A Lot of New Experiences: November 11 - 17, 2024

 

      The week almost always starts with Family Home Evening on Monday nights.  This week the ward reserved the Hub, the game room in the Aloha Center on BYU - H campus.  We have known about the Hub, but we have not experienced the game room yet.  I was excited to have the opportunity to see what the Hub was like,

     We had heard about the bowling alley in the Hub from the Neeleys.  When the Neeleys started their mission serving at the Aloha Center, one of their duties was to help run the Hub.  The bowling alley was not operational and needed repaired.  Elder Neeley found a technician that knew how to fix the bowling lanes and got it working again.  But the lane we bowled on kept messing up the setting up of the pins.  It didn't always set all the pins up.  It was an interesting way to bowl.  It improved our scores a lot.

     Besides bowling there were two pool tables that were a popular option with the students.

     Plus, a couple of ping pong tables (lower left-hand picture), air hockey (that we couldn't figure out how to make work), tabletop soccer (top right-hand picture), and a karaoke room (top left-hand picture), and lots of pizza (lower right-hand picture).  At first, I thought they had bought way too much pizza, but by the end of the night it was gone.  The karaoke singers in the picture, Clabelle and Laiza were both in the Church Music Festival broadcast. They have wonderfully beautiful voices.  Watch the broadcast and hear for yourself.

  

      On Tuesday we had security duty at the back of the Gateway terrace. Since we are in the back with no interaction with the guests, I was able to work on making my brother-in-law's lei for when they arrive next week.  It's a super easy lei to make with eyelash yarn, ribbon, and a fat straw.  Check back in next week's post to see the finished product.

    On our day off it was back to Hukilau Beach for a little beach time.  The Gammons, who are in our district, told us that they have seen turtles at the far north end of Hukilau.  We have gone there multiple times and have never seen a turtle.  They told us to go there in the early afternoon.  We decided to give it a try.  I wasn't very hopeful, but we actually spotted a couple of turtles swimming in the water not too far out from the shore.  The two right-hand pictures show a turtle (in the red circle). We followed along the beach for a while watching it swim and waiting for it to pop its head out of the water.  We also watched a kite surfer weave back and forth across the bay.  It was a good windy day for kite surfing.

      On Thursday we attended a farewell luncheon for Elder Mike and Sister Tamie Taylor.  Elder Taylor was the safety officer for the PCC.  He made sure all operations are safe and in compliance with federal laws and regulations.  Sister Taylor worked in the same building as the food warehouse, only upstairs in uniforms.  She and her crew issued all the uniforms to the student workers at the PCC and inventoried and checked in the returned uniforms when a student ends their employment.  Notice the numerous leis both Elder and Sister Taylor received from people who love and appreciate the work they have done.  Because Elder Taylor's safety work reaches over every department at the PCC, there were many people there to thank them and wish them well.

    On Friday we had to leave work a little early to go get our car inspected.  Our car was already overdue for a safety inspection, and we took the soonest appointment we could get which made us have to leave work an hour early to get down to Kaneohe Auto Care.  Elder Rappleye was a little worried that it might not pass because the check engine light is always on, but they didn't even say anything about it and our car is supposedly all legit now.

     Since we were halfway to Honolulu, we decided to continue on to town and get our grocery shopping done on the same trip.  Since we started later in the day than we normally do, we were driving back to Hau'ula in the dark with very little traffic.  The moon shining on the ocean surface was beautiful and calming.  It's one of the many beautiful scenes from our time in Hawaii I hope I never forget.

      Our YSA stake along with the other YSA stake had a service opportunity on Saturday morning to go help at the Kahuku Agricultural Farm located behind Kahuku High School.  A couple of Relief Society sisters, Jo Ya and Judith, wanted to go help but didn't have a ride to get there.  We offered to pick them up at 7:45 AM and we all went to help clean up the farm.  Jo Ya and Judith are in the lower left-hand picture.  Jo Ya is from Taiwan and is graduating in a few weeks when the semester ends.  Judith is a first-year student.  

  We did a lot of weeding and filling wheelbarrows like the one pictured many times.  We also found a lot of Hawaii size snails!

      It was fun to see Ethan, who used to be in our YSA ward, and get to know Jo Ya and Judith a little better.  It's been over a year since I've done any yard work, something that I do plenty of back in Utah.  The whole group is pictured in the upper left-hand picture above.

     Sunday night was a special devotional at the Cannon Activities Center for all BYU-H students, faculty, and senior missionaries.  Elder Dale G. Renlund and his wife spoke to us.  Elder Renlund spoke about "willingly and wholeheartedly taking upon us the name of Jesus Christ."  He shared five aspects of the process of taking on the name of Jesus Christ - identification (link our name with His as Christian), capability (receive God's power to change and become better), emulation (Christ becomes our role model to develop Christlike attributes), purpose (join the Savior in His work of ministering and sharing His gospel) and remembrance (worthily partaking of the sacrament each week helps us to remember Jesus Christ).  Elder Renlund's topic was very appropriate to us as missionaries since we bear Jesus Christ's name on the name badge that we wear every day.  We were grateful that Brent Cowley was thoughtful enough to save seats for us in the center lower section where we had a great view of the meeting.  If Brent hadn't saved us seats, we would have been in the rafters.  It was a great uplifting and spiritual way to end our week.