Aloha Hawaii! November 13 - 16

      After having a weekend full of cleaning our house for the last time, laundry, and fun family activities including an early Thanksgiving feast at our son, Devin, and his family's house with all of our Utah based children and grandchildren on Sunday we reluctantly said goodbye to everyone.  We had our daughter Aimee drive us to the Homewood Suites Hotel near the Salt Lake City airport to spend the night.  We decided that would be the best thing to do, since we needed to go to the airport Monday morning when it would be hard for someone to be available to drive us to the airport because of work and school schedules.  

     It was nice to get up Monday morning, have a leisurely breakfast, and just load up all of our luggage into the hotel airport shuttle van and let them drive us the short 5-minute drive to the airport and drop us off.  That really helped to keep our stress level down.  Plus, it was nice to be flying Delta Airlines where we already had assigned seats and our gate was an A gate, and we didn't have to walk all the way to the B gate terminal.  We managed to escape Utah before any major snowstorm hit the valley.  Here we are totally relaxed waiting to board our plane to Honolulu.  It was a totally full flight.

     Our seats happened to be on an emergency evacuation row which meant more leg room!!  We just prayed there would be no in-flight emergency.   After everyone was boarded, they announced a delay for take-off because they had to replace the brakes, so we sat on the plane an extra half hour while they replaced the brakes.  We were finally able to take off on our almost 7-hour non-stop flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. 

     Here's a view of Lake Tahoe from the plane.

     After an uneventful flight, we landed in Honolulu, surprisingly on time despite the delay.  Although in seemed a little surreal that we were actually in Hawaii, it also seemed perfectly right. 

The Mission president, President Bassett, and his wife were there to greet us at the baggage claim, along with a team of other missionaries to haul all the luggage and everyone to Laie.  They greeted us with kukui nut leis and red and white (BYUH school colors) leis.  They were so quick in corralling us out to the curb and loading our luggage, but I manage to get a quick picture of Elder Rappleye with most of our luggage.

     We were blessed to ride to Laie with President Bassett and his wife.  That gave us an hour to visit and get to know them a little more.  As we were leaving Honolulu, there appeared a rainbow in the sky.  You have to look close in the picture to see it, between the two poles, a sign of good things to come, I hope.  As we are driving from Honolulu to Laie, we could look out the right side of the car and see the ocean and look out the left side of the car and see beautiful green covered "mountains" (we'll call them mountains although they are not like the mountains we are used to in Utah, but they are more than hills.)  

     We find out that we will be living in Hau'ula, a small town just south of Laie.  We are about 5 - 7 minutes away from the Polynesian Cultural Center, where we will be spending most of our time.  We are up the mountainside a ways.  I will post pictures of our living accommodations a little later in the post, but here are some pictures of the views we have from our very small deck in the front of our place.

The first picture is looking down the street towards the ocean.  If you can zoom in, or look very closely past the tall greenish house, you can get a peek of the ocean.  It's about a half mile from our house.  

The next picture is looking up and somewhat behind our house.  The house in the picture is next door to ours up the hill from us.  It's a view of the mountain we live next to.

The last picture is looking up the street towards the mountain peak (I call it "our" mountain).  At the end of the street is a No Trespassing Sign, so we  

can't go explore "our" mountain.  I think it's government owned.  I'm told there is a water tank up a ways on the mountain.  We get a lot of low hanging clouds over our place.  The beach can be sunny, but it can be overcast at our place. I don't know if that's the way it is year-round or just at this time of year.  Since we have arrived it has been raining quite a bit.  They say it's a little early for the rainy season, but it's been very hot and dry here the last 6 months, so the natives are very glad to see the rain.  To me, it feels a lot like Seattle where I grew up, only hotter.  We have started to take an umbrella with us whenever we go out.

     By the time we got all of our luggage into our living quarters, it was dinner time.  The Archibalds, they are the lead couple over all the senior missionaries at the PCC, invited us to go eat at the restaurant at the bottom of our street, called North Shore Tacos.  We had a taco salad, which was a poor imitation of Cafe Rio, and twice as expensive.  Welcome to high living expenses in Hawaii!  After dinner we had just enough energy to unpack our suitcases, then it was lights out.

     The next morning, Tuesday, our group that came out to Hawaii together met at the back of the PCC for some orientation and training.  Our group consisted of us along with 3 single sisters, Sister Ronco from Pueblo, CO, Sister Walters from West Jordan, UT, and Sister Condie from El Paso, TX.  The Sorensons, a senior missionary couple, showed us around parts of the PCC and explained to us some of the things the senior missionaries do to help.  A couple of times a month we have the opportunity to help with line control at the 2 luau venues, and also help at the "Ask Me" spots around the center.  The Ask Me spots are like information spots where we are available to answer the tourist's questions about where certain places are in the center, the times of the shows, where their dining venues are that they have tickets to, etc.  We won't get a chance to do that until December because the assignments are scheduled a month in advance.  

     We also had to do some of the same training that they give the regular employees, because that is what we are, volunteer employees of the PCC.  Then we got our pictures taken for our badges and received our official PCC badges.  When we are working at the PCC, we are required to wear our PCC badges and not our missionary badges.  We cannot do any proselyting while we are on the PCC property.

     We enjoyed a lunch at the Gateway Terrace at the PCC.  This is where a lot of the senior missionaries that are working at the PCC gather     

to eat lunch together every day.  The picture to the right is Sister Rappleye at lunch at the Gateway Terrace on the first day.  After lunch we had an appointment to meet the President of the PCC, President Grace.  He was very nice and wanted to know a little bit about us and what we would be doing at the PCC.  Since they were still trying to figure out where to put us, we couldn't really tell him what we would be doing.  He gave us a very nice copy of the book, "Miracle in the Pacific".  It tells about the history of the PCC with lots of great color pictures.  Our goal is to get it read before we leave. 

One of the perks of serving here in Laie, Hawaii is all the activities at Brigham Young University - Hawaii campus.  We are able to attend any or all of the performances, devotionals, and lectures that are at the university if we would like.  And with it also being the Christmas season and the end of the semester, there is a lot going on.  Tuesday night we really enjoyed a performance at the McKay Auditorium of dancers and the Shaka Steel Drum group.

      That completed our first full day as missionaries in Hawaii.  The next two days we had free to take care of setting up house.  The most urgent thing being getting groceries in our "pad" (they call apartments here pads).  There is a small grocery store down the hill from where we live, but the selection is not great, and neither are the prices. There is a Foodland grocery store in Laie, the selection is a little better, but the prices are even more expensive.  So, the most common way to grocery shop here is to go into "town" (the other side of the island toward Honolulu), 

and shop at Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, or Target.  Bigger stores with lower prices and better selection.  The drawback is that it takes almost an hour to drive into town and an hour to drive back home, even though it's only 35 - 40 miles away. Add on shopping time and depending on how many places you stop at; it can take 4 to 5 hours each trip.  If you forget anything, then you are stuck either waiting until the next trip or paying a lot of money for it at Foodland.  There is no same day or next day delivery to our part of the island.  I have found that I can order online at Walmart and get free delivery (with a W+ membership) and get it in 3 days. Hopefully we can get to the point where we are not going into town every week.  Both of our free days were spent going to town to get things we needed.  Our pad was lacking quite a few things we needed, so I also spent time online ordering items from Amazon and Kohls. It will take two or three weeks to arrive (no 2-day delivery from Amazon here).

     Here is the front of the house we are living in. We live in a house that is divided into 3 pads.  We have the upstairs front portion of the house.  There are 4 single guys living in the downstairs apartment.  We have met 3 of them - Guy, Cameron, and Jesse.  They are working construction on the BYUH campus.  There will be some major renovations of the BYUH campus while we are here and over the next 10 years.  The back portion of the upstairs is rented by a married couple, he also works construction on the BYUH campus - Paul and Laura. You can see our small deck in the picture above.

Come on inside our "pad".  This is the stairwell looking down from the top of the stairs.  At the bottom of the stairs is the little landing you can see, then it turns to the right, and you go down three more steps to the small landing at the front door.  That's where the cute octagon window you see in the picture of the front of the house is located.  I brought the wooden plaques on the wide ledge from Utah.  The pineapple shaped one says, "Island Time" and the other one says, "Welcome to Paradise".

The first picture is our living room.  It's right at the top of the stairs.  Behind the couch is a desk and chair.  Someone left a printer, paper, and office supplies.  I wish we could figure out how to get the printer to work.  Right now, it's just taking up space.  Back by the desk is the door to go out onto the deck.  The next picture is a view from the other end of the living room looking down the hallway.  The next two pictures are our kitchen and laundry area.  They told us we were lucky to have a washer and dryer in our pad.  They are quite noisy and the top of the dryer is all rusty, but they also told us that was normal, everything gets rusty here from the moisture and salty air.  You'll notice that we have no dishwasher, so we'll be washing dishes by hand for the next 18 months. There are fans in every room.

The spare bedroom is down the hall on the righthand side.  It's got a bunkbed in it with lots of extra bedding and towels, foam mattresses and even an air mattress, but we don't know if it's any good.  So we have a little extra room for guests.  Just keep in mind we only have one bathroom.

     Our bedroom is at the end of the hallway.  Nothing fancy, but the bed is comfortable.  Notice there is no blanket or comforter on the bed.  The overnight temperatures are so warm, in the 70's, that you don't want blankets.  Under the window you can see a small AC unit.  That's the only air conditioning we have, but since we arrived it has not been unbearably hot because it's going into the winter season.

     

     Our bathroom is small, but everything works like it should.  It's definitely an adjustment from living in our house back home to a small two-bedroom apartment. So many times I have needed something and thought if I was back home I would have it.  Here in Hau'ula, it's a small community, so you can't just hop in your car and go get what you need at the nearest store.  I'm going to have to be organized to have the supplies I need or remember to get them when we go to town or else do without.  Aw, the "growing pains" of adjusting to a new place.     

      It is not the most ideal, but it keeps us dry and gives us a place to eat and sleep at night.  It will be "home, sweet home" for the next 18 months.