My Cave My View

When the Good Book says, “and the blind shall see”, I have always about the individual that was being given their sight.  Lately, I have learned that the bystander’s eyes might also be opened to see. I want to tell you about Mia, an 18-year-old girl, and her blind father. They have been helping me...
Getting older hasn’t been that hard; being old is.  But recently I aged a decade or two as the result of something my daughter wrote.  People’s words can have this affect.  It’s like the first time the cashier at the store said, “Can I help you sir?”  I looked around to see who he might be talking...
All packed up and ready to go. Gary Torres photo
Mark Twain wrote the book “Innocents Abroad” when he traveled with Quaker pilgrims on a chartered boat to the Holy Land.  If Tonga has a Holy Land, it would be the island of Niuas; which is where Elder Groberg went on his mission in the movie, “The Other Side of Heaven”.  We recently traveled with...
Keyboard class in Tonga, led by Dee Torres.  Courtesy photo
It seems that as I look back there are two things that we remember and have made a difference in our life: teachers and primary songs.  Teaching is a calling; not a career.  So it is hard for teachers to not teach because they love learning, they love learners, and they love bringing the two...
Members of the Tonga Senior Missionary Dental Team include: (left to right) Karen Darrington, Tupou Vala, Susan Goodman, Pierce Goodman, and Heu Lafitani. Courtesy photo
When you don’t have many resources such as money or a government social safety net, you learn to rely on the Lord for basics such as health care. I have learned that Tongans pray with sincerity, frankness, and earnestness and with an unassuming but confident expectation that the Lord hears them and...
As you get older you get disconnected from familiar yearly milestones.  I swear that school and football practice just started.  Bam!  Just as suddenly grandkids are excited to graduate from junior high or kindergarten.  I swear it was last week.  If life was like a calendar year, springtime would...
Courtesy photo
In 1969 Loren Eiseley wrote: A man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking up starfish and gently throwing them into the ocean.  Approaching the boy he asked, “Young man, what are you doing?”  “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The tide is going out. If I don’t throw them...
Gary and Dee Torres distributing Solar Buddy lights to students at a school in Tonga. Courtesy photo
It is cyclone season and there are 200 perilous miles of the South Pacific Ocean between where we are and where we need to be.  We are trying our best to deliver Solar Buddy lights to children on remote islands of Tonga that have no electricity.  But we don’t know the way, don’t have a boat, don’t...
If you were limited to owning only ten items, would your scriptures be one of them? Lately we have been visiting homes in small villages where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in partnership with the Tongan Ministry of Health has provided wheelchairs to people in need.  Technically,...
The Caveman and other white-shirted friends hard at work sending Solar Buddy to remote islands of Tonga. Dee Torres photo
Tonga is made up of 176 islands but only 36 are occupied.  There are about 121 small villages on these small outer islands.  Many villages have less than 100 inhabitants and do not have electricity, sometimes a store or a church might have a generator that runs a few hours a day.  Imagine that you...

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