Monday I was back to my regular schedule for serving at the PCC. All week it was going to be very busy. The holiday season finally has kicked in. Monday night we went to the last musical presentation of the Christmas season at the Visitor's Center. The schedule said it was Hau'ula 2nd Ward, but it was only a family that was performing. Maybe the family was in the Hau'ula 2nd Ward. The young man pictured in the top photo is a singer/songwriter and performed one of the songs he wrote. The father, in the bottom left picture was the narrator. The bottom right picture is the mother and daughter singing while the son played the piano and sang. They were a very musical family.
Tuesday was Christmas Eve. Lili, my boss, had me do most of Tuesday's purchase orders on Monday just to make sure we got them in on time, in case the vendors were closed or closing early on Christmas Eve. That made Tuesday a really short, quick day. I was done by 10AM. I went over to the church building in Laie by the temple to practice my piano solo one more time before the performance that night. By the time I came back, Elder Rappleye was wrapping things up at the motor pool because Anthony, his boss, told them to close at noon.
Tuesday night was the mission wide Christmas devotional. All the missionaries, young and old, attended and anyone could volunteer to perform a musical number. I had brought with me a piano Christmas solos book (not sure why). Last Christmas we were so new and getting adjusted that we did not participate in the musical devotional. This year when they asked for volunteers, the spirit reminded me that I had brought the Christmas solos piano book. I wasn't sure I wanted to volunteer. I could think of lots of excuses not to - I didn't have ready access to a piano to practice on; I had hardly played the piano in over a year; and I have not performed in public in decades. But the spirit kept prompting me, so I looked over the songs in the book and picked out what looked like the shortest and easiest piece to play. I emailed the sister missionary in charge of the program and told her I would be willing to play a piano solo and told her what the piece was, "The First Noel". She responded by asking if I could play a different piece because someone else was already doing "The First Noel". I wavered. I looked through the pieces again and thought I could possibly do the medley of "Joy to the World/Hark the Herald Angels" although it was one page longer than "The First Noel". I emailed her back and told her I could change it to "Joy to the World/Hark the Herald Angels" medley. She responded by telling me that Joy to the World was going to be the closing song and was there something else I could play. I was ready to tell her no, and to just forget about it, I would not be a part of the program. But before I responded back, she responded again and told me it would be fine if I played the medley, and that there were a lot of vocal numbers, and they needed musical numbers on the program so she would put me on the program. I guess I was stuck.
I was scheduled to play my piece in about the middle of the program right after the men's choir sang "The Little Drummer Boy". After they sang, I got up and started laying out my music on the piano (see picture above) and as I was doing that, the junior sister missionary who was listed on the program after my song came up to the podium and started singing and playing her ukulele. I was mentally all ready to play, but then I had to wait until Sister Walker got done playing her song. That's when I started getting nervous. When she finished, as I started playing the air conditioning came on and my music was right in the path of the AC vent, and it started to blow my music off the piano. I had to stop playing, rearrange my music and start again. The same thing happened! Now I was pretty flustered. Sister Lee and one of the junior missionaries came to my rescue and stood on both sides of the piano to hold my music in place. I started playing for the third time and was able to get through the piece with only a few minor mistakes despite it not going well to begin with. I had asked God to send me angels to help me as I played, specifically asking for my mother to calm my nerves and my mother-in-law to help me play well because she was very good at playing the piano. I'm sure God answered my prayers, and they were there beside me to help me get through it. Although it stressed me out for weeks, I'm grateful I followed the spirit. It was certainly a learning and growing experience for me. Now I could enjoy the Christmas holiday - no more stress.
We were really hoping being away from family on Christmas day would not be as hard as last year. We were able to Facetime several of our children in the morning and open presents that they sent while talking to them. We had a mission wide Christmas luncheon at noon. I volunteered to bring cheesy potato casserole. There were rows of tables filling up the cultural hall to fit enough places for everyone. There were 3 serving tables, one on either side of the gym and one in the overflow back area. Even with 3 serving tables, the lines were long, but everyone didn't mind, it gave us a chance to visit with each other. We had traditional ham, potatoes, corn, rolls, Jello salad, garden salads, and many different kinds of desserts. There were so many desserts that they had to put them in the Relief Society room. After eating, there was a program (pictured above bottom right). The first skit was "The 12 Days of Christmas I see in Laie!" (top left and bottom right picture). It included geckos, chickens, turtles, matching muumuus, ukulele players, fans, cockroaches, and a mission leader in a palm tree. Then a junior sister missionary did a hula dance (top right and bottom left picture).
Then the king, Elvis Presley, made an appearance and sang "Blue Christmas". Elder Parker was "the king" and did a pretty decent job of impersonating Elvis. He even dyed his hair black to help complete the look. Elder Harris, Sister Larsen, Sister Lee, and Elder Wayt were his backup singers.
We have 12 sister missionaries from the Philippines serving in our mission. They all sang a Filipino Christmas song.
All the BYU - Hawaii senior missionaries did "Twas the Night Before Christmas" skit and adapted it to what their assignments at BYU-Hawaii are. It was nice to see which missionaries are serving where because we don't interact with the BYU-Hawaii missionaries much unless they are in our district.
Sister Purcell, a counselor in the mission presidency's wife, did the "Song of Christmas Hula"
Then she taught the moves to everyone, and we all did it with her.
I captured a few pictures of Elder Rappleye trying to learn the hula.
Then we had a ukulele sing along. Everyone who has been learning how to play the ukulele was encouraged to bring their ukuleles to play. I didn't see too many people playing the ukulele this year. It seems like last Christmas there were a lot of missionaries playing the ukulele, especially the younger sister missionaries. After the program was over and after helping clean up, we headed over to see the Cowley family. There was so much food leftover from the luncheon that they were trying to get people to take some home with them. We grabbed some of the bags to take over to the Cowleys. Jen was going to have a baby in a couple of weeks, so we thought they could freeze it and use after the baby was born. We visited on their front porch, and they opened the gift we had left them on Sunday. It was a Velcro dart game. They immediately went out on the lawn and started playing the game. Thankfully Christmas wasn't as hard as last year. We were able to talk or Facetime with all of our children. We ended up not having enough time to go to the beach like I was hoping, so we can't say we spent Christmas on the beach.
But we did go play some pickleball with the Fishers and Goodfellows, and Elder Rainsdon to burn off some of the calories we ate at the Christmas luncheon.
We finally unwrapped the rest of our gifts after pickleball and ended the night watching Mr. Kruger's Christmas. One of the gifts we opened were messages and drawings from children and grandchildren. I was so happy to now have some pictures to put on our ugly looking refrigerator. Doesn't the refrigerator look so happy now?
We got so many notes that they wouldn't all fit on the refrigerator, so we taped them up in our stairwell. Now we can see them and feel the love every time we go out our front door and when we come home.
The day after Christmas we were back serving at the PCC. They had pushed town run to Thursday since Christmas was on Wednesday. Thankfully, there wasn't very many stops, so it wasn't as stressful as the last couple of weeks. Here's a few interesting sites we saw on our town run this week - top picture is Oahu Community Correctional Center. It's the largest jail facility in Hawaii and it's right in Honolulu. It houses about 950 male inmates. The bottom picture shows that there is a street named "Salt Lake Blvd." in Honolulu. We have driven by there lots of times. We finally stopped at a red light where I could get a picture of the street sign. We were so excited to see our neighbors that live across the street from us in South Jordan at the Hukilua Marketplace. They were vacationing on the island for Christmas break. I arranged for some discount PCC tickets for them. It was good to see familiar faces from home and visit with them for a little bit.
The pictures to the right show the decorations at the Aloha Center (Student Activities Center). It's pretty quiet there during semester break. On Saturday we drove over to Turtle Bay Resort. We had heard that the Christmas decorations at the resort were pretty good. So, we walked around the resort looking for all the Christmas decorations we could find. We also found an infinity pool with a gorgeous view toward the ocean with lots of palm trees. The ocean swells were quite large that morning. We were hoping to enjoy some beach time at the resort, but it was too overcast. We decided to get back in the car and drive along the north shore in hopes of finding some sunshine. We got to Sunset Beach and the sun was shining, so we got all settled into our beach chairs to watch the wild waves (too dangerous to swim) and do some reading. After about 30 minutes it started to rain, so we packed everything up and headed home. So much for getting some beach time.
Later Saturday afternoon we were able to watch on our laptop the BYU football team play in the Alamo Bowl and beat the University of Colorado, 36 - 14. So even though we didn't get to have some good beach time, it was a good day after all with the BYU win!
We had a fun district activity on Sunday evening. The Tates offered to cook everyone a turkey dinner with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. Everyone else brought different sides. The dinner was delicious. Then we did a white elephant gift exchange. It was mostly a true white elephant gift exchange with odd items found around our houses that each person didn't want any more. There was even some stealing going on during the gift exchange. I ended up with a pretty nice hoodie that says Ketchikan Alaska (never been there) with canned snow. Elder Rappleye ended up with a box of macadamia chocolates.
We celebrated three birthdays - Elder Brent Timothy's whose birthday was December 24th; Sister LaRae Tate whose birthday is January 16th, and Sister Sherry Gammon whose birthday is January 7th (bottom picture - left to right),
Top picture is a group district picture with the birthday honorees seated on the couch.
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