May 24, 2015
Greetings from a chilly Laie, Hawaii!
The weather has been quite warm and humid for several days but today broke the trend. We’ve had some rain and mostly cloudy skies with a light, cool breeze. The weather app on my iPhone says it’s 68 degrees outside at 8 pm. That’s pretty cool and for me is almost sweater weather.
The Hawaii mission generally has around fifty convert baptisms each month. The mission decided to set a serious stretch goal of 100 baptisms into the Church in the month of May and it’s possible that the goal will be reached! It’s been named “Miracle May”. As part of the process, each missionary companionship was invited to have a special fast day (we selected May 4th) and each zone selected a zone fast day, which was today. The fun part is that the Visitors’ Center is leading the way in convert baptisms for our zone.
People come to the Center for a variety of reasons. Mostly, it’s because the building and grounds are very beautiful and peaceful so the tourists and tour groups like to stop here. The tour companies like this stop because it is popular and doesn’t cost anything. Quite a few people stop because they feel something special about the place and are kind of drawn here. We also get one or two people a week who come because they are having serious life difficulties and are looking for help.
Yesterday I talked with a woman who was here visiting with family and was kind of interested in “exploring the Mormon Church”. We talked for a while and she talked with a couple of the sister missionaries. They’ll be following up with her online, answering questions and discussing the beliefs and doctrines. At some point they’ll introduce her to the local missionaries. This is a pretty typical situation. Almost half of the people who connect with the sister missionaries and allow them to follow up online afterwards decide to get baptized and join the Church. It’s quite an experience meeting people like that. On a typical week since we’ve arrived, ten to twelve people will make that connection.
The overall schedule has become pretty much routine, but every day is different! We’ve decided that there is no “normal day” here. This past week has included a spate of bicycle maintenance issues. I think I’ve gotten all of the bikes back in good working condition. Four sister missionary companionships rely on bicycles for their transportation. They put some serious miles on those bikes! When they don’t work right, it’s quite a problem for them.
Two new missionaries fresh from the Mission Training Center arrived last week. Sister Leng is from Cambodia and Sister Ting is from Hong Kong. They are both full of vim and vinegar … and just fun to be around. Three missionaries will go home during the month of June and they’ll be sorely missed. During the time we’ll be here every other missionary at the Visitors’ Center will go home, including the Director and his wife as well as the other senior couple that we work with, Elder and Sister Jensen. We’ll see 100% turnover. That’s a lot of comings and goings! And a lot of muumuu’s to be sized and hemmed, one of your mother’s jobs.
Anyone in the family who wishes can be added (or removed) from this weekly letter. A few days ago LeeAnn asked me to add James, Steven, and Shaundra to the distribution list. James and Steven are in the process of submitting their missionary applications so this is a way for them to begin to hear a bit about being a missionary from my perspective. So, when I refer to “your mother”, for some of you, that may mean “your grandmother” and to others it may mean “your mother-in-law”. Just use the translation that works best!
This past week has also been a fairly slow week at the Center. The visitor count picked up at the end of the week with the Memorial Weekend and now that school is out in many places in Idaho and Utah. The number of visitors will start increasing significantly over the next couple of weeks as summer vacations come into full swing across the US. Now that we’re pretty much acclimatized, we’re looking forward to being very busy at the Center.
Food is, for the most part, significantly more expensive here than back home. But, we’re beginning to find better options. Every other Friday is “Payday Friday” at BYU-Idaho and there is a Farmer’s Market. We stopped there on Friday afternoon this week for the first time and found that we’ve been missing out! Lots of fresh fruit and produce were available at very reasonable prices. We have also learned about another Farmers Market on Thursdays about a half-hour from here and another on Saturday about 45 minutes from here. Those are now on our priority lists. For example, a red bell pepper in the store here in Laie is about $4 and a small container of strawberries is about $7. At the BYU-Hawaii farmers market the bell peppers were $1.15 and the strawberries in the same size container $2.25. We can start putting some more of these vegetables and fruits into our diet more often. Your mother is not complaining about the pepper prices! (me, not so much.)
Now that we’ve pretty much settled in and have most everything working for us, we have a bit more free time available. We like to go sit on the beach (and there are some beautiful beaches) and watch the sunset. Our schedule at the Center always has us there three mornings a week which means we have three or four evenings a week available. We have started to do a little more sightseeing in the area. I was able to set up my ham radio station for a couple of hours this past week for the first time since we got here and had a nice conversation with a person down on the Big Island, about 400 miles from here. There is a ham radio club at the University that I need to look into … that’s on my to-do list for this coming week.
Thanks for the emails, pictures, and text messages! We appreciate hearing from you! We’re both writing fairly often in our blogs:
https://seashellsandseaglass.wordpress.com/
https://www.rnsmith.com/
and were both enjoying being missionaries for the Church.
Love,
father!
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