There will be no Christmas shopping this year in the capital, but the Rev Ma'afu Palu hopes that the first Tongan biblical theology book will brighten up an otherwise bleak Christmas in the riot-ravaged nation.
Moore College student Mr Palu has just returned to Tonga and has taken with him a second carton filled with his book: Halakinikini ki he Vete Tohitapu (Introduction to Biblical Interpretation).
The first shipment had only just arrived when November's pro-democracy riots destroyed Tonga's only Christian bookshop along with 80 per cent of the buildings in Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa.
Mr Palu and his family have been living in Australia since the beginning of 2005 while he has been completing his PhD at Moore College.
His study is jointly funded by the Diocese of Sydney and Langham Partnership Australia, a ministry started by John Stott to support the work of churches in the "Majority world'.
Mr Palu began studying divinity in Tonga as soon as he left school, but the teaching at his liberal theological college left his faith in tatters.
"I didn't know how to preach [the Bible] because I wasn't convinced that the things in it were true," he says.
With the certainty that science was the only knowledge worth being confident in, Mr Palu came to Australia to study science teaching, only to rediscover his faith through the work of Campus Bible Study at the University of New South Wales.
On completing his PhD late next year, he will return to Tonga to teach at the Methodist Sia'atoutai Theological College.
"My vision is to be able to, by the help of God's grace and mercy, raise up faithful Bible teachers for Tonga and the Pacific."
He says that is book is a biblical theological approach to interpreting the whole Bible, in a Tongan format, and hopes that it will help address Tonga's great need for teachers with confidence in the Bible.
