More Visitors and Another Aloha "Oe: August 26 - September 1, 2024

     After 3 weeks in a row of having an Ask Me Shift at the Gateway Terrace in the PCC on Monday night, we finally were not scheduled this week, so we were able to go to ukulele lessons.  Needless to say, we were a little rusty.

  On our way into work on Tuesday, as we turned off the Kamehameha Highway and driving towards the back of the Polynesian Cultural Center, we were greeted with this lovely rainbow.  The low-lying clouds are covering the view that we usually have of the mountains.  We have been blessed to enjoy so many views of rainbows while we have been serving here in Hawaii.

    The not so fun part of serving at the PCC is the things you have to do because you are basically working a job at the PCC, only without pay.  This was the case on Tuesday morning. The silly picture of us to the right was taken in the Hawaiian Journey theater while we were waiting for the sexual harassment training everyone has to attend once a year.  This picture shows Elder Goodfellow giving us rabbit ears as Elder Rappleye took the picture.  I was laughing because I knew what Elder Goodfellow was doing.  Felt like we were in junior high school again - haha!  Some missionaries are still kids at heart.

   On Wednesday for our P-day, we decided since the weather was predicted to be unpredictable, we would do something indoors.  We found out that we can get into the Bishop's Museum for free with our PCC badges (and up to 5 guests free as well).  So, we decided to check it out before we did our grocery shopping.  It's in a big old brick building in Honolulu.    

  It was much bigger than I thought, 3 levels in the main hall, plus another two-level hall and then an exhibit hall and a planetarium. We had only planned to spend a couple of hours there, but we could have stayed much longer.  We spent most of the time in the main hall pictured to the left.  It has a lot of Hawaiian history and culture displays.

  We've seen many of these kinds of replicas of thatched "hales" at different places we have visited.

  We got a bonus treat - a concert!  These Japanese students were singing when we walked into the main hall.  They sang for about 15 minutes while we were there.  The acoustics in the main hall were amazing!

  

   Founded in 1889, Bishop's museum is the largest museum in Hawaii and has the world's largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts.  Originally the buildings were built to be a boy's school.


      Hopefully we will be able to get back to the museum again sometime before we leave, but we seem to add things to our bucket list as fast as we check things off our bucket list.

      Late Wednesday night, Elder Rappleye's sister, Patricia and her husband, Mike, came for a short, somewhat unexpected visit.  Their daughter, Meadow got married on the Big Island and they took a short side trip to see us.  We didn't know they were coming until a week before they arrived.

      They just stayed two nights and one day.  Long enough to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center for a day.  After we worked in the morning, we met up with them to spend the afternoon in the PCC.

    They were able to see the new canoe show that they are doing on the lagoon.  If you look closely at the top left picture you can see the Samoan men vigorously rocking the canoe with their dancing.  Both canoe navigators are working hard to not fall in.  In the top right picture, you can see that the back canoe navigator is in the water - he ended up falling into the water because of the rocking motion.

     We spent time in the village of Fiji.  It's the first time I have seen this dance presentation on the left in the Fiji village.

      We also watched the Ha, night show with Patricia and Mike.  It's the fifth time we've seen the show, but it's so amazingly good every time.  I'll never get tired of watching it.

     On Friday, the motor pool had a going home lunch for the Duncans.  Elder Dan Duncan worked out in the motor pool with Elder Rappleye for the first 7 months we were here, then they transferred him over to the visitor's center with his wife, Stacey. Elder Rappleye was disappointed to have Elder Duncan get a change in assignment. We really like the Duncans and are going to miss them.  Luckily, they live fairly close to us in Springville, Utah so we'll be able to visit them when we get back home.

   I got to come to the luncheon that was held out at Seven Brothers in Kahuku.  In the pictures to the left, the boss, Anthony Wong, is presenting to the Duncans gifts of appreciation for their service.  It started to rain on us, so in the top right picture several of the group is huddled under a patio umbrella.

      Elder Rappleye is presenting Elder Duncan a special lei we made for him.  We put a few of his favorite mission activities on the lei - 2 golf club/golf ball charms, 2 excavator charms with his name engraved on them, and one Laie temple charm.

      On Sister Duncan's lei we attached little white flowers and nursing charms since she was the mission nurse as well as serving at the Visitor's Center.  She also had a Laie temple charm on hers as well.

     They are wearing the leis in their picture above, but you can't see the charms on them very well.

     The Laie temple is closing for 6 weeks, and this week was the last week it would be open until October 21st.  We have been trying to get an endowment appointment for weeks, but it has been fully booked.  I would log on several times a week hoping for a cancellation that would open up 2 spots that we could take.  We were finally able to secure seats in the Friday 4:30pm session.  We were so happy to get to do an endowment session before it closed because we haven't been able to do endowments for weeks.  The only availability has been for sealings or initiatory.  We will miss our weekly temple service.

      Bishop Causse, the presiding Bishop of the church, and his wife came to visit the PCC.  The picture above was taken by one of the senior missionaries who were working in the mission settlement and noticed them watching the canoe show Saturday afternoon.  He came to check on the properties of the church, and the PCC is one of them.  

      The Food Warehouse was given a heads up that he would be coming to inspect the warehouse on Saturday, so the student workers worked really hard the last few days of the week and got the warehouse cleaned, organized, and in tip-top shape before his arrival.  I wasn't there because I don't go into work on Saturdays, but we did get this message from the VP over the warehouse.  Sounds like all the hard work was worth it.

      

      Bishop Causse also held a devotional for all the French speaking students at BYU-H.  The picture below shows a group picture of all who attended the devotional.  I found three students in the picture (look for the red arrows) that we know from our YSA Ward.

      

     Saturday, we went to Pounder's beach for an hour in the morning.  The rest of the day was spent listening to the first BYU football game of the season and getting the welcome handouts prepared to pass out at church on Sunday.  At 3:30pm we had to get ready for our shift helping at the Hale Ohana luau, so we didn't get to listen to the 4th quarter of the game.  I was manning the entrance to the luau and Elder Rappleye was providing security at the exit.  Right at the busiest time when there were lots of people waiting to get their tickets scanned for entrance into the luau, an older lady who was in an electric scooter lost control of her scooter and ran into another guest and knocked her to the ground.  It caused quite a bit of confusion.  The lady who got knocked over had abrasions on her leg that needed attending to by the first aid personnel. We finally got the injured lady off the ground and onto a bench to wait for first aid to arrive.  Then the student worker scanning tickets was able to get the waiting guests admitted into the luau and things calmed down.  Not the kind of excitement we like to have while we are doing our shift.

      Sunday was the first Sunday for a lot of the new students that are coming to study for Fall semester.  We wanted to start the new school year off with some words of encouragement for all of the students in our YSA Ward, so we made 120 of these bookmarks pictured to the right and passed them out as we welcomed them to the YSA 10th Ward at the door of the chapel.  I could tell many of the new students were nervous to be there.  So many of them have come long distances, leaving family and friends, to a campus that is totally unfamiliar to them, where everyone is a stranger. Some are still struggling with the English language and stress about their classes is high.  I am impressed by their courage and faith in taking this opportunity to learn and improve their lives.  Many of them will not be able to return to see their families for 4 years until they have graduated.  They are making such huge sacrifices but will be so blessed for it.  They come from all over the world.  They are the future of the world and church - definitely youth of the noble birthright. 

    It was our monthly munch and mingle on Sunday evening.  Sister Renee King and I wore our matching dresses, so we had to get a picture of us in our matching outfits.  Sister King is a single sister from South Jordan, UT and serving as a seamstress at the PCC.

   It was the official "Aloha 'Oe" for the Duncans. One last time to say goodbye and wish them safe travels home on Tuesday.

 

Changes in the Food Warehouse, and Tahiti Devotional: August 19 - 25, 2024

 

     For the third week in a row, we started the week off doing an Ask Me shift at the Gateway.  We had heard that there were Fiji dignitaries at the Polynesian Cultural Center that day and as we were standing outside the Gateway building, two black carts (aka "limousines") drove by with the Fiji delegation of dignitaries.  By the time I got my phone out to take a picture, they were out of the carts and standing at the entrance to the Gateway.  The picture to the left is the best picture I could get of the group since I couldn't leave my post.  That was the most exciting thing that happened during our shift.  It was still a little slow like last week, but not quite as much.

  We have another new student worker in the food warehouse.  She is Faith and she's from the Philippines and the first student worker that I've worked with that is married.  She just got married in April.  Faith has actually been working at the warehouse for a few weeks already, I'm just a little slow at getting a picture with her.

     This week in the food warehouse we are losing some of our space in the chill area.  They are giving some of our space to the kitchen, so I took some before pictures on Tuesday, the day before the change, of the areas affected.  The top picture to the left is in the chill 2 area looking into the kitchen area behind the gate.  The bottom two pictures show the shelving on the right and left side of the gate that we use to store inventory items that need to be chilled.  You can see that there are two sections of shelves on either side of the gate.

    The pictures to the right are showing the Chill 3 area.  This chill 3 area is on the other side of the chill 2 area to the left of it. The bottom right picture shows the gate looking into the kitchen area, just like in the chill 2 area.   The other two pictures show the shelving on either side of the gate.  In the lefthand picture, it already shows one of the shelves taken out that used to be in the empty space.

     On Wednesday when the warehouse is closed, they made the change over.  After pictures to come later in the post.

  We checked the tide schedule for Laie Bay and noticed it was going to be low tide early Wednesday morning.  We have been wanting to try to walk over to Goat Island from the point in Laie Bay, but it has to be done at low tide.  We have watched people walking across to Goat Island during low tide and it seems to be fairly easy and doable.  We arrived at Hukilau Beach around 8am and walked around the bay to the far north side where it is the shortest distance to Goat Island.  As we were walking to the point where it's shallowest and shortest distance to the island, we noticed the swells were looking rather large and started to have second thoughts.  After talking to a local that happened to be right by the point, we decided it might not be a good day to try it.  He said that in the Fall the tides get a lot lower and that is when it's a good time to try it. But we did decide to see how far we could go just to get a feel for it.  You can see in the picture Elder Rappleye headed out into the water with the island in the background.  You can also see the rocks under the water that you walk across on, so you have to wear a good pair of water shoes.  

    I had walked out a little further than Elder Rappleye is in the picture when I started feeling stinging on my right leg.  I realized I had been stung by a Portuguese man-o-war that was in the water (see picture at right).  I immediately said, "I'm done, I'm out of here" and got out of the water as quick as I could and rubbed sand on my leg to try and lessen the stinging sensation.  We had forgotten to check the moon charts to see if it was close to the full moon, that's when there are a lot of "blue bubbles" (what the locals call Portuguese man-o-wars) in the water.  The stinging sensation was quite intense for about 30 minutes despite rubbing sand on my skin.  When I washed the sand off I could see red welts all around my ankle.  We have managed to avoid the blue bubbles for 9 months, but they finally got me.  I'm hoping to not repeat that experience again during the rest of our mission here.  We do hope to get another better opportunity to go over to Goat Island before we leave.

  We were planning on staying at the beach for the summer activity the PCC was putting on for our department and the luau department workers.  But I wasn't feeling like sticking around because my leg was hurting and the only person there at that time was Rowan, one of our new employees at the food warehouse.  Rowan is a local girl who lives in Laie and just graduated from high school in the spring.  She is going to BYU-Idaho in January, so she'll only be around until December.  I heard that after we left, more people finally showed up around 11 am for food and games.

      Later that afternoon my leg was feeling good, so we decided to fit in a short hike to 'Ehukai Pillbox near Sunset Beach on the North Shore.  The pictures to the right show us at the trailhead (top left), at one of the steep sections of the hike (top right), and the bottom pictures are views of the trail.  Notice the rope in the bottom left picture.  They string rope on the steep portions of the trail to help climbers, especially for when the trail is muddy and slippery.

Views on the way up.

Views at the pillbox.

This pillbox was the largest one we have seen.  You could walk right into it without having to bend over. 

Inside the pillbox, the paintings were well done.  Look at the ocean scene that was on one of the walls. 

We didn't have time to hike the loop trail from the pillbox, so we may have to go back sometime and do the whole hike.  Pictures to the left were taken on the way down the trail.  You can see in places it was rather steep.  This huge rock was right in the middle of the trail.

Thursday morning when I came into work, the remodel of our chill area in the food warehouse was complete.  Here is the after pictures.  To the right is pictures of the chill 2 area.  There is now only one row of shelving units on either side compared to two rows of shelving.  The gate across the back has been moved forward to give the kitchen more room on their side of the gate.

To the left is pictures of the chill 3 area.  All the shelving along the back in front of the gate is new.  There is no access now to this gate between the kitchen and the food warehouse.  Instead of the shelves facing each other with a big open area between them, the shelving is now in an L-shape.

I forgot to take pictures of the before in chill 1 area, but this is how chill 1 looks now.  They have moved the gate forward and now the ice machine is in the kitchen area instead of our area.  The luaus, gateway buffet, and the islands that use ice will now have to go to the kitchen to get their ice everyday.

Saturday morning, we enjoyed another uplifting devotional.  This time from the island village of Tahiti.  Each island village in the PCC hosts a devotional throughout the year.  This devotional is our fourth island devotional - Hawaii, Samoa, and Aotearoa have been the other 3.  We also attended a Mission Settlement devotional, which was the first devotional we attended.

The pictures to the left show the welcoming committee. Don't the students all look so sharp in their Tahitian outfits?

The devotionals are held in the island villages of the PCC.  All the senior missionaries are invited (required) to attend.  It's one of the few times that PCC, BYU-H, and Visitor's Center missionaries are all together.

They started the devotional with raising the Tahitian flag and singing the national anthem of Tahiti.

The theme of the devotional was "The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra."  Tahiti is part of French Polynesia, so everyone in Tahiti speaks Tahitian, and French, and some know English.  So, the opening and closing songs were sung in all three languages, first English, then Tahitian, and then French.

The speakers, clockwise from top left, are students working in the Tahitian village and the last speaker was President Grace, president of the PCC.  He always gets to speak at the devotionals.  Poevai (bottom right picture), the only girl speaker told us she is 19 years old, a junior at BYU-H, and a non-member.  In her talk, she was quoting Book of Mormon scriptures, and conference talks.  I would have never guessed she was not a member of the church if she had not told us.

They sang to us a song during the devotional and then another one after the closing prayer.  Of course, they both was sung in Tahitian, so we had no idea what they were saying, but they sing beautifully and joyfully.

They always serve refreshments after the devotionals.  This time they had a lot of fresh fruits.  They set up tables around a big shade tree and set the food out on the tables (bottom left picture).  The top picture is a group picture they had taken after the devotional, and the bottom right picture is a post at the entrance to the building that was decorated for the occasion.

After the Tahiti devotional Saturday morning, we decided to try hiking Pu'u Ma'eli'eli trail.  It had rained quite a bit during the week, and we weren't sure how muddy the trail might be.  It's only about 40 minutes away from where we live.  Here we are at the trailhead.  You have to park in a shopping center parking lot, then walk about a quarter of a mile along the highway to get to the trailhead.

The beginning of the trail was a bit muddy, but I'm not sure that part of the trail ever dries up because it was quite shady.  It was also a roller coaster type of trail with a lot of up and then down portions of the trail.  The picture above shows the up portion (left side) and then the view from the top looking down (right) on the next part of the trail.

We also saw a little wild piglet on the trail.  I didn't get a very good picture of it because it was always scurrying along the trail ahead of us.  From this picture it looks like a dog but believe me it was a little piglet.

Just as we got almost to the top it started to rain.  We came to this sign.  It says according to Hawaiian Mythology, pu'u ma' eli'eli means "digging hill".  The companion gods Kane and Kanaloa once raced to the top of the hill and had to "dig" into the slope with their hands to climb up.  I don't know if they had to use their hands because of the steepness or because it was muddy and slippery.

It also tells about the bunker or pillbox at the summit.  It's a remnant of the Heeia combat training area built during WWII.

Because it was raining while we were at the pillbox, the view was obscured by the clouds.  We will probably have to hike it again in order to enjoy a better view than what we got this time.

The trail was definitely muddier hiking down because of the rain, so we had to be careful not to slip on the way down.

   We had another opportunity to have the junior missionaries over for dinner on Sunday.  Sister Earl has been assigned to our Ward for 6 months now, so we've had her over for dinner many times.  Her companion, Sister Mansaloon is a brand-new missionary that Sister Earl is training.  She is from the Philippines.  We love having the missionaries over for dinner.  Since they serve in a YSA ward with everyone being students, they don't get any dinner invitations except from us.

I have started teaching a new piano student.  Thanush was one of my conducting students and now he is starting the piano course.  He is from India and just got married a week ago on August 17th.  Hopefully he will be able to continue through the whole course and graduate. I haven't taken a picture of him at piano lessons yet, but here's a picture of him with this wife.   

Lots of Excitement - Expectant and Unexpectant: August 12 - 18, 2024

    

     We are excited that this is the last week the Polynesian Cultural Center is on their summer schedule..  After this week it goes back to the normal schedule, which means they are closed on Wednesdays.  Even the regular employees are excited about it.

     It started out not so good, but it provided some excitement at the food warehouse that even involved Elder Rappleye.  One of our forklifts died in the middle of the dock while working on putting away a delivery.  Satoru was driving it and stopped and went to do something else really quick and when he came back and turned it on, it wouldn't start and showed an "error" light on the dashboard.  That's when we had to call Elder Rappleye over from the motor pool to come check it out.  Elder Bates and Elder Rappleye came over, looked at things, and determined they needed to call the manufacturer to find out what was wrong.  The manufacturer determined it was the battery - it was shot - we would have to get a new one at the cost of $10,000.

  We couldn't leave it in the middle of the loading dock because it was in the way for receiving deliveries.  So, the next thing we needed to figure out was how we were going to get the forklift moved out of the way.  They determined that the forklift was too heavy, so the battery needed to be taken out of the forklift.  The battery weighed over a ton.  The picture to the left, near side, show Saturo, Blankey, and Ralph pushing and finally sliding the battery far enough out to get it mostly on a pallet. The picture on the far left shows Lili using the other forklift to haul the battery into the warehouse.  Because it wasn't completely on the pallet, the boys had to hop on the pallet to counterweight the pallet so the battery wouldn't fall off.

     The next problem was to get the forklift out of the way.  With the battery out, the plan was to lift the forklift onto the other forklift and move it to the side of the loading dock.  The problem was with all the posts located in the loading dock it was difficult to get the working forklift in the right position to lift the dead forklift.  It took quite a while, but with Lili's excellent maneuvering skills, she finally got the dead forklift lifted onto the forks of the working forklift and very slowly and carefully moved it to the side of the loading dock.  What seemed like an impossible task somehow got accomplished with teamwork.  Luckily it was a slower day for deliveries, and we were not having to deal with receiving deliveries at the same time.

     Monday evening, we were scheduled again to do an Ask Me Shift in the exact same location as last week - Gateway.  It was not very busy.  It appears that mid-August is a good time to come to the PCC.  With school already started in some places (like Hawaii) or starting next week in a lot of other places, travel is down.  If you like less crowds, you now know when a good time to come visit the PCC.

   Another pig carcass encounter in the kitchen on Tuesday at lunch time.  If I have too many more of these, I may have to give up eating pig.

    Wednesday night was our senior devotional.  We usually have it on the third Tuesday night of the month, but this month we had a visiting General Authority come and we had it on Wednesday night.  Elder Peter M. Johnson and his wife spoke to us at the visitor's center.  We had an Ask Me shift right before the devotional.  We had to go straight over to the Visitor's Center, run into the bathroom and change from our Aloha outfits to our missionary attire, so we ended up sitting towards the back of the auditorium.  After the meeting, we did get to walk right by them and shake their hands and thank them for coming and speaking to us.  It's the first General Authority to come speak to the missionaries in our mission since we have arrived.  We have had General Authorities come and speak at BYU-H at the student devotionals, but they haven't spoken specifically to the missionaries.  When they speak at BYU-H, their comments are directed to what the students need to hear.  Elder Johnson's comments were directed to what we as missionaries need to hear.  He mentioned the need is great for more senior missionaries.  Only 43% of the requests for senior missionaries are being filled.  He said that when you are serving a full-time mission you are keeping your covenants by living the law of consecration.  He also spoke about ways we can come unto Christ.  Being engaged in living the gospel of Christ - faith, daily repentance, baptism and keeping our covenants, and listening to the spirit is coming unto Christ.  Living the gospel of Christ produces spiritual monument.  The other way to come unto Christ that he mentioned was to minister to the one just like the Savior does.

Here's our group picture taken in the Visitor's Center with all the senior missionaries, Elder Peter Johnson and his wife, and the mission presidency and their wives.

   Thursday morning at work, when a delivery truck was backing into the loading dock, the truck clipped one of the sprinkler heads on the ceiling and set off the fire alarm and water started gushing down all over the truck and loading dock.  He had cleared the first sprinkler head, and I guess he thought he was okay with the other one or maybe he didn't see that one.

 Everyone came out of the office and warehouse to see what was going on. Even the people upstairs in uniforms came down because the alarm was going off and they didn't know if there was an actual fire or not.  After about 5 minutes, Roland (lower right picture) came and unlocked the valve and turned off the water.  Then Jared got out the big water vac and started cleaning up the mess.  That made for two exciting events in one week at the food warehouse. I'm not sure that will ever be topped the rest of the time we are here.  Thank goodness it was an easy fix to put a new sprinkler head on and they had it fixed before I left for the day.  An actual fire could have been devastating.

   We went to the temple that night to do sealings.  We couldn't get any one to tag along with us, but when we got there, Elder and Sister Goates, and Elder and Sister Jacobson were there, and we ended up doing the sealing session with them.

 Saturday morning, I had a training meeting for the food warehouse team.  I have not been attending the once-a-month training meetings, but Sister Sauve was asked to conduct the meeting, so I went to support her.  

     I caught a picture of the daily pineapple delivery on the dock before the meeting.  92 cases of pineapples are delivered everyday - 7 pineapples to a case.  

      They give out monthly awards for the outstanding student workers at the training meeting.  The picture to the right is Blankey (left), Ralph (upper right), and Jared (bottom right).  All 3 received awards for their hard work during the month.  The training was on one of the 7 cultural beliefs of the PCC - Take Charge - See it, Own it, Solve it.  In other words - S.O.S. - Help.

     After the training meeting, we headed to town to do our grocery shopping.

    We had to say goodby to Elijah Ebert.  He has been in our YSA Ward since we got here last November.  He has been a membership clerk and the Ward Clerk.  He has been very helpful in getting me a list of birthdays (a new one at the start of every semester) of the students in our ward so I can pass out birthday treats. He is going to Belgium to work for the church in an academic internship.  We will miss him in our ward.  He also has been a tour guide at the PCC, so we will miss seeing him around at the PCC.  The best of luck to Elijah in his new endeavors.  He says he'll return to BYU-H after his internship, but we will probably be back home by then.