May 3, 2015
Greetings from Laie … a little bit of paradise.
We’ve just come home from a “Break the Fast” social which was followed by a “Zone Conference for Senior Missionaries”. It’s a little after 9pm on a Sunday evening. We’ve got all the windows open and are enjoying the cool breeze. Day by day it’s getting a bit warmer and the heat and humidity are making themselves known. I’m very thankful for trade winds!
The first Sunday of the month is Fast Sunday where we skip two meals in a 24-hour period and donate the money saved (plus a generous amount) to the relief of the poor and those in need, such as Nepal and the area in the south Pacific devastated by the category 5 cyclone last month. All of the senior missionaries here get together over at the Polynesian Cultural Center at 5:00 pm on Fast Sunday for a potluck dinner and social to end the fast. It’s a lot of fun and we get plenty of visiting with other senior missionaries that we don’t see very often. In addition to the social, the Honolulu Hawaii mission president and his wife held the first conference in the mission specifically for senior missionaries. We have 52 senior missionary couples in the mission plus an additional 17 single senior sisters. Most of the senior missionaries are assigned to the Polynesian Cultural Center, some to BYU-Hawaii, some to the mission office in Honolulu, and others to various wards or military complexes. And, of course, three couples, including us, to the Visitors’ Center. I enjoyed the training and discussion from President and Sister Warner tonight.
Now that Spring Break is over in the US and schools are back in session, our visitors to the Visitors’ Center from the US have dropped off quite dramatically. The folks coming from Asian countries continue, so quite a few of the people who are visiting the Center are people I can’t talk to, unless they can speak English. Yesterday I was visiting with a group of three people from Micronesia (very remote south Pacific islands). One of them spoke some English; the other two did not. Somehow we had a pretty interesting conversation between gestures and some pidgin English. They obviously were enjoying their time in Hawaii and I was quite curious about what is different in their country than what we see in Hawaii. As best I could figure out, the biggest draw was all of the shopping! They were each taking two additional suitcases back with them of things purchased in Hawaii that they couldn’t buy at home.
Meanwhile, we have lamented a bit on the things we want to buy but either can’t find here or can’t find at a price we want to pay. Yesterday a postal package arrived from Amazon.com of short-grained brown rice for Nina. A couple of weeks ago it was angel food cake mix and baking pans. I’ve ordered Splenda since it was a larger package than I could buy here for less money and with Amazon Prime, free shipping, You gotta love Amazon!
Our schedule is pretty fixed and hasn’t changed since the last letter. Consequently, the days pretty much seem to run together. We have a calendar on the fridge with our schedule and I have to check it regularly to make sure where I’m supposed to be tomorrow and what time I’m supposed to be there. Monday and Tuesday we are on the afternoon shift. But, Monday morning at 7:30 we have a training meeting, except once a month when it’s on a Tuesday because the Center Director has to be at a meeting at the Mission Office on that Monday morning. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we on the morning shift. Sunday and Wednesday are the other two odd days, so I can usually keep track of them. What this means is that we’re settling into a routine and becoming comfortable with it. We’re getting to know the sister missionaries by name and personality, which is a lot of fun. My goodness, they’ve got a lot of energy! There’s no possibility of keeping up with them. Fortunately, Sister Priday, the Director’s wife, is good with text messaging and reminds us when the training meeting is not on a Monday morning.
We’ve had an invasion of ants in our apartments. They seem to be everywhere! As a result, the landlord has finally started spraying for ants and bugs every Friday. I’d like it to be more effective as I’ve just killed three ants crawling across the keyboard. Since there is never a freeze here, the bugs are prolific. That also means the the birds and chickens are also very prolific. There are feral chickens and roosters everywhere. The most common things I hear outside the window during the day are roosters crowing and at night ambulance sirens. The only hospital on the north shore is located in the town just west of us and there are a lot of ambulance runs. Because of the geography in this area we can hear the sirens from a long ways away … and, the windows are always open to let the breeze through (at home all the windows were always closed and the air conditioner / furnace on to manage the temperature). We have a window air conditioner in the front window that works quite well, but have only had to turn it one once so far this year. There’s also one in our bedroom but that one has a problem with a bearing going out in the fan motor. It makes quite a noise. I’ve notified the landlord and hopefully it’ll get fixed or replaced before we really need the air conditioning in July and August when the trade winds die down.
Thanks for the emails we’ve gotten back (you know who you are). We really appreciate the updates from your lives. Sometimes we feel quite remote and cut off out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And, somewhat repentantly, I remember the pleas for letters from our missionary children when they were in France, Argentina, and Japan!
Our blogs have other details as well:
https://www.rnsmith.com/
https://seashellsandseaglass.wordpress.com/
Love,
father! (or f-i-l)
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