A lot of Rain in Paradise - January 8 - 13, 2024

        We started the week with rain on Monday.  It was raining when we got up and it rained all day.  At times it was fast and furious, but for most of the day it was a steady rain.  By the end of the day when we went to ukulele class, we saw a lake had formed in the grassy area by the HJG building where we have class.  It took days for the "lake" to disappear.  Probably because we kept having rain throughout the week, just not non-stop like on Monday.

     We found out that there is a movie theater in Kaneohe that has discounted movie rates on Tuesdays.  I wanted to go see the movie, "The Boys in the Boat" since I read the book.  So, after work on Tuesday, we drove down to the Windward mall where the theaters are and saw the movie.

      Thankfully it was a nice morning on Wednesday, so I could finally get back to the pool.  Now that the school schedule is back to normal along with the PCC schedule, I'm hoping the weather will cooperate so I can get to the pool every Wednesday and possibly Saturday mornings.

      We had a number of things we needed to get done on our day off on Wednesday.  One of them was to give Elder Rappleye a haircut. He hasn't gotten his haircut since we left, and it needed to be cut. Our daughter, Aimee, has been giving Elder Rappleye his haircuts since she got her cosmetologist license about 10 years ago. Before that I always cut his hair.  When we came to Hawaii, we were not sure if there would be a good place to get Elder Rappleye's haircut close to where we lived or if he would have to go into town or if I would have to go back to cutting his hair.  Elder Rappleye asked around for recommendations for places to go to get a haircut.  He did not like the reviews he was hearing of any of the places around Laie.  He didn't want to spend his time going to town to get his haircut on our days off.  So, when we saw that Costco had a haircutting kit on sale, we bought it as a "Christmas" gift knowing that we would save more than the cost of the kit by having me cut his hair.  I'm not too excited to be back in the haircutting business, but it seems to be the best option.  Here's Elder Rappleye with his new haircut.  It's not as good as Aimee can do, but it can't be worse than what we were hearing the barbers around here do.  Plus, it is basically free, and it can be done without wait time.  Elder Rappleye does have less hair now than when I used to cut it - does that make it easier?

   

   We weren't sure how long everything we needed to get done would take us, but after we got the haircut out of the way, we decided we had time to go to Laniakea Beach on the North Shore.  This beach is known for being a popular feeding and sunbathing area for sea turtles.  The best time is supposed to be between 11am - 1pm. We got out there around 11:45am.  We did see turtles swimming in the ocean close to shore.  Every once in a while, a fin or turtle head would pop up out of the water.  We could also see the turtles in the swell of the waves.  I tried to get a picture, but as you can see from the picture at the right, all I got was the waves.  They would pop up so unpredictably and in different places.  It was hard to get a shot of them.  The turtles never came up on the beach while we were there.

      We also got a good long walk on the beach before we gave up on the turtles and headed home.

      Everyone from the motor pool is back from vacation and they are fully staffed again. There are about 80 electric carts that motor pool is responsible to service every month.  Each department or person who has a cart is supposed to bring it to the motor pool every month to get serviced, but lots of time Elder Rappleye and Bry have to go looking for them and take them to the motor pool to get serviced.  It's about servicing 4 carts a day to keep on top of things.  Usually, they get behind early in the month and have to do a lot of carts the last two weeks of the month.  There are always things popping up to do and fires to be put out.  

       My boss, Lili was still out this week along with Kalo who helps in the warehouse. Kalo does a lot of the counting of inventory, so Kapu'u and I were doing all the counting of inventory this week. 

      Thursday has become our temple day, if I can remember to get online early enough in the week to get an appointment.  Thursday is usually a wide-open day after work with no commitments to get in the way of going to the temple.  It was another rainy and stormy cool day.  In fact, we had the coldest morning temperature since we arrived - a chilly 59 degrees!  I know a lot of you won't feel sorry for us, but with the humidity it feels a lot colder.  Plus, our pad has no furnace so we can't turn on the heat when it gets a little chilly.  We have kept all our windows open since we have arrived to help keep our pad from getting too hot because we don't have air conditioning either.  The problem is that there are several windows that we can't reach to close when the weather turns chilly.  The window right by where I sit at the desk is broken and we can't shut it.  3 windows are up high in our stairwell so we can't reach to close them either, For the last week or so we have woken up in the morning to a pretty chilly apartment.  We didn't bring with us any kind of winter clothing because we didn't think we would need any.  Thankfully it doesn't stay cold all day or for weeks at a time. There are unexpected trials here in paradise that we have not been prepared for.

 

      Saturday, we decided to try to combine a fun activity on the same day as grocery shopping.  We have not tried to do both in one day yet.  With it being Saturday and the roads and stores more crowded, we weren't sure how it would work.  But off we went.

      We did fun first.  Last Saturday we went to the northwestern part of the island.  This week, we headed for the southeastern most point of the island, Makapu'u Point. 

       There is a lighthouse on the point which was built in 1909.  We missed a turn on the way to the lighthouse which got us there about 30 minutes later than we had hoped.  It was 10:30 am and it was already packed with cars parked along the highway. Elder Rappleye decided to try our luck and pulled into what looked like a full parking lot.  But just as we were about to turn around and head out, someone pulled out of a parking space a little way in front of us, so we ended up getting a spot right near the trailhead. Score!

      The trail is a 2-mile round trip hike and it's uphill the whole way.  In the picture above you can see the parking lot down below and the view out to the ocean.  We were probably about two thirds of the way up at that point.  

      The picture on the right is Elder Rappleye with the lighthouse in the background.

      On a clear day you can see the islands of Moloka'i and Lana'i, but it was a bit hazy so we could barely see the shapes of the islands.  The picture below is our view of "the islands".

      Here's pictures of views from the top of the point.  You actually hike higher than the lighthouse and look down on it. It was well worth the hike up, fairly easy and paved all the way.

 

   You can see that it was pretty windy at the top.

      We left the point a little after noon and headed to Walmart and Costco.  Our stop to play did cost us, both places were pretty busy.  Thankfully we did not have a lot of shopping to do, so we were on the road back home by about 3pm.  Maybe we will be able to do more combined fun/errand trips in the future.

      On Sunday, our sacrament meeting was the highest attendance since we have been here.  It's the beginning of the semester, and there are a lot of new students who have moved into the ward.  They all want to "check" out the new Ward, aka girls checking out the boys and the boys checking out the girls.  Ha, the fun of a young single adult ward.  Here at BYU-H, the students have to get an endorsement from their bishop every semester in order to qualify to stay in school.  One of the requirements of the bishop is attendance at sacrament meeting.  We had over 90% attendance last week.  The goal is 100% attendance.  Second hour attendance however is not so good.

      Second week of conducting class and everyone came back.  In fact, we added one more student, so now we have 8.  I'm impressed with all of them.  We had them each take a turn to conduct a hymn in 3/4 time.  All did super and looked very comfortable in front of an audience. At the end of class, they all have to go into the keyboarding class and group conduct a hymn while the keyboarding students and teachers sing.  I'll have to try to remember to take a picture next week of the group.

      On the second Sunday of each month we have a district meeting.  It's a time for our district to get together and discuss the gospel and get to know each other better.  We have a new couple in our district, the Gammons.  Now we are not the newest couple in our district.  I think they said they were from Pennsylvania.  They are CES/Seminary and Institute missionaries.  Elder Gammon was CES for his career.  They will be teaching institute at BYU-H.  We have 5 couples in our district, 3 are BYU-H missionaries and 2 are PCC missionaries.  I provided chocolate Oreo cream pie for refreshments.

      It was transfers for the junior missionaries and both sisters in the YSA 10th Ward got transferred out to married student Wards.  Now we have two new junior sister missionaries, one of them is a brand new sister from the Philippines.

      Hopefully we have survived the coldest and wettest week of the winter.  We have also hit our two-month mark in Hawaii.  Although we are still learning the ropes, we do feel like some things are getting easier.  Hoping all of you in Utah are surviving the coldest, snowiest week of the winter so far.