New Missionaries, Tender Mercies, and Amazing Views: May 20 - 26, 2024

 

      This week started with 19 new senior missionaries starting their assignments in our mission.  Actually, they came on the 13th, but all last week they were getting settled in, and having orientation so we didn't see any of them.  13 of the 19 missionaries are serving at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  Some of them started working at the PCC on Friday last week, but by Monday they were all at the PCC learning their new assignments. We totally remember the growing pains of the first few weeks and are grateful we don't have to do it again.  We are more than willing to do all that we can to help these wonderful new senior missionaries make their transition a smooth and quick one.

     Because there were so many new missionaries that came in all at once, there was a little bit of shuffling people around to figure out where to have them serve. Sister Tingey who was assigned to the Food Warehouse with me got moved to a new assignment in one of the retail shops. I only worked with her for about 6 weeks, but I will miss having her seating in the office with me.

      Welcome to Sister Sheri Sauve.  She is the new sister working with me in the Food Warehouse.  She will be doing all the receiving of the deliveries.  She is from Centerville, UT.  The first week was a little rough for her, but it was rough for Sister Tingey and it was rough me - for several weeks in fact.  Learning a totally new job that you have no prior experience when you are in your 60's is definitely a challenge.  The learning curve is pretty steep.  I thought she did a wonderful job picking up on how to receive the deliveries and post the invoices.  The system the PCC uses is not the most user-friendly system and there are lots of steps you have to learn and remember. She has such a great attitude, always saying thank you whenever Kapu'u corrects her work and shows her the right way to do it.  Her attitude is much better than mine was when I was going through the learning process.  She'll be crushing it in no time.

   We had an Ask Me assignment on Monday night.  We were helping at the Marketplace spot and usually we get a lot of questions like where is the night show?, where are the restrooms?, where do we catch our tour bus after the show?  On this night I got asked by a lady to help her make a temple reservation on her phone.  As I was helping her do that, we got talking and I found out she was a retired Bingham High School teacher.  When she told me her name, Barbara Johnson, and that she always wore Indian jewelry, it clicked and I remembered her.  She is now living in St. George along with a few other former Bingham employees I knew.  My picture with her is the bottom picture on the right.

      Shortly after talking with Barbara Johnson, two cute ladies came over to talk to me while their husbands took their bags to the car.  They are from Gilbert, Arizona and after talking for a while we realized they know Elder Rappleye's youngest sister, Jeanie.  So, I snapped the top picture on the right and sent it to Jeanie to see if she would recognize them.  She recognized the lady on the left, Karena.  Here at the PCC/BYU-H it is definitely a small world!

 

   After our Ask Me shift, we headed over to the "old gym" at BYU-H for a FHE sports night.  They had a volleyball net set up.  The kids just hit the ball back and forth and didn't keep score.  See if you can spot me in one of the pictures.  Hint:  I'm wearing the neon green shorts.  Some of the group played basketball while the volleyball was going on.
    

We also played wiffle ball.  Some of the students had never played the game.  The pictures below are ones that the Bishop took while we were playing.  Elder Rappleye is in the blue t-shirt in the top picture and I'm at bat in the bottom picture.  

Here's the group picture taken at FHE.  We are not in it because we went home early.   It had been a long day, and it didn't end until 10pm.  We are usually in bed by 10pm.  It was our biggest turnout to date.  Sports night was a big hit.

Tuesday night was our monthly Senior Missionary Devotional.  Three of the single sisters sang a lovely rendition of "This is the Christ".  Sister Tingey who was working with me in the Food Warehouse is the sister in the middle.  Sister Larson is the sister on the left, and Sister Ratelle is the sister on the right.  They look great in their matching red dresses.

The mission president and his wife talked about the Prophet Joseph Smith and his role in the restoration of the gospel and also discussed President M. Russell Ballard's last conference talk about the prophet Joseph Smith.  We are grateful for the prophet Joseph Smith and our testimonies of him.

One of the new senior couples serving here at the PCC is Mark and Sally Zollinger.  They are in our stake back home in South Jordan.  Two of their daughters and two of our daughters went to school together and played volleyball together at Bingham High School.  They arrived exactly six months after we arrived here in Hawaii.  Sally is assigned to be a seamstress and Mark is a handyman at the PCC.  It's so nice to have familiar faces here.   

Wednesdays are our day off, but the Food Warehouse had a field trip scheduled for P & E Foods in the morning.  Elder Rappleye planned to go into work while I was on the field trip.  Around 7:30 am I got notified that the field trip was cancelled so I now had the morning open.  Elder Rappleye said he was still going to go into work.  I stayed home and gave our kitchen a good cleaning.

We were invited to the Dahlin's farewell luncheon at noon on Wednesday.  Elder Rappleye came back home and got me in time to go to the luncheon.  Since the PCC is closed on Wednesdays, they were able to have the luncheon at the Hale Ohana venue, one of the places they do the luaus.  It was a big crowd.

The Dahlins will be missed.  Elder Dahlin is the current handyman and Elder Zollinger is his replacement. Sister Dahlin worked as a seamstress for a while and then moved up to the Uniforms office.  They also helped in the Mission Settlement for the last few months of their mission.  One of the things we will miss is their homemade vanilla ice cream that they would make and bring to our Munch and Mingle dinners on the first Sunday of every month. 

After the luncheon, we headed to the beach.  With all the rainy weather we have gotten, it's been about two weeks since we have been to the beach.  The waves were a little bigger on this day than they usually are at Hakilua beach, but there were quite a lot of people at the beach.  I guess everyone else had missed going to the beach as well.                                                                        A tender mercy happened on the way home from the beach.  Way back on the first weekend of April I started getting intense pain in one of my teeth on the left side of my mouth.  As soon as Monday came, I called the one and only dentist here in Laie to see if there was a chance I could get an appointment to have my tooth checked out.  It was a miracle that they gave me an appointment on Wednesday.  When I went to my appointment the dentist gave me the bad news that I needed a root canal. He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic to get rid of the infection I had, but here in Hawaii, they have to refer you to an endodontist to have a root canal done.  He sends a referral to an endodontist in Kailua that was in network on my insurance plan, but they call and tell me they don't accept my insurance and a root canal would not be covered.  So, then my dentist sends another referral to an endodontist in Honolulu, but they also said they don't accept my insurance.  So, then I call my insurance plan, Humana, and ask them to give me a list of endodontists on Oahu that would accept my insurance.  They email me a list of 15 endodontists that are on the island.  I give that list to my dentist's receptionist, and she calls them and finds out that NONE of them said they accept my insurance plan!  By now I am losing my patience because it's been a month since I went into the dentist and I'm not getting any closer to getting my dental work done and my tooth still hurts.  I have to chew my food on the side of my mouth that doesn't hurt.  So, I call my insurance again and complain to them about how hard it has been to find an endodontist that accepts my plan and that there has to be someone on the island that would accept me.  I was told it would cost $1,400 if I had it done out-of-network.  The customer service rep finally offered to call some endodontists and find one that would accept my plan.  She put me on hold and after a while she came back on and gave me a name of an endodontist in Milliani.  I call the endodontist office; they tell me I have to have my dentist send a referral over and then they would call me and set up an appointment.  I call my dentist and ask them to send a referral to the endodontist.  She says she will, but after two weeks of not hearing back from the endodontist, I call the dentist office and ask them if they sent the referral. She says yes but will check with the endodontist office to make sure they got it.  They say they didn't get the referral.  My dentist sends it again.  Still nothing.  It's been 6 weeks now since I first went to the dentist.  Finally, on our way home from the beach I get a call from an endodontist office, not in Milliani but in Kailua, that has my referral and will set up an appointment for me.  I have no idea how they got my referral, but I'm not going to question them.  I was sure they would not be able to get me in for several more weeks, but they told me they had an appointment available next Wednesday afternoon.  Perfect! I took it.  I'm still holding my breath that they might call back and tell me my insurance won't cover it.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Next tender mercy happens on Thursday.  With all the new senior missionary couples coming in they will finally have someone to do the Tuesday town runs.  We do Thursday town runs, but I'm needed at the Food Warehouse on Tuesdays because it's a busy day putting in lots of purchase orders, and Elder Rappleye can't be away from the motor pool two days out of the week.  We love being able to do the town runs on Thursdays and told the Archibalds, the senior couple in charge of making assignments for the new missionaries, to please let us keep doing Thursday's town run (we had heard rumors that we would not be doing it anymore because one of the new missionary couples would be doing both days).  I would NOT be a happy camper if we were not doing the town runs anymore.  It's my favorite workday even through it is usually a longer day than when I work at the Food Warehouse. I love the variety, being able to see different places on the island, and meeting the people at the places we visit and helping all the departments at the PCC.  The Archibalds had told Elder Rappleye that this week only he would go with Elder Boyer, the new missionary, to help train him.  Elder Rappleye was not excited about that because he's the driver and I'm the navigator and he wasn't sure how well Elder Boyer would do as a navigator.  Thursday morning, we show up at the warehouse with the cargo van.  We go into the office and Elder Boyer is already there mapping out the route.  We thought, "oh good, he's already to go".  When he gets done, he hands the binder with the list of stops to me, and says, "Here you go."  I hand it back to him and say, "I'm not going.  There are only two seats in the van.  You and Elder Rappleye are going.  He's driving and you are the navigator."  Elder Boyer states, "I have to be the driver.  I get car sick if I don't drive."  Elder Rappleye says, "I'm not a navigator.  My wife is usually the navigator and I've never done the navigating." Then Elder Boyer says, "Well, you guys can go. I need to stay here and do some things on the computer." and walked away.  Elder Rappleye says to me, "My prayers have been answered.  I was praying that somehow you would be able to come with me on town run."

 

So off we both go to do the town run.  We had to go pick up macaroons for Tutu's Sweet Shop in the Hukilau Marketplace.  This is the second time we have picked up macaroons.  This time I took a picture of the case of macaroons in the shop.  The top picture above shows the macaroons on the bottom shelf.  They certainly look delicious. We also had decided if we ever had to picked up macaroons again that we would have to buy us a treat because everything in the case looks so yummy.  The bottom picture above shows the magic bar we bought.  We usually don't have lunch when we do town run, so I guess you could say that was our lunch. 

We had an incident at our stop at Home Depot.  We were picking up some long conduit pipes and Elder Rappleye tried to slide them over in the van and there was a jagged end on one of the conduit pipes and it ripped open his skin on the top of his left hand.  He started bleeding.  The Home Depot employee that was helping us load escorted us into the store where they had a first aid kit and another employee helped bandage him up.  The top picture on the right was taken in the store while they were administering first aid.  You can't see the wound very well.  The bottom picture was taken when we got home and Elder Rappleye was changing out the bandages.  It looks pretty gross, but it really was just a superficial wound.  He got a nice scab on his hand after a few days. 

In the picture to the left, you can see that there is a Salt Lake Blvd. here on Oahu.  We go by this sign on the freeway a lot.  I have no idea why they named one of their streets "Salt Lake".                                                                 There is also a Bingham Street in Honolulu.  Maybe I'll be able to get a picture of that street sign too.

     Saturday morning we got up early, 4:45 AM, and met the Colemans, Fischers, and Sister Van Bloom at the motor pool.  We had reserved the 12-passenger van so we could carpool to the trailhead and all hike to the top of Koko Crater. It was an hour drive to get to the trailhead.  The picture to the right is at the base of the stairs, actually on old railroad track, that we climbed up to the summit.  

    It's a good thing we started early. The parking was crazy because there was also a baseball tournament going on that day at the park by the trail, so we were lucky to find a spot to park. The sun hadn't come over the rise of the crater, so we were in the shade all the way up.  It was already crowded on the way up. There are 1,048 railroad ties to climb up, about 991-foot elevation gain, and 1.5-mile roundtrip trek.  We had to rest several times on the way up.  In the picture on the right side of the collage you can see the path of the stairs all the way down.

      It took us about 40 - 45 minutes to hike up to the top.  The pictures on the right are taken at the top.  The views were amazing!  The top picture is a view of Hawaii Kai in the forefront and Diamond Head, way in the distance.  The bottom left picture shows Hanauma Bay in the background.  The bottom right is our celebration pose - we made it! We were talking to a guy at the top who said he was visiting Hawaii and had gone to the Laie temple the night before.  I asked him if he was in the 5:30pm endowment session.  He said he was.  I told him we were in the same session. What a coincidence!

     Here's our group at the top.  Sister Van Bloom is on the far left.  She was the last one to make it to the top, but she was so excited that she made it.  Sister Coleman and Elder Coleman - they were the first ones up.  I think they are the youngest of the bunch.  We were the second couple to make it to the top.  Sister and Elder Fischer are on the far right in the picture.

   

   We met up with Elder and Sister Bates at the top.  The Bates are on the far right in the picture.  The Bates have done the hike several times before, so they are pros at it.

     Hiking Koko Crater has been on our bucket list since we got here.  It did not disappoint.

 

     This is the view at the top looking to the other side.  It shows the southernmost tip of Oahu.

   

     On the way down we saw a lady on the ground who had tripped and fallen down on the trail.  It was bad enough that the EMT's came up and put her on a basket, slid her down the track and took her away in an ambulance.  I think they were just being overly cautious, but who knows.

   After the hike, we drove around to the other side of the crater and visited the Koko Crater botanical garden.  The plumeria trees were in full bloom and there was lots of color.

      Amazingly there was cactus in the gardens and Sister Coleman called the tree in the left-hand picture a "Dr. Seuss tree." 

     Finally, a picture where you can see Elder Rappleye's eyes!  We were all pretty tired of walking, so we didn't explore the gardens a lot.  We may have to visit again sometime when we are well rested and feel like walking through the whole garden.  We did not feel sore until the next day, but going up and down the stairs at the HGB where we have church and the stairs in our pad were pretty rough.  Our legs were not liking it.

    We had the sister missionaries over for dinner on Sunday.  Sister Earl and Sister Strickland are now living at the bottom of the hill from us with Sister Scott and Sister Kraft, so we invited all 4 of them to dinner.  Sister Scott served in our YSA ward with Sister Earl a few months ago and Sister Kraft is a new missionary.  She came out to Hawaii with Sister Strickland, so everyone knew each other. Sister Kraft is from Mapleton, UT and Sister Stickland is from Las Vegas. Sister Stickland is on the bottom left in the picture, Sister Eart and Sister Scott, left to right, in the middle, and Sister Kraft on the top right with Elder Rappleye.  We wish we had time to have the sister missionaries over more often.

     It was an exciting and eventful week.

Too Much Rain in Paradise: May 13 - 19, 2024

 

    

  We were asked to be in charge of this week's Family Home Evening activity.  We chose to do the game Conference Jeopardy.  It's a fun way to review all the talks given at General Conference. 

We have used this version of the game with our Pamela Place group when we were serving there before our mission.  The first round was questions are divided by sessions.  We then had a double jeopardy round with the following categories - What Is the Subject, Words of Wisdom, Funny Things, Stories Told, and This 'n' That.  It culminated in a Final Jeopardy Question.  We had the Elder's Quorum President, Evan, be our game show host.  He was a very good "Alex Trebek".  There weren't as many students there this week, so we only had two teams.  After the final jeopardy question the score was 7000 to 7001.

  The winning team squeaked out a win.  We ended up giving prizes to both teams because the score was so close.  We were only in charge of the activity, but the FHE committee made breakfast sandwiches for the refreshments.  We have decided we should not eat dinner before FHE because they serve a meal afterwards, not just refreshments!

    It was Laie May Day on Tuesday.  All the elementary school children came to perform at the Pacific Theater at the PCC.  It's like BYU-H Cultural Night only with elementary school children.  Sister Tingey and I were allowed to take a break and go watch for about an hour.  The whole theater was full, and we had no place to sit.  All the upper seats were filled with all the students dressed in their costumes.  The parents and family members had filled up the lower portion of the theater.  We had to stand in one of the stairways to watch the performance.  When we arrived, the pre-Kindergarteners were performing (top picture in the collage).  Then the 6th graders performed (bottom right picture in the collage). They were representing Africa.  They did a really good performance, and they were fun to watch.  The kindergartens then performed.  They represented Jamaica (bottom left-hand picture in the collage).

We were also able to see the first graders perform.  They were representing Greece (bottom picture in collage to the left), and the second graders perform.  They represented China.  I spied Brent and Jen Cowley right before the second graders performed and ran over to see them.  Their son, Cohen, was performing with the second graders.

    

  During some of the performances, the children in the other grades who were sitting in the audience would sing and dance along with the kids on stage.  Here are the fifth graders closest in the black and red costumes.  You can see some of them with their hands up and singing along.  

    I really would have liked to have seen the whole thing but had to get back to work.  Tuesday is a pretty busy day for me.

   Another rainy shift of Ask Me at the Marketplace.  My lei from Mother's Day was still looking fresh, so I wore it instead of my kui nut necklace. 

       It has actually been quite rainy since last Thursday.  We've had many downpours and warnings for potential flooding.

      While we were at the PCC, we spied this little guy.  Actually, it's not so little.  It's the biggest snail I have ever seen!  Ugh, but it's the prettiest snail shell I've ever seen as well.  All the rain is bringing out an invasion of snails!

   It wasn't raining Wednesday morning when we got up, so we headed over to BYU-H so I could get in the pool to do water aerobics and Elder Rappleye went to the workout room.  It actually rained on me twice while I was in the pool, but it wasn't a downpour and thankfully it didn't rain for too long.  At least it's warm when it rains here.

Then Elder Rappleye felt like he needed to go into work (even though it was our day off).  I was supposed to have a field trip to Pepsi in Honolulu, but it got postponed because of all the heavy rainfall.  The picture above is flooding on the road we take to get to town. There was a good chance we would have gotten stranded and not been able to get back to Laie if we had gone to Honolulu.  Instead, I stayed home and got some items of business done that I needed to do.  By late morning, it seemed like the weather was not going to clear up, so I got showered and dressed for the day.  About an hour later, the sun came out and it was nice.  I really wanted to go to the beach, but I wasn't sure how long the sunshine was going to last, and I'd already showered.  It turned out that it was nice for about 4 hours.  I regret not dropping what I was doing and heading to the beach.  I didn't know that the rest of the week was going to continue to be rainy.  When it came time to go play pickleball, it was raining at our pad, but we decided to drive up to Laie and see if it was nice enough to play.  Sure enough, by the time to got to BYU-H, just 3 miles down the road, it had stopped raining.  We were able to have a nice evening playing pickleball with the Colemans, Fischers, Elder Rainsdon, and Sister M.

  On Thursdays before we leave the PCC to go to Honolulu to do the town run, we always go to the motor pool because we have to check out and pick up the cargo van.  We usually get delayed there because Elder Rappleye has things he needs to tell the other workers in the motor pool before he is going to be gone all day.  Today, I caught him showing Sister Bates how to do a task on FMX on the computer.  Proof, that despite Elder Rappleye saying that he doesn't know how to do anything they want him to do on the computer, he knows more than he lets on.

   Luckily Thursday wasn't one of the heavy rainfall days and we had no trouble with flooded roads.  We had only 5 stops to make with several of them close together and being stops we were familiar with.  The picture on the right is one of the murals I've been wanting a picture of. We drive by it quite frequently, but it's hard to get a photo of it because we are driving by so fast and it's between highway pillars.  I got most of the mural in the picture.  You can see the raindrops on the car window.

    Driving home we were able to see so many waterfalls cascading down the Ko'olau Mountains.  On our drive into Honolulu the clouds were covering the mountains, but on our drive home the clouds had lifted enough that we could see the many waterfalls that had popped up because of the heavy rainfall we have had for a week. I've tried to find on the internet how much rain we have had here in the Laie area in the last week, and the closest I could find was a reading at Kahana Bay, about 5 miles away of 15.75 inches in the last 7 days.

      Thankfully we got home before the big rainstorm hit.  We hadn't been home very long before it started pouring down rain again.  Here's a couple pictures from our deck of the street gutter in front of our house full of water.  We live near the top of the street by the mountain, and you can see the dirt that is being swept down the street from off the mountain.  Sadly, we don't get any lovely waterfalls coming down the side of our mountain when it rains a lot like we saw coming home.

Thursday night we got a knock on our door.  Our neighbor behind us was at the door.  His wife was having hip replacement surgery the next day.  We had already told him we would fix them dinner Friday night for when they got home from the hospital.  He wanted to ask us if we would also pray for his wife that all would go well with her surgery.  We told him we would love to and most definitely pray for his wife, Lara. 

      Friday morning, we woke up early and watched Elder Young's funeral on You Tube at 6 AM our time. It is wonderful to have the technology to be able to participate in the funeral that was held in Utah, but we are in Hawaii.  They also had a group that performed the haka outside the building after the funeral.  We didn't get to see it, but I bet it was awesome.

     Friday after work, there was a break in the rainy weather, so we decided to chance it and go for a bike ride.  We finally have another bike available for Elder Rappleye to ride so we can both go for a bike ride together.  There is a bike/walking path along the Kamehameha highway starting just north of Laie and going north toward Kahuku.

    A section of the path goes past a horse pasture.  The horses are very friendly and come right up to the fence next to you.  We see people stopping there all the time to feed the horses.  We started our bike ride from the motor pool at the PCC, biked through the town of Laie to get to the start of the bike path, went all the way to the end of the bike path and back again.  It's about a 6-mile round trip.  We are used to longer bike rides, but it's about the only place to ride bikes around here where you don't have to worry about getting hit by a car.

      When we got home from our bike ride, our back neighbors were home from the hospital, so I finished up fixing their dinner, cooked it in the oven (our neighbors don't have an oven in their apartment, so having a home cooked, oven cooked meal was extra special.)  I made them beef and bean enchiladas.  It's one of the few recipes that I can remember without having my recipe card to refer to.  

      Saturday was an all-day rainy day.  We did manage to take a walk in the morning down to the post office to mail a couple of birthday packages to grandchildren before it started to rain.  I kept checking the radar map to see if there was any place on the island that did not have rain, but no such luck.  We just stayed home and had a relaxing day. I was able to get caught up on a few things.

   Sunday at piano lessons, it was my student, Tapu's turn to play the closing song.  Every week the student's take turns playing a closing song of their choosing while everyone else gathers round the piano and sings.  It's good practice for them to get used to playing while people are singing.  They need to learn how to keep the tempo while people are singing and to keep going if they make a mistake instead of stopping and going back and playing it right.  Tapu chose a hymn that was not one she had already learned, but one she figured out on her own during the week that was much harder than the hymn she had been practicing.  The hymn was "Be Thou Humble".  She had taught herself how to play the right hand.  I just helped her smooth over a few rough spots, taught her what to play for the introduction, and sang along while she played to help her get used to playing while people are singing to see where she was too slow and get used to not stopping when she made a mistake. 

  

   The picture above was taken while Tapu was playing, and we were singing.  The picture to the right is Tapu and Krystle playing chopsticks after class was over.  They will both be great piano players someday.

     Sunday is one of our favorite days of the week because we get to spend more time with the students than any other day.  They are all wonderful and amazing!

 

 

More Unexpectant Happenings: May 6 - 12, 2024

      

      Let me begin this post with noting that on Monday it was our 6-month mark since our first day in the MTC.  That makes us one-third through our mission. WOW!  Does that make us a local, yet?

      On Monday night, we had the Aloha Ohana assignment.  Actually, we had been assigned Tuesday night, but we had our district activity planned for that night, so we traded nights with the Fischers.  It was Elder Rappleye's turn to man the entrance while I guarded the exit.  Sometimes, out of the blue, we see a guest at the PCC that we know, but had no idea they were coming.  This night happened to be one of those times.  While I was at the exit, a lady came towards me and I thought she was needing to know where the restrooms were, that being the most common question we get.  But instead, she came up to me and asked, "Do you remember me?  I'm Nikki Dockstader, I was in your ward when I was growing up!"  When she told me her name, I totally remembered who she was.  What a blast from the past!  We chatted for a long time.  Since she was a guest, I was totally legitimate talking to her for as long as she wanted to. 😁😁😁 She introduced me to her husband and oldest son, who is leaving on a mission to Brazil in September.  

 

     I also got a good picture of the boys bringing the pig from the imu to the carving table.

   

 We were actually expecting to try to meet up with a granddaughter of one of the Bishops we had in Texas when we lived there.  We were expecting her to call us sometime during the afternoon, but we hadn't heard from her.  I figured we were going to miss her and her family.  But later in our shift, a cute blonde-haired lady with 4 little kids and a husband came up to me and said, "I think you are who my grandma wants me to meet."  It was certainly an amazing thing that she ran into me.  The PCC is a big area and I was tucked away at the luau exit.  They must have just happened to decide to use the restrooms by the luau exit and noticed me there.  I'm sure Cindy Jordan, her grandma, must have shown her a picture of me to Ashley, her granddaughter.  So, for the second time in one night, I had a fun time talking to one of the guests who was more than just a guest. 

      After our shift, we went over to the HGB on campus for our ward's Family Home Evening activity.  Since it was the first one of spring semester, they played some getting to know you games.  The pictures on the right are showing the group playing Love Your Neighbor.  One person is asked if they love their neighbor, meaning the people sitting on either side of them.  If the person says yes, then he/she and the two on either side have to get up and change seats really quick before the person asking the question grabs their seat.  Whoever doesn't get a seat, has to pick a person and ask them if they love their neighbor.  If the person says no, they have to say who they do love, i.e. everyone wearing black, or everyone with glasses, or all the boys/girls, etc.  Then everyone who it applies to jumps up and finds a new seat.  They all seemed to enjoy the game.

Here's a group picture.  The kids in the picture are the Bishop and First Counselor's kids.  The bishop's wife is in the back row by Evan, who has the kids climbing all over him.  This is the best participation we have had at a Family Home Evening.  It might be because the semester has just started, and they aren't overwhelmed with schoolwork yet.  Most of them were new ward members, so maybe they just wanted to meet and get to know the other students in the ward.  Whatever reason, it was nice to see so many.  The activities committee puts in a lot of effort and work into FHE night.  It's good to see students coming out.

Tuesday night was our District activity.  We all went to the temple together to do sealings.  In the picture to the right is the Gammons (far left), then the Lees, Neeleys, and us.

Then we went to Pounder's restaurant for dinner.  We met the new couple in our district, Brent and Jacque Lee. They arrived in the mission after we had planned the sealing activity.  They were scheduled to work at the PCC until 5:30pm and our appointment at the temple was at 4:30pm.  We were glad they could meet up with us for dinner.  We sat next to the new Lees during dinner and got to know them.  They lived in Burley, Idaho for 40 years, but moved to St. George 5 years ago.  They were mission leaders in the Jacksonville, FL mission.  They finished serving right before covid hit.  They both are working in the mission settlement at the PCC.  Sister Lee is helping teach ukulele lessons to the guests, and Brother Lee helps in the schoolhouse and chapel buildings answering the guests questions and telling them about the early days in Laie.  The new Lees are dressed in their Aloha wear from work in the group picture at Pounders.  Elder Neeley noted that we are the district of "les".  Everyone's name ends in "le" except Gammons - Two Lees, Neeleys, and Rappleyes. 

On Wednesday morning the mission needed senior missionaries to drive the junior missionaries' cars down to New City Nissan in Honolulu for a software update.  Elder Rappleye and I got asked to help with that.  There were 18 of us driving cars down.  They had us stagger our departure time so that when we arrived at the dealership the wait time would not be too long.  The first missionaries left at 5:30AM.  We were scheduled to leave at 6:50AM.  It takes about an hour to drive down to Honolulu from Laie and an hour back, with hopefully less than an hour wait at the dealership. The car I drove got done fairly quickly, so we expected Elder Rappleye's car to be done next.  But the cars of the missionaries that arrived after us were getting finished before Elder Rappleye's.  After all the other missionaries were gone, and we had waited at least a half hour since my car had been done, Elder Rappleye finally asked someone about his car.  It had somehow got lost and overlooked in the rotation of cars.  They apologized and got his car updated so we could get on the road.  We were the last ones back to the mission office about 45 minutes later than scheduled.

After spending most of the morning helping with the mission cars, we headed to Hukilau beach for some R & R.  The weather forecast was predicting rain for the rest of the week and into the next week, so it was going to be the last nice day in a while to get some beach time.

Wednesday night was the second week of fire knife competition.  This time it was the women's and men's divisions.  Here are the women's division winners.  First and third place winners are from Laie, HI.  The second place winner is from Olympia, WA.

Here are the three finalists for the men's division. These three finalists would complete on Thursday night at the Ha show to see who the winner would be.  The guest who had tickets for the Ha show on Thursday night got an extra bonus watching these three compete for the championship.

Sure enough, the next day for our town run adventures we had rain.  This picture of road construction is Dillingham Blvd in Honolulu.  It has been under construction since we started doing the town runs.  Almost every week we end up having to go pick up something down in the area of Dillingham Blvd.  I finally decided I should take a picture of the road construction mess we deal with every week. 

At one stop we had a pretty good view of the "Pink Hospital" aka Tripler Army Medical Center.  It's situated on a hill so it's visible from all over Honolulu.  We pass by it every week when we are in town, sometimes we pass by it multiple times! It is the largest military medical treatment facility in the entire Pacific Basin.

We also got stuck in a backup.  There was a multiple car accident on highway H3, so our GPS sent us on an alternate route, which ended up also having a backup.  Supposedly it was the fastest route to our destination.  If that was the fastest route, I would hate to have been stuck on highway H3.  The back up we were in was bad enough.  We ended up driving back to the PCC the north shore route because it was the fastest way because of all the traffic messes on the freeways.  Despite the delays we ended up back at the PCC at a reasonable time.

    It's a good thing we weren't too late, because it was book club night, and I was in charge of it.  We had read the book, Thursday Murder Club.  It's a light, somewhat comical read that my daughter, Noelle, recommended.  Joyce, one of the characters in the book is always baking, so I baked a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for the refreshments.  We had a small group, but 3 new sister missionaries came, and we were able to not only discuss the book, but get to know Sister Rainsdon, Tingey, and Larson.

The picture above shows the winner of the Thursday night finals.

First place - Tafili Galea'i from Lāʻie, HI

Second Place -  Fumiya Matsushima from Fukushima, Japan

Third Place - Jacktai Laban from Apia, Samoa

 

    Friday morning, I got news from my dad that his older brother and my uncle, Jay had passed away.  He lived here in Laie, Hawaii for over 50 years, had taught at BYU- Hawaii, raised his family, and retired here.  He died two days before his 91st birthday.  I'm grateful that I got to visit with him a couple of times since we have been here on our mission.  I'm especially grateful that my dad and Javan came to visit us in early March, and he was able to spend some time with his brother and his wife, Faith.  It was only a few weeks later that my Uncle Jay suffered a stroke and then another major stroke a week later that brought on his death a few weeks after that.

This news came only 5 days after the news of Elder Young's death.

  

  Saturday morning while we were doing our housecleaning, we had a huge downpour.  It has been raining almost constantly since Thursday, but not like the downpour we had Saturday morning.  The picture to the left is the view out of our kitchen window.  It really doesn't show how heavy the rain was coming down.

     We knew it was going to be a rainy weekend, so we went to the movies in Kailua.  We were so excited to find a theater here on Oahu that was showing the movie, "Escape from Germany".  It is based on true accounts of how 79 American missionaries of the church miraculously escaped from Germany just 9 hours before the breakout of WWII.  I highly recommend seeing this movie.  It was giving me goosebumps throughout the movie. The movie helps one see that God is in the details of our lives.  If you go see it, be sure to remain in your seat after it is over and watch the part that tells of the real-life characters in the movie and what happens to them after their escape. 

We had the whole theater to ourselves when I took this picture, then Elder and Sister Dahlin from our mission came in and sat in the seats across the row from us.

After the movie, we headed to Honolulu to do a Costco trip.  We needed gas and groceries.  When we arrived at Costco, it was pouring down rain again!  So many shoppers were lined up under the covered entrance waiting for the rain to stop so they could go to their cars. It was hard to make our way through to the entrance.  Thankfully by the time we were done shopping, the rain had let up a little and we were able to get to our car and drive back home safely.

On our way home, the Elders in our mission were doing a car wash.  The rain had stopped momentarily, so Elder Rappleye pulled into the church parking lot in Hau'ula and let them wash our car.  The above picture shows the Elders that were there doing the car wash, minus the two that were out by the highway waving signs to draw people in.  That is the extent of the young Elders in the whole mission here.  They are actually in the Honolulu mission, and they rotate Elders into our missions transferring them about every 3 months, so we have some young priesthood holding missionaries serving in the area.  We have mostly senior missionaries and young sister missionaries in this mission.  By the time we got home, 10 minutes later, it was raining again.  So much for a clean car! 

For Mother's Day in Hawaii the tradition is to give mother's a lei to wear on Mother's Day.  I decided that I wanted to send all my daughters and daughters-in-laws a real orchid lei for Mother's Day.  I can buy leis from the food warehouse fairly cheap, but to package it right so it arrives fresh, and take it down to the Honolulu airport to ship that day was not logistically possible.  After searching the internet for options, I bought the leis online and let them, the experts, handle the packing and shipping of the leis to them.

Three of them sent me pictures of them with their leis on - daughters Aimee and Noelle, and daughter-in-law, Jasmin.  Look how gorgeous they are with their leis. Our daughter, Sara was going to be out of town, so she'll have to get one at the later date that won't be disclosed here.

Of course, Elder Rappleye was able to take advantage of buying my lei at the food warehouse for a little more than cost.  Plus, it was a very simple process for him because he comes over to the food warehouse every day to get me and we have lunch together.

The picture on the right is me in my Mother's Day new skirt and lei.  I'm in the room where we have sacrament meeting in the Heber J. Grant building on BYU-H campus.  I was the only actual mother in the whole congregation. The students were all so kind to wish me a happy Mother's Day.  One young woman told me that "we", the students in the ward, were my Hawaii children wishing me happy Mother's Day.  That melted my heart.  There were several of the girls that gave me hugs, so I didn't have to go without hugs on Mother's Day.  

I did miss being with my family.  Another holiday that was hard to be away from family, but I got several calls and video chats from my children.  The Saturday before Mother's Day I got a card in the mail from my oldest daughter, Angela, with recent photos of her three children.  That card will probably stay taped on our wall in our pad our whole mission, unless I get an updated one.

Although we've had several events that have been hard to deal with, we are grateful for God's plan of salvation for all of His children and the knowledge that we will see loved ones again and can be together forever because of Jesus Christ and His atonement.