Greetings everyone! This has been a very wet day here in Hawaii, on both the windward as well as the leeward sides of the Island of Oahu. I try to get out to say hello to all the tour bus drivers who stop at the Visitors’ Center and thank them for stopping. We also have a stash of Snickers® candy bars and I take one out to give to the driver (“Something sweet for your drive!”). Other places they stop may give them a kickback or spiff them in some way for stopping. The best we can do is a candy bar…! Anyway, today all of them were complaining about the rain. And, there was a lot of rain! However, most of the time when one of the tour buses stopped, the rain stopped for a while. A couple of the drivers remarked about that which gave me an opportunity to tell them they should expect those kinds of miracles when they stop at the Visitors’ Center and encourage their patrons to go inside the Center. More and more drivers/guides are doing that and more of them are actually leading their tour group onto the grounds and into the Center. Today was a very busy day and I don’t have a complete recollection, but we had at least 11 tour buses stop today, including one of Polish vacationers and another of German visitors.
While every day is unique and different in some ways, over all the routine is pretty much the same for us. One small thing for us is that during this transfer our Preparation Day is on Thursday and our next shift is on Friday afternoon, so we have a day and a half break. That small benefit comes every other transfer. Next transfer we’ll have our P-Day on Wednesday, will work an evening shift on Tuesday (at the Center until about 9pm), have Wednesday off, and then back to the Center at 9am on Thursday morning. That made me stop to think about how many transfers are left before we head back to Pocatello. We have the rest of this transfer, three full transfers, and the three weeks of the last transfer and we’re done. Just over six months.
Mother has her 92nd birthday tomorrow (August 1st). My brother Perry and his wife Chris, along with my sister Terry and her husband, and my niece Suzie and her boyfriend all visited mother yesterday (Saturday) for a mini-birthday party. Heather and Jaelene were there a few days ago. Jared, Tania, Daryl, Laura and Lilly were there a month or so ago, and James, LeeAnn, and Shaundra also paid a visit a couple of weeks back. Thank you all for spending the time. Mother thoroughly enjoys the visits!
Every once in a while we witness a marriage proposal at the Visitors’ Center. Today was one of those occasions (picture attached). A young man, a student at BYU-Hawaii, arranged with some friends to bring his girlfriend over to the Center. He then showed up, and the next thing you know, he was on his knees proposing! Fortunately for him, she was ecstatic and said “Yes! Yes!! Yes!!! Somehow they managed to do this during a short lull in the traffic at the Center. Five minutes earlier and the place was mobbed. Five minutes later, it was full again. This looked to me to be a marriage proposal sanctioned from heaven….
Marriage proposals here are not at all uncommon. For instance:
Saturday morning I met a family from the east coast on a vacation. The father had proposed to his wife on the Temple grounds 46 years earlier. They had a number of pictures from that event taken by friends that were with them. They were trying to re-create the pictures 46 years later. Of course, much on the grounds had changed in the intervening years (and quite a bit about the two of them had changed as well). The whole courtyard area was completely redone just before we arrived. After a storm took out many of the coconut palm trees about 25 years ago, they were all replaced with royal palm trees. The walkways up to the temple had also been redone and moved from how they were set 46 years ago. It was a lot of fun working with them to get as many of the photos re-created as possible. He had been stationed in Honolulu in the navy, she came over to visit, they came up to the Temple where he proposed (a surprise for her). They were married six months later in the Los Angeles Temple.
That was a proposal that stuck!
We have a few reporting requirements each month to the mission. One of them is that we send in our automobile mileage each month (ending mileage for the month of July: 16,449 … not bad for a 2013 Toyota Corolla. The Church sells them at 25,000 miles and whoever gets to buy one is getting a very good deal). We put on 523 miles last month for the entire month. We don’t do very much driving! Next month it’ll get the annual car inspection as well as an oil change.
So, that pretty much does all of the exciting news for this week! ‘Til next week!
Love,
father/father-in-law/grandfather/uncle/brother/brother-in-law/son/friend/missionary
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