Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand

The Rt. Hon Helen Clark has served as the Prime Minister of New Zealand for nearly eight years and will likely continue if her Labor party wins over the National party in next years elections. In this photo, I'm visiting with Helen Clark after her key note speech to 1600 youth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Sunday November 11 at 7pm. The event was to promote the importance of continuing education and we were pleased that she delivered an excellent message. The National party leader is John Key and we have a commitment from him to speak to our youth on May 18, 2008. Prime Minister Clark's standards don't always match up with those of our Church but she addressed her audience perfectly well. She was in Tonga for the Pacific Forum on October 15th - 20th and she was the only Head of State out of the 16 present that was a woman and more noteworthy, she was the only one to wear pants. All of the men wore skirts (tupenu) usually covered with a woven mat around the waist that is called a ta'ovala. We were also pleased with the announcement on November 11th that our friend Winnie Laban who is a Member of Parliament has just been named the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs for New Zealand. This means that we will have more than friendship to justify our visits with her in the future.