

We brought two laptops with us, one for each, because we don't know how to share.  Shanna's laptop's battery, about halfway through the mission, decided it couldn't hold a charge for more than a few miutes; so, we had to keep it plugged in.  We decided that she could have a new computer when we got home (a rather easy decision for us as our children will attest).  What to do with the old computer?  It was still a very good computer, so we decided to give it away.  As we thought about who to give it to, we asked some of the senior couples if they had someone, we considered someone in the ICS Department that we had worked with, and we started to think about people we had met.  After visiting President Kofe's humble home (see the climbing coconuts blog) and we have worked with him for several months, the decision just seemed right to give it to his family.

We began the preparation of the computer for his family.  We wanted to make it more than just a word processor, we wanted it to be an educational tool - carrying forward our mission theme- Using Technology to Bless the Lives of the Members.

We loaded tux math, typing tutor, a learning English program, the 200 gig of Church videos we had installed on all the unit computers, the gospel library, and left the Microsoft Office that was licensed to that machine.  We changed all the intro screens to read 'Kofe Family'.  We knew they didn't have internet service and probably never would, but we left Chrome so President Kofe could take it to the Stake Center from time to time and use it - hopefully for family history and his calling.

This is our last week in the mission and so we decided Tuesday would be the day.  We drove to Saleilua, the humble fale home of President Kofe, and he led us into the fale chapel that is in the front of their home.  When we told him what our visit was for, his eyes teared (now if you know anything about Samoan culture, they do not cry easily nor do men show this type of emotion) and he became speechless.  Our hearts were so touched we became emotional, also.  We could literally feel the love and appreciation.  His wife came in with two cups of cocoa Samoa for us and we pulled out a folding table and sat president and his wife and their six year old son down at chairs and proceeded to show them how to use the computer.

We started with the Church videos and Sister Kofe's eyes just lit up when we showed them the children videos.  President knew what a treasure these were because he had watched many of them on the stake computer.

We then went to tux math.  Now, this is a family who has never played a video game and that's the format of this math tutor program.  You shoot down the math combinations as they fall from the sky.  We opened the addition option and math problems started to fall, we showed them how to type the number and then press 'enter' to shoot.  President was rather slow at catching on, but Sister Kofe quickly took over and she was pressing numbers and shooting and just smiling from ear to ear!  Theron told president his dinner was going to be late from now on - she was hooked.  Such a simple program, but one she knows can be of benefit to teach her children!

For us this was such a simple thing to do; we truly have been given much.  Our hope is that for this family it will bless them, it will help with their education, it will assist them in strengthening their testimonies.  Charity is such a powerful tool to help overcome selfishness.