Lots of Visitors - Some Unexpectant: January 13 - 19, 2025

      For Christmas we received new family photos from all but one of our children's families.  I decided to tape them on the wall above the TV in our living area so we can see their beautiful smiling faces every day, and it makes us feel loved to have our family with us even if it's only in pictures.

    We got a surprise visit from Dave Conrad on Monday evening.  He is our son, Derek's boss and was in our stake presidency several years ago, but has since moved to Mapleton, UT.  Dave just called Elder Rappleye out of the blue on Monday afternoon telling us he was at the Polynesian Cultural Center and wondered if we could meet up and visit for a few minutes. We went at 6pm to visit him after the luau was done.  Another great experience to see friends from back home.

         After visiting with Dave Conrad and his wife, Jill and their friends who were with them, we headed over to campus for FHE.  It was missionary night.  The junior missionaries talked about how they both decided to serve missions.  They are both converts to the church.  Then a sister in the ward, Mary, who just got her mission call to Uruguay, talked about how she decided to go on a mission.  After that, we played a game.  We were paired up and you face each other with a cup in-between you on the floor (picture on the right).  Then it's like Simeon Says only all the motions are head, shoulders, knees or toes until the person shouting out the commands says cup and whoever grabs the cup first wins.  In each round half the people are eliminated until you get down to two people.  The final round was the only picture I took.  After the game, Elder Rappleye and I each gave a short spiritual thought.  It was very interesting hearing Sister Mansaloon, Sister Pabalate, and Mary's journeys to get to where they are today. 

    Tuesday night we went to the temple to do sealings.  We had names of 3 brothers in one family and 2 brothers in another family to seal to their parents.  We invited male students from our Ward to join us at the temple to participate in the sealing.  We were hoping to get enough males in the sealing group so the brothers could be all sealed at the same time.  But we only got Elijah Ebert to join us.  Elijah was in the Ward last school year and then went to Belgium for an internship.  Last Sunday we were so excited to see him back from his internship and back in our Ward.  Although we didn't get enough males to do the sealings of brothers at the same time, it was great to have Elijah there to do all of our male family names.  We are hoping to invite students with us every time we do sealings to help encourage them to attend the temple.  Next time - females!

    

  Wednesday's town run was a long tiring, but interesting day.  We had 14 stops - that's a LOT!  We have seen the mural in the top picture to the right from a distance, but our route took us right past it this week, so I'm glad I was able to get a picture of it.  The murals in the bottom picture were on a narrow one-way street we stopped at to pick up luggage, shoulder bags, etc. for the retail stores in Hukilau Marketplace.

    While we were stopped waiting for them to bring out the merchandise and load it in the van, we had a mother hen, and her chicks pay us a visit.  We were standing so close to them and neither the chicks nor the mother hen seemed to be worried about us being right next to them.

     One of the stops was a print shop.  We picked up these posters shown on the right and also some bigger posters for the Polynesian Hall of Fame that is located at the PCC.   There was going to be an induction ceremony on Saturday for the 2025 Hall of Famers.  More on that later in the post.  The package in the photo contained multiple football player's posters.  We wanted to look at all of them, but it was heat sealed, and we couldn't open it without ripping it, so we thought better of it.

   Our last stop was in a new area of town we had never been.  We ended up at a garage in a condo complex.  We were picking up a box full of painted and lacquered wooden chopsticks.  While we were waiting for the owner to package them up, I browsed all the paintings he had hanging all over the garage and stacked on the floor.  They were very colorful and looked pretty good.

   By the end of the day, the cargo van was fully loaded.  We had to play Tetris and move the load around several times to get everything in.  I wasn't sure we could get all the items in, but the employee at the luggage vendor was expert at Tetris and moved and packed the van so we could get everything in.  The left-hand picture shows the view from the back of the van - those are all the luggage boxes.  The right-hand picture shows the view looking back from the passenger seat.  Except for when we had the cargo van packed with AC units, this was the most packed we have had the van.  We didn't get home until after 4:30pm.  By the time we had dinner (we had no time for a lunch break, so we were starved) and got it cleaned up it was too late to go to pickleball, so no pickleball this week.😞😦😩😫

     We had a couple of uneventful days on Thursday and Friday, but on Saturday morning the PCC was going to host the induction of 3 football players into the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame.

     When we were here for last year's induction, we were told attendance was by invitation only, so we didn't get to go.  On Friday, our district leader sent out a text message telling us that if we wanted to go to the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony, we could get in with our PCC badges.  Although we had plans for later in the morning, we thought we would go attend for the first hour and then leave.  In the top left-hand picture you can see us with the Lees, our district leaders sitting on the front row because we were the first ones there.  Yes, we were a little bit excited to see BYU coach, Kalani Sitake, in person.  

     Then our bubble was burst.  We were told we had to buy a ticket if we wanted to attend.  Since we could only stay for a little bit, we opted to not buy $30 tickets for each of us and left, but the picture on the left shows what we missed.  Notice the reserved sign on the chair in the front row.  That sign was not on the chair when I was sitting in it before we left.  We were really hoping to get our picture taken with Coach Sitake, but it didn't happen.😒😞

     Instead, we headed down to Honolulu to meet up with the Cowleys and went to the Bishop's Museum.  Bob and Tammy Cowley, our friends from home, were visiting their son, Brent's family.  With our PCC badges, we were able to get Bob and Tammy in to see the museum for free!  We have been to the museum before by ourselves, but we were not able to see everything.  It's quite a large museum.

  

    During this visit we were able to see the planetarium show with the Cowleys.  It showed how the Polynesian people used the stars to navigate across the ocean from island to island.  They even showed us how to find certain constellations in the Hawaii night sky.

    We were able to also explore the Pacific Hall exhibits more.  We only were able to walk though it very quickly last time we were there.  These tiki statues are actually in the Hawaiian hall displays.

    We found some more statues all around the museum.  Although we explored more of the museum this visit, we still did not have time to go explore the science center building.  We'll have to see if we can make one more visit before we go home.

      We had to leave early in order to get back to the PCC for an Ask Me assignment.  Pictured to the right is the Ask Me crew for the night.  Somehow, we all showed up in blue aloha wear.  In the picture on the left side of the table is Elder Rainsdon (front), Elder Rappleye, Elder Greiner, and Sister Greiner.  On the right side of the table is Sister Rainsdon (front), Sister Rappleye, Sister Bates, and Elder Bates.

     Where we usually sit to eat dinner before our Ask Me shift there was a wedding dinner/party going on.  They had a live band, so we were able to enjoy the music of the band while we ate.  We ended up eating on the other side of the terrace.

   

     Our Ask Me post was at the entrance of the Gateway Buffet.  It's fairly close to the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame display, so we took turns going to see the displays of the new inductees.  The top right-hand picture shows the display where the poster we picked up on town run, (shown in a previous picture), is now displayed.  The red arrow is pointing to it.

     One of the top exciting things while on my mission happened on Sunday afternoon.  A friend from junior high/high school was visiting the island for just the day and came to Laie and I was able to meet up with her on the temple grounds. According to Debbi, we haven't seen each other since 1973.  My sister and I invited her to play church ball with us when we were 14 years old.  That was her first contact with the church.  She also would go to church youth dances with us.  She met the missionaries and took the lessons and wanted to get baptized, but her parents wouldn't allow her to be baptized.  My poor senior brain has a hard time remembering all this, but she told me the story when I saw her.  Her parents finally allowed her to be baptized after she had moved away. I either don't remember or didn't realize that she had gotten baptized, until a few years ago when we reconnected on social media, and I found out/relearned that she had joined the church.  She attended BYU-Idaho (Ricks College back then), met her husband, got married in the temple, raised 3 boys, and has gone on a senior mission with her husband, serving in one of the temples in Mexico.  She told me that my sister and I had encouraged her to read the Book of Mormon (I wish I could remember that!).  What is amazing to me is how after she was baptized her parents wouldn't take her to church (the church was about 10 miles from her home), and she got no help from her Ward members to help her get to church, but she was able to get to Ricks college where she could nourish her testimony and help it grow. Here's a quote from her, "I'm so thankful for your example to me as a 14-year-old! It really changed the course of my entire life.  It's a perfect example of "planting seeds". I am forever grateful."  I didn't think I had done anything extraordinary when I had invited her to play church ball. It was just something you do when you are friends. But what a miracle that has happened because of it.  God is a God of miracles!  Planting seeds, with time, good ground and nourishment, "will become a tree, springing up in you unto everlasting life." (Alma 33:23).  We haven't had any opportunities to teach investigators here while on this mission, but this mission has given me an opportunity to see the fruit of my labor from many years ago. This was a totally unexpected mission blessing.

      Later that evening, we went over to the Cowley's house in Laie to visit with them and see their new little one, Kai.  I got to be a temporary grandma and hold Kai, who was only two-weeks old.  It was fun to visit with Bob and Tammy some more and hear about happenings from home.  The bonus was they had room in their suitcase to take a few things back to our house for us so we will have less stuff to pack up when we go home in May.