January 31, 2016
Greetings from the middle of the Pacific Ocean! We’ve had another very interesting week here on our mission. Even though at the 30,000 foot level it seems we’re doing the same things over and over again, when we look at it day by day there’s often quite a bit of variety.
Yesterday, that is Saturday January 30th, was definitely a one-time kind of a day. Elder Jeffery Holland from the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was here on the Island of Oahu and held a two-hour devotional on Saturday for all of the missionaries from 2pm to 4pm. After a lot of discussion among the Visitors’ Center director and the two senior missionary couples, we figured out a plan so that all of the sister missionaries could be in Honolulu for the devotional.
The issue was the Polynesian Cultural Center. From 3pm until 7pm a tram (actually an open-air bus) picks up visitors from the PCC, takes them on a tour through Brigham Young University – Hawaii Campus, through the town of Laie, and then drops them off at the Visitors’ Center. That tram picks up anyone waiting at the Visitors’ Center and returns to PCC to start the twenty-minute cycle all over again. The big question; What to do about the PCC guests?
Our options were to (1) cancel the trams for Saturday. (2) do some kind of a modified tram process, or (3) keep some of the sister missionaries here and send the rest to Honolulu. We eventually decided on #2.
The Center Director and his wife had to be in Honolulu for the day. Elder Holland was holding a training session for Stake Presidents, Mission Presidents, Visitors’ Center Directors, and other area authorities at 10am, then the devotional at 2pm, followed by a meeting open to the general public at 6pm. We decided that the two senior missionary couples, Elder and Sister Andrus along with Sister Smith and I would stay behind and handle the trams. Sister Smith and I would spend the afternoon at the PCC helping people get on the trams. The tram drivers would do the dialog (they know it as well or better than the sister missionaries know it), and Elder and Sister Andrus would meet the tram at the Visitors’ Center, invite the guests in, give them a brief tour, and help them get back onto the tram to return to the PCC.
The kicker was that Sister Smith and I have never done the process at the PCC to recruit people to get on the trams and Elder and Sister Andrus are brand new!
So our Saturday went like this:
We went over to the Visitors’ Center at 9am to open the Center and work our normal shift until 2:30pm. We then quickly changed clothes into our matching shirt and muumuu that we wear when we’re volunteering at the PCC, and then went over there to load the trams. Elder and Sister Andrus came to the Center about 2pm (a half-hour early) to give us time to get ready and go over to the PCC, and they then handled the rest of the day at the Visitors’ Center.
It actually worked out very well!! Surprisingly well!! We had a great time talking with people to explain the tram tour and help them work out their schedule so they didn’t miss anything at the PCC or didn’t miss part of their dinner luau. There were a lot of guests at the PCC on Saturday as well, which made things even more interesting.
The Hawaiian Football Hall of Fame is located at the Polynesian Cultural Center and they held their annual induction ceremony on Saturday morning. Interestingly (to us), people came from all over the US and throughout the Polynesian Islands to attend the ceremony and then enjoy the PCC. This year the ceremony was even more important than usual as Sai Sikahema was being inducted. He was a star football player at BYU Provo in his college days, went on to play for the Cardinals, Packers and the Eagles as a running back, then became a well-known and well-liked sports broadcaster (he’s also a Stake President for the LDS Church in Pennsylvania). Hawaii holds the induction ceremony around the time of the NFL’s Pro Bowl, which this year is being played today (Sunday) at the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. So with all that going on, we were able to meet and talk with a lot of people at the PCC and helped a lot of people make the decision to take the tram tour and learn about the LDS Church. By the end of the day we were definitely ready to kick back and put the feet up!
The rest of the week was generally quite routine. Sister Smith and I have been reorganizing our literature storage area to make things a bit more accessible and easier to find. We have Books of Mormon and associated Church literature in about ninety languages in this storage area and over time it’s gotten a bit discombobulated as some kinds of materials have been discontinued and new kinds of materials introduced. This reorganization will take another week in our spare time. I had my quarterly visit with my doctor at the VA Hospital in Honolulu this week, which included doing a whole battery of laboratory tests. After visiting with her I went over to the outpatient laboratory to donate fourteen vials of blood and two containers of urine. The young Army nurse who did the blood draw was very friendly and personable and very efficient. They were using a new kind of a needle that I haven’t seen before. When she was finished with the last vial of blood, she pushed a tiny button and the needle retracted out of my arm into the carrier untouched by human hands.
Well, it’s definitely time to head for bed. We’ve an early Visitors’ Center Training Meeting tomorrow morning at 7:30am followed by our normal 9am —> 2:30pm shift at the Visitors’ Center. I hope all is well with everyone! Our prayers are with Pam Mills’ husband Ed who is in the hospital at the moment. We love you all and pray for you regularly.
<--Previous Entry | Next Entry -->