Greetings from Laie where it is raining, the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing. The trade winds are back along with much cooler temperatures for a couple of days. The trade winds generally blow from east to west, but for the past several months the predominant flow has been from west to east which is one of the causes of the “el niño” effect in the eastern Pacific where warmer than normal waters pile up dramatically affecting the weather across the US. Well, those patterns dramatically affect the weather here in Hawaii as well!
The major news of the week is that Sister Smith got rear-ended last Tuesday morning. She was returning home from a “quick” trip to Foodland and was stopped on the highway to make a left turn onto our street, Lanihuli Street. She had been stopped for bit when a lady couldn’t get stopped quickly enough and plowed into the back of our Mission car, ripping off the back bumper covering. We now have a quite ugly car while waiting for the insurance to clear us to go get the car repaired. We drove to Kaneohe (a town about 45 minutes south of Laie) last Wednesday to get an estimate for the insurance (the other driver is fortunately fully insured). Hopefully this week we’ll get the go-ahead and then will have to wait for parts to arrive from the mainland. Attached is a picture of the backend of our car. It looks rather naked, me thinks.
So we’ve now joined the ranks of missionaries who have wrecked their mission car! That wasn’t a statistic we were planning to become part of.
We’ve had a delightfully busy week at the Visitors’ Center. I’ve mentioned before that there are bus tours from the Polynesian Cultural Center to the Visitors’ Center every twenty minutes between 3pm and 7pm Monday through Saturday. The earlier tours have traditionally been pretty sparse and many were empty. The last two tours, the ones leaving at 6:20pm and 6:50pm were traditionally crowded and more people wanted to go on the tour than the busses could accommodate. The busses can take a maximum of 30 people.
Elder Swinton, the new Visitors’ Center Director, has tackled this problem to first, get the earlier busses better utilized, and secondly, to have more busses available during the 6-7pm hour. He has had a beautiful little card printed up that has pictures from the tour on the front along with a schedule of the tours on the back with encouragement to take an earlier tour. Sister Missionaries go over to the PCC around 11:30am when the Center opens and hand these cards out to incoming guests and answer any questions they might have. He’s also made arrangements with one of the tour companies that bring guests to the PCC in small 25-passenger busses to have two of these small busses available between 6-7pm. The PCC has two 30-passenger vehicles and coupled with the two 25-passenger busses, we now have the capacity of 110 people coming to the Visitors’ Center from the PCC, each arriving at 6:10pm, 6:30pm, and 6:50pm. Further, no one has had to be denied because we have no more room on the bus.
Those changes are working very well and we’re now having 2x to 3x more visitors from the PCC each afternoon. But, that has brought other issues needing to be solved! We have to send one of the senior missionaries over to the PCC from 5:30pm – 7:00pm to coordinate the loading of the busses. Sister missionaries are there recruiting people to take the tour, getting them lined up, and talking with them, but someone needs to coordinate the four vehicles in a very small area at the PCC.
The same is true at the Visitors’ Center … we need a senior missionary there to coordinate the loading process on the return. People don’t need to go back on the same bus they came over on. When one bus is filled, it can leave to go back relieving the congestion a bit at the PCC.
So, now in addition to our normal shift schedule, three nights a week Sister Smith and I go either to the PCC or back to the Visitors’ Center to coordinate the loading and dispatch of the busses. It’s becoming clear that we need one more set of senior missionaries! Meanwhile, we’d much rather be busy doing this work than sitting around doing something else not nearly as meaningful.
It’s good to get all of these logistics worked out before the summer tourist season starts! We’ll probably have another complication this summer as the Church currently plans to renovate our Visitors’ Center this summer. That renovation will take 6-10 weeks, but we’ll remain open for business even though the Visitors’ Center building itself will be closed. We’ll probably work out of a large tent or something similar during that time. The Center will be getting new carpeting, draperies, wall coverings, and updated exhibits. That should be quite delightful when it’s completed.
In other news this week, Sister Smith’s younger (and only) brother succumbed to cancer Saturday evening. This was a very aggressive set of cancers and he lived only a few weeks after diagnosis. We’re thankful that he went quickly with little suffering and is now in a much better place. Rest in peace, Ralph Lester Nettleton.
Thirteen months of this mission are now in the books. We’re continuing to have a great time and be very busy. We love and pray for all of you daily!
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