January 3, 2015
Happy New Year! This is the third time I’ve had to stop, backspace, and correct the year. It won’t be the last time, either. Last year was finished very quickly and this one will likely be even faster. Time is not a constant as a person ages.
Today is Sunday, the first Sunday of the new year. That means our Church and Visitors’ Center schedule changed for the year. Our Ward, the Laie 3rd Ward in the Laie Stake, now meets at 8am until 11am. A half hour later we are to be on duty at the Visitors’ Center where we serve from 11:30am until 4pm. Then we’re pretty much through for the day, unless other things, like firesides, get scheduled. The time we spent at the Visitors’ Center this afternoon, for instance, was quite different than the 9-11:30 shift for the past year. Lots of families, particularly people on vacation from somewhere, spend a couple of hours or more in the afternoon at the Center. Many local members come into the Center and hang around for quite a while as well. In the time we were there today more than four hundred people stopped into the Center.
We’ll see the total numbers for 2015 tomorrow morning at our Visitors’ Center Training Meeting, but it looks like we’ve had just over 145,000 total visitors for the year. While that’s not a record year, it’s definitely in the top ten. The last two weeks of December were well above average for this time of the year. I think all of the early and heavy snow in Utah and Idaho caused more people to decide to spend Christmas / New Years in Hawaii rather than in the snow at home.
The first Sunday of the month is also Fast Sunday, meaning that we fast for two consecutive meals and contribute the amount saved to the care of the poor and unfortunate. It also means that all of the Senior Missionaries here in Laie get together over at the Polynesian Cultural Center at the Kuai Luau venue for a potluck dinner. The PCC is closed on Sundays, which makes it possible for us to use that location for our get together. Tonight there was a good crowd and a lot of Very Good Food (almost any food is good after fasting for twenty-four hours!). The newly arrived missionaries are introduced, visiting family members also get introduced, and the soon-to-depart missionaries have a chance to say their good-byes. Sister Smith and I really enjoy the Break-the-Fast get-togethers. Tonight our assignment was to bring some kind of a dessert. The brownies didn’t come out right, so last night we stopped at the store and bought a large apple pie. It must have tested pretty good as it was completely devoured by the time we were ready to leave. Since it was in the container from the store, we didn’t have anything to bring home and wash. A double bonus!
The New Year definitely started with a BANG … actually, an uncountable and inestimable number of Big Bangs as the entire town erupted into an impromptu fireworks display from about 11:50pm until 12:10am. Sister Smith, however, slept soundly through the entire cacophony of noise. I wasn’t so lucky. Even after the din finally died down it took quite a while to get back to sleep. That short night was followed by a communal breakfast for all the missionaries in the Laie Zone (twenty-three sister missionaries, eight elders, and eight senior missionaries) at 7:30am at the Visitors’ Center. On New Years Day the Center was closed until noon. We had a nice French Toast breakfast which, for me, was followed by a nap when we got back to the house. We were then on duty at the Center from noon until 4pm on New Years Day afternoon.
On New Years Eve the Center closed at about 7pm and all of the missionaries got together at the Center in the big theater to watch “The Cokeville Miracle”, a recent movie made about the 1968 school hostage taking that happened in Cokeville, Wyoming. It was a good movie and had a good story that resonated with the missionaries. The DVD also had subtitles which really helped the foreign missionaries to be able to understand the movie. The young missionaries were to be in the apartments by 9:30pm on New Years Eve to avoid any issues that may potentially occur. None of them slept through the noise, either … except for Sister Smith. She was definitely tired and crashed about 11pm for the rest of the night!
One of the fun things about the holiday season is the number of people who have interest in learning more about the beliefs and teachings of the LDS Church. Of course, that’s the real reason that there is a Visitors’ Center. We try very hard to make it possible for very visitor to have a positive and uplifting experience without being pushy or demanding. I can’t think of a week that’s gone by in the nine months we’ve been here where we haven’t had one of those special experiences with a visitor. We love what we’re doing and the people that we’re serving with here at the Center. It’s been a fabulous 2015 and I’m looking forward to an outstanding 2016. We pray for the best for each o you and hope that you too will have a banner year!
Attached are a couple of pictures. Since the holiday season is ending, the Christmas Trees at the Center are coming down. That’s one of the pictures. The other was taken at Break-the-Fast as Sister Smith was helping to set up the serving table. Happy New Year!
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