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.