The Week Before Christmas: December 18 - 24, 2023

         This week was another fairly quiet week.  It was still a bit rainy and even a little on the chilly side after dark.

    

  There was live entertainment from 6pm to 7pm at the Hukilua Markektplace all week.  Most of the week it was rainy at that time of the day, but we manage to make it down on Tuesday night to listen to this trio of sisters sing.  

    

  You can see by our picture to the right, that we actually had to pull out our jackets for that night.  It was a bit on the chilly side, but definitely not Utah cold.

        

On Wednesday when we did our town run it was rainy going into town.  While we were in Honolulu it stopped raining, but on our return trip the rain returned in large quantities.  I took this picture of the car in front of us.  You can see there was a lot of standing water on the road that we had to drive through.  It was coming down faster than it could drain off.

    

  We also made it down to the Marketplace on Thursday night to hear another performing group.

      Most mornings at my job in the Food Warehouse, we have a short devotional.  Elder Rappleye also has devotional out at motor pool.  One morning I took these pictures of some of the students that work the morning shift.  In the top picture from left to right is Jared, Third, Lisi, and Saturo.  In the picture to the right is Kapu'u, the second in command and knows everything about how the food warehouse is run, Sister Jones, who does the receiving end of all the orders, and hiding behind Sister Jones is Terry.  Beyond the clear plastic door behind Lisi, is three other big areas - the 2 chill areas and then the big freezer.

     Speaking of the Food Warehouse, I had a little accident this week.  While I was in the chill area counting inventory, I was standing right by the doorway and got hit by the forklift.  Luckily, I just got hit at my ankle and it got a little scraped up.  Kalo, who was driving the forklift didn't see me standing on the other side of the plastic strips and came through the doorway and hit me.  At first, I thought it was my fault because she had honked the horn, but I was so intent on taking inventory that I didn't pay enough attention to her honking.  But I was later told that because her load was higher than she could see over, she was supposed to be backing in with the cab coming in first so she could see what was in front of her.  Plus, she was supposed to go slower when going through the doors just in case someone is on the other side.  She felt pretty bad about it.  I tried to help her not feel so bad by giving her a hug and telling her I would be fine.  I escaped with only scratches and not as much bruising as I thought there would be.  I guess there was a little bit of fault on both sides.  All is good.  It is healing.

    

      On Friday night, we had elf duty at the Hukilua Marketplace with Mr. and Mrs. Claus.  I was helping with line control and taking the pictures with Santa for all the visitors, and Elder Rappleye was handing out the candy canes to all the children.  It was fun to see all the different nationalities of people who all wanted to take their picture with Santa Claus. Santa and Mrs. Claus were one of the senior missionary couples, the Tanners, to keep with missionary guidelines, no sitting on Santa's lap was allowed.

      I don't think I've shared in the blog all the decorations at the Aloha Center on the BYU-H campus.  The Aloha Center is the student activity building.  It has a bookstore, mailroom, game room, and a few other things in that building.  It was a very festive place to go and hang out for the students.

     

 We were given a dozen fresh eggs from my cousin Julie and a bunch of fresh picked bananas from my Aunt Faith.  I took a picture of the eggs because I have never seen green eggs before.  I guess Dr. Seuss wasn't making it up, there really is green eggs and ham, Sam I Am.  Julie called them Easter eggs because they don't need to be dyed.

      

I spent time putting together Christmas bags for those in our district, the sister missionaries assigned to our Ward, and for Uncle Jay, Aunt Faith, and cousin Julie's family.  Each kind of candy represents something about the nativity.  I'm including the pictures of each one just so I can remember what was included in case I want to do it again sometime.  Rocky Road and Sugar Babies are very hard to find and as such, quite pricey as far as candy goes.  Amazon to the rescue, but since there is no 2-day delivery here in Hawaii, I had to plan ahead to get them here in time.

  

   We also inherited a ream of printer paper that was sitting on the desk in our pad, so I used some to make the fan angel ornament that I attached to each of the gift bags.  The angels are so simple and easy yet, look fancy at the same time.  I left my angel ornaments white, but if you have watercolor paints, they look really pretty painted all different colors.

     Our Saturday off we were cleaning house because we were having the sister missionaries over for dinner on Christmas eve.  We were asked to speak in sacrament meeting on Christmas eve, so we were preparing our talks as well.  Our topic: Jesus Christ is The Treasure, conference talk by Elder Dale G. Renlund.

      Here is a picture of Sister Lin, from Taiwan and Sister Ho from Boston.  Sister Lin has only been a missionary just a little longer than we have been.  Sister Ho has been here for over a year.  We served lasagna.  It was the first time Sister Lin has eaten lasagna.  She said she liked it, and I believe her because she had seconds.  They don't get invited to dinner very often because they are serving in a student ward, so they were very excited to have a dinner invite on Christmas Eve.  I guess we'll be having them over more often.

      After dinner we had just enough time to clean up the dishes from dinner and go to the chapel in Laie where the mission office is.  The mission had planned a musical Christmas devotional for all the missionaries - senior and junior.  We have quite a lot of talent in our mission as you can see from the program.  At the end of all the musical numbers, Elder Goates read the nativity story from the scriptures.  After the program there was refreshments and time to visit.  Definitely a little different Christmas eve than we are used to, but still a very good way to celebrate the birth of the Savior.

    

 I'll end this post will the thought in the picture to the right:

Believe like Mary

Trust like Joseph

Hope like Shepherds

Seek like Wise Men

Worship like Angels

Love like Jesus

Truly He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords

May we all Come, Let us Adore Him.

Learning More About the Island: December 11 - 17, 2023

       We had a somewhat quiet week.  It was another pretty wet week with quite a bit of rain.  We have learned to take an umbrella with us when we go anywhere or else we might end up wet.  

   

   On Tuesday night we had another assignment to help with the luau.  This time we were helping at the Hale Ohana luau venue.  I was manning the exit area, so I was able to snap some pictures of the program.  The picture on the right is not the best, but hopefully you can see the procession announcing the queen, and the queen coming into the venue.

      

These pictures just show some of the dancers performing.

    After our shift we went and ate at the Gateway restaurant.  Our server, Martyn, took this picture.  It's not the best picture of us, but it is a good picture showing the murals on the walls in the Gateway.

     

 We loved our server Martyn and hope to see him again some time when we are eating there again.

   

 Wednesday was our day off, but the mission needed people to go down to Honolulu and pick up new cars for the junior missionaries.  Since we weren't working, we volunteered to go.  We all drove into Honolulu in the mission van.  There was 4 of us picking up new Volkswagon Tiguans.  Elder Rappleye and I both drove a car back to Laie.  These cars only had about 14 miles on them.  The newest cars we'll ever drive!

   

  

 In the afternoon, we drove up to Haleiwa on the North Shore.  We were told it was a cute little town with a bunch of little shops.  We wanted to check it out and hopefully do a little Christmas shopping.  It was an overcast day and it did rain on us while we were there.

    This is the main shopping area.  All the little shops reminded me of Park City, but the town had a more beach/island casual feel to it, and it was much smaller.  There is a shop there that is supposed to have the best shaved ice, but we didn't get some.  It wasn't a very hot day, rather cool and rainy so we didn't feel like trying the shaved ice.  We'll have to go back another time to get some shaved ice.

We did happen to find a cute little shop with everything made by locals.  It was my favorite shop.  We did buy some gifts there for Elder Rappleye's brother and sister-in-law.

Haleiwa is situated on a little bay.  We were wearing our missionary badges and a guy came up and just started talking to us.  He's a recently returned missionary who served in the Odgen Utah mission.  Several times people have noticed our badges, and they just start talking to us.  Usually, they are members of the church.  But it is fun to meet local church members.

The rest of the week was just normal workdays.  On Saturday they were having a 5K race through the Polynesian Cultural Center.  We volunteered to help monitor the course.  We had to be there at 5am in the morning.

Here are all the senior missionaries that volunteered to help monitor the course during the race. Sister Duncan, Sister Young, and Elder Young (the people we had breakfast with at Papa Ole's the Saturday before) are in the top picture.  Elder Duncan and Elder Rappleye in the lower picture.  Since we were there at 5am and the race didn't start until 7:30am, we had plenty of time to chill waiting for our assignments on the course.

I was assigned a spot near the 2K spot (for the first lap) and the 4K spot (for the second lap).  You can see the signs in the picture.  So as the runners pasted by my spot, I would point the way and cheer them on.  The second lap was fun because I could tell them they were almost done, just 1K left.

      The top picture is the group of lady runners that I called the Santa elves.  They were all dressed in Christmas attire and sporting Santa hats.  It was fun to see their Christmas spirit.                                                                                                                      The picture on the right is Elder Archibald.  He was just walking the course.  He and Sister Archibald are the couple over all the senior missionaries serving at the PCC.  They help all the new PCC missionaries get settled in and assign the jobs to fit the missionaries.  They are also the one's who we went to dinner with the first night we were here.

      Elder Neeley is in the top photo.  This was his first lap, so he was able to give me a smile.  Not so on his second lap.  The Neeley's were our mentoring couple that helped answer our questions and was our first friends in the mission.  They are in our district and live just down the hill and across the highway from us.

Sister Bodily and Sister Archibald are in the picture above.  Sister Bodily and her husband have only been here about two weeks longer than we have.  They were in our training group. 

Next year, if they do this race again, I will have to try running/walking it.  I didn't know about it in time to train for it.                                                                                                                                               

In the afternoon I was hoping to go to the beach by our house, but it was windy, overcast and cool.  We decided instead to go up the road north to Kahuku.  It's the small town just north of Laie.  They have a big food truck area where there used to be a sugar mill.

There were some fun old relics and sculptures around the place.  An old wooden train engine, a wooden water wheel, and a one armed woman.  Not sure, but maybe they used to dress like that when picking the sugar cane.

     There were lots of fun painted murals on the different food trucks.  We did not try any food this time since we had already eaten.  This was plan B, so we didn't know we would end up coming.  This was another place where I hear a sister yelling to me, "How are you sister?"  When I turned around and saw a young lady, I was having a hard time knowing who she was or if I had meet her before.  Turned out we hadn't meet her before, but she and her husband are members of the church and own one of the food trucks there - Zephanie's Pizza.  She was so friendly.  She said she loves to see the senior missionaries come to the Kahuku food trucks.  She grew up in Sandy, UT.  We will have to go back sometime and try a pizza.

We decided to go further up the highway to see if we could find the Turtle Bay pill box hiking trail.  This map shows Turtle Bay and Kawela Bay.  The point dividing the two bays is where we hiked to the pill box.  Pill boxes are all over the island.  They are left over from WWII,  They were used to guard the coast line of Hawaii.  Soldiers would hide in the pill box and be able to fire their weapons if the enemy came near.

The first thing we came across on our hike to the pill box was this banyan tree.  It's super huge and the sign there told us that this tree has been featured in the TV series Lost and the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean.

We popped out from the trail to find the most gorgeous bay, Kawala bay, with hardly any one on the beach. This bay was used in the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The water was a lot calmer because of the bay formation.  We were wishing we had our swim gear with us because the water looked so inviting and it was a lot warmer and sunnier than it was on our side of the island. 

We continued walking along the coastline until we found the pill box pictured in the top picture.  We continued walking along the coastline towards Turtle Bay hoping to see a few turtles, but we never saw any.   I think we are not coming at the right time of day.  Going back into the wooded area we had sort of lost our way because there were many different paths to follow.  Thankful we finally came across a sign directing us back to the banyan tree where we could get our bearings again.  Another place to revisit someday.

      Just to give you an idea of how expensive groceries are in Hau'ula and Laie, I took these two pictures of prices at Tamara's grocery store.  Remember that Tamara's in the cheaper of the two grocery stores nearby.  The small package of Hostess Chocolate Donuts shows $12.99 and the Campell's Chucky soup is $4.19.  Notice that is the in-store special price.  The retail price is $15.49 for the donuts and $4.59 for the soup.  You can see why we go into town to do most of our grocery shopping.  Lucky for us, we were at Target in Kaneohe the other day and saw that the bags of Hostess chocolate donuts were on sale for $2.29.  You can bet we bought a bag.  What a steal!