January 24, 2016

We’ve been hearing and reading about the winter back in the mainland and continue to be grateful to be on the Island of Oahu! The winter looks to be one for the record books. Laura (Daryl’s wife in Downingtown, PA) posted some pictures of their snowstorm and I was definitely impressed.

We’ve been pretty consumed here with the leadership changes that are underway. A week ago Friday the new Visitors’ Center Director and his wife arrived and they are quickly coming up to speed on the operation of the Center and definitely making a contribution. Further, a new senior couple arrived on Wednesday to replace Elder and Sister Jensen who have completed their mission.

Elder and Sister Andrus come from Rexburg, Idaho. We’ll definitely enjoy working with them as well. They have jumped right into the deep end of the pool and have also started swimming. To accommodate all of this change, Sister Smith and I have put in some long hours at the Visitors’ Center and did not have a Preparation Day this past week. Everything is starting to settle in place and we’ll be back to normal rotation schedules this week. Adding to the complexity, missionary transfers are this week. Three sister missionaries complete their missions and go home on Wednesday. A new sister from the Provo MTC arrives on Wednesday (she’s from Soda Springs, Idaho, the town where I grew up), with the net result that the Center is going down to twenty sister missionaries. We’re authorized twenty-six and have housing for that many. We understand that in March we’ll probably get back up to (or close to) the authorized staffing level.

We had a wonderful highlight last Wednesday. Some of you know and remember Karl Anderson from the Cleveland area in Ohio. I worked for him for about nine years in the 1980’s at Systemation, Inc. He is the author of two books on Kirtland, Ohio: Joseph Smith’s Kirtland and The Savior in Kirtland. He’s also the Church’s foremost authority on Church history in Kirtland. Well, Karl and his wife Joyce came over on a vacation and stopped at the Center on Wednesday for a great visit. It was actually kind of hard to say goodbye when they finally had to leave! They have been such good friends over the years.

We’re still in kind of a slow period as far as visitors go. But, that’s also giving us some time now to clean out some storage areas at the Center and make some decisions about what materials we can dispose of and how to make the material we do have easier to find when guests arrive. For instance, we have on hand Books of Mormon in more than 90 languages along with other materials in most of these languages. The main storage area isn’t very big, so some of the material has to be stored upstairs, which is fairly inconvenient when a guest is waiting. This is turning out to be a fairly big project and will take a couple of weeks to complete.

We enjoy hearing from you … and encourage those emails! Please know that we’re still having a good time, are busier than we had ever imagined, and the we love you all!

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