Unexpectant Events and Angels to the Rescue: June 17 - 23, 2024

       This is the week before Spring term finals.  That means time to make chocolate chip cookies for all of our 150+ students in our YSA Ward to wish them success in their finals.  So, I spent a lot of time baking cookies this week.  This is the third end of semester we have given out cookies to encourage the students to endure to the end and finish strong.  

      There was no FHE on Monday night.  The activity was moved to Saturday night this week. More on that later. 

      Tuesday night was our monthly Senior Devotional.  Our district leader, Elder Robert Lee, sang a special musical number.  He is a very well-trained vocalist, like an opera singer.  I can't remember the name of the song he sang.  It was a song I'd never heard before.  It was very well done.  It was the last senior devotional for him and his wife since they are going home the first part of July.

     Then, all the junior sister missionaries that serve in the married student wards spoke.  They introduced themselves and told us how they gained their testimonies.  Most of them have been members their whole life, so their parents, church leaders, and seminary played a major role in their conversion.  I think there were 3 or 4 of the sisters who were converts to the church. Their stories of how they were introduced to the gospel and gained a testimony were very inspiring.  We were impressed with all of the sisters, with how strong and valiant they are, and sure they will all be great future leaders in the church - youth of the noble birthright!

  On Wednesday we had planned to go check out Manoa Falls and then go do our grocery shopping.  Manoa Falls is about an hour drive from our pad.  We were about halfway there in Kaneohe and just about to get on the Likelike highway when our car's alarm went off warning us that the car was overheating.  We quickly pulled over into a neighborhood right off the main road.  Elder Rappleye popped the hood and found antifreeze sprayed all over the engine, but there was no steam, and he couldn't figure out where the antifreeze was leaking. We were 40 - 45 minutes away from home and knew no one close by.  Luckily the lady who lives in the house in the picture to the right was in her front yard.  Elder Rappleye asked her if he could use some water so he could pour it into the surge tank to see if he could find the problem.  She was so nice. She not only offered us water but got us a pitcher to put the water in and she offered her husband's toolbox for us to use.  She saw our missionary tags and told us she was a member of the church but taking a "sabbatical" (break) from the church.  She told us her name was Kava.

      A short time later, her son, Mika (pronounced MEka), came home and come over and offered us his help.  By then, Elder Rappleye had figured out the problem and knew he needed a new return hose for the surge tank. Mika offered to take Elder Rappleye to an auto parts store to see if they had the part.  They went to Napa Auto Parts in Kaneohe, and they didn't have it.  Mika then took him to the Dodge dealer where he works to see if they might have the part.  No luck.  They also found out that the internet site that you can use to look up the part and who has it in stock was not working because of a cyberattack on the site.  They then went to O'Reilly Auto Parts store and the O'Reilly employee was able to call the Chevrolet dealer in Honolulu and found out that they actually had the part in stock, we just needed to get down to Honolulu to pick it up.   Elder Rappleye and Mika came back to where I was waiting at the car.  Mika offered to take us into Honolulu to get the part.  He had already spent quite a bit of time going to several auto parts stores.  We were a little hesitant to take him up on his offer, but we had no other options.  So, we gratefully accepted and hopped in his truck.  It's not a trivial thing to go to Honolulu and back from Kaneohe. 

  We picked up the part from the dealer.  As we were leaving, I said to Elder Rappleye, "Are you sure it's the right part?"  He said, "That's what the auto parts store told me."   When we got back to the car, Elder Rappleye found out that it was the right part, but he needed an additional part to be able to connect it to the surge tank.  No one had told him about that.  We were still stuck with a broken-down car in Kaneohe. We offered to pay Mika for his gas, but he would not let us give him any money.  I mentioned to him that he had definitely earned his angel wings today.

    

      We ended up calling our insurance's roadside assistance to get our car towed back to the PCC motor pool.       

    We sat in our car on top of the flatbed tow truck all the way back to Laie, about a 45-minute drive.  That was a new experience for both of us and we got a bird's eye view of the scenery all the way home. 

   As we were being towed home, Elder Rappleye contacted the Chevrolet dealer again and they figured out the other part we needed, which they happened to have in stock which is amazingly fortuitous, and I arranged for us to rent a car the next day so that we could drive back down to the dealer to pick up the other part that was needed.  By the time we arrived at the motor pool, our stress levels had gone down significantly, and we were happy we had a plan in place for the next day to get our car back up and running.  Now we just needed to get home. It was about 4pm by now. I put out an SOS text to our district to see if anyone was available to pick us up at the motor pool and take us home.  Our district leaders, the Lees were leaving the temple parking lot and offered to come pick us up and take us home. Thanks to the many angels coming to our rescue, we finally made it home.  Now we just had to get our car back up and running. 

     After we got home, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and packaged up some cookies with a note for Mika, our knight in shining amour.  

      Thursday morning, we were able to get a ride with the Bates to the PCC.  We both worked at our assignments for about an hour and then we went and picked up our rental car (it was right across the street from the BYU-H campus entrance).  We then headed down to Honolulu to the Chevrolet dealership a second time to get the second part we needed to fix our car.  On the way down we stopped at the home of our rescuers, Kava and Mika hoping someone would be home to drop off the note and cookies.  It was a very small token of our appreciation for the help we received from them yesterday.  It turned out that no one was home, but they had a ring doorbell, and we were able to leave a message for them.  We left the package on a small table they had next to their front door.  We also happened to have Mika's phone number in Elder Rappleye's phone, so we sent him a text message with a picture of the cookies (I love technology❤️) to let him know he had cookies waiting for him by his front door.  I wasn't sure we would get a response back, but very quickly after we sent our message he texted back, "Aww, thank you guys very much. Take care".  Hopefully the cookies were still in good shape by the time he got them.

      The picture to the right is Elder Rappleye examining the part at the dealership to make sure this time we had the right part we needed.

      While we were in Honolulu, we also went and got our grocery shopping done that we were not able to do yesterday.

    Here's Elder Rappleye putting in the new part.  Just as he said, it only took him a few minutes to put the new part in and get our car back on the road.

   We were able to return the rent car and only had to rent it for one day.

   We are grateful we were able to solve the issue so quickly and that we were able to receive the help we needed in a timely manner.  So many things fell into place that made the experience less painful than it could have been.  We certainly felt God's love and watchful care over us.

 At 7pm, I went with the food warehouse crew to visit Kalo and her family.  Her mother had passed away a week ago.  Kalo is Tongan, so it was interesting to see how Tongan culture deals with death.  They had a big four corner canopy set up in the front of the yard and had hung beautiful tapestries all around the sides and laid down woven mats on the ground.  There was a banner hanging with her mother's name and picture on it.  I could tell from the picture that Kalo looked a lot like her mother.  She is the youngest of 11 children.  We all sat while we sang a hymn and had a prayer.  Then we presented to them gifts of food and water.  We also gave them a couple of blankets. You can see the pile of food on the right in the picture and the blankets spread out on the mats (a red quilt and a white crocheted Afghan).

Here's part of the crew sitting on the mats - Aurel, Danna (pronounced Donna), Terry, Satoru (in front) and Blankey next to him.

Then Kalo's family presented us with blankets and mats and food.  Lili, our manager, told them we could not accept their offer of the blankets and mats, but we would take the food.  It's a good thing Lili, who is Samoan, knows the Tongan culture because I wouldn't have known that we could decline all the gifts without offending them. 

    Here's part of the crew leaving with all the food they gave us.  You can see that they loaded us down with food.  They would give the same thing to all those who visited them during this mourning period. In the top picture, from left is Satoru, Terry, Danna, Rachel, one of Kalo's family members, Aurel, and Blankey.  David is in the bottom picture with part of his head missing. (HAHA)

   All day Friday, Elder Rappleye and the motor pool crew worked on building a box to fit on the dump truck.  The finished product is pictured to the left.  They will shred up green waste and shoot it into the box on the dump truck.  When full, they will take the truck out to the green waste area and dump it all out and let it compost.

   Saturday morning was the viewing and funeral for Kalo's mother.   We were told the viewing was from 9am - 11am and the funeral at 11:30am.  We planned to just go to the funeral, so we arrived a little before 11:30am.  We went into the cultural hall and there was Kalo talking in Tongan at a podium.  I thought we had been told the wrong time for the funeral and we had come late.  Actually, we had walked into the last few minutes of the viewing.

   The cultural hall was decorated almost like a reception.  The picture on the left shows a beautiful wreath that the PCC sent to the family.  There was also a beautiful quilt displayed. Mate Ma'a means die for Tonga.  It's also a name of a rugby team in Tonga.  She must have been a big rugby fan.

      After a short break, we went into the chapel for the funeral.  The entire funeral was spoken in Tongan, so we didn't understand a word that was spoken.  But we did recognize the song "It is Well with My Soul" that was sung, and the grandchildren sang, "Families Can Be Together Forever".  We did feel the spirit and it testified to us that Kalo's mother was a valiant daughter of God who has returned home to her Heavenly Father and family in heaven.  This is the third funeral/celebration of life that we have participated in since coming to Hawaii almost 8 months ago.  I never imagine that would happen on our mission. 

      Saturday night was our FHE activity this week.  It was a nerf gun war in the HGB.  We were so busy playing capture the flag that I didn't get any pictures taken.  I was hoping someone would post pictures on the ward messenger page, but no pictures yet.

     On Sunday, we had a combined Sacrament meeting with the YSA 15th Ward.  There was not a special reason for combining that we could figure out.  The second hour was not combined with the other ward.  The picture above is in Relief Society. We had just finished singing happy birthday to two of the sisters who had birthdays that day, Clabelle (in the middle row blue blouse) and Laiza (in middle row, blue polka dot dress).

      There were no piano lessons on Sunday.  It was the day before finals, so we gave them the day off.  I had planned to have Brent Cowley come for dinner since his family had all left for the mainland, and the two junior sister missionaries come as well.  But Sunday morning the Bishop announced an activity for 4:30pm that we and the junior missionaries needed to be at, so I had to cancel the dinner plans.  I was hoping to be able to reschedule the dinner, but between our schedule and Brent's finals week schedule it wasn't meant to be.  We went to a Ward Council appreciation dinner at the bishop's home and had hot dogs instead of the nice meal I had planned.

      After the dinner, we went over to the Laie Hawaii First Stake Center on campus to sing with the ward choir at a Temple and Family History Multi-Stake Fireside.  The program had us singing as a combined YSA choir, but it was only our YSA 10th Ward choir.  We left after our choir number and didn't stay for the rest of the program.  But, Shine, our choir director sent out a message to all of us after the program was over.  This is what it said, "Guys, they say we sounded powerful😊thank you for sharing your talent!  It was indeed a wonderful night."  I think the chapel either has very good acoustics or we did sound pretty powerful.  We really enjoyed singing the song, "Come Unto Christ" with the 10 - 12 students that participated.