September 13, 2015
Greetings from Hawaii and our little corner of paradise. We’ve had a good week and, as usual, a week with quite a variety. Tuesday morning we drove down to Honolulu to go to the VA Clinic and get “read in” to this facility from the Salt Lake system where I was previously attached. That included going through an extensive question and answer process with at least a third of the questions having to do with my mental health situation. A lot of veterans are committing suicide and the VA is trying to reduce the problem. It all ended with them drawing five vials of blood along with a copious amount of urine. I’ll be seeing the dermatologist, the cardiologist, and the urologist in the next month or so. Some of the medications I’m taking require sign-off by these specialists from time to time.
But, going to the VA is always difficult. There is literally no parking available after about 7:00 am in the morning. The only course of action is to arrive very early (which we didn’t due to my navigation error), wait by the top of the parking lot for someone to come out, and then follow them (stalk them, in other words) to their car and jump on their parking place. Others are doing the same thing…. so it’s kind of a Mario Cart game.
The tests all look (to me) to be reasonably normal. Now to see what the specialists say.
This was also the week of the slowest day in months and the busiest day in the last month. For some reason Friday brought more than 600 visitors to the Center while the day before was less than 200. On the other hand, the day before was a day of torrential downpours and pretty constant rain showers the entire day. The pool in the courtyard filled to overflowing as the drains weren’t able to keep up with the rainfall. And, Honolulu got significantly more rain that we did for some reason. The Big Island is coming up on forty straight days of rain and some are starting to joke about building arks! I’m sure we’d like to be sending some of this rain to California.
Tonight was the first in a series of firesides at the Center featuring original families or families that came here to build the Temple, BYU-Hawaii, or the Polynesian Cultural Center. It’s delightful to hear some of their family stories. This evening we heard from a couple who have been married more than forty years. They met when she was working at the PCC and a new group of students were coming from New Zealand (they called them FOB’s … for “fresh off the boat”). She spotted him, staked her claim with the other girls working at the PCC, and succeeded in making the claim pay off. Then they learned that her grandfather and his grandfather served together as labor missionaries many years earlier in New Zealand. Their story was quite delightful. We’ve another fireside in two weeks, two more in October, and two in December following which the Christmas season will start with a Missionary Musical Fireside on November 30th.
For Christmas the Center puts up a large number of artificial trees and the various stakes and wards are assigned to a tree to decorate it and take care of it during the holidays. Weekly musical firesides also are put together during the season as well. It’s kind of funny that we’re already making plans and assignments for the Christmas season. The Visitors’ Center is open every day of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’re only open a half-day on New Years Day.
This week is the last week of the transfer. Sister Smith will be doing housing inspections on Thursday and I’ll be doing the minor repairs that are needed. Then next Monday we’ll swap schedules with Elder and Sister Jensen, the following Wednesday several sister missionaries will complete their mission and return home and a couple of brand new missionaries will arrive from the MTC. During all of that we’ll be holding a “Give-n-Take” in our garage for the missionaries to drop off what they no longer want or need and take whatever they see that they can make use of. Whatever is left then goes to the “Give-n-Take” operated by BYU-Hawaii for the students.
I’ve been doing some ham radio things. I’ve put up another long wire antenna over the past few days and am looking forward to making use of that new capability. There is a small but fairly active ham radio community over here. Sister Smith leaves the house most every morning a little after 5 am (I think … I’m still sound asleep) and wanders the beaches and streets of Laie. She posts quite a few pictures on Facebook. We also write fairly regularly in our blogs, so that’s a place to get some more local detail.
We’re still having a great time and love having Church and Gospel conversations with the people who come into the Center. Yesterday Sister Smith was able to spend some quality time with a mother and daughter visiting here from Russia. The mother was very interested in the Church and all of them definitely bonded. These are some of the choice experiences we have on a regular basis. We love you all and appreciate your love and support for us over here in Hawaii!
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