Thanksgiving Week, November 20 - 26, 2023

      With the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, the PCC would be closed that day, so this week it would be open on Wednesday. That would make our work week Monday - Wednesday, Thanksgiving Day off, and then work on Friday.  No long Thanksgiving break for us as missionaries.

      We get into work around 8am every morning. The first week, they started me slowly, by not having me count inventory.  That was introduced to me on my second week of working there. I would start by working on getting all the purchase orders made up and sent out.  I was very nervous about making mistakes and getting things wrong.  After all, having all the right food in all the right amounts depended on me.  So, I was pretty slow and deliberate about each purchase order. A couple of the vendors I would have to order on their websites, then fill out the same order in our purchase order form, so I was having to do it twice. I found that even though I was pretty slow, I had plenty of time to finish the work and was getting done usually by noon.  

    Elder Rappleye, on the other hand, was not having an easy time in motor pool.  They were having a hard time getting him set up and into the PCC system on the computer.  So, he was sitting around not sure what he was supposed to be doing for most of the day.  He would go outside and watch what the mechanics were working on and try to help where he could, but it was pretty frustrating for him.  He is used to being the expert in his field and knowing exactly what to do, not so much in this situation.  At least he is familiar with Teams, having used it at work, whereas I have never used it.  The main reason for the struggle was that the missionary couple that had been serving in motor pool had gone home the day after we arrived, so Elder Rappleye was not able to get any training from them before they left.  There was a notebook that the sister had put together with information about the job, but it really was not very helpful.  In the picture I caught him trying to figure out how to drive the carts they have at the PCC. 

     We were both struggling in different ways.  But we were always able to have lunch together every day. Many of the senior missionaries that serve at the PCC gather to have lunch together and visit.  We sit at the Gateway Terrace patio.  It is a covered patio behind the Gateway Restuarant.  It is not far from the food warehouse where I work.  The Polynesian Cultural Center does not open until 12:30pm, so it's quiet back where we eat.  A nice respite from the stress of learning a new job.

     We decided to take advantage of the opportunity to learn how to play the ukelele while serving here.  They have lessons for the senior missionaries every Monday evening at 6:15pm in the Heber J. Grant building on campus.  We had our first lesson this week.  We haven't bought our own ukeleles yet, but they have extra ones we can use.  We will wait to see how well we do before we invest in our own ukeleles.  I found it a lot harder than I thought it would be.  My left-hand fingers would not cooperate and curve the way they needed to to press on the strings on the fret of the ukelele.  I think it's because about 3 years ago I dislocated my pinky finger in my left hand at work.  Ever since then, I have not been able to curl my fingers into a tight fist.  My fingers just don't curl or bend right.  Plus, I am left-handed.  So to adapt, I have to turn the ukelele around and have the fret end of the ukelele on my right and use my right hand to make the chords.  My right-hand fingers cooperate a lot better, but I have to figure the position of the fingers on the strings upside down or opposite, because when you turn the ukelele around, the string that is at the top of the fret is now on the bottom of the fret and so on.  It is more of a mental challenge. Elder Rappleye is picking is up quickly.  He is much better at it than I am.  He may have discovered a new hidden talent.

    We found out that the BYU women's basketball team was playing in a tournament on campus, so Tuesday after work we went over to the gym and watched the BYU women's team play St. Louis.  It was the championship game for the tournament.  Another perk we are finding that comes with this mission.  This picture was taken before the game started.  You can see we had pretty good seats - center court and lower bowl.  It filled in a little more before the game started.  Seating behind us was a group of students that would look at the program and figure out the BYU player's names and would yell out her name and cheer whenever she scored a basket or made a good play.  It was fun.  

     

 After the game and later that night, we attended a senior missionary devotional at the Visitor's Center by the Laie, temple.  There is a devotional once a month.  All the new missionaries that have arrived since the last devotional are asked to introduce themselves and tell everyone where they are from and what their assignment is.  Afterward there was refreshments and a chance to visit.  We meet many of the couples that are a part of our mission that we hadn't meet yet.  If they serve in the visitor's center or on the BYU-H campus, we don't get much chance to mingle with them unless they are in our district or at the mission wide activities, such as devotionals.

   

  You can see that they already had a decorated Christmas tree in the visitor center's chapel that we met in.  It's the junior sister missionaries assignment to decorate that tree.  The picture at the right shows the Laie temple crocheted tree topper that is on the tree.  I have challenged my very talented 10-year-old granddaughter, Noelle, to see if she can make one like it.  She is into crocheting and has taught herself how to crochet all kinds of things.

      On Wednesday we were working, but in the evening around 5:15pm, there is a group of missionaries that play pickleball outside on the basketball courts.  The first week we were here it was raining, so no pickleball.  But this week we showed up and it was threating to rain, and actually started to rain, but we were able to go inside the smaller gym and set up one court to play on.  We rotated in and out to allow everyone a chance to play.  Elder Rappleye and I have only played one time, but we brought our own paddles and balls that we had gotten last Christmas, so we hopefully have a chance to play often while we are here.  We need to get the exercise after sitting at a desk for most of the day.  It is not so intense or competitive but more recreational and fun.

     

 Thanksgiving was very different then our traditional family gathering.  It was the first time in over 40 years that I did not cook a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a good thing we had two Thanksgiving activities to go to that day to help us not miss our family so much. The first activity was the YSA 10th ward Thanksgiving lunch at noon.  So many of the students can't afford to go home for the holidays because home is so far away, and their families don't have the money to fly them home.  Many are working at the PCC and in the community so they can't get off work either. So the ward is their family.  

    

  It was held in the Heber J. Grant building in one of the classrooms.  They had karaoke, and games on all the tables to play.  And of course, plenty of food.  The second counselor in the ward is at the food table.  He is actually one of the students going to school here.

     We were hoping to meet a lot of the students while at this Thanksgiving lunch, but we ended up having a long conversation with the couple seated at the table in the picture to the right.  Camilla is in the green dress and Jimboy in in the black t-shirt and mustache.  Jimboy is from the Philippines and Camilla is from Utah. We found out that they are engaged and Jimboy is graduating in a couple of weeks with a Fine Arts degree.  He will be going to Springville, UT for an internship.  His emphasis is sculpture and he will be furthering his studies there.  We found out how they met, got engaged, and when they are getting married, April 5th in the Laie temple.  They have invited us to their wedding even though we hardly know them.  That is how welcoming everyone is here - the Aloha spirit!  

     

      The young boy sitting next to Jimboy is the 

Bishop's son.

   

   The pumpkin pie was the best pumpkin pie I have ever tasted.  It had a different kind of crust, not a pastry crust and it was delicious.  They had so much food, that they insisted that we take some home with us.  So they loaded us up with leftovers, so even though we didn't have to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, we still ended up with leftovers to enjoy.

     Our next event was at 1pm at the Gateway Terrace at the PCC.  It was a senior mission wide Thanksgiving dinner.  The Ah You family that lives in Laie puts on this dinner every year for the senior missionaries and the homeless.  They provide all the meat (he told us they cooked 30 turkeys), mashed potatoes, rolls, gravy, and of course rice.  Every missionary provides a side.  So that was all I had to cook - a side dish.  Again, there was lots of food.  Since we had just eaten at the single's ward lunch, we were not very hungry.

       But there was lots of entertainment. The older couple with the leis on in the pictures were there with all their family for a family reunion and celebrating a wedding anniversary, I can't remember which one, but it was over 50 years.  They are the Wilkinson's and it was his father, Ernest Wilkinson, that was president of BYU in 1951 - 1971. 

      I didn't get a picture, but they taught everyone who wanted to learn the hukilau hula dance.  It's probably the most famous and easiest hula to learn.

      The old gentleman standing in front leaning on a cane in the picture above is the oldest master canoe carver alive.  He is keeping alive the old traditional way of making native canoes and passing on the skills to the younger generation.

     I have somehow lost my video I took of the hula dancing.  Bummer!  It was a lot of fun.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching the Polynesian dances.

      It was definitely a warm, sunny, different kind of Thanksgiving this year.  We feel very blessed and thankful to be serving a mission here at this time in our lives.  Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving with family and friends.

      The Friday after Thanksgiving we were back to work, but it was a pretty relaxed slow day, so we were able to get off work a little early.  We decided to brave the Black Friday crowds and do a town run because we needed groceries and we wanted to have Saturday open to finally do some exploring of the North Shore.  We always rely on our GPS to get us to where we need to go.  There are two ways to go to town, the northern route up around the north shore, or the southern route down along the eastern edge of the island and then across towards Honolulu.  Whichever our GPS tells us the quickest way is, that's the way we go.  It usually tells us to go the northern route into town and the southern route back to Hau'ula.  But this time we went the southern route both ways.  I couldn't figure out why the northern route was showing such a long travel time.  I figured there must be a really bad accident.  Later we found out that the waves on the North Shore were so big that they were washing sand up onto the roadway and it was so much sand that the cars couldn't drive on the road.  It was too dangerous to drive through that area because you never knew when an extra big wave would hit and possibly wash sand over the road. They had to get bulldozers to shovel all the sand off the road.

     

      The next day, Saturday, we finally had an open day to spend exploring the island.  We started close to home at Laie Point.  Elder Rappleye and I are standing out on the point.  The waves were still quite high, but not as high as Friday.  You can see in some of the pictures the waves crushing over the rocks. The water coming through the hole indicates how high the waves are coming.  Normally there is no water going through the hole. The top picture shows the water coming through the hole.  The bottom picture shows it without the water so you can see the difference.  

           To have the waves come up over the rocks is huge because the rocks are so tall.  It might be hard to judge by the pictures but believe me they were huge.  The plague below tells of a Hawaiian legend, Laniloa, The Mo'o, a legend of O'ahu.  It explains how the 5 islands out in the distance came to be. 

     

      

 The next beach north of Laie point that we stopped at was Hukilau beach, a very popular tourist attraction from the 1940's to 1971.  Here is where the members of the church would do fundraiser luaus to raise money to build a chapel.

    

  The beach is a very nice sandy beach.  We will definitely be coming back to this beach.  We knew that the waves could still be high and strong today, so we didn't wear swimsuits or plan to swim.  The beach was pretty deserted.  We did walk all the way to the point in the distance and back again. 

    

  The next stop was Turtle Bay.  It's a world class resort on the point of the North Shore.  Somewhere on the resort, you are able to see turtles on the beach, but we never saw any on the beach we explored.  Later I was told it's on the other side of the hotel from where we were at.  We got there too late, but earlier in the morning there was a triathlon happening at the resort.  We just saw the finish line still up, but no athletes were still around.

     

       We continued up around the North Shore.  We could see where the sand from the beaches had washed up onto the road the day before.  It was hard to catch how big the waves were in a picture, but the one to the right is the best one I got.  No swimming in these waves.  They say there are really strong ripcords as well.  Summertime is the time to enjoy the beaches up along the North Shore, not winter.

      On Sunday at church as we talked with the students, we found out that finals were coming up.  I felt impressed to make homemade chocolate chip cookies for all the students in the ward to help them get through the rigors of studying, preparing, and taking their finals.  That meant getting enough ingredients to make around 200 cookies.  When my parents served their mission in Chicago, my mom was known as the cookie sister missionary because she would make cookies for all the missionaries to have every transfer day. Maybe she was trying to inspire me to continue the tradition.  It felt like the right thing to do as another way to meet and get to know the members of the ward.

     

 

The bishop invited everyone from the ward to go to his house later in the afternoon for dinner.  Well, the bishop lives in Hau'ula even further away from the campus than we are.  Many of the students don't have cars, so we volunteered to shuttle students down to the bishop's house at 4pm. 

After we took a couple of carpool runs from the campus, down to the bishop's house, and then back to the campus to get more students, we stayed at the bishop's house until we had to go to our District meeting at 6pm. There was at least 20, maybe 25 students packed into the bishop's small home. While the meal has cooking, we all played some really fun games.  There was a lot of laughter.  They love being together and know how to have fun. Unfortunately, by the time the meal was ready, it was time for us to go to our District meeting.

   

  Our district meeting was at our district leader's home in Hau'ula.  Brother and Sister Lee, from Odgen, UT, are serving at BYU-H, teaching religion classes.  There is also Elder and Sister Harris, from Idaho, who serve at the PCC; Elder and Sister Neeley, from Providence, UT, who serve at BYU-H in the Aloha Center, which is the student center; and Elder and Sister Wilde, from Provo, UT, who serve at BYU-H teaching a life skills class.  They are going home in December.

     This picture was taken at our district meeting.  From left to right in the picture is Sister and Elder Harris, Sister and Elder Neeley, Sister and Elder Wilde, Elder and Sister Rappleye, and Elder Lee.  Sister Lee was taking the picture.

     Elder Lee led a discussion about different ways to study the scriptures.  When it's our turn to lead the discussion, we might have to try and get our son and daughter-in-law, Neal and Jasmin, to help us through zoom with some Scripture Central insights.

      It was a busy week.  We still feel like we are not quite in full swing.  We are still learning our roles and how best to fulfill them.  It will continue to be a process.  I'm glad we can struggle, learn, and do it together as a couple.