Greetings from Laie on the north shore of the Island of Oahu where it’s 7:30pm, a balmy 73°, and 82% humidity with a light breeze. Today has been a very nice weather day, as are most days here at this time of the year. The really sultry weather, however, is just weeks away….
We’ve just come home from Break-the-Fast, our monthly pot-luck dinner with all of the senior missionaries here in Laie. Quite a few are finishing their missions this month, so hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll be seeing quite a few new senior missionaries here. Since this is considered to be a “stateside mission”, quite a few senior missionaries serve for one year (initially, then quite a few extend to 18 or 12 months).
We’ve had a good week with nothing new or out of the ordinary. On our Preparation Day last Thursday we made a quick trip to Honolulu for a few items and were able to leave well before the rush hour traffic. The Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon”, a quite profane caricature of two bumbling Mormon missionaries, has been playing in downtown Honolulu. The missionaries have been going over to the theater when the show closes for the evening handing out copies of the Book of Mormon. The show ended its run last night and a grand total of 7,900 Books of Mormon have been handed out to attendees. We’ve also had several visitors at the Visitors’ Center who came because they had seen the musical and wanted to learn a bit more about this religion. That’s always a fun conversation, particularly when I know next to nothing about the musical and the sister missionaries haven’t even heard of it!
All the puzzle pieces have come together and we take our car into the body shop tomorrow for repair. The shop says it’ll bake at least a week. Meanwhile, we’ll have a rental car from Enterprise while our car is in the shop. It’ll be good to have a whole car back … the back end looking brand new and the front end looking like it’s got a few miles on it.
Mothers Day is coming up in a week and a big activity at present is getting all of the sister missionaries set up to be able to make Skype calls back home. The U.S. missionaries will call home on Sunday. The International sisters will arrange a time during this week or next to make the call as Mothers Day is pretty much a U.S. thing. It’s celebrated in England, but a month earlier. So, sister missionaries who don’t have a Skype account are busy getting one set up (meaning they need help to do that), and others are making test calls to each other to verify that they remember their Skype userid and password (many do not and need help with that). Then, of course, is the issue of “what time is it back home?” That becomes particularly important to the International sisters whose families are on the other side of the International Date Line. There are also a couple of sister missionaries with split families … mother in one country and father working in some other country. All of this will keep things pretty busy from a technology standpoint this coming week. But it’s all worth it when they make a connection with their mothers! I’m certain that LeeAnn is anxiously awaiting the calls from both of her missionary sons!
We’re enjoying pictures and info from Kendra who’s in England on a Study Abroad at the moment and from Stephanie and Randy who are vacationing in Iceland prior to Stephanie starting her Masters program. My sister Terry is vacationing this week in Hawaii on the Island of Kuai and my other sister Eileen and her husband Phil will be here in a couple of weeks to attend Phil’s son’s graduation. We’re looking forward to seeing them!
Life continues to be good here! We love you and want you to know that you’re always in our prayers!
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