July 29, 2015

Well, this is several days late. Definitely time to get this missive out and into to the email systems after one busy, crazy ten days at the Visitors’ Center. By golly, we’re still having a great time even when we have to just shake our heads from time to time in sheer puzzlement.

I’ve just finished repairing a bicycle chain. Haven’t had to do that since we lived on Thwing Road out in Chardon! I’m not very sure that it’s done correctly so when I returned the bike to the missionary, Sister Ozaki (from Japan), I told her it was possible that while she was riding the bike, the chain may suddenly break. She said, “That’s OK. It’s already done that so I’m now prepared.” Well, of course! The chain had already broken and that’s the reason I had to repair it. However, I’m not convinced it is possible to be “prepared” for the chain to separate….

Today was our scheduled Preparation Day. However, a few days ago your mother got a text message from the other senior couple asking if we were “still OK with switching Preparation Days.” Neither of us remember having any kind of a conversation about that, but it didn’t really matter, so we just responded that we were still OK. That meant that we worked from 2:30 – 8:00 pm yesterday and then came back in at 9am this morning. Overall I’d rather work the morning shift anyway and have the afternoons available for other things.

So what all has been different about the past week? We’ve had plenty of apartment and bicycle issues to take up all of our spare time. For some reason, when things start breaking, lots of things start breaking. The air conditioning systems are the biggest culprits. The wiring in these duplexes is old and it isn’t possible to run the air conditioner and a hair dryer at the same time, even in different rooms. That trips the circuit breaker and I get the opportunity to go reset the breaker. One of the sister missionaries from Taiwan has finally gotten fed up with the issue and had me show her how to reset the breaker. That is working! I haven’t had to go back to fix the power issue in that apartment since then.

In the area where our duplex is located there are five sister missionary apartments, all owned by BYU-Hawaii and maintained by the Church’s Facilities Management Group. Eighteen sister missionaries are in those apartments. Eight more are in two apartments down by the beach, rented from and maintained by a local rental agency. These have no air conditioning at all. For that reason, they aren’t very popular. Besides, they are difficult to keep clean. Further, the missionaries aren’t allowed to go onto the beach (“your mission ends where the sand starts”) which is quite a bummer. There’s a beautiful beach just outside those apartments. Your mother has spent some quality time the past week at these apartments helping the missionaries get them uncluttered and things organized.

Well, one of them was burglarized in the early morning while they were sleeping. That has caused all kinds of activities to get everything in both apartments secure and to make things more safe. In a couple of cases, the sisters had left “back doors” available so they could get in when they forgot their keys and didn’t have to call me to let them in. Well, those have all been fixed. In addition, the stove in one of those “beach pad” apartments needed a fix. The repairman managed to break the stove entirely, so he just pulled the stove out, put it outside, and went away to buy a new stove, thinking it could be finished tomorrow or the next day. Four very unhappy missionaries with no way to prepare meals was the result. Eventually I was able to track down the landlord who graciously offered to reimburse the missionaries for meals at local restaurants until the stove could be replaced and back into service.

That brought a slightly different problem. It’s the end of the month. The missionaries have a debit card from the Church where their monthly allowance is loaded at the beginning of each month. By the end of the month, they are usually pretty broke, and paying for a meal at a restaurant was very problematic. They were able to pool resources with other missionaries … and hopefully they’ve kept good track as everyone needs to be reimbursed (as soon as they give me the receipts, which one missionary has forgotten to do twice, now). In my old age I occasionally forget things. The missionaries forget things all the time! I’ve come to realize forgetfulness isn’t an age thing.

Then came the emergency drive to the Honolulu Airport. I don’t know the back story, but Elder Jensen called to ask if we could take a Japanese family to the airport. Their baby had lost the car keys and their flight was leaving in a couple of hours. It’s a full hour drive to the airport under the best conditions. Nina was committed to taking some of the sister missionaries shopping, so we did some car swapping. By the time I found the family, the best we could do was get the the airport about 45 minutes before their flight, not counting any traffic issues and not counting the traffic at the airport. I got them finally to the departure area a half-hour before their flight was to leave. They couldn’t speak English, I have Very Limited Japanese. I’ve no idea whether they made it out on their flight, or some other flight, or whatever. Another fairly unusual circumstance!

We’ve had some interesting guests at the Center as well. I spent some time with a family from Hiram, Ohio and learned that there is now a Ward in Hiram. We talked about a lot of different people from out there. It was fun to catch up on some of that news. Your mother spent some time with a very nice woman from Adelaide, Australia on another occasion. Her pen-pal Janet lives in Adelaide. We’ve had two different young people come with their mission call envelopes to open them at the Visitors’ Center. BYU-Hawaii starts classes on Monday, so we’ve also had numerous families here dropping off a son or daughter to start their college experience. A fellow from the Missionary Department responsible for the scripts and dialogs at the Temple Visitors’ Center was here and we had some great training from him. The day before he spent time “incognito” at the Center (during our shift!) observing what was going on. Fortunately, we were doing well and got some nice compliments from him. He really liked how your mother worked with a foreign woman who was undecided about taking some literature and ended up taking just about everything available in her language.

The fountain is nearing completion. They’re planning on putting water into the pool tomorrow (finally). Then comes the task of getting the whole thing working correctly. Sometime next week we’ll have a fountain again. We’re looking forward to that! The flag pole, however, remains in it’s non-straight condition.

The month of June is celebrated here in Laie as Pioneer Month. It started with a delightful fireside where a couple of the Labor Missionaries recounted their experiences back in the 1950’s and 1960’s helping build the Polynesian Cultural Center. Then it ended last Sunday evening with a musical fireside attended by close to 400 people. It was all local talent and beautiful. I was sad to see it come to an end (but then, by that time it was absolutely necessary to find a bathroom)!

So, we continue the streak of having no two days alike and finding that there seems to be no “normal day” at the Visitors’ Center! We’re having a lot of fun but at the same time know that we’re doing the right thing at the right place at the right time.

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