Pre-Graduation, Recognitions, and Palm Sunday: April 7 - 13, 2025.

    

       Monday night is always ukulele sing-along class.   This week was Elder Thompson's last week to lead the class.  You can see it's a pretty big group of senior missionaries that come to the class.  The pictures don't even show the front two rows.  

      The group all donated money for a going away/appreciation gift for the Thompsons.  The right-hand picture shows Elder Hudnall presenting Elder Thompson with a custom hand craved wooden ukulele.  The left-hand picture shows Elder and Sister Thompson holding the gift.  We are going to miss the Thompsons, especially Elder Thompson who came prepared every week to help us all improve our ukulele playing talent.

     We had no FHE this week.:(

     Tuesday night we had another sealing appointment at the temple and invited students to come with us.  This time we had Caron Verma and her friend, Gordon come with us.  Caron is in our ward, but Gordon, her friend, is not, but we were glad to have him come join us.  Both are from India.

     Wednesday was another long town run day.  This week our new stop was Triple FFF.  Although this was the first time, we have had to pick up an order here, it's not the first time I have heard of Triple F.  Triple F is one of the food warehouse vendors I order from all the time.  I make purchase orders for Triple F almost weekly, but they usually deliver to the warehouse.  But sometimes if the order is too small to make minimum amount for delivery or we need the items before the next delivery date, then someone has to go make a will call/pickup.  That's why we were requested to make a pickup this week instead of having them deliver.  The Triple F warehouse was a lot bigger than I thought it would be.  The picture only shows about one fourth of the size of the building.

     We got back too late to go play pickleball, but I think it got rained out anyway.

     On Thursday evening we had a shift at Hale Ohana to help with luau line management.  It was Elder Rappleye's turn to watch the back exit to make sure no one accidently tries to go into the luau from the back.  I helped at the entrance (pictured to the left) with helping the guests make sure their tickets were for Hale Ohana and not Hale Aloha or Gateway Buffet.  Quite often people do get mixed up as to where they are supposed to go for dinner.

    

        On Friday morning, all PCC employees attended an Employee Recognition Ceremony in the Hawaii Journey Theater at the PCC.

      They have the employee recognition ceremony every year.  Last year we were on Kauai celebrating our anniversary, so we missed it.  

      You can see from the pictures to the left that it's a pretty big deal.  Everyone in attendance gets a raffle ticket and during the ceremony they will draw tickets for prizes.  Some of the prizes were really nice.  Since we are going home soon, we didn't want to win anything that would be hard to pack in our suitcases.  Fortunately, we didn't win anything.

      They have the "Spirit of Aloha" award.  It's the most prestige award they give out.

 

    They also recognize employees that have worked for the PCC for 5, 10, 20+ years.  This year they honored two of our bosses - Regina for 20 years of service and Anthony for 10 years of service.

   Here's a picture of the food warehouse crew that was working and attended the ceremony with Regina and Anthony.  Notice all the leis they are wearing.  We were unaware that they were being honored so we were not prepared and had no lei to give them.

      On Friday night we had Sister Mansaloon and Sister Pabalate over for dinner.  Next week is transfers and they both feel like they will be transferred, so it may be our last time having them come over for dinner.

     On Sunday, we gave Elijah Ebert, Shine Remion, and Noel Faumuina candy leis for graduation.  All three are in our YSA ward.  We made the leis on Saturday and gave the leis to them on Sunday because we would not be able to attend graduation on Friday due to our work schedules.  We also made a candy lei for Robert who is also graduating, but we couldn't find him at church.  We were able to deliver it to his hale on Monday night.

   

     There also was a piano graduation Sunday afternoon at piano class.  Two students graduated, Vian and Jae (left hand picture).  I only knew Jae.  Vian had lessons on a different day than Sunday because of her Sunday meeting schedule, so I didn't know her.  Sister Goodfellow taught Vian, and Sister Spilker taught Jae.

     Right after piano class, we had a rehearsal at the visitor's center for the Easter Music Devotional that evening in the Cannon Activities Center.  All the senior missionaries were singing in a choir lead by Sister Jackie Lee.

      Then we all made our way to the CAC for the devotional.  When the meeting started and we sang the opening song, I was delighted to see Krystel, a student who I taught in a conducting class, leading the music.  She did an awesome job.  After the meeting I saw her and asked her if she had been nervous, and she said yes!  I told her she did a terrific job.

      Here's our whole group sitting together before the devotional started.  Sister Lee, our conductor is sitting on the bottom row, far right in the green blouse.

     We were first on the program.  This is the only picture I have that someone took while we were singing.  We are on the far left second to the bottom row.  You can see Elder Rappleye the best and I'm to the right of him.  We sang a medley of two songs - He is Risen and I Know That My Redeemer Lives.

      Here's pictures of all the other groups that sang.  Some had fairly large groups like ours and others were small groups, like the violin soloist and pianist (middle picture middle row).  The male Filippino student quartet were very good (bottom right-hand picture).  The top picture is a group of Samoan students that work at the PCC.  The group in the bottom left-hand picture is a community singing group of women.  The middle right-hand picture is a group of youth singers that I enjoyed very much.  

      It was a great way to celebrate Palm Sunday listening and singing praises to and about the Savior.