LEINANI AIONO LE TAGALOA

1 December 1999

Hi guys!
Its been a very busy, hectic year, but finally the dust has settled long enough for me to collect my thoughts and think back over the last fifteen years, and reflect on what I have done in them. Scary thought!! it has actually been fifteen years since that memorable Class of '84 that Ive read so much about. So where to begin?  

1985 - who could forget the experience of being only the second intake for that novel new institution - the IAOS! Being the Uniprep Year...The novelty of not wearing uniform - much - and experimenting with what to wear...shades of 'The wedding Singer', but hey if I did wear double belts and had a lace top, I know of some people who had much more radical tastes..leather pants and Michael Jackson - no names!  

1986 - got a scholarship to Otago University to do Med Intermediate -  belatedly, by some 'strange coincidence' - (my life has been full of those); stayed at Carrington Hall. Studied more or less constantly after realising the stiff competition to get in to Med School, so I didnt see much of Pania, Marie, Madeline, Tony, Faaea, Kaiser who were there with me. Hey guys, I know its a lifetime later, but - Im sorry for the muckups and misunderstandings. If you still remember you'll know what I mean. I have always had a problem with over-enthusiasm and jumping before thinking, but there never was any malice intended. At the end of the year, I took home brochures on BSc., convinced I'd failed!  

1986 - 1991 Medical School - plus involvement with Apostolic Church youth groups, and coming home in the holidays to help my folks. I went to Washington D.C for my elective in 1990, and finally got to see the 'real' America in Vermont - red barns, maple syrup pine forests and little furry cows! I kid you not, they do exist - little furry cows, that is! I graduated at the end of 1991.  

1991 - 1993 worked in Dunedin Hospital for my registration and senior house officer years;

transferred 1994 to Palmerston North Hospital to become a surgical registrar, passed my Part I in Surgery after three attempts in 1998 - and came all the way back down to Dunedin for 1999.

Have been staying with my sister Fanaafi - some of you may remember the wee squirt who used to come to Samco to pick us up (viz me and Donna); she is 'wee', no longer - and shaping up to be a formidable lawyer who graduates in two years time. I came here to continue my Surgery, but have had a change of direction, and in a week's time I will be starting formal training as an anaesthetist - a commodity desperately needed back on the old Rock. I should be finally finished in four years.So for all of you whose babies I promised to deliver - how about an epidural  to help with the pain?!? :-) Can you wait that long!?!!  

So you see, I have not had the exciting adventures of Doug or Matt; or travelled the world like Moana; on the surface it has been a pretty staid and placid fifteen years( although living through it has certainly felt like 'blood sweat and tears' at times!)

 I left Dunedin in 1994 thinking YES! onward - upward - outward! All the way to Palmerston North - and those of you who know NZ will know how exciting a place Palmy is - only to; come back to Dunedin again! But even though I have not travelled much geographically, I have come  a long way on a journey of hope and healing, and discovered  the meaning and reason to my life - and now at 32, so many years on, I can truly say that I am content and at peace, and that I know who I am, and why I am here; why I exist.

Looking back again at that memorable year, 1984..for most of you it was a year to remember, a year of golden memories. For me, it was one of the worst years in a life that had had a fair number of nightmarish experiences, already.Being made a prefect in Fifth Form was perhaps one of the worst things Samco could have done to me - I dont really think I was mature enough for it, or for the many enemies I made as a consequence. Only just last week I met a girl who used to be in my class in Samco whose only memory of me was puttting her on detention for being late to school.( Egad, the number of people who must hate me for that alone must run into the hundreds!) Then  NOT becoming a prefect the next year  made me realise how many people had been my friends just because I was. It was a real blow to my own puffed up - and very unreal! - sense of pride. But the final blow came the next year when I really came face to face with the fact that I wasnt very much liked by anybody at all. It was then that I found Jesus - as a friend. I know, as Samoans especially, we all consider ourselves as Christians, and up to that point I hadnt thought of myself as anything but. However I discovered that there was more to knowing Jesus than just going to church on the occasional Sunday and not converting to Islam. I find it hard to put my experience into words without using those many-times-hashed words that mean so little now - 'gave my life to the Lord', 'accepted Jesus into my life', 'became born-again' yeah I did all those, but what it REALLY means is I discovered the beginning of the road which has lead me towards the one True love and  meaning of Life. Someone who knows me completely and intimately because He made me, even knew me from my birth; whose single desire is my total good and who seeks after fellowship and friendship with me - even died so that that would be eternally possible. Mind blowing? It is, and I am only just discovering it. Through the power of His love the whole of my life was opened before me, I was halted from running away from the terrible pain of it all and bit by bit He tenderly reached in and brought out all the broken pieces and is making me whole. I can look back with peace and acceptance on my childhood, can say with gladness that I am who I am - Leinani, created by God exactly the way I am, yes not fully Samoan or fully American by birth; very fully Samoan at heart; maybe not everybody's favourite person - but I can live with that now and be thankful for it! I am here , now, in the place that I am , with the life that I have by His grace and love alone, with no regrets for my choices and the life I have had. You may be wondering why I have told you all this - some people may have long ago quitted reading out of disgust or contempt, even. Thats okay. But no update would even be true without my explaining the motivation and hope behind my life and why it has turned out the way it has. I have made my share of mistakes along the way but God's love and grace and forgiveness have been my strength and guide; the sole reason for anything and everything that I am and not to acknowledge Him for it would be a betrayal.

Acknowledgement is also something I would like to do here - of all the hurts, real or imagined, intended or otherwise, that I have ever inflicted on any one of you, my friends - please forgive me. I lived most of the time in a little bubble, a world of my own, my way of coping with the nightmare I had come through before I met Jesus - it didnt leave much room for consideration of anyone else. As for me, any hurts I absorbed from way back then have been forgiven and forgotten - by Gods grace. May He keep you and bless you - and I really hope that you could give a moments pause, a thought even, to that Love; because he meant and lived it and died it for everyone.

Love always, Nani