{"id":11293,"date":"2015-12-03T14:51:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T22:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=11293"},"modified":"2015-12-03T14:51:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T22:51:11","slug":"tongan-misinale-celebrates-financial-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/tongan-misinale-celebrates-financial-giving\/","title":{"rendered":"Tongan Misinale celebrates financial giving"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enjoying the fruits of giving: resting and sharing stories after a very successful Misinale. From left to right: Lupe M., Vea T., Penina T., and Litia T. A roasted pig is traditionally served during special events. The whole roasted pig will be set on the tables for people to eat from. Guests of honor will also be gifted a roasted pig and other foods to take with them.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n
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Misinale: Celebrating financial giving as a deep expression of missional faith inherent in Tongan culture <\/strong>
\nBy The Rev. Mausia Folau and Mele Taumoepeau \u2018Aho<\/em><\/p>\n

What is Misinale?<\/h3>\n

Misinale is the Tongan word for the traditional, annual celebration of donations of money to the church practiced today by Tongan churches all over the United States. This Christian giving system in Tonga was introduced by early missionaries as a Biblical view of generous giving and was highly encouraged as God\u2019s standard giving. \u201cI grew up with this notion of our donating system,\u201d shares Mele \u2018Aho, a member of First Tongan UMC. \u201cIt is my understanding that this is one of many benchmarks to measure growth, particularly spiritual growth.\u201d Pastor Mausia Folau explains that through a successful misinale, the members of the church are more involved and better understand their responsibility and ownership of the church.<\/p>\n

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Rooted in Tradition<\/h3>\n

The generosity of giving is a Tongan tradition. The Tongan misinale model here has a group leader with 6-8 member families per small group, called a kalasi \u2018aho. Each of the groups set up their own time to gather and share their faith walk. This group system allows for everyone\u2019s involvement where they have a voice and can testify about their Spiritual connection. They also work together throughout the year in many fund-raising events, such as feast events and so forth. Pastor Mausia requested that each kalasi \u2018aho raise $10,000. Some small groups generate a competitive atmosphere for their giving while others feel that their eagerness to give is based on their faith journey. Pastor Mausia and the Lay Leader, Mosese Uhila, encourage this spiritual awakening through announcements during Sunday worship, knowing how important this is to their involvement and interest in growing the church. According to Aho, \u201cI believe we all have the same goal – the significance of giving financially to God\u2019s work. My father, Lemeki N. Taumoepeau, was the chair of 2015 Misinale. He quoted from Corinthians 16:2, \u2018On the first day of every week, let each one of you put aside and save, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come.\u2019 He was so thrilled, thankful and honored to be the 2015 chair to witness God\u2019s work in His Kingdom. Our family generously set forth the first peleti misinale on his behalf followed by our small group, Mo\u2019unga Heamoni (Mt. Hermon).\u201d <\/p>\n

Celebrating our Christian Faith Community <\/h3>\n

First Tongan UMC has six kalasi \u2018aho groups plus its Youth Ministry that pledges support in every year\u2019s misinale. This year, members of the congregations from Seaview UMC, Free Church of Tonga, the Free Wesleyan Church and Pastor Sia Puloka shared in the misinale celebration and we raised over $100,000. When sending invitations to other Tongan congregations to attend the First Tongan UMC misinale, Pastor Mausia said, \u201cIt\u2019s important to appreciate their work, celebrate being a Christian, and create community. Together we give the Lord our money, our song, our faith and our sermon\u201d. We were blessed by the sermon conducted by Pastor Maka Vao of Seaview UMC. <\/p>\n

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Special thanks to Kathy Finau.<\/em><\/center\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enjoying the fruits of giving: resting and sharing stories after a very successful Misinale. From left to right: Lupe M., Vea T., Penina T., and Litia T. A roasted pig is traditionally served during special events. The whole roasted pig will be set on the tables for people to eat from. Guests of honor will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":11294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[111,246],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-channels","8":"category-ethnic-ministries"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/IDEAS_MISINALE.png?fit=741%2C486&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-2W9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11293"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11302,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11293\/revisions\/11302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}