August 30, 2015
Greetings and good evening! We’ve just gotten home from a very long Sunday. Because the Director and his wife had a meeting they needed to attend (related to the 150 year anniversary celebrations this fall), they switched shifts with us, meaning our shift at the Visitors’ Center would go from noon until 4pm. To do that we went to a different Ward’s Church services at 8am this morning. That finished a little after 11am, a quick run home to grab a sandwich and for Sister Smith to get into her muumuu and then over to the Visitors’ Center. We finished there at 4pm, came home for about 50 minutes and then returned to the Center to set up for a musical fireside at 6pm.
The fireside featured songs and testimonies from the sister missionaries and went until about 7:30pm. Normally we would then put everything back into place and go home, but one of the people attending the fireside had a vehicle that wouldn’t start and needed a battery jump start. That meant finding the person with the car packed next to him to get that car moved so I could get my car into position. We were successful…. he drove away happy … and by that time everyone else had put things away. It was 8pm and we could go home for the evening. Tomorrow the day starts with a training meeting at 7:15 am.
Mac and cheese with a hot dog for dinner is on the menu. Neither of us have the energy to do anything else!
Clearly, school has started all across the United States. Our visitor count is about half this week of what it was last week, and that count was down significantly from the week before. We’re now in the “in-between-times” until families start coming over for Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations. Meanwhile, we’re still getting bus loads of Asian tourists and couples sans children.
We definitely had a highlight yesterday, though. The Polynesian Cultural Center has been going through some upgrades (some are still in progress), including building and setting up a new shopping area called the Hukilau (hoo-key-lau) Marketplace with several different food trucks, souvenir shops, clothes, and accessories. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf and his wife came over with a couple of other General and Area Authorities and dedicated the new marketplace. Of course, it was packed with people and the sun was bright and the humidity was in triple digits (or seemed that way), but we certainly enjoyed hearing President Uchtdorf speak and offer the dedicatory prayer. For those who may not know, President Uchtdorf is the Second Counselor in the Church’s First Presidency.
A couple of side observations about Church meetings here in Laie:
- People wander in … and the meetings are always quite crowded.
- People SING! That is something I’ll really miss when we go back stateside
- People really participate in Sunday School, Relief Society, and Priesthood meetings and the meetings regularly go overtime.
We enjoy Church services here and are starting to get to know some of the people in our Ward, which is very nice.
The battle of the bedbugs continues. Our efforts to contain them didn’t work. The landlord’s person who came in to clean and spray moderated the situation somewhat, but they’re still in abundance. Next on the docket is Terminex. I’ll find out tomorrow morning when they will be there to take care of the apartment. Maybe next week I can give a better report. Meanwhile, the flag pole has been straightened and I expect we’ll be able to put up flags sometime this coming week. The pole looks very strange without anything on it and I get a lot of questions from people about why we don’t have a flag on the flagpole.
We’re anxiously waiting for Steven’s mission call to arrive (he’s probably a marginally more anxious and nervous than we are!). It surely should arrive this week! The Bishop of the Ward we attended this morning announced that his daughter had just received her mission call to Taiwan but wouldn’t be reporting to the MTC until next January. So, Steven, even after the call arrives, you may have a few more months of waiting and getting prepared!
This coming week will be a very normal schedule for us. Nothing new or different, and there’s seldom anything that is very new or different, anyway. So, I’ve run out of words for this week. Be sure to check the blogs!
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