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.

+

    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.