Our First Family Visitors: January 22 - 28, 2024

 

      The beginning of this week started slow, not much happening out of the ordinary.  The picture to the right was captured by Elder Rappleye, a couple of weeks ago.  I forgot to share it in the last post.  Every once in a while, we are treated to some great views in the sky, like amazing sunrises or sunsets, and rainbows after rainstorms.  This picture was taken outside the motor pool at the PCC.  Elder Rappleye happened to step out of his office and had a great view of the full rainbow.  I'm glad he pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of it.  On Wednesday morning this week, I got to view a gorgeous pink sunrise while I was in the pool doing my water aerobics workout - sorry no picture of that since I don't take my phone in the pool.

    

    On Wednesday last week, we finally stopped and snapped this picture.  It's on the side of the 7-11 store in Hau'ula.  We drive by this on our way home from town, but we are always in a hurry to get home and put away our groceries, so we never stop.  This trip we had no groceries, so we took the time to stop and get a picture.

      I'm so excited to have this bike to ride now.  Elder Duncan, who works in the motor pool with Elder Rappleye, offered to let us have his wife's bike because she doesn't use it.  They will be going home in April, and they are not shipping their bikes home.  I happened to mention that we would love to have bikes here, and that's when he offered us theirs.  He will give us the other bike when they leave.  He uses his bike to get to work every morning.  It's a very stripped-down version - no gears and coaster brakes.  We don't have room to store it at our pad, so we keep it locked up at the motor pool.  It's great to have a chance to take a little bike ride after work when it's nice enough.  I've been on a couple rides after work while I am waiting for Elder Rappleye to finish up his duties before we go home for the day.  When the time comes for us to go home, we'll find another missionary couple who would like to have them and pass the bikes along to them.

      BYU-H had club rush week on campus.  I found this picture posted on Facebook of the Elder's Quorum president in our student ward.  Rory Pilkington is the one on the left in the picture to the left.  He is from Australia and served a mission to New Zealand.  He works as a tour guide at the PCC.

      We were excited to have our youngest son, Derek, and his wife, Sharron, and their 10-month-old son, Parker come visit us for 6 days.  They are the first family visitors we have had since we arrived in Hawaii in November.  Their plane got in about two hours late on Thursday night, so by the time they arrived in Laie they were ready to hit the sack.  They stayed with Sharron's parents in an Airbnb in Laie on Iosepha Street, so it was close to us in Hau'ula.  Sharron's dad served his mission in Hawaii 30 years ago, so he is always looking for an opportunity to come visit Hawaii to see old friends.  He bankrolled the Airbnb, which made it possible for Derek and Sharron to be able to afford to come.

      On the list of things Derek wanted to do in Hawaii, a visit to Pearl Harbor was on the top of the list.  Friday, we drove into Honolulu and went to Pearl Harbor.  We have been wanting to visit Pearl Harbor as well, but we knew when visitors came, they would probably want to go to Pearl Harbor, so we were waiting to go when we could go with family. Thanks, Derek, for coming to visit!  I'm sure we will visit Pearl Harbor a few more times before we go home.

 

   It was a great day to go - not too crowded and slightly overcast so it wasn't too hot.  In the picture on the left, we are waiting to get on the boat to go out to the USS Arizona Memorial.  See how happy Derek is to be at Pearl Harbor?

     Picture to the right - On the shuttle boat to go to the USS Arizona Memorial.  Sharron's dad didn't get to go out to the memorial.  He had to take care of an issue with their rent car.  The car alarm had gone off when they were unlocking the car to put bags in it and the alarm wouldn't turn off.  He ended up having to wait for the rent car company to come tow the car and go back to the airport to get a new rent car.   He missed the whole Pearl Harbor experience, but we were glad we were stranded there with things to occupy our time and not on the side of the freeway somewhere.

 

The wall of remembrance in the background.  Neither Elder Rappleye or I had any direct relatives on the USS Arizona, but it's very sobering to remember the 1,177 men who were causalities that awful day in history. Grateful to those who sacrificed their lives so that we can enjoy our freedom today.

The opening on the memorial is where you can look down into the water and see part of the sunken battleship. The last time I was at Pearl Harbor was 51 years ago when I was only 15 years old.  I 'm pretty sure I didn't understand the significance of the event and sacredness of the place at that age. This visit impacted me more this time than my first visit did.

 

After the rental car situation got taken care of, we headed back towards Laie.  We decided to stop to eat dinner at one of Sharron's dad's favorite places to eat - Haleiwa Joe's in Kaneohe.

We thought we were getting there fairly early and there wouldn't be a long wait time, but no such luck - 1 1/2 hour wait.  We decided to wait it out.  There was a beautiful garden area to enjoy while we waited.

      The pictures don't do it justice.  This is a view of the restaurant.   We walked down a pathway to the left of the picture through the trees to the pond pictured.  There were koi and turtles in the pond.

     Here's our whole group on the walkway out to the gazebo that was out on the pond.  Parker, our grandson, was a champ waiting it out for our table.  It helped that he had both sets of grandparents there to entertain him.

   

   There were paths to wander around on, but it had been raining so they were a little muddy.  Elder Rappleye is looking back on one of the paths.  Right there it wasn't too muddy, but just beyond the bridge it was quite muddy, so we had to turn back.  The picture on the left is looking across the pond from the restaurant side towards the mountains.  The restaurant was right behind us on the hill.

    

  The food did not disappoint.  It was worth the wait.  Elder Rappleye and I shared the top sirloin and mashed potatoes.  I didn't take a picture of my salad.  If you didn't notice - like father, like son.  Derek got the top sirloin like his dad.

      

Saturday morning, we drove back down to Honolulu to the swap meet at Aloha Stadium.  We got out of our car, took this picture while we were waiting for the Adam's car to arrive, then it started to rain, and we ran back to our car.  We sat in our car for about 1/2 hour until it stopped raining.  

      The swap meet is all outdoors.  Vendors set up booths all around the outside of the stadium.  We walked all the way around looking and shopping.  We got us zippered hoodies (for these cooler days in winter) and flower clips for my hair.  All the women around here wear them in their hair.  If you put it on the right side, it means you are available.  If you put it on the left side, it means you are taken, so I'll be wearing it in my hair on the left side.

     Here's a picture of the inside of the stadium.  Elder Rappleye says they don't use the stadium anymore because it's condemned.

      Of course, we had to try some of the food choices.  I had gone to the restroom and when I came back, the food Jim bought was almost gone, so I didn't get a picture of it.  It was a Filipino dish, one kind had chicken and another kind had bananas in it. They only saved me a piece of the banana dish, so the chicken must have been good since it was all gone.  I liked the banana dish; it was like a pastry of some sort.

      After shopping we headed to Kaneohe.  We were meeting up with the Gutheries.  Sharron's dad, Jim, baptized Rachelle when he served his mission 30 years ago and now, she is married and has a family. They are still active members of the church in Kaneohe.  Jim had arranged to have us all go boating with them out to the Kaneohe sandbar and play in the ocean for the afternoon.  We were so excited to do this activity because it would probably be the only time we would get a chance to go out to the sandbar since we don't know anyone who owns a boat.

      We were going to be getting on the boat at the Kaneohe Yacht Club.  The pictures above are views of the docks at the yacht club.  You can see the dark clouds in the sky.  When we arrived, we were told that the ocean was too rough right now and we would have to wait and see if the waves calm down, then we could go out.  The water in the bay looks calm, but out of the bay it was very rough.

 

      The yacht club just happened to be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the yacht club, so there were a lot of people hanging out at the club.  Above is a picture of Derek's cute little family waiting and hoping that we would be able to go out on the boat.

Here we are relaxing at the club with our dry pina colada with raspberry syrup.  It was delicious.  I never thought we would be hob knobbing with the yacht club community while we are missionaries here in Hawaii.

An interesting thing they did while we were waiting is that they asked us all to gather in a big circle in the lawn area and hold hands.  Then a Hawaiian clergyman gave a speech and pronounced a blessing on the yacht club.  He spoke about Christian values and in the blessing, he recognized the need of Jesus Christ in our lives.  I guess we fit in more than I thought we did with the yacht club crowd. 

It didn't look like we were going to get out on the boat, so I finally went and sat by the edge of the pool and dangled my feet in the pool.  There was a lady about my age floating around in the deep end where I was sitting.  I thought I would try to engage her in a conversation, so I started asking her questions to find out about her.  Well, she just started talking to me like I was an old friend.  I found out all about her family, how she ended up living in Hawaii (she used to live in Utah, but now she lives on Maui, but her daughter lives in Kaneohe).  By the end of the conversation, she had invited me to come back to the yacht club tomorrow for her son-in-law's boat christening event.  She said it was going to be fun and there would be a catered meal.  I had no plans to attend, but it was nice of her to invite someone who she had just met to this private party.  That's the spirit of Aloha.

On Sunday, Derek Sharron, and Parker came to our YSA ward for sacrament meeting, then took Parker home for a nap.  Peekay had not gotten too many naps since arriving in Hawaii and needed to get caught up on sleep.  In the afternoon, after I had taught my conducting class, we headed back down to Kaneohe to have dinner with the Gutheries.  Another example of the Aloha spirit.  While there we met another senior missionary couple who serve in Kaneohe as MLS missionaries.  It was fun to hear how their MLS mission is like.

Here's a picture of Sharron's parents, Jim and Melissa (on the left) and the Gutheries (on the right)

Who thought a senior mission could be like a vacation? I'm grateful that the Church allows family members to visit and experience the places senior missionaries are serving. 

Laie - City of Refuge: January 15 - 20, 2024

 

       

 

      Monday was Martin Luther King holiday.  The students didn't have class, but the PCC was open.  So, we were working.  At the Food Warehouse, we were still missing our "boss", Lili.  She has been out since December 18th.  We were also missing Kapu'u, who is second in command.  Luckily Kalo was back and she was keeping things going.  As far as I could tell, everyone just knew what to do and was busy doing their duties.  We made it through the day without messing everything up.

      We always start the week off with ukulele lessons on Monday nights.  Here's a picture of our new ukulele.  We bought it at the Ukulele Experience store at the PCC.  They give the missionaries a discount and free engraving on the ukulele.  We had the Hawaiian Islands engraved on it, along with the name of our mission and dates of service.  If we end up not ever mastering playing the ukulele, we at least have a nice souvenir of our mission.

   

   Here is Elder Rappleye practicing the ukulele.  We have made it through the whole round of beginning lessons. This week's lesson we were back to learning the same songs we have already been taught.  So, we will be working on trying to get quicker at changing chords and not looking at the frets when we change chords.

Picture of the city of Laie

     Tuesday night we had our monthly Senior Missionary Devotional.  One of the Laie Stake Presidents spoke to us and told us about some of the history of Laie. We have heard some of what he told us, but we learned quite a bit about Laie's history.  One of the things we learned was that Laie was known as a city of refuge, Before1819, Laie was a puʻuhonua, or a sanctuary for fugitives.  As long as the fugitives were within the city boundaries, they were safe from their pursuers. The stake president compared this history of Laie being a city of refuge, to it also being a place of spiritual refuge.  With the temple, BYU - Hawaii, and the PCC all within Laie, it makes Laie a unique place to find spiritual refuge from the world.  The mission of the PCC is "to spread the spirit of aloha throughout the world."  Aloha meaning love, acceptance, and welcome. In gospel terms spread the light and love of Christ throughout the world. Aloha is a way of living and treating others with love and respect.  If we, who live and serve in Laie, strive to instill aloha, then Laie will still be a city of refuge.

      At the beginning of January, we had cooler and rainy days, but this week we had almost perfect weather - sunny and not too warm.  It was delightful to be outdoors, so we took advantage of the nice weather and spent some time at two different beaches on Wednesday and Saturday, our days off.  With beaches everywhere you go, it doesn't take a lot of time to get to a beach.  On Wednesday, we headed down to Kahana bay.  We pass by this beach on our way to town to do our grocery shopping.  It looks very inviting every time we pass by.   I've been wanting to go spend some time there for quite a while.  It's a little further away from where we live, but still only 20 minutes or so.  The only problem was the closer we got the more overcast it was getting.  When we were about 5 minutes away, we decided it would not be a good day to go to Kahana Bay and turned around and headed back north.  By the time we reached Laie, it was nice and sunny.  So, we stopped at Hukilua Beach and soaked up some sun, walked along the beach, and played in the water.

      

      Since we didn't get to go to Kahana Bay on Wednesday, we decided to try again on Saturday.  This time we decided to do a hike that was across the highway from the bay before heading to the beach.  It was a short 1.2 mile hike called Kapa'ele'ele' trail.  So many of the trails get very muddy and slippery after it rains.  Since we had no rain this week, we thought it would be a good time to try hiking it.

      

     The hike was not a favorite of mine.  It was very overgrown and lots of gnats and mosquitos.  I was worried the whole way about centipedes.  They tell us they can sting and it really packs a punch.  Not realizing that the trail would be overgrown, I was wearing shorts and sandals.  Thankfully Elder Rappleye lead the way, hopefully shoeing all predators out of the path.  We walked past this wall of vines draping off a power line.

  

    The trail got narrow and steep.  I could totally see how slippery it would be if muddy and one could slide right off the path down the hillside.  Luckily it was dry, but there were quite a few big tree limbs across the trail that you had to climb over or under or around.  At the top we got a great view of the bay.

   

  On the way down, the trail was even steeper.  They had a rope along the trail that you could use to help assist you to not fall.  You would definitely need it if it was slippery.  We thought it was interesting that we did this hike the same week we were studying about Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life in the Book of Mormon. Although it wasn't a rod of iron like in Lehi's vision, the rope certainly reminded us of hanging on to the iron rod (Word of God) to get us safely home.

    

 Elder Rappleye is giving a demonstration of holding on to the rod (aka rope) in the picture above.  The picture to the right shows the rope along the trail.

      Elder Rappleye at the end of the trail, coming out of the forest, It put us out at the edge of the highway, so we had to walk along the highway to get back to the beach area.  You can probably understand why this hike is not a favorite of mine.

      Pictured above is both ends of the bay.  We loved that the water was calmer in this bay.  I wish we had a kayak or raft to paddle around in.  You can see that it's a wide-open beach with no one around, even though it's a Saturday!  Actually, there were people on the beach, but it obviously did not feel crowded at all.

      The weather cooperated again this week so we could play pickleball.  There are quite a few senior missionaries that like to come and play.  We only have two courts. We play short games of first team to 7 points, so we can quickly rotate in and out teams.

      This week we did initiatories at the temple on Thursday night.  Women only get to do 3 names at one appointment, but men can do 5 names because it's not as busy on the men's side.  You are not allowed to book back-to-back appointments.  You just have to fill your time slot and then if you want to do more names you can do more, but you have to go into the back of the rotation, so the wait time depends on how busy it is.  It is a busy temple, so I have not been able to do a second round yet.  The wait time is too long.  I don't want to keep Elder Rappleye waiting a long time in the lobby.

     Today was the third week of Conducting class, halfway through the course.  Here's a picture of the students practicing their conducting.  They are conducting the song "I Am A Child of God".  They learned how to conduct 4/4 time and how to conduct songs with fermatas (you can hold me as long as you want) in them.  They are quick learners.

      Pictured from left to right is Kawdalya from India, Rizza from the Philippines, Deepika from India, Taputailo from Samoa, Ylistia from the Philippines, Krystel from the Philippines, and Nicha from the Philippines.

      Sunday is definitely my favorite day of the week.  It is the day we get to have the most time and interaction with the students.  I am so impressed with how friendly they are and how much they know about the gospel.  The talks in Sacrament meeting by the students have been very good and you can tell they have strong testimonies of the gospel. They will strengthen the stakes of Zion wherever they end up after they are done with their schooling.

A lot of Rain in Paradise - January 8 - 13, 2024

        We started the week with rain on Monday.  It was raining when we got up and it rained all day.  At times it was fast and furious, but for most of the day it was a steady rain.  By the end of the day when we went to ukulele class, we saw a lake had formed in the grassy area by the HJG building where we have class.  It took days for the "lake" to disappear.  Probably because we kept having rain throughout the week, just not non-stop like on Monday.

     We found out that there is a movie theater in Kaneohe that has discounted movie rates on Tuesdays.  I wanted to go see the movie, "The Boys in the Boat" since I read the book.  So, after work on Tuesday, we drove down to the Windward mall where the theaters are and saw the movie.

      Thankfully it was a nice morning on Wednesday, so I could finally get back to the pool.  Now that the school schedule is back to normal along with the PCC schedule, I'm hoping the weather will cooperate so I can get to the pool every Wednesday and possibly Saturday mornings.

      We had a number of things we needed to get done on our day off on Wednesday.  One of them was to give Elder Rappleye a haircut. He hasn't gotten his haircut since we left, and it needed to be cut. Our daughter, Aimee, has been giving Elder Rappleye his haircuts since she got her cosmetologist license about 10 years ago. Before that I always cut his hair.  When we came to Hawaii, we were not sure if there would be a good place to get Elder Rappleye's haircut close to where we lived or if he would have to go into town or if I would have to go back to cutting his hair.  Elder Rappleye asked around for recommendations for places to go to get a haircut.  He did not like the reviews he was hearing of any of the places around Laie.  He didn't want to spend his time going to town to get his haircut on our days off.  So, when we saw that Costco had a haircutting kit on sale, we bought it as a "Christmas" gift knowing that we would save more than the cost of the kit by having me cut his hair.  I'm not too excited to be back in the haircutting business, but it seems to be the best option.  Here's Elder Rappleye with his new haircut.  It's not as good as Aimee can do, but it can't be worse than what we were hearing the barbers around here do.  Plus, it is basically free, and it can be done without wait time.  Elder Rappleye does have less hair now than when I used to cut it - does that make it easier?

   

   We weren't sure how long everything we needed to get done would take us, but after we got the haircut out of the way, we decided we had time to go to Laniakea Beach on the North Shore.  This beach is known for being a popular feeding and sunbathing area for sea turtles.  The best time is supposed to be between 11am - 1pm. We got out there around 11:45am.  We did see turtles swimming in the ocean close to shore.  Every once in a while, a fin or turtle head would pop up out of the water.  We could also see the turtles in the swell of the waves.  I tried to get a picture, but as you can see from the picture at the right, all I got was the waves.  They would pop up so unpredictably and in different places.  It was hard to get a shot of them.  The turtles never came up on the beach while we were there.

      We also got a good long walk on the beach before we gave up on the turtles and headed home.

      Everyone from the motor pool is back from vacation and they are fully staffed again. There are about 80 electric carts that motor pool is responsible to service every month.  Each department or person who has a cart is supposed to bring it to the motor pool every month to get serviced, but lots of time Elder Rappleye and Bry have to go looking for them and take them to the motor pool to get serviced.  It's about servicing 4 carts a day to keep on top of things.  Usually, they get behind early in the month and have to do a lot of carts the last two weeks of the month.  There are always things popping up to do and fires to be put out.  

       My boss, Lili was still out this week along with Kalo who helps in the warehouse. Kalo does a lot of the counting of inventory, so Kapu'u and I were doing all the counting of inventory this week. 

      Thursday has become our temple day, if I can remember to get online early enough in the week to get an appointment.  Thursday is usually a wide-open day after work with no commitments to get in the way of going to the temple.  It was another rainy and stormy cool day.  In fact, we had the coldest morning temperature since we arrived - a chilly 59 degrees!  I know a lot of you won't feel sorry for us, but with the humidity it feels a lot colder.  Plus, our pad has no furnace so we can't turn on the heat when it gets a little chilly.  We have kept all our windows open since we have arrived to help keep our pad from getting too hot because we don't have air conditioning either.  The problem is that there are several windows that we can't reach to close when the weather turns chilly.  The window right by where I sit at the desk is broken and we can't shut it.  3 windows are up high in our stairwell so we can't reach to close them either, For the last week or so we have woken up in the morning to a pretty chilly apartment.  We didn't bring with us any kind of winter clothing because we didn't think we would need any.  Thankfully it doesn't stay cold all day or for weeks at a time. There are unexpected trials here in paradise that we have not been prepared for.

 

      Saturday, we decided to try to combine a fun activity on the same day as grocery shopping.  We have not tried to do both in one day yet.  With it being Saturday and the roads and stores more crowded, we weren't sure how it would work.  But off we went.

      We did fun first.  Last Saturday we went to the northwestern part of the island.  This week, we headed for the southeastern most point of the island, Makapu'u Point. 

       There is a lighthouse on the point which was built in 1909.  We missed a turn on the way to the lighthouse which got us there about 30 minutes later than we had hoped.  It was 10:30 am and it was already packed with cars parked along the highway. Elder Rappleye decided to try our luck and pulled into what looked like a full parking lot.  But just as we were about to turn around and head out, someone pulled out of a parking space a little way in front of us, so we ended up getting a spot right near the trailhead. Score!

      The trail is a 2-mile round trip hike and it's uphill the whole way.  In the picture above you can see the parking lot down below and the view out to the ocean.  We were probably about two thirds of the way up at that point.  

      The picture on the right is Elder Rappleye with the lighthouse in the background.

      On a clear day you can see the islands of Moloka'i and Lana'i, but it was a bit hazy so we could barely see the shapes of the islands.  The picture below is our view of "the islands".

      Here's pictures of views from the top of the point.  You actually hike higher than the lighthouse and look down on it. It was well worth the hike up, fairly easy and paved all the way.

 

   You can see that it was pretty windy at the top.

      We left the point a little after noon and headed to Walmart and Costco.  Our stop to play did cost us, both places were pretty busy.  Thankfully we did not have a lot of shopping to do, so we were on the road back home by about 3pm.  Maybe we will be able to do more combined fun/errand trips in the future.

      On Sunday, our sacrament meeting was the highest attendance since we have been here.  It's the beginning of the semester, and there are a lot of new students who have moved into the ward.  They all want to "check" out the new Ward, aka girls checking out the boys and the boys checking out the girls.  Ha, the fun of a young single adult ward.  Here at BYU-H, the students have to get an endorsement from their bishop every semester in order to qualify to stay in school.  One of the requirements of the bishop is attendance at sacrament meeting.  We had over 90% attendance last week.  The goal is 100% attendance.  Second hour attendance however is not so good.

      Second week of conducting class and everyone came back.  In fact, we added one more student, so now we have 8.  I'm impressed with all of them.  We had them each take a turn to conduct a hymn in 3/4 time.  All did super and looked very comfortable in front of an audience. At the end of class, they all have to go into the keyboarding class and group conduct a hymn while the keyboarding students and teachers sing.  I'll have to try to remember to take a picture next week of the group.

      On the second Sunday of each month we have a district meeting.  It's a time for our district to get together and discuss the gospel and get to know each other better.  We have a new couple in our district, the Gammons.  Now we are not the newest couple in our district.  I think they said they were from Pennsylvania.  They are CES/Seminary and Institute missionaries.  Elder Gammon was CES for his career.  They will be teaching institute at BYU-H.  We have 5 couples in our district, 3 are BYU-H missionaries and 2 are PCC missionaries.  I provided chocolate Oreo cream pie for refreshments.

      It was transfers for the junior missionaries and both sisters in the YSA 10th Ward got transferred out to married student Wards.  Now we have two new junior sister missionaries, one of them is a brand new sister from the Philippines.

      Hopefully we have survived the coldest and wettest week of the winter.  We have also hit our two-month mark in Hawaii.  Although we are still learning the ropes, we do feel like some things are getting easier.  Hoping all of you in Utah are surviving the coldest, snowiest week of the winter so far.