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.