Changes in the Food Warehouse, and Tahiti Devotional: August 19 - 25, 2024

 

     For the third week in a row, we started the week off doing an Ask Me shift at the Gateway.  We had heard that there were Fiji dignitaries at the Polynesian Cultural Center that day and as we were standing outside the Gateway building, two black carts (aka "limousines") drove by with the Fiji delegation of dignitaries.  By the time I got my phone out to take a picture, they were out of the carts and standing at the entrance to the Gateway.  The picture to the left is the best picture I could get of the group since I couldn't leave my post.  That was the most exciting thing that happened during our shift.  It was still a little slow like last week, but not quite as much.

  We have another new student worker in the food warehouse.  She is Faith and she's from the Philippines and the first student worker that I've worked with that is married.  She just got married in April.  Faith has actually been working at the warehouse for a few weeks already, I'm just a little slow at getting a picture with her.

     This week in the food warehouse we are losing some of our space in the chill area.  They are giving some of our space to the kitchen, so I took some before pictures on Tuesday, the day before the change, of the areas affected.  The top picture to the left is in the chill 2 area looking into the kitchen area behind the gate.  The bottom two pictures show the shelving on the right and left side of the gate that we use to store inventory items that need to be chilled.  You can see that there are two sections of shelves on either side of the gate.

    The pictures to the right are showing the Chill 3 area.  This chill 3 area is on the other side of the chill 2 area to the left of it. The bottom right picture shows the gate looking into the kitchen area, just like in the chill 2 area.   The other two pictures show the shelving on either side of the gate.  In the lefthand picture, it already shows one of the shelves taken out that used to be in the empty space.

     On Wednesday when the warehouse is closed, they made the change over.  After pictures to come later in the post.

  We checked the tide schedule for Laie Bay and noticed it was going to be low tide early Wednesday morning.  We have been wanting to try to walk over to Goat Island from the point in Laie Bay, but it has to be done at low tide.  We have watched people walking across to Goat Island during low tide and it seems to be fairly easy and doable.  We arrived at Hukilau Beach around 8am and walked around the bay to the far north side where it is the shortest distance to Goat Island.  As we were walking to the point where it's shallowest and shortest distance to the island, we noticed the swells were looking rather large and started to have second thoughts.  After talking to a local that happened to be right by the point, we decided it might not be a good day to try it.  He said that in the Fall the tides get a lot lower and that is when it's a good time to try it. But we did decide to see how far we could go just to get a feel for it.  You can see in the picture Elder Rappleye headed out into the water with the island in the background.  You can also see the rocks under the water that you walk across on, so you have to wear a good pair of water shoes.  

    I had walked out a little further than Elder Rappleye is in the picture when I started feeling stinging on my right leg.  I realized I had been stung by a Portuguese man-o-war that was in the water (see picture at right).  I immediately said, "I'm done, I'm out of here" and got out of the water as quick as I could and rubbed sand on my leg to try and lessen the stinging sensation.  We had forgotten to check the moon charts to see if it was close to the full moon, that's when there are a lot of "blue bubbles" (what the locals call Portuguese man-o-wars) in the water.  The stinging sensation was quite intense for about 30 minutes despite rubbing sand on my skin.  When I washed the sand off I could see red welts all around my ankle.  We have managed to avoid the blue bubbles for 9 months, but they finally got me.  I'm hoping to not repeat that experience again during the rest of our mission here.  We do hope to get another better opportunity to go over to Goat Island before we leave.

  We were planning on staying at the beach for the summer activity the PCC was putting on for our department and the luau department workers.  But I wasn't feeling like sticking around because my leg was hurting and the only person there at that time was Rowan, one of our new employees at the food warehouse.  Rowan is a local girl who lives in Laie and just graduated from high school in the spring.  She is going to BYU-Idaho in January, so she'll only be around until December.  I heard that after we left, more people finally showed up around 11 am for food and games.

      Later that afternoon my leg was feeling good, so we decided to fit in a short hike to 'Ehukai Pillbox near Sunset Beach on the North Shore.  The pictures to the right show us at the trailhead (top left), at one of the steep sections of the hike (top right), and the bottom pictures are views of the trail.  Notice the rope in the bottom left picture.  They string rope on the steep portions of the trail to help climbers, especially for when the trail is muddy and slippery.

Views on the way up.

Views at the pillbox.

This pillbox was the largest one we have seen.  You could walk right into it without having to bend over. 

Inside the pillbox, the paintings were well done.  Look at the ocean scene that was on one of the walls. 

We didn't have time to hike the loop trail from the pillbox, so we may have to go back sometime and do the whole hike.  Pictures to the left were taken on the way down the trail.  You can see in places it was rather steep.  This huge rock was right in the middle of the trail.

Thursday morning when I came into work, the remodel of our chill area in the food warehouse was complete.  Here is the after pictures.  To the right is pictures of the chill 2 area.  There is now only one row of shelving units on either side compared to two rows of shelving.  The gate across the back has been moved forward to give the kitchen more room on their side of the gate.

To the left is pictures of the chill 3 area.  All the shelving along the back in front of the gate is new.  There is no access now to this gate between the kitchen and the food warehouse.  Instead of the shelves facing each other with a big open area between them, the shelving is now in an L-shape.

I forgot to take pictures of the before in chill 1 area, but this is how chill 1 looks now.  They have moved the gate forward and now the ice machine is in the kitchen area instead of our area.  The luaus, gateway buffet, and the islands that use ice will now have to go to the kitchen to get their ice everyday.

Saturday morning, we enjoyed another uplifting devotional.  This time from the island village of Tahiti.  Each island village in the PCC hosts a devotional throughout the year.  This devotional is our fourth island devotional - Hawaii, Samoa, and Aotearoa have been the other 3.  We also attended a Mission Settlement devotional, which was the first devotional we attended.

The pictures to the left show the welcoming committee. Don't the students all look so sharp in their Tahitian outfits?

The devotionals are held in the island villages of the PCC.  All the senior missionaries are invited (required) to attend.  It's one of the few times that PCC, BYU-H, and Visitor's Center missionaries are all together.

They started the devotional with raising the Tahitian flag and singing the national anthem of Tahiti.

The theme of the devotional was "The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra."  Tahiti is part of French Polynesia, so everyone in Tahiti speaks Tahitian, and French, and some know English.  So, the opening and closing songs were sung in all three languages, first English, then Tahitian, and then French.

The speakers, clockwise from top left, are students working in the Tahitian village and the last speaker was President Grace, president of the PCC.  He always gets to speak at the devotionals.  Poevai (bottom right picture), the only girl speaker told us she is 19 years old, a junior at BYU-H, and a non-member.  In her talk, she was quoting Book of Mormon scriptures, and conference talks.  I would have never guessed she was not a member of the church if she had not told us.

They sang to us a song during the devotional and then another one after the closing prayer.  Of course, they both was sung in Tahitian, so we had no idea what they were saying, but they sing beautifully and joyfully.

They always serve refreshments after the devotionals.  This time they had a lot of fresh fruits.  They set up tables around a big shade tree and set the food out on the tables (bottom left picture).  The top picture is a group picture they had taken after the devotional, and the bottom right picture is a post at the entrance to the building that was decorated for the occasion.

After the Tahiti devotional Saturday morning, we decided to try hiking Pu'u Ma'eli'eli trail.  It had rained quite a bit during the week, and we weren't sure how muddy the trail might be.  It's only about 40 minutes away from where we live.  Here we are at the trailhead.  You have to park in a shopping center parking lot, then walk about a quarter of a mile along the highway to get to the trailhead.

The beginning of the trail was a bit muddy, but I'm not sure that part of the trail ever dries up because it was quite shady.  It was also a roller coaster type of trail with a lot of up and then down portions of the trail.  The picture above shows the up portion (left side) and then the view from the top looking down (right) on the next part of the trail.

We also saw a little wild piglet on the trail.  I didn't get a very good picture of it because it was always scurrying along the trail ahead of us.  From this picture it looks like a dog but believe me it was a little piglet.

Just as we got almost to the top it started to rain.  We came to this sign.  It says according to Hawaiian Mythology, pu'u ma' eli'eli means "digging hill".  The companion gods Kane and Kanaloa once raced to the top of the hill and had to "dig" into the slope with their hands to climb up.  I don't know if they had to use their hands because of the steepness or because it was muddy and slippery.

It also tells about the bunker or pillbox at the summit.  It's a remnant of the Heeia combat training area built during WWII.

Because it was raining while we were at the pillbox, the view was obscured by the clouds.  We will probably have to hike it again in order to enjoy a better view than what we got this time.

The trail was definitely muddier hiking down because of the rain, so we had to be careful not to slip on the way down.

   We had another opportunity to have the junior missionaries over for dinner on Sunday.  Sister Earl has been assigned to our Ward for 6 months now, so we've had her over for dinner many times.  Her companion, Sister Mansaloon is a brand-new missionary that Sister Earl is training.  She is from the Philippines.  We love having the missionaries over for dinner.  Since they serve in a YSA ward with everyone being students, they don't get any dinner invitations except from us.

I have started teaching a new piano student.  Thanush was one of my conducting students and now he is starting the piano course.  He is from India and just got married a week ago on August 17th.  Hopefully he will be able to continue through the whole course and graduate. I haven't taken a picture of him at piano lessons yet, but here's a picture of him with this wife.