Hawaii Laie Mission Nov. 2023 -May 2025: The Week Before Christmas: December 18

This week was another fairly quiet week. It was still a bit rainy and even a little on the chilly side after dark.

There was live entertainment from 6pm to 7pm at the Hukilua Markektplace all week. Most of the week it was rainy at that time of the day, but we manage to make it down on Tuesday night to listen to this trio of sisters sing.

You can see by our picture to the right, that we actually had to pull out our jackets for that night. It was a bit on the chilly side, but definitely not Utah cold.

On Wednesday when we did our town run it was rainy going into town. While we were in Honolulu it stopped raining, but on our return trip the rain returned in large quantities. I took this picture of the car in front of us. You can see there was a lot of standing water on the road that we had to drive through. It was coming down faster than it could drain off.

We also made it down to the Marketplace on Thursday night to hear another performing group.

Most mornings at my job in the Food Warehouse, we have a short devotional. Elder Rappleye also has devotional out at motor pool. One morning I took these pictures of some of the students that work the morning shift. In the top picture from left to right is Jared, Third, Lisi, and Saturo. In the picture to the right is Kapu'u, the second in command and knows everything about how the food warehouse is run, Sister Jones, who does the receiving end of all the orders, and hiding behind Sister Jones is Terry. Beyond the clear plastic door behind Lisi, is three other big areas - the 2 chill areas and then the big freezer.

Speaking of the Food Warehouse, I had a little accident this week. While I was in the chill area counting inventory, I was standing right by the doorway and got hit by the forklift. Luckily, I just got hit at my ankle and it got a little scraped up. Kalo, who was driving the forklift didn't see me standing on the other side of the plastic strips and came through the doorway and hit me. At first, I thought it was my fault because she had honked the horn, but I was so intent on taking inventory that I didn't pay enough attention to her honking. But I was later told that because her load was higher than she could see over, she was supposed to be backing in with the cab coming in first so she could see what was in front of her. Plus, she was supposed to go slower when going through the doors just in case someone is on the other side. She felt pretty bad about it. I tried to help her not feel so bad by giving her a hug and telling her I would be fine. I escaped with only scratches and not as much bruising as I thought there would be. I guess there was a little bit of fault on both sides. All is good. It is healing.

On Friday night, we had elf duty at the Hukilua Marketplace with Mr. and Mrs. Claus. I was helping with line control and taking the pictures with Santa for all the visitors, and Elder Rappleye was handing out the candy canes to all the children. It was fun to see all the different nationalities of people who all wanted to take their picture with Santa Claus. Santa and Mrs. Claus were one of the senior missionary couples, the Tanners, to keep with missionary guidelines, no sitting on Santa's lap was allowed.

I don't think I've shared in the blog all the decorations at the Aloha Center on the BYU-H campus. The Aloha Center is the student activity building. It has a bookstore, mailroom, game room, and a few other things in that building. It was a very festive place to go and hang out for the students.

We were given a dozen fresh eggs from my cousin Julie and a bunch of fresh picked bananas from my Aunt Faith. I took a picture of the eggs because I have never seen green eggs before. I guess Dr. Seuss wasn't making it up, there really is green eggs and ham, Sam I Am. Julie called them Easter eggs because they don't need to be dyed.

I spent time putting together Christmas bags for those in our district, the sister missionaries assigned to our Ward, and for Uncle Jay, Aunt Faith, and cousin Julie's family. Each kind of candy represents something about the nativity. I'm including the pictures of each one just so I can remember what was included in case I want to do it again sometime. Rocky Road and Sugar Babies are very hard to find and as such, quite pricey as far as candy goes. Amazon to the rescue, but since there is no 2-day delivery here in Hawaii, I had to plan ahead to get them here in time.

We also inherited a ream of printer paper that was sitting on the desk in our pad, so I used some to make the fan angel ornament that I attached to each of the gift bags. The angels are so simple and easy yet, look fancy at the same time. I left my angel ornaments white, but if you have watercolor paints, they look really pretty painted all different colors.

Our Saturday off we were cleaning house because we were having the sister missionaries over for dinner on Christmas eve. We were asked to speak in sacrament meeting on Christmas eve, so we were preparing our talks as well. Our topic: Jesus Christ is The Treasure, conference talk by Elder Dale G. Renlund.

Here is a picture of Sister Lin, from Taiwan and Sister Ho from Boston. Sister Lin has only been a missionary just a little longer than we have been. Sister Ho has been here for over a year. We served lasagna. It was the first time Sister Lin has eaten lasagna. She said she liked it, and I believe her because she had seconds. They don't get invited to dinner very often because they are serving in a student ward, so they were very excited to have a dinner invite on Christmas Eve. I guess we'll be having them over more often.

After dinner we had just enough time to clean up the dishes from dinner and go to the chapel in Laie where the mission office is. The mission had planned a musical Christmas devotional for all the missionaries - senior and junior. We have quite a lot of talent in our mission as you can see from the program. At the end of all the musical numbers, Elder Goates read the nativity story from the scriptures. After the program there was refreshments and time to visit. Definitely a little different Christmas eve than we are used to, but still a very good way to celebrate the birth of the Savior.