Lots of Excitement - Expectant and Unexpectant: August 12 - 18, 2024

    

     We are excited that this is the last week the Polynesian Cultural Center is on their summer schedule..  After this week it goes back to the normal schedule, which means they are closed on Wednesdays.  Even the regular employees are excited about it.

     It started out not so good, but it provided some excitement at the food warehouse that even involved Elder Rappleye.  One of our forklifts died in the middle of the dock while working on putting away a delivery.  Satoru was driving it and stopped and went to do something else really quick and when he came back and turned it on, it wouldn't start and showed an "error" light on the dashboard.  That's when we had to call Elder Rappleye over from the motor pool to come check it out.  Elder Bates and Elder Rappleye came over, looked at things, and determined they needed to call the manufacturer to find out what was wrong.  The manufacturer determined it was the battery - it was shot - we would have to get a new one at the cost of $10,000.

  We couldn't leave it in the middle of the loading dock because it was in the way for receiving deliveries.  So, the next thing we needed to figure out was how we were going to get the forklift moved out of the way.  They determined that the forklift was too heavy, so the battery needed to be taken out of the forklift.  The battery weighed over a ton.  The picture to the left, near side, show Saturo, Blankey, and Ralph pushing and finally sliding the battery far enough out to get it mostly on a pallet. The picture on the far left shows Lili using the other forklift to haul the battery into the warehouse.  Because it wasn't completely on the pallet, the boys had to hop on the pallet to counterweight the pallet so the battery wouldn't fall off.

     The next problem was to get the forklift out of the way.  With the battery out, the plan was to lift the forklift onto the other forklift and move it to the side of the loading dock.  The problem was with all the posts located in the loading dock it was difficult to get the working forklift in the right position to lift the dead forklift.  It took quite a while, but with Lili's excellent maneuvering skills, she finally got the dead forklift lifted onto the forks of the working forklift and very slowly and carefully moved it to the side of the loading dock.  What seemed like an impossible task somehow got accomplished with teamwork.  Luckily it was a slower day for deliveries, and we were not having to deal with receiving deliveries at the same time.

     Monday evening, we were scheduled again to do an Ask Me Shift in the exact same location as last week - Gateway.  It was not very busy.  It appears that mid-August is a good time to come to the PCC.  With school already started in some places (like Hawaii) or starting next week in a lot of other places, travel is down.  If you like less crowds, you now know when a good time to come visit the PCC.

   Another pig carcass encounter in the kitchen on Tuesday at lunch time.  If I have too many more of these, I may have to give up eating pig.

    Wednesday night was our senior devotional.  We usually have it on the third Tuesday night of the month, but this month we had a visiting General Authority come and we had it on Wednesday night.  Elder Peter M. Johnson and his wife spoke to us at the visitor's center.  We had an Ask Me shift right before the devotional.  We had to go straight over to the Visitor's Center, run into the bathroom and change from our Aloha outfits to our missionary attire, so we ended up sitting towards the back of the auditorium.  After the meeting, we did get to walk right by them and shake their hands and thank them for coming and speaking to us.  It's the first General Authority to come speak to the missionaries in our mission since we have arrived.  We have had General Authorities come and speak at BYU-H at the student devotionals, but they haven't spoken specifically to the missionaries.  When they speak at BYU-H, their comments are directed to what the students need to hear.  Elder Johnson's comments were directed to what we as missionaries need to hear.  He mentioned the need is great for more senior missionaries.  Only 43% of the requests for senior missionaries are being filled.  He said that when you are serving a full-time mission you are keeping your covenants by living the law of consecration.  He also spoke about ways we can come unto Christ.  Being engaged in living the gospel of Christ - faith, daily repentance, baptism and keeping our covenants, and listening to the spirit is coming unto Christ.  Living the gospel of Christ produces spiritual monument.  The other way to come unto Christ that he mentioned was to minister to the one just like the Savior does.

Here's our group picture taken in the Visitor's Center with all the senior missionaries, Elder Peter Johnson and his wife, and the mission presidency and their wives.

   Thursday morning at work, when a delivery truck was backing into the loading dock, the truck clipped one of the sprinkler heads on the ceiling and set off the fire alarm and water started gushing down all over the truck and loading dock.  He had cleared the first sprinkler head, and I guess he thought he was okay with the other one or maybe he didn't see that one.

 Everyone came out of the office and warehouse to see what was going on. Even the people upstairs in uniforms came down because the alarm was going off and they didn't know if there was an actual fire or not.  After about 5 minutes, Roland (lower right picture) came and unlocked the valve and turned off the water.  Then Jared got out the big water vac and started cleaning up the mess.  That made for two exciting events in one week at the food warehouse. I'm not sure that will ever be topped the rest of the time we are here.  Thank goodness it was an easy fix to put a new sprinkler head on and they had it fixed before I left for the day.  An actual fire could have been devastating.

   We went to the temple that night to do sealings.  We couldn't get any one to tag along with us, but when we got there, Elder and Sister Goates, and Elder and Sister Jacobson were there, and we ended up doing the sealing session with them.

 Saturday morning, I had a training meeting for the food warehouse team.  I have not been attending the once-a-month training meetings, but Sister Sauve was asked to conduct the meeting, so I went to support her.  

     I caught a picture of the daily pineapple delivery on the dock before the meeting.  92 cases of pineapples are delivered everyday - 7 pineapples to a case.  

      They give out monthly awards for the outstanding student workers at the training meeting.  The picture to the right is Blankey (left), Ralph (upper right), and Jared (bottom right).  All 3 received awards for their hard work during the month.  The training was on one of the 7 cultural beliefs of the PCC - Take Charge - See it, Own it, Solve it.  In other words - S.O.S. - Help.

     After the training meeting, we headed to town to do our grocery shopping.

    We had to say goodby to Elijah Ebert.  He has been in our YSA Ward since we got here last November.  He has been a membership clerk and the Ward Clerk.  He has been very helpful in getting me a list of birthdays (a new one at the start of every semester) of the students in our ward so I can pass out birthday treats. He is going to Belgium to work for the church in an academic internship.  We will miss him in our ward.  He also has been a tour guide at the PCC, so we will miss seeing him around at the PCC.  The best of luck to Elijah in his new endeavors.  He says he'll return to BYU-H after his internship, but we will probably be back home by then.

Huki 2.0, Visit from Friends, Hukilau, Cafe Rio & a Wildfire: August 5 - 11, 2024

       After having a week off from doing Ask Me, we started the week on Monday night by doing an Ask Me shift at the Gateway location for the Zollingers.  We did their Monday night shift, and they did our Tuesday night shift.  The Gateway location is always a nice spot to be at because by that time of day it is shady and there is always a breeze to help cool things off.  We just ended up missing ukulele lessons that night since we don't finish until 7pm, and that's when ukulele class is over.

    On Tuesday, Elder Rappleye and Bry finally got the green light to take the cargo van, pictured right, to the auto body shop in Kailua to get it fixed.  This is one of the first things Elder Rappleye worked on when we first arrived here in November.  The pictures were taken in December for the insurance adjuster.  It has taken 8 months to go through all the red tape between the insurance company, the church, the auto body shop, and the Polynesian Cultural Center to get everything signed off, bids on repairs, and money from the insurance company to pay the auto body shop.  Elder Rappleye was beginning to think the repair wasn't going to happen while we were still here.  Now it is in the shop for 3 weeks to get it fixed, and looking like he will be able to say mission accomplished on this job. This is the van they use for town runs, so the town run missionaries have to use the pickup truck or 12 passenger van to do the town run until the cargo van gets finished being repaired.

   Since we didn't have to do Ask Me on Tuesday night, we went to the temple.  This happened to be our "Hump Day".   We entered the MTC on November 6, 2023, which made Tuesday the halfway mark of our 18-month mission. We decided to get a picture showing how many months we have left - 9.  Watch for each month's picture on the 6th of the month as we count down to the end of our mission.  It's not that we can't wait to go home, it's just that we thought it would be fun to remember what we were doing on the 6th of each month as we get closer and closer to the end.

   The Polynesian Cultural Center is adding a new show called the Huki 2.0.  It's like the canoe pageant they used to do before the Covid-19 shut down.  They have revamped it, creating new costumes, music and dances.  All the employees were invited to the dress rehearsal on Wednesday morning before the PCC opened.  The pictures to the right are from the beginning of the show with the emcees introducing the program.

  Then came Mother Earth on her own canoe.

    After Mother Earth they start introducing the different islands at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The first one is the friendly island of Tonga.  Their costumes and dancing are always fun to see, along with their enthusiasm.

 

 Then the island of Aotearoa, or New Zealand.  I loved their bright blue dresses that remind me of the ocean.  They do a stick dance, tossing the stick to each other in rhythm.  They even toss them from one canoe to the other.

  Next the island of Fiji.  That's when my camera on my phone started to not cooperate and it would only take pictures occasionally, even though I was pressing the button on the screen.  So, I only got one picture of the Fiji island's canoe.

    

  And only a couple of pictures of the island of Tahiti's canoes.

  One picture of the island of Samoa's canoes.  The green costumes the girls wore with the bright yellow flowers in their hair were stunning.  They are the happy people of Samoa.  They also dance with enthusiasm. Part of their presentation is the men rocking the canoe side to side.  That takes a lot of core strength and balance.

 

    Last but not least is the island of Hawaii's canoe.

    At the end of the show, every island's canoe comes out on the lagoon.  I only captured Hawaii, Tonga, and Samoa's canoes.

     The students have been working hard all summer long to learn and get ready for this performance.  It was delayed about a month, but it is now performed every day at 12:40pm, right after they open.  Our second counselor in our YSA Bishopric is in the performance and performs on the Aotearoa canoe.  The two weeks before the opening they were doing 4 run throughs a day. 

    There have been several improvements at the PCC to get ready for this canoe show.  The pictures to the right show the new red umbrellas installed along the walkway by the main waterfall to provide shade to those watching the show (top), and a new sign displayed on the north end of the lagoon with the name of the show on it (bottom).  The waterfall was already picturesque, but the red umbrellas seem to enhance its appeal.

   The same day in the afternoon, we were able to meet up with our friends, Scott and Denise Osborne, from South Jordan, Utah.  We served with them in the Fayette Branch in downtown Salt Lake City the last several months before we left for our mission.  We were worried about leaving the branch shorthanded, but when the Osbornes got called and assigned to serve with us at Pamela's Place/Sunrise Metro, we knew we were leaving at the right time and in very capable hands.  It was good to find out how all our friends at Pamela's Place/Sunrise Metro are doing.  We do miss ministering to them, but we know we are doing what God wants us to do at this moment in time.

   

   Thursday when we went over to the Visitor's Center to pick up some packages that were delivered to us, we noticed a wildfire up in the hills behind Laie.  I was told it started near the trailhead to Laie Falls.

     Thursday night we had Dan and Stacy Duncan over for dinner.  Elder Rappleye and Elder Duncan have worked together in the motor pool since we got here last November, but a couple of months ago the mission leader, President Bassett moved him and his wife over to work at the visitor's center.  They will be done with their mission and going home on September 2nd, and we wanted to have them come to dinner before they leave.  They were nice enough to join us in our hot apartment for dinner.

    Saturday morning, I went to a Hula dance lesson class for senior missionaries.  I missed the first lesson the Saturday before, but luckily most of the class time was reviewing what they learned the previous week, so I was able to get somewhat caught up.  Here's a picture of the group that was there on Saturday.  I'm not sure I'll be able to keep going.  Next Saturday I have a training meeting for the food warehouse I have to go to, so I'll miss another class.  The sister in the front of our group picture is our instructor.

   Right after the Hula lesson, we went to Hukilau beach to help with a community Hukilau.  The pictures on the right show us gathered around the boat with the fishing net in it. In the top picture, the man in charge, in the red shirt and straw hat, is giving us instructions on how the hukilau works.  In the bottom picture the boat is heading out to spread out the net in the bay.  It's a huge net and covers a good portion of the bay.  Divers go out all along the edge of the net and make sure the net does not get caught on any rocks, coral, logs, etc. that are under the water as the net gets pulled into shore.

These pictures show the pulling in the net team.  The bottom left picture shows a red dot on the beach.  That is where they started pulling in the net.  As they pulled it in, they walked forward and pulled to close up the area of the net.  If any of the divers saw that the net was caught on anything, he would signal to the puling team, and everybody would stop until the diver had untangled the net.

   Since I was one of the few who came dressed ready to get in the water, I was on the anchor team.  Our biggest job was to just stand in the water on the other end of the bay holding on to the other end of the net until we were given the signal to start pulling in our end of the net.  The top picture shows us holding on to the net waiting for the signal to start pulling in our end.  I'm the one on the far left.  The bottom picture shows us finally getting to pull in our side of the net.  Some of us pulled in from the top of the net and some held on to the bottom of the net and kept it close to the ocean floor and pulled to keep the fish from swimming out through the bottom.

  

 Here's a few pictures showing some of the fish that was caught.  They gathered up the bigger fish and threw the smaller fish back into the ocean.

      Sister Sauve, the sister I work with in the office at the food warehouse, is standing next to a local keiki (child) holding one of the larger fishes that were caught.  She is also in the bottom right picture holding her own fish.  We didn't hold a fish, but a pretty good size crab got caught in the net and I did hold on to it long enough to get a picture taken (top right).  Then there was a crazy local who put the head of the fish in his mouth (bottom left).  THE FISH IS STILL ALIVE!

   A few miscellaneous pictures from the Hukilau.  Elder Rappleye and I with the ocean in the background.  The bottom left picture shows them cleaning the net.  After pulling all the fish out of the net, they then clean the net of all the seaweed and other things that got stuck in the net.  You can see the clean portion of the net on the sand.  The bottom right picture shows the piles of rope that was used to pull in the net.  Did I tell you it was a HUGE net?

 

     After the Hukilau, we came home and cleaned up, then went to the grocery store in Laie to buy last minute items for the dinner Sister Sauve and I were having the next day for the Food Warehouse student workers.  Then Elder Rappleye took the car to the motor pool and replaced the brake pads on our car while I stayed home and made no bake cookies for Sunday dinner. 

     The fire was still burning on Sunday.  We noticed 2 helicopters dropping water onto the fire while we were sitting in our Ward Council Meeting.  I also heard it had burned over 200 acres of forest.  I circled in yellow where the helicopter is in the picture above.

     Sister Sauve's old roommate from college is Sister Sudweeks, her and her husband are service missionaries teaching at BYU-H.  They went home to the mainland for the summer break, and they graciously let us use their apartment, which is much bigger than either Sister Sauve or our apartments are, for our dinner with the student workers at the Food Warehouse.  We would not be able to host that many people without using the Sudweeks apartment.  It worked out really well.  We decided to make Cafe Rio sweet pork/rice/beans and all the fixing's for tacos.  Most of the students have never had Cafe Rio food.  We got almost all the students to come.  We were just missing Leiana, Faith, and some of the summer student workers.  The picture to the left shows the whole group -Sister Mansaloon (one of the junior missionaries in our YSA ward), Sister Sauve, Vanessa (one of our summer student workers), Rachel, Ken (Blankey), Ralph, Saturo, Aurel, Jared, Rowan (the newest employee), me and Elder Rappleye.  Sister Earl is taking the picture.  It was my first attempt at making Cafe Rio sweet pork and cilantro lime rice.  It was a lot of work, and it was not without some major disasters along the way.  In the end, it turned out well.

     We ended up having to leave early for our district meeting at 6pm at the Visitor's Center, but returned after our meeting to help Sister Sauve clean up.  I guess, while we were gone, they were already discussing what they want to do the next time we have a dinner - potluck!  We won't be able to use the Sudweeks apartment until December during Christmas break - stay tuned.

 

Awards, Canoe Races and Another Dime Story: July 29 - August 4, 2024

 

    I'll start this week's blog with the news of some awards that the Polynesian Cultural Center received at the end of July.

    The first was by USA Today, Readers' Choice, #1 Best Family Attraction in Hawaii" for 2024.  This award will help attract tourist to make the PCC a destination to see while visiting Oahu, which in turn keeps more BYU-Hawaii students working to help pay for their education.  

     The second award was given by Tripadvisor, the "Travelers' Choice Award 2024".  It too will help attract more guests to visit the PCC while vacationing here.  Most of the students at BYU-H (80%) would not be able to attend school without the support that working at the PCC provides.

     On Monday as I was going through the kitchen to lunch, which I do every day, I walked right past this pig.  It's the first time I have seen the pig before it was roasted.  They come to the food warehouse in the boxes the pig is laying on, so I never see the actual pig.  It's not a sight I want to remember as I enjoy the pork at the Gateway.

     We had not been to the beach since Scott and his girls were here, so I was needing some beach time.  We had planned to go after work on Tuesday, but the weather did not cooperate.  On Wednesday, which is a really slow day at the Food Warehouse, they actually told us to go home at lunchtime.  Elder Rappleye wasn't able to leave that early, but we did get away earlier than normal and the weather was perfect, so we headed to the beach.  The picture at the right is the sight we saw at Hukilau Beach, a huge camp set up.  It's a common site all summer long at the beaches.  The wards and other groups have weeklong camps on the beaches.  Hukilau is one of the larger campground areas along the windward side.  It's an ultimate staycation here in Hawaii.

      Just as we were driving to the beach, we got a call from the tire guy.  We had trouble last Sunday with low tire pressure, and Elder Rappleye noticed as he was airing the tire that we needed to get new tires put on the car. The nice thing with Elder Rappleye working in the motor pool is that he knows just the right people to call when we need help with our car.  Jeff Archibald is that right guy - the tire guy.  He comes to the PCC and does the work there, so we didn't have to go to town to get new tires put on the car.  He wanted to come install the tires around 4pm.  Since that wouldn't leave us much time at the beach, I decided to stay at the beach a little longer while Elder Rappleye drove back home, changed his clothes, and took the car to the motor pool area to meet Jeff and get the new tires put on.  I ended up walking about a mile in my flipflops from Hukilau beach to the PCC motor pool, and got there just as Jeff was finishing up installing the tires.

     

 On Thursday morning when I walked into the dock area of the food warehouse, I decided to take pictures of what it looks like when we get a big delivery.  This is a delivery from YHata.  We get a delivery every Monday and Thursday, and it's almost always a big order which means every Friday and Tuesday I am putting in a huge order to YHata.  In the bottom picture you can just see the heads of Jared and Rachel behind the pallets of boxes, and Lili, the food warehouse manager and Ralph over by the door. 

       

    Elder Rappleye, along with Bry, worked on the cart pictured to the left to resurrect it.  Elder Rappleye has nicknamed this cart the Green Dragon, and it was completely dead, not working at all.  When you look at all the rust on the back, you wonder why they would even bother resurrecting it.  New ones are pretty expensive, and it takes a long time to ship new ones out here to Hawaii, so they really try to keep the carts running and running and running for as long as they can.  Elder Rappleye wanted to just scrap it, but when he found a dime laying on a shelf by the dashboard, it reminded him of his dad and how his dad would never give up on fixing anything.  Seeing the dime was like his dad telling Elder Rappleye to not give up on the Green Dragon just yet.  They were able to find just the right used parts in the motor pool to get this monster working again.  We'll see how long it can keep running.

      This week was the first week in months that we were not assigned a night to do an Ask Me/Luau shift, so we had a free evening. 

      It also was a slow week for Elder Rappleye in the motor pool.  When he first arrived in November to help in the motor pool, he realized that the servicing of the carts was very disorganized.  No one seemed to know exactly how many carts there were, and they didn't have a system to keep track of which carts needed serviced when.  Elder Rappleye decided to make a list of all the carts, their numbers (each cart is assigned a number), and their location at the PCC.  Then he divided the number of carts, 87, by the four weeks in the month and assigned 22 carts a certain week of the month to get serviced, so by the end of the month every cart will have been serviced. This system has worked really well.  It helps to eliminate missed servicing of carts and helped let everyone who has a cart know what week they need to bring their cart over to the motor pool to get serviced.  If there is a fifth week in a month, like this last week was, it leaves the week wide open to work on other projects or keep on top of putting out the "fires" that pop up all the time.  

      After finding out last Saturday that the canoeing state championship was happening next Saturday, I sleuthed around the internet and finally found some site I could message, and they sent me the information of where and when they were held on Saturday.  So, we headed down to Ke-ehi Lagoon Park in Honolulu early Saturday morning.  We got about a mile from the park and the traffic was backed up so bad, that we decided to drive down a side road and find a place to park and walk the rest of the way.  We ended up walking 20 minutes to get to the event.  I had no idea it would be so popular.  It definitely reminded me of high school state championship track meets.

    Here is a picture of the board that shows the different races.  There were 44 races listed for that day.  The teams were aged from 12 - 70, and the categories were boys, girls, women, men, and mixed.  We could tell it was going to last all day.  We didn't have time to stay that long, but we stayed for about an hour and saw 6 to 8 races.

             We started out watching down by the finish line.  The beach was lined with canopy tents of all the different teams.  We just made our way through the crowd and found a good place to stand and watch.  We were surrounded by canoe team members and parents.  The pictures above are the races we watched from the finish line.  The first few races we watched were 1/2-mile distance races where the teams started and finished at the same spot.  They had to paddle out a 1/4 mile, go around a buoy, and back to the finish line.  The colored flags out in the water show where the start/finish line was.  Because the canoes spanned the whole length of the lagoon, it was hard to tell who crossed the finish line first.  You had to listen for the cheers.

     Pictured above are some of the canoe teams getting ready to head out to the starting line.

      Then we walked to the other end of the lagoon as close as we could get to the starting line and watched a few races from there.  These were the younger age teams, and they were only racing a quarter-mile distance, so they started on one end of the lagoon and paddled to the finish line.  We could see the canoes really well in the middle section of the race, but really couldn't see which canoes won.  

      The pictures above, clockwise from top left show the bay lined with covered tent shades, a team's row of paddles, the awards podium and one of the canoes. Ater about an hour, it was getting hot, and we didn't come prepared to stay all day with chairs, shade, water, etc.  We also needed to get some other things done while we were in town, so we headed back to where our car was parked.

      We ended the week with our monthly Munch and Mingle on Sunday evening.  This month there were no missionaries headed home during August (thus no pictures), so we did not sing Aloha 'Oe to wish them farewell, but because we have had so many new missionary couples arrive, they had a chance to learn and practice singing the original Hawaiian version of Aloha 'Oe that was written by Queen Liliuokalani. Aloha 'Oe means Farewell to Thee and is sung on all occasions of farewells here in Hawaii. 

Trying to Have Fun While Doing Hard Things: July 22 - 28, 2024

 

      I'll have to admit this week was a little hard to be away from family.  I'm glad all of our children love  hanging out with each other so much that they held a family reunion without us, and I love that they included us in the only way they could by sending us lots of pictures and videos, but it was still hard not to wish we were there enjoying all the fun activities like boating, swimming, hiking, parades, glow stick dance parties, s'mores, and more. Rappalooza was declared a success by everyone who attended and kudos to our party planner daughter, Noelle, for planning, organizing and hosting everyone in Logan, UT.

     We've decided that every time we make an appointment to do sealings at the temple we will reserve 4 spots and invite another couple to go with us.  I wasn't sure if we would get any takers because everyone's schedules are different with different days off and being finished for the day at different times. Tuesday night was our first attempt to go with another couple.  We decided to extend the first invitation to the couples in our district.  We were so excited when Elder Brent and Sister Sue Timothy took us up on our offer and came with us to do sealings.  We ended up in a sealing session with Taputailo Ufi, the student I've been teaching piano to.  After the session and when she was taking our picture, she asked us if we could take her to Tamura's so she could do some grocery shopping.  Since Tamura's is in Hau'ula, just down the hill from where we live, we agreed to take her, even though that made the back seat in our car a little tight.

     The picture to the left, Sister Sauve took when I was printing out 200 labels and the machine was printing them out faster than I could fold them up.  She said it reminded her of the I Love Lucy chocolates episode for those of you who can remember the TV show I Love Lucy. Here's the link for those who might not be familiar with what I'm talking about.

 https://youtu.be/AnHiAWlrYQc?si=B1F1mpl9UoLf5q96 

The students have to label every food item that is received into the warehouse with the date it was received to keep track of the inventory and make sure they are pulling the items in FIFO - first in first out, order.  Thursdays is one of the busier days of receiving deliveries, so lots of labels are used on Thursdays.

       Friday morning when I arrived at work, this surprise in the picture to the right was waiting for me in front of my computer.  Sister Sauve found out that I like wheat thins, so she brought me in a box of them with a note of appreciation for helping her adjust to her food warehouse job and my words of encouragement as she struggled to learn the system.  Even though her job is receiving, and my job is purchasing, many of the struggles to figure things out are the same.  I could totally relate to what she told me about her feelings and frustrations as she learned her job.

   The day went all downhill from there.  I walked into the chill area of the warehouse to ask Lili, my boss, a question and found this sight in the picture to the left, only worse because this picture wasn't taken until after we had picked up most of the pineapples.  Lili was using the forklift to put away the delivery of pineapples when the pallet all the boxes on snapped in two and caused all the pineapples to tumble to the ground.  Jared was standing nearby, but fortunately he was able to get out of the way, so no injuries to any workers.  We were able to salvage some of the cases of pineapples, but we lost about 10 cases.  There was a small benefit to the accident.  I got to take home a couple of the not too damaged pineapples.  This was the first time since we arrived 8 months ago that a major incident has happened.

    We heard that there were canoe races on Saturday at Kahuna Bay.  We went last March to watch the canoe races, and enjoyed watching the races, so we decided to go watch them this time as well.  But we got down there later than we had hoped, and we just barely caught the final race of the day.  In the picture to the right, I circled the 4 finalists lined up ready for the start of the race.

      In the top picture to the left, it shows the two canoes that were neck and neck for most of the race and it was hard for us to tell who won until the winning canoers raised their paddles in the air and cheered.

      The bottom picture shows 3 of the 4 canoes after the race.

     We did find out from the director of the races that next Saturday is the state championships in Honolulu.  We are considering going to watch those races if the weather is nice.

   Since the canoe races were done so early, we decided to do a hike nearby called crouching lion.  The picture on the right shows the front side of the peak we hiked to (blue arrow), but we hiked up the back side of the peak and came up where the red arrow shows, then hiked across the saddle and climbed up to the top of the taller peak. 

This picture shows better how high the peak is.

     We had read that it's a short but steep hike.  The picture to the left show Elder Rappleye climbing up one of the steepest parts of the hike using a rope.  Thank goodness for a lot of tree roots and branches along the trail that we could use to steady ourselves and keep us from sliding on the loose gravelly dirt.  The whole time we are climbing up I'm worrying about how the heck we are going it get down the steep trail without sliding all the way down on our butts.

 

   We had a gorgeous view of Kahana Bay behind us as we climbed up the trail.

   Just as we get to the first peak (the spot where the red arrow is in the picture previously), we come upon this memorial.  Not a very encouraging sight.  I had read that there have been fatalities on this trail, so I was a little reluctant to go on this hike.  The last thing I wanted to do was fall to my death or get injured while hiking.

    But we pressed forward, admittedly with a few doubts in my head, and made it to the top.  Now that we were safely to the top, we were glad we continued on.  It was quite windy and rocky up at the top, so we definitely had to watch our steps.

    The views were amazing.  The top picture to the left is looking out towards Kahana bay and the ocean.  The bottom picture is looking down off the cliff to the highway and houses below.

     Going down was another adventure.  We were so busy trying to keep from sliding on our butts that I couldn't take pictures, but I did get this one of Elder Rappleye going backwards down a steep section of the trail using his hands to grab on to rocks and a rope that would help steady him.  I am proud to say that we managed to not once slip and slide on our butts the whole way down.  We saw other people sliding on their butts as they were going down.  The key was to go slow and steady.

      Needless to say, we were glad to make it back to the trailhead.  The picture on the left is us at the end of the hike, relieved and all smiles. You can see the signs posted about how dangerous the hike is.  The area closed sign is there to try to keep people from going up there, but people are hiking it all the time.  Every time we drive past the parking lot on the way to town, there are lots of cars there.

        It really did give us a sense of accomplishment that we completed that hike as "old" as we are.  Not too bad for two senior missionaries!

      Later that night, we had a Ask Me shift at the Polynesian Cultural Center and had a surprise visit from Elder Rappleye's cousin Judy (bottom picture) and her son's family.  Her son is stationed at Wheeler Army Airfield here on Oahu, and she came to visit him and his family.  They just happened to be at the PCC the same night we were working.  Her dad and Elder Rappleye's dad are brothers.

    Sunday night the Relief Society presidency organized an icebreaker activity to get everyone together and get to know each other.  We are between spring and fall terms and there are not a lot of students here right now, and those that are here are working 40-hour work weeks, so there is not a lot of time for socializing.  The picture to the left shows the group that showed up for pizza and we played a getting to know you game.  I knew a lot of the girls, but there were a few I hadn't met yet. It's always fun to hang out with the students.