Greetings from Laie, Hawaii. We had a tropical depression move through the area last night and this morning bringing with it a pretty steady rain and 100% humidity. I’ve been blessing air conditioning the entire day. We had our monthly pot-luck Break-the-Fast meal this evening over at the Ku’ai venue at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The food was excellent (particularly the strawberry shortcake!) and we had a great time visiting. However, the heat and humidity made their presence known and the whole event broke up a little earlier than normal. On the other hand, this is pretty normal for August!
We were notified this week that we’ll have to move somewhere else within the next 45 days. Our apartment, along with the apartment the other senior missionary couple are in, is having the garage converted into a bedroom. That involves re-doing the bathroom, knocking a hole in the cinderblock wall into the garage, and relocating several items to bring the house up to code. That requires us to vacate the house by the time the contractor is ready to start to work. The job has to be completed by December 31st or the money evaporates (the Church operates on a cash accounting system). So, we’ll start looking to see what might be available. The Mission Office is also tasked with finding an apartment for us. The is almost nothing available here in the Laie area, so this is something the Lord is going to have to intervene in. We’re also competing with the returning BYU-Hawaii student body and all the new BYU-H staff.
With four additional sister missionaries arriving at the end of August and another seven additional sister missionaries arriving by the end of the year, housing is definitely at a premium. Converting our garages into bedrooms and making them available for the sister missionaries takes care of housing for eight additional missionaries. That just leaves seven sister missionaries to find housing for somewhere in Laie, that is, once they find housing for Sister Smith and me as well as Elder and Sister Andrus. Along with being incredibly busy at the Visitors’ Center and at the Polynesian Cultural Center, we now need to also find a place to live, pack up our stuff, move, and then figure out how to settle into the new place.
We have had another great week at the Visitors’ Center. The Laie Tram Tour has become very popular and the number of guests coming to the Center from the PCC continues to increase. The local Marriott Courtyard hotel has expressed interest in putting together a tour in the morning for guests at the hotel to come over to the Visitors’ Center. That is still in the early planning stages as we need more missionaries in order to staff that function. However, it’d probably bring another couple hundred people a week to the Center. And, even in the steady rain, the visitors from mainland China continue to pour into the Center. We had eleven tour buses stop at the Center today alone.
One of the real blessings coming to me here in Hawaii is the medical care available to me at the Veterans Administration Medical Center located at Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu. Despite all the bad rap the VA medical system has gotten over the past couple of years, the care provided and available here is just outstanding. Sandi Uchida, my primary care physician, has been very proactive all the while we’ve been here and, as a result, my overall health has been steadily improving. Last Wednesday I had a followup kidney ultrasound tracking the status of several large masses on my kidneys. The good news came back that they are stable and only need periodic assessment going forward. Best of all, no kidney stones were found!
One of our assignments is to be at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings to coordinate the trams and buses being used for the Laie Tram Tour. In the later afternoon, particularly between 6-7 pm, is when the majority of the PCC guests take advantage of the tram tour so we have two trams and two 25-passenger buses that operate (as needed) at 6pm. 6:20pm, and 6:40pm. It is a very hectic time with PCC guests going every which direction as the sister missionaries invite them to take the tour, the trams and buses coming and going (and all of them have to back into the loading area). That needs some adult coordination. So Sister Smith and I are there two nights a week, Elder and Sister Andrus are there two nights a week, and Elder and Sister Swinton (the Director and his wife) are there two nights a week. All of that is just background for what, to me, was kind of a funny moment.
Last Wednesday was a beautiful day and the PCC had a near capacity crowd. Lots of people were lining up to take the Laie Tram Tour. A couple of sister missionaries are assigned to work with the people in line. They help them understand what the tour is, where it is going (and that it’s stopping at the Mormon Temple), what time it’ll be back (reassuring the guests that they’ll be back in plenty of time for the evening show at 7:30pm), and that the guests will need to get off there for about 15 minutes. As they were doing that, a fellow spoke up quite loudly, “We’re going to some kind of a Mormon thing??? I don’t want to go to some religious thing to learn about Mormons!!” His wife immediately spoke up. “Oh be quite, Henry! Stop harassing the sister missionaries!” Then she turned to the sisters and said, “We’re members of the Church from Utah.” The fun part was, after that they had quite a conversation with the people around them in line about what it meant to be a Mormon. They had people around them in line from Korea, Taiwan, and Georgia.
So, in addition to our normal work week, we’ll start looking around to see what might be available to us for housing. Something reasonable will become available. We just need to find it!
‘Til next week! Ta ta for now.
Love,
father/father-in-law/brother/uncle/grandfather/son/brother-in-law/missionary/friend
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