Two Too Many Mistakes: February 17 - 23, 2025

      Monday was President's Day.  Normally we don't get the day off because the Polynesian Cultural Center is open on most holidays.  I was surprised when late Friday afternoon after we came home, I received a text message saying I didn't have to come in on Monday.  I was grateful to have Monday to do some housekeeping things and get caught up with some financial record keeping.  Elder Rappleye still had to go into work at the motor pool.   A lot of regular employees had the day off which makes it an excellent day to grab carts and service them because the carts are not being used like on normal workdays.  He did finish up early, around 12:30pm and came home.  There was also no Family Home Evening with the YSA Ward that night, but we did go to ukulele class.  It was a pretty chill day.

     Tuesday was anything BUT chill.  We had our work at the PCC during the day.  When I went into work on Tuesday, I found out that my worst nightmare had come true - I had sent in the wrong numbers for the order from Sysco! I've gone 15 months without my worst fears coming true, that of totally botching an order.  Normally I send in the Sysco order on Mondays, for a Tuesday delivery.  When I do the order on Monday, I am looking at a new week's order guide.  Since Monday was a holiday, I sent in the order on Friday, which had me looking at the last week's order guide.  When I do the order on Mondays, I look at the first column of red numbers - those are the amounts/items to order.  When I order on Friday, it's the last column of red numbers.  I apparently scrolled over to what I thought was the last column of red numbers, but it was not the last column. Instead, it was the column of the delivery I had already ordered earlier in the week, and we had received on Friday.  So basically, I double ordered Friday's order.  Major mistake!!  It left them scrambling for a few items.  Then after work, we had an Ask Me shift at the Marketplace, followed immediately by our monthly senior devotional.  Elder Thompson and Sister Purcell, the mission president's first counselor's wife sang a duet that Elder Thompson had written the lyrics and Sister Purcell had composed the music (top picture).  Elder Thompson is playing the ukulele.  He is our ukulele instructor on Monday nights.  Then President and Sister Bassett spoke.  They reviewed the last six months of devotional topics.  The bottom picture above shows the outline of the devotionals.  They also talked about the Christlike attribute of Charity.  We definitely feel like we have a way to go on that attribute before we've mastered it.

      Then after the devotional we headed back to the PCC to preview a new movie in the Hawaiian Journey theater that was made here in Laie and the actors are mostly BYU-Hawaii/PCC employees.  The movie, "She Heard Us" is based on a true story that happened in the 1980's in the director/producer's family, so it brings his family history alive.  The three sisters sitting behind us and the senior couple to the right of us in the top picture to the left are all missionaries.  This same producer made the movie, Tala, that we saw at the beginning of our mission.  It also was based on a true story from his family history.  We really liked the movie, Tala, and were excited to see this new movie that he made.  The story told about a miracle they experienced in their family, but it was a more sobering, sad experience so we didn't like it was much as his other movie.  It was still a very interesting story, and it testified that God hears and answers prayers in His Way, which is sometimes in very unexpectant ways.  The director/producer is standing in the bottom right picture above.  It was a long and busy day.

      We were pretty excited when we got to work on Wednesday and found out we only had 7 stops for our town run.  That's the smallest amount of stops we've had since the week after Christmas. But during our drive to town, two more stops were added via text messages. Our last stop was a new location, a Sherwin Williams store in Honolulu by the airport.  The parking lot was tight, but we have seen worse.  Elder Rappleye parked the van.  I hopped out to go inside to pick up the items on the order.  Elder Rappleye decided he could probably get turned around in the parking lot on his own without my guidance.  He did really well to back up into an empty parking stall, but when he pulled out, he thought he had pulled out far enough (the van is really long) before turning the wheels, misjudged and clipped a beautiful blue Toyota's front bumper (see top picture to the left) that was parked in the spot next to him.  It did minimal damage to the van we were driving (see bottom picture to the left) 😬😨😰.  The damage is at the same place on the van that Elder Rappleye had worked so hard to get fixed when we first got here. 😦😧 Thankfully no one got hurt, but it was an inconvenience to deal with finding who owned the car and getting the information we needed to report the accident.  I came out of the store and when I found out about what happened I felt sick about it (Elder Rappleye even more so).  We thought maybe the PCC would "fire" us now and we wouldn't have to do town run any more.  There went our perfect driving record.  It really is amazing we have not had an accident before now with all the stops we make and all the traffic and tight situations we find ourselves in.  I told Elder Rappleye no more backing up without assistance - just to be safe.

      On Tuesday it was Leiana's birthday, but she didn't work a shift while I was there. On Thursday she was there in the morning, so I was able to give her a little birthday gift and get a picture with her.  She's a fun, happy worker.  She is from Tonga.

   When I went into the Gateway to get the Ask Me button I wear while greeting the tour bus guests, I noticed the new menus on the tables.  We had picked up those menus on one of our town run trips.

       After I was done greeting the buses, I went to go return the maps that I hadn't given out when I spied Casey Griffiths from Scripture Central.  I was just listening to one of his podcasts about the Doctrine and Covenants that morning while I was getting ready for work.  I had to stop and talk to him.  The best way to introduce myself to him? "Hi, are you Casey Griffiths?  I'm Neal Rappleye's mom."  He knows our son Neal, and our daughter-in-law, Jasmin, because they both work for Scripture Central too.  He was nice enough to talk to me for a few minutes and let me get a picture with him to send to Neal and let him know who I saw that day.  If you haven't heard of Casey Griffiths or Scripture Central, I attached a link to one of their You Tube podcasts below.

https://youtu.be/dShq_CKJ7wc?si=o4XJU_ieyBrUUEm

      Elder Rappleye got another recognition with his picture and write up in the Employee Bulletin that the Polynesian Cultural Center puts out.  Wowing Customers is one of the seven cultural beliefs that is part of the PCC's values and objectives.

       On Friday, we had originally planned on having Jimboy and Camilla over for dinner, but at the last minute Jimboy had to go into work, so it has been postponed until sometime in March.  Since I didn't have to fix dinner for company, I had some time to go to the BYU-H sewing Center where they have sewing machines available for students, staff, and missionaries to use free of charge.  I am sewing some birthday gifts for my grandchildren there.  I'll have to post pictures next time I'm working on them.

      We finally had a Saturday free and clear of any obligations, so we went to the farthest western most part of the island to hike the Ka'ena Point west side coastal trail.  Last winter we hiked the eastern side of the point, and we made it a goal to hike from the other side before we went home.  It took us an hour and 40 minutes to drive to the trailhead.  When we arrived the road was closed, so we couldn't drive all the way to the trailhead.  We parked along the side of the road along with a lot of other cars and had to start our hike about a mile from the trailhead.  As we walked along the road on our way to the trailhead, we came across two fisherman hauling home their morning catch (top picture).  I think it's a bluefin jack or bigeye jack fish.

     

     We finally made it to the actual trailhead. The purple arrow shows the side of the point we hiked. 

 

       It was quite an enjoyable walk along the coastline.  The trail was good except for a few puddles to avoid and a couple of places where the trail had eroded away so we had to take a small detour.  The bottom left picture in the collage shows the starfish flower (Stapelia Grandiflora) a succulent with stems that resemble cacti but are more closely related to milkweeds.  The blooms look like starfish and emit a strong odor that smells like rotting meat, which attracts its primary pollinators - flies.

   

  About halfway up the coast is the Ka'ena Point Arch.  The top picture was taken looking towards the point.  The bottom pictures were taken looking back away from the point towards the trailhead.

      The picture above shows the view of all the whales we saw from the trail.  Actually, my phone camera is lame and not quick enough to capture the whales as they come up out of the water.  We never saw any of them breach, but we could spot the spouting, then a few seconds later their backs or tail would emerge above the water.  They were pretty far away from the coast.  Of course, binoculars would have been great to have, but we forgot to bring them.

    

        Just before you get to the point, you enter a nature preserve area for sea birds and monk seals.

   Last year when we hiked the other side, we didn't see whales or seals.  This year we hit the jackpot.  Not only did we see whales, but there were two monk seals on the beach at the point.  I circled where the seal is in the bottom picture because it is pretty well camouflaged among the rocks.  The other seal in the top picture is pretty easy to spot on the sand.

Here we are at the point!

  

    Views from where we sat and ate some snacks before we headed back down the coast. It's the northwestern most point of the island.

      Here are pictures of the sea birds in their nesting habitat.  I even got a picture of one in flight (bottom right).

A view down the whole coastline from the point.

   With 2.5 miles still to hike, I lost the sole of my right sandal.  Thank goodness there was still enough of the bottom of my sandal to allow me to continue walking the rest of the way.

      Despite the extra 1.8 miles we had to hike because of the road closure and the blow out of my sandal, we really enjoyed this hike.  It was well worth the long drive to get there.

  

      There was a gorgeous sunset on Sunday night.  This is the view looking towards the temple parking lot.  We were on our way to attend a musical devotional at the church building near the Laie temple and visitor's center.

    We were privileged to attend a devotional with Nik and Darla Day.  Nik is a singer-songwriter who has written songs for lots of the yearly youth themes like "I WIll Go and Do", "A Great Work", and "Peace in Christ".  Nik sat at the piano and played, sang, and talked while seated at the piano.  His wife, Darla, told her conversion story with songs interspersed. Her story is a testament to God's love, mercy and redemption. Every time they performed one of his songs, it turned into a sing-along.  Almost all the junior missionaries were familiar with his songs.  Many had their phones out recording all the songs as they were sung.  The bottom picture shows our mission leader and his wife, President and Sister Bassett and Nik and Darla Day.

      Here's a link to a piece of the song "Peace in Christ" that I recorded during the devotional.  

https://photos.app.goo.gl/dNb8cn4BW6gPj6ig8

 It was a rough week, but it ended with a highlight and reminded us that through Christ's atonement he can redeem us from the mistakes we made this week and every week.