Cookie Run Time: April 15 - 21, 2024

   Monday night we had another shift of Ask Me at the PCC.  We had loaded up all 160+ cookies into a Playmate cooler and one other insulated bag and took them with us so we could go pass out cookies to the students after our shift.

    I wish I had taken pictures while we were doing our cookie run, but since I forgot, here are pictures off the internet to give you an idea.  Each of the cookies were individually wrapped like the picture above, only the cookies we gave out were larger than the one pictured.  Then, the picture on the left looks like the playmate cooler we used except it doesn't say cookies on it, but it is blue.  Picture it full of cookies.  

     We invited the young sister missionaries to come help us pass out the cookies to each of the student's dorm rooms.

      We have two boy's dorms and two girl's dorms.  Elder Rappleye is not allowed to go into the girl's dorms and I am not allowed to go into the boy's dorms.  So Elder Rappleye had to pass out cookies to all the boy's dorm rooms by himself.  Luckily there is not as many boys in the ward as girls.  The sister missionaries came with me.  One of the girl's Hales (dorms) just have 2 girl's to each room with a few single rooms, and the other girl's Hale has 6 girls to an apartment with their own kitchen. The boy's rooms were either 4 or 6 students to a room.

      Last time we passed out cookies at the end of Fall semester we did not have very good luck finding the students home in their rooms.  This time I posted on the ward's Facebook page ahead of time telling them when we would be delivering cookies.  This post seemed to help because we probably caught at least one person in two thirds of the rooms at home.  

      The sister missionaries were so excited to be with me because they told me afterwards that they saw miracles happen.  They have been trying all semester to meet and talk to several inactive members of the ward but could never get them to answer their doors.  We were able to talk to two of the girl's they have been working on meeting all semester.  I guess knocking on doors and announcing we have cookies can open even the most unlikely doors.

     Just Elder Rappleye and I went back Tuesday night to try to finish passing out cookies to the ones we missed on Monday night.  We got a few more, so I would say we reached about 90% of the ward members with our cookies this semester.  As we continue to do it every on of semester, we hope they will excitedly anticipate our delivery.

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     I have to do another shout out to my granddaughter, Lilli.  She got inducted into the National Honor Society this week.

      With the students having finals this week, I didn't have a field trip with the food warehouse team.  We needed to go into Honolulu for some shopping and a gas run (the cheapest place on the island to get gas is Costco by at least 80 cents a gallon).  While we were down in Honolulu, we took the time to visit Pu'u'ulaka'a, a state park commonly known as Tantalus.  It's high above the city of Honolulu and the views were incredible!  The pictures to the right are the view of Diamond Head (top picture) and Pearl Harbor (bottom picture) without being zoomed in.

     It was also very windy.

The view of the top picture above is looking inland to the Ko'olua mountains.  The bottom picture is a zoomed in view of Punchbowl, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the green grassy hill in the foreground.

Wednesday night we were invited by the Bodilys to join in a group sealing temple session with a few other senior missionaries.  It was very enjoyable doing family names with people you know.  The picture on the right is our group after we came out of the temple looking out to the ocean. 

   Pictured from left to right:  Sister Kmak, Sister and Elder Archibald, Sister and Elder Duncan, Sister Pistorius, Sister Wright (she actually wasn't in our group, but we saw her as we were coming out and invited her to get in our picture), Sister and Elder Bodily, Elder Rappleye and I.

This week's town run was uneventful.  Except they did send us on a little bit of a wild goose chase.  They handed us a broken Milwaukee saws all and asked us to find a place in Honolulu that would fix it.  That was hard since we don't really know about what companies are available in Honolulu that would do that.  I googled places that fix Milwaukee tools and one suggestion came up. We were fairly close by it, but had to back track, so we headed over to the shop.  I should have called them instead because when we got there, they told us that they don't do that kind of repair.  That little adventure set us back at least 45 minutes. But as we were leaving a guy told us he knew a place that could fix it.  We just wrote it down and when we returned to the PCC, passed on the information and will let them check into it.  We could possibly be headed to that repair shop on a future town run.

On Friday, the motor pool and general warehouse had a luncheon for the boss, Anthony Wong.  Wives were invited, so I got to tag along.  Technically, Anthony is also the higher up boss for the Food Warehouse, but very rarely do I have any interaction with him.  But Elder Rappleye has a lot of interaction with Anthony.

Can you see in the bottom picture to the left, the two Elder Bates?  Ron Bates, on the far left, has been at the PCC longer than we have and is the electrician, and his brother, Mike, just arrived last week and is working in the motor pool with Elder Rappleye.  The brothers look quite a bit alike, but we can tell them apart.

Here's a picture of the birthday boy, Anthony, in the picture to the right.  He's wearing the lei and brown shirt.  He never would tell us his exact birthday or how old he is.

Saturday, we spent doing things to get ready for our anniversary trip next week.  I don't want to spoil it, so you'll have to read our next post to find out where we went and what we did to celebrate.

Sunday was a pretty full day with our church meetings from 9AM - 11AM, then Ward Council until 12:30 PM.  This Sunday was our week to zoom with our family for a Group Family Home Evening, one of our favorite months where we share our favorite General Conference talk.  Elder Rappleye's was Elder Holland's, "Motions of a Hidden Fire" and my favorite talk was Elder Bednar's, "Be Still, and Know That I Am God".  After our Group Family Home Evening, I went back over to BYU-Hawaii and taught piano lessons to Tapu and Zaya.  I think I'm the only one teaching two lessons every week.  I may be losing Zaya because her church schedule just got changed to 2pm - 4pm and they may have to find someone who can teach her in the mornings, since I'm at church at that time.  I hate giving up teaching her, but there may be no other choice.

Not the New Kids on the Block Anymore: April 8 - 14, 2024

   

   The week started for both Elder Rappleye and I relinquishing our status as the new kids on the block in each of our departments and meeting our new co-workers in our area of assignments.  Elder Rappleye's new senior missionary helpers are Elder and Sister Bates.  Elder Bates is a true mechanic, that was his profession.  He owned a business and his wife helped in the business.  So, Sister Bates will be taking over the office duties for the motor pool.  Elder Rappleye will help train her in what he has been doing on the computer programs that he has been using.  Plus, she will probably have to be trained on the programs that Elder Rappleye never did get trained on but needs to be done.  Elder Rappleye is excited to not be doing the office duties anymore, but it's good for him to know it just in case the Bates are gone for sickness, family visits, etc.  Sister Bates twisted her ankle when they did their tour of the Polynesian Cultural Center, so she has had to start off a little slowly because she wasn't able to put in a full day until the pain level came down.  Elder Bates will be focusing on repairs and maintenance of the big equipment such as forklifts, log splitters, riding lawn mowers, etc. and all the small engine machines.  That will leave Elder Rappleye, along with Bry and Elder Tam, doing all the servicing of the carts and other miscellaneous tasks at the motor pool. The Bates are from South Jordan, Utah close to where we live.  They even know Joyce Tanner, our backyard kiddy corner neighbor who used to be in our Ward until it was split.  Elder Bates's brother and his wife are also serving here at the PCC, so now we have two Elder and Sister Bates.  Sister Bates's first name is Cindy, the same name as my twin sister, so I'll easily remember her name.

      Sister Tingey is the new single sister taking over Sister Jones's position in the Food Warehouse.  She will be learning to do all the receiving and department transfers. It's been a very frustrating week for Sister Tingey because they have not been able to get her account on the computer up and running.  That makes it harder for her to learn the system.  I remember how hard it was to figure things out on how to use the LS system for purchase orders and I imagine it's the same for learning how to do the receiving.  In fact, after five months, I still don't know everything and I'm still finding out things I'm doing wrong.  The learning curve is steep and having computer issues makes it even more frustrating.  Sister Tingey is from Missouri by way of Houston, Texas area.  Her first name is also Cathy, spelled the same way as me.  How amazing is that?  So, we have both lived in Texas and have the same name.  She was a social worker for her career.  I hope she can survive the initial challenge of learning the system and that it won't take her as long as it did me to feel somewhat comfortable doing her assignment.  Prayers for her and the Bates as they learn how to fulfill their assignments.

  

    Monday was also Asian Pacific Career Conference Day for the students at BYU-Hawaii.  This is when a lot of businesses/vendor representatives come in to visit the warehouse and meet the students.  It's a way to help the students make connections with potential employers when they graduate.  Four of the workers in the warehouse were assigned to show the visitors around the warehouse and explain the processes, procedures and goals of the warehouse team.  The picture on the left shows their bios that the vendors received about each of the students, "Blanky", Zach, Jared, and David.  Blanky, Zach, and Jared are from the Philippines and David is from the United States.  The three main goals of the food warehouse are to ensure supply chains are always running efficiently, make sure the product delivered is fresh and safe from start to end, and eliminate waste.

      Here are some interesting facts they presented to each of the tours they conducted.

*  The yearly spending in 2023 was almost 8 million dollars.

*  The largest single cost item is the leis presented to the guests at the luaus.

*  They cooked 781 pigs for the luaus in 2023.

*  The item the PCC used the most, by quantity is pineapples.

*  Donated to Aloha Harvest (food bank) in 2023 was 49,190 pounds.

*  Total inventory value in the food warehouse at the end of March 2024 was $269,741.

*  Monthly waste or slop (all the excess food left on the guest's plates are gathered together in bins and donated to the local pig farms) 6,190 bins 

    The field trip the Food Warehouse team went on this week was to KYD in Honolulu.  I have been putting in orders to KYD for months and finally know what the KYD stands for - K. Yamada Distributors.  This was probably the most boring field trip I have gone on so far.  It was just a huge warehouse full of boxes of their different inventory stock.

     Here's a view of just one row in the warehouse.  In the background is Kalo in a black shirt, Kapu'u in the red shirt, and Lili in the striped shirt.  The warehouse had at least a dozen rows like this one.  This is only one of their several warehouses.

Here's several views of the stacks of boxes in the warehouse.  The bottom right picture is a stack of Charmin toilet paper.  Remember when there was a shortage of toilet paper during the covid pandemic?  Apparently, it was all stuck in KYD's warehouse.

Although it was extremely boring to me, both my boss, Lili and Kapu'u  gained valuable information on possible items to purchase from KYD that would be much cheaper than from the vendors we are purchasing them from right now.  Part of their job is to try and keep the cost of supplies as low as possible, so it was a good fact-finding mission for them.  They have also assigned me to do cost analysis on different items we order to find which vendors have the lowest costs, when I have time between doing the purchase orders.

   Thursday's town run was the fewest stops we have had - just 4.  But it was the biggest load we have had to pick up.  Here is Elder Rappleye in the driver's seat after our last stop.

This is not the best picture of our full load, but this is looking from the front seat towards the back of the van.  It was loaded front to back and top to bottom with mostly air conditioning units - 13 in all.  We were told to pick up as many as we could.  We didn't think we would be able to fit all 13 units in one trip, but the guys that helped us load the van were very good at packing the boxes in.  I wish I had gotten a picture of the loading crew.  Excellent customer service to say the least - a 5-star review in my book.

Occasionally they have high school groups that are on the island touring for their spring break perform at the PCC.  A couple of weeks ago they had Herriman High School from Utah performing but we were not able to see their performance. We were able to catch the show by Cupertino High School from Cupertino, California on Friday evening.  The group was very good, and they had a lot of good choreography along with their singing.

In the picture to the right, they have a few of the students playing special instruments - the tambourine, the bongo drum, and a cabasa.

  

     They performed for about a half an hour.  The only thing I feel they could have done better with to smile while they performed.

Saturday morning we did our usual housekeeping chores around our pad.  Then I baked about 80 chocolate chip cookies (4 batches).  I had baked about that many cookies last weekend and put them in the freezer.  It's finals week starting on Monday which means a cookie drop off to all the students in our YSA Ward.  It's a great way to meet some of the students we haven't met yet, encourage them to keep pushing through for their finals, show them a little love and let them know we believe in them.

After getting the cookies all baked, we were able to hit the beach because we finally had a super nice warm sunny day.  The weather hasn't cooperated, and our schedule has been too busy, so it's been several weeks since we have had some beach time.

When we hit the beach we usually only stay for about an hour.  It was so nice on Saturday that we stayed for an hour and a half, a little longer than we normally do.  We went to my favorite beach, Hukilau beach, to get a nice walk in.  We stopped to talk to some people who own one of the houses facing the beach.  They are from California and were super nice.  They have owned the house for over 20 years and even mentioned what a special place Laie is.  It's the Aloha spirit that is here, and all the people radiating the light of Christ in their lives.  The only problem with staying that long was we got our first sunburn.  I thought we were acclimated to the environment, but the sun was extra strong that day and not a cloud in the sky.  Thankfully it was not too bad a burn and I don't think we are going to peel.  Picture above - my view from where I was sitting on the beach.

After two Sundays off of piano lessons for Easter and Conference, and three weeks since the last time we had piano lessons, I taught a piano lesson again to Tapu.  It was the day before finals, and I was so proud that Tapu made the time to come to lessons.  She is doing very well and progressing quickly.  Just a little more work on note recognition to help her read the notes quicker.  It will help her as she learns more advanced songs.

Wedding Reception, Conference, and Aloha 'Oe - oh My!: April 1 -7, 2024

     

 No April's fools for us this year.  Unless you consider Elder Rappleye having very little help out in the motor pool for the whole week.  With Elder Craighead back home in Pima, Arizona, Elder DeHart left on Tuesday morning, and Elder Tam still in Utah visiting family, that left only Elder Duncan and thankfully Bry, who had come back from his trip to Utah.  That put a lot of stress on Elder Rappleye to get all the carts serviced that week that needed servicing, plus all the other things that needed done. 

One of the things Elder Rappleye did when he started working out in the motor pool was organize how the carts were serviced.  Before he came, they were just randomly trying to get all the carts serviced once a month.  Elder Rappleye made a chart of all 83 carts and divided them up by weeks and assigned certain carts to be done each week.  As they got the servicing done, they would check them off as done and that way could keep track of which ones had been serviced and which ones hadn't.  It also helped them concentrate their efforts on the 20 or so carts assigned to that week and know which ones to "hunt" down or request to be bought in for servicing. Since doing that, servicing all 83 carts have gone a lot more smoothly. 

We helped at the Aloha Ohana Luau on Tuesday night.  We've only done that location once before.  One person helps at the entrance with crowd control/questions and the other person helps at the exit to direct guests to location of the restrooms and keep guests that don't have tickets from coming in.  This time Elder Rappleye manned the exit, and I helped out at the entrance.  At the end of our shift, we took our picture in front of this waterfall.  All the luau guests get their picture taken in front of this waterfall before going into the luau.

     After our shift we get to eat at the Gateway Buffet.  When we had the sister missionaries for dinner on Easter Sunday, we found out that Sister Scott has never tried Dole Whip.  We also found out that they would be at the PCC at the same time on Tuesday night.  So, I promised we would bring them some Dole whip from the Gateway Buffet.  Here's a picture of them with their sweet treat.  If you come to Hawaii, you need to try Dole Whip!

  On Wednesday the motor pool had a going away luncheon for Elder DeHart at Seven Brothers in Kahuku.  Here's our group. Front row - Anthony, Elder and Sister DeHart, Elvis (from the maintenance warehouse), Mohea (maintenance warehouse),Back Row - Elder Merideth (full-time service missionary), Regina, Bry, Elder Rappleye, Sister Duncan, Sister Rappleye, and Elder Duncan.

     It was a little unusual to have pigs and chickens roaming around feet from where we were eating our lunch.

     Later in the afternoon, I had another field trip with the food warehouse team.  We visited a local farm, Marine Agriculture, a few miles north of Laie.  I forgot to bring my phone with me, so I only have a few pictures Danna shared with me from her phone.  This farm does hypo agriculture, a system of growing crops without soil and can cultivate year-round.  They grow sea asparagus and ogo or limu, a type of seaweed.  Here's a picture of me out in the "fields". 

 

     The picture of the left shows a field of sea asparagus.  It grows in ponds.  Under the water, the ogo grows.  It's a symbatic relationship.  The ogo helps the sea asparagus grow and the sea asparagus helps the ogo to grow. They gave us a sample of the sea asparagus.  It looks kind of like parsley, and is salty to the taste, but only when you bite into it.  When you lick the leaves or stem on the outside it is not salty at all.

     If you enlarge the picture to the right, you will be able to see the worker harvesting the sea asparagus.  It's manual labor, no high-tech machinery to harvest the crop.  They just cut the tops off of each plant.  Each plant can yield harvest for 5 cuttings before they have to pull it out and reseed. Just off to the left of where the picture ends was another worker harvesting the ogo.  He was using a pitchfork to "dig" or pull the ogo out of the water and put it into a big crate.  The ogo then has to go through 5 washings, then it gets tumbled to get all the rest of the impurities out, then dried.  The coloring is brown and turns green when cooked.  It was very educational, but not what I expected to be learning about while serving a mission.

    We are settling into our town run Thursdays.  We are definitely going all around Honolulu and surrounding areas to pick up items for the PCC.  Occasionally, we get to drive by some amazing murals on the side of buildings.  Some I haven't been able to get a photo, but the picture to the left and below are just a couple of examples.  They are huge, larger-than-life pictures.

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    All week there were end of the semester performances at night from groups or individual performancers.  We went to the Ho'olokahi Chamber Choir and Seasider Singers performance on Thursday night.    

This is the Seaside Singers Choral group.  They performed songs from different countries - Philippines, Korea, Malaysia to name a few.  They had all the graduating seniors sing a song together to honor them.

This is our friend, Jimboy Frajardo, who we met the first week we were here.  He sang a solo. He's a very good singer.

The Ho'olokahi Chamber choir sang after the Seaside Singers.  Here they are gathering around one of the faculty members, Dr. Melissa Glen, to sing goodbye to her.  She is leaving the faculty for family reasons.  The students definitely love their teacher.

 This performance was a combined choir number with both choirs.  They used fun arm movements while they sang.  It's so nice to be able to enjoy the talents of the wonderful students here at BYU-Hawaii.

Saturday was General Conference.  If you want to listen to the sessions live here in Hawaii, the morning session starts at 6AM, afternoon session is at 10AM, and the evening session is at 2PM.  We decided to watch live because we had a wedding reception to go to in the evening.  The reception was at the BYU-H ballroom.  Jimboy and Camilla were sealed on Friday and their reception was Saturday night.  The top picture to the right  is the lovely newlywed couple and the bottom picture is us with the bride and groom after they had the money dance, a tradition in the Filipino culture. They have the women pin money onto the groom's clothing and the men pin money onto the bride's gown to show them how much they are loved and help establish the couple in their new life.  If we had known they were going to do that at the reception, we would have given them our gift that way instead of in a card.

 

    Three of my favorite students were helping serve the food.  Zaya is on the far left.  She is from Mongolia, and she is one of my piano students that I teach on Sundays.  Shinehah, in the middle, is in our YSA ward, and Princess, on the right, is one of the Relief Society presidents in our YSA Ward. We have two Relief Societies because there are so many female students in our ward.

 There was a band.

A hula dancer.  Maheta is in our YSA ward.

These are pictures of their first dance.

Bouquet toss.  It was a fun enjoyable time of celebrating Jimboy and Camilla.

      Conference Sunday morning was rainy.  The sessions were all amazing.  We received great council and teachings and were uplifted and strengthen. Too many great messages to mention here.  It was especially exciting to hear President Nelson announce a temple in Honolulu, Hawaii. We were done listening by noon.  Later in the afternoon the sun came out and we took a walk up the mountain by our house on the trail at the end of our road.  It's a paved trail, but with all the rain the pavement was still wet and scattered with wet leaves.  You had to be careful not to slip on them.  I also made breadsticks for the munch and mingle later in the evening.

     This is our fifth Aloha 'Oe since we have arrived.  Last month was the first one we actually knew several missionaries quite well.  This month there were 15 missionaries going home in April that we knew, in fact we knew all of them to one degree or another.  I had to take two pictures to fit the whole group in.

     The picture above has Sister Purcell on the far left.  She is the wife of one of the mission counselors.  She always sings the verse of the song Aloha 'Oe and then all the missionaries join in on the chorus.  The first couple starting on the left are the Masons.  They served at BYU-Hawaii and taught religion.  They also know Jasmin, our daughter-in-law.  In fact, he was Neal and Jasmin's sealer at their wedding.  The next couple are the Curtiss.  They served in the mission settlement at the PCC and taught ukulele lessons to the guests.  Elder Curtis also teaches the beginning ukulele class to all of the senior missionaries. A very good and patient teacher. The next couple are the DeHarts.  Elder DeHart served with Elder Rappleye in the motor pool at the PCC, and Sister DeHart served in the nursery making the grounds of the PCC look fabulous. Sister Forsythe also worked in the nursery with Sister DeHart.  She is the only one we didn't know very well.
       The last couple in the top picture are the Bodilys.  They worked at the PCC in research and development.  They came only about a week and a half before us, but they are only serving a 6-month mission.  Not very common for this mission.  They are one of the couples that come join our missionary group at lunchtime.  Sister Bodily also team taught the conducting class with me.  I was so disappointed when I found out that they were leaving so soon. Both of us will miss the Bodilys.  In the top picture left are the Youngs on the fa.r right.  Sister Young served in the Ukulele Experience store at the PCC and Elder Young was counseling students at BYU-Hawaii.  They were so welcoming to us when we were new missionaries here and invited us to have breakfast at Papa 'Ole's and just visit and get to know us and gave us some really good advice.  The couple to the left of the Youngs are the Nyes.  They served at BYU-Hawaii in the Women's Services Department. They would often come play pickleball on Wednesday nights.  Elder Nye is a very good pickleball player and very competitive. Sister Nye is very friendly.  The couple to the left of the Nyes are the Skidmores. They served at BYU-Hawaii helping with housing.  Elder Skidmore would come play pickleball.  He is very competitive too, but I played as his partner several times, and he was very kind and encouraging, always complimenting me on a good serve or hit and gave me pointers to help me improve my game.  I heard that he is the oldest senior missionary in the mission but can play pickleball better than almost anyone here.  This group is going to be missed.  We loved getting to know them through our service. God be with you till we meet again.

 

Easter Week: March 25 - 31, 2024

      We are still doing our ukulele class on Monday nights, but a few weeks ago we took a leap and started attending the more advanced class.  It's called the Sing-Along class.  It's definitely a lot harder than the beginner class, but the beginner class was definitely too easy for us.  So, we just do the best we can in the sing-along class.  If we keep practicing, one of these weeks we'll be able to keep up.  This Monday when we went to class, Elder Rappleye's ukulele was out of tune, so he started to try to tune it while everyone else was playing.  That mixed him up and the next thing I know, I hear a loud snap. Elder Rappleye had broken a string.  That was the end of class for him, so he packed up his ukulele and took it out to the car.  I decided after playing a few more songs, I should pack up and leave too.  So, we had a shortened lesson that night.

We started the week by going to the temple on Tuesday night.  It has been three weeks since we have gone because it was closed for two weeks for cleaning and maintenance and the first week it was open we were not able to get an appointment.  The Laie temple is almost always busy.  It also has so many of the BYU-H students working in the temple.  It was so fun to have one of the Relief Society teachers in our YSA Ward officiating as I did initiatories.  This is how we are gathering Israel on our mission by going to the temple once a week whenever possible.  The picture of the left is the view from the top by the temple looking down on the grounds and out to the ocean.  It's always a beautiful view.

Wednesday was the start of a couple of weeks of saying goodbye to senior missionaries going home.  The first party was the Food Warehouse honoring Sister Jones who has served in the Food Warehouse for 22 months.  She did all the receiving when the orders were delivered.  She sat in the same office as me and made everything look so easy.  She had the best sense of humor.  She helped me feel like I wasn't the only one that struggled to figure things out. 

Whenever she would say, "when I was new here . . ."  it was always something I was feeling or having trouble with, so it helped me feel like I could keep trying and sooner or later I would know what I was doing hopefully as well as Sister Jones.  Everyone will miss Sister Jones - the students that work in the food warehouse, Kapu'u and Lili and the other employees, and me.  The new sister missionary coming in to take her place has some pretty big shoes to fill.

 The picture above shows most of the students that work in the food warehouse.  Starting with Zach, in the white T-shirt, Kina, Third, and Blankey on the left side of the table.  Aurel, Leilani, Jared, David, and Saturo are on the right side of the table.  All but Kina and David are students.  In the picture on the right is Kalo and Danna helping with the food.  Danna is a student at BYU-H. 

 

There is always lots of food at these Hawaiian parties.  I was asked to bring a salad for 30 people.  Not only were we honoring and saying goodbye to Sister Jones, Elder and Sister DeHart, and Elder and Sister Craighead was also invited to attend because Elder Craighead and Elder DeHart serviced all of the heavy equipment that is used in the food warehouse like the forklifts and picker.

Here's Elder Rappleye with Elder DeHart (right next to Elder Rappleye), the boss, Anthony Wong, and Elder Craighead (far right).  Both Craighead and DeHart are going home as well.  Both are very good mechanics and when they leave the motor pool they will be without a true mechanic (Elder Rappleye is only a mechanic hobbyist) for about a week until Elder Bates arrives to be the head mechanic.

They love to play games at parties here.  The picture on the right shows them playing a version of the game statue.  They had to dance to music and when the music stopped, they had to freeze until the music started again.  If they moved while the music was stopped, they were eliminated.

In this game, a person had to close their eyes and walk backwards through the cup obstacles without knocking any of them over while someone else is coaching them on which direction to step.  In the picture to the right is Blankey walking backwards and SIster Jones coaching him (left side) and Terry walking backwards and Third coaching him (right side).  I also had a turn walking backwards with David coaching me.  He was an excellent coach and I got through in the fastest time.

This was the craziest game.  They called it the water dance.  Everyone stood in a circle with a cup of water and Blankey was in the middle. Blankey would dance and when he gave a certain signal, everyone would throw the water they had in their cup at him.  If you look closely, you will see that some of the students had soda in their cups and not water.  So Blankey ended up not only wet, but sticky.

Of course, the star of the entertainment was Kina and his fire knife dancing skills.  It never gets old watching the fire knife dance.

But the true star of the party was Sister Jones.  She has endeared herself to everyone in the Food Warehouse and going to work every day is just not going to be the same. A light will be missing, and that light is Sister Jones.  Kapu'u will especially miss giving Sister Jones a hard time (with love) and fighting over what temperature to keep the office at.  I was always on Sister Jones's side.  Kapu'u likes to keep the office way TOO cold!

They showered Sister Jones with all kinds of going away gifts.  She turned around and gave out gifts to Kalo, Lili, and Kapu'u.  Tears were definitely shed all around.

Although we hate to say goodbye to Sister Jones and the Craigheads and DeHarts, we definitely love having an excuse to throw and enjoy a good party.

We are still enjoying doing the town run on Thursdays, although this week's run was the biggest and hardest one so far.   We did not arrive back to the PCC until 4:30pm. Our first stop in Kaneohe should have been an easy stop to pick up ukuleles for the Ukulele Experience store, but the GPS took us to their store in the Windward Mall instead of their factory down the road from the mall, so that took longer than it should have.  Then we had 11 more stops to make, the most stops to date.  At one of the stops, Elder Rappleye spotted this cute mini-VW van camper. Since a favorite pastime here in Hawaii is camping on the beach on the weekends, it seems like this car would be very popular here. Our daughter, Noelle, would have probably loved one of those to drive around in high school and college.

We noticed a monk seal snoozing on the Hau'ula beach on our way home from town.  I am told it was Sadie, who winters in Kauai and has returned to her Oahu home.  At first, 
I thought it was a big rock, but then I realized it was a seal.

We have to give a shout out to our granddaughter, Lilli.  She took the ACT test and got a score of 32!  She was hoping for a perfect score of 36, but google says that only the top 3% of students who take the ACT score 32 or higher.  We are very proud of Lilli.  That is an amazing score, and we know how hard she studied for the test.  She wants to take the test again and try to do better.  She never stops trying to do the best she can.  We know God loves effort and He loves Lilli, so we think that's got to be a winning combination.

On Friday evening we had another Ask Me assignment.  This is the first time we have helped at the Gateway Buffet spot.  We stand right outside of the Gateway Buffet and help answer the guest's questions as they leave the restaurant.  One of us also has to stamp hands if they are leaving and want to come back in.  You get to talk to a lot of people, and they are all in a great mood after spending the day visiting the PCC and enjoying a wonderful buffet.  Everyone has a smile on their faces.  That night they had a lot of big touring groups of young people because it's spring break for a lot of students right now.

Saturday morning our YSA Ward had an Easter breakfast activity.  We were assigned to come early and decorate the tables.  Annelise does a great job planning and preparing for the Ward activities.  She had all the supplies for decorating the tables.  All we had to do was show up and set it all up.

There is always plenty of delicious food.

They also had an Easter egg hunt in the HGB.  They hid 300 plastic eggs for the students.  I got out in the common area too late for pictures of the hunt, but here's one picture of them after the scramble for the eggs with them holding their bags full of eggs.

The pictures to the left show them back in our party room enjoying the fruits of their labor - the candy!  It was amazing how much they got into searching for the eggs, It's like they were little kids again.  I guess you are never  

too old to have fun.

They also dyed Easter eggs.  I could tell by some of their reactions that for some it was their first-time dying eggs.  They used eggs that were like ping pong balls only egg shaped.  No boiling eggs a head of time.  As expensive as eggs are here, it was probably cheaper to use these kinds of eggs and you get to keep them.

We have to give another shout out to my cute grandson, Parker Kingsley James (Peekay) who turned one.  Isn't he the cutest?  He always has a smile on his face and he's always quick to give a smile to almost everyone.  Missing these family events are hard.  We love you Peekay!

We also missed this cute little one's blessing day on Easter Sunday, Weston Eugene was blessed by his dad.  He was born in December, so we haven't even met him yet or gotten to hold him.  We are definitely going to have to make up for lost time when we get home.

I have to admit this Easter weekend was the hardest time for me since arriving in Hawaii.  So many special family events to not participate in.  Our love for God and His love for us helps us through these hard times.

We didn't want to spend Easter dinner by ourselves, but our pad is small and doesn't have room for a big crowd.  We invited the Jr. sister missionaries over for dinner because they are away from home too and we didn't want them to have Easter dinner alone.  We took this picture out on our deck after dinner.  Sister Earl and SIster Scott are holding the bunnies I made them with chocolates inside.

Even though it was hard to be away from family this year at Easter, we have so much gratitude and joy for the gift God and Christ gave us of His Atonement and Resurrection. Easter is something we should celebrate all year long.