Tuesday morning, another adventure out in the motor pool. Elder Rappleye, Elder Bates, and Bri working on the Excavator. They are removing the wide bucket to put on the narrow bucket.
My good friend, Lily Heiner, who I have been trying to get her to come visit us at the Polynesian Cultural Center since we arrived (I think she would love to be a missionary here, so I wanted a chance to recruit her), finally was able to come visit. She arrived on Tuesday, so we took her to enjoy a day at the PCC. We worked in the morning and then took the afternoon off to go to the PCC with her.
We were sad we have to leave her after dinner to attend our monthly senior mission devotional. Lily went to the HA show instead. It was the only night she was going to be able to see it and we definitely didn't want her to miss that experience and she would enjoy the show much more than our devotional. The senior devotional is the one and only mandatory meeting we have as missionaries and it was our last one before going home, so we needed to attend. Sisters Armstrong, Timothy, Hudnall, Larsen, and Lee all sang a beautiful musical number. President and Sister Bassett talked about and reviewed the previous messages of devotionals we have had throughout the past year - all messages of Christ and his doctrine.
After our devotional, we went over to the Hukilau Marketplace and picked up Lily from the show at the PCC. She loved it! I knew she would. Everyone loves the Ha show. We were able to see it 7 or 8 times and loved it every time!
I took Wednesday off (Elder Rappleye did the town run with Elder Hansen - thank you Elder Hansen for filling in for me!). Our first stop was going to the PCC to have Sister Hansen give Lily a tour of the sewing room where the seamstresses serve (Lily is a great seamstress) and help give her a feel for what it would be like to come serve a mission here). Then it was off to play - Laie Point was the first stop, and then we went up to the gazabo behind the temple to see the view of Laie and the ocean. After that we made our way north around the north shore. We stopped in Kahuku to do a little browsing of the outdoor shops and get a smoothie at Hawaiian Island X-treme food truck. It had the great mural on the side of the truck that Lily is standing in front of.
Then we went to Kawela Bay, one of my favorite spots along the North shore. It took us our whole mission to finally find the secret spot where the sea turtles hang out at Kawela Bay, so we were able to see a few turtles sleeping in the alcove where they like to hide. We ended our journey at Sunset Beach where we got our picture with the iconic 100+ year old palm tree.
It was great to visit and catch up. I haven't seen Lily in several years and it was the first time since her husband, Jae, passed away in 2021. Although her visit was short, I was so happy she made the sacrifice to come see us.
Thursday was the last day Lily was here. Unfortunately, we could not take the day off, so Lily went exploring the BYU-H campus, the Laie temple grounds and visitor's center on her own while we worked in the morning.
When we finished our work, I rode with Lily in her rent car and Elder Rappleye followed us down to Pearl Harbor. Lily has never been to Pearl Harbor, so we definitely wanted to make sure she visited the Arizona Memorial before she left. We have been many times to Pearl Harbor when family and friends came to visit, but this time was the first time we spotted a turtle swimming in the water by the memorial (top picture).
After visiting Pearl Harbor, we had just enough time to go do take out at Restuarant 604, just down the street from Pearl Harbor, before Lily had to go to the airport to catch her flight home.
Friday was a rainy Spring commencement day. We were not able to attend because we were working, but several of the students from our YSA ward walked. I found this picture of Shine (front and center) on social media that I copied.
We also did an Ask Me shift that night at the PCC. Luckily the rain had cleared out and we stayed dry during our shift.
Very early Saturday morning, the whole mission, young and senior missionaries, gathered in front of the Laie temple for a mission photo. The pictures to the left show some of the missionaries as we got ourselves organized for the picture - all 200 or so.
It started to cloud up and sprinkle a little bit as we got ready to take the picture.
Just like the last mission picture they took in front of the temple when we had only been on our mission about 6 weeks, a rainbow appeared over the temple.
You can see, the photographer captured the rainbow in this mission picture as well. I think some of the newer missionaries that had seen last year's picture had been praying for a rainbow to appear in this picture too. We were one of the few lucky missionaries that were in both rainbow mission pictures! I'm not sure you can pick us out in the group, but I'm in a turquoise flowered dress, left of the cascading fountain that goes down the middle of the picture, second row from the top.
With only a couple of weeks left before we go home, I insisted that we needed to have some beach time on our day off.
So, after the mission photo shoot, we headed to Pounder's beach for a few hours. It has been raining so much that the stream (bottom right picture) that flows down from the mountains was quite full. It usually doesn't flow all the way to the ocean, but today it had created a channel all the way out to the ocean (top right and bottom left picture). The top left picture shows all the sticks that had been washed up onto the shore recently.
You can also see that we had the beach all to ourselves! How am I going to survive without a beach close by to go enjoy?
Sunday morning before church, we had our exit interview with our Mission leader and his wife, President and Sister Bassett. When asked what the most valuable experience we had during our mission, I talked about how my relationship with Jesus Christ had been strengthened. Elder Rappleye shared both our feelings about how much we had come to love the people we worked with at the PCC and the students we served in the YSA 10th ward and how much we were going to miss them.
In sacrament meeting, our friend, Shine, gave a talk, and our friend, Duane and her cousin sang a beautiful musical number.
Sunday evening, we attended our district farewell dinner for both us and the Timothys, who are going home the same week as us. The Timothy's came out last May and have served a year. The dinner was held at the Tate's pad across the Kamehameha highway from us.
Each day the realization that we will be home soon becomes stronger. It is a bittersweet realization - excited to go back home to be near family, but sad to leave the people we have come to know and love,
