Greetings all from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In the Visitors’ Center is a large table with a large globe that rotates. The Island of Oahu is a depicted as a white dot out in the middle of the ocean (the other Hawaiian Islands are brown). I like to show people where they are when they visit the Visitors’ Center and usually comment, “It’s a very long swim…!” Most people really don’t realize how very much in the middle of the Pacific Ocean the Hawaiian Islands are. I just went back through my pictures and see that I don’t have a picture of this big globe! That’s now on my to-do list.

We’ve had another fun, busy, hectic week. The Chinese tour guides are definitely talking amongst themselves and the number of tour busses stopping at the Visitors’ Center is increasing. We’re getting at least five Chinese tour busses a day (including Sundays) with anywhere from 25 to 50 people on each bus. The bus stops, everyone gets off, we greet them and invite them inside (thankfully we have a PA system outside in the courtyard). Meanwhile, the driver / tour guide kicks back and relaxes for a half-hour or so while we take care of their guests. My 15-word Chinese vocabulary is getting a workout! We do have at least one sister missionary who speaks Chinese on shift all the time. While they really enjoy interacting with the bus groups, they’re also pretty tired by the end of the day!

My sister Eileen and her husband Phil were in Hawaii last week for Phil’s son Creighton’s graduation from the University of Hawaii with a Master’s degree in Social Work. Last Monday afternoon Eileen and Phil came over to Laie and we spent the afternoon together at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We went to a luau and then the night show. We had a very nice visit and are a little more caught up with news from their family. It sounded like they’ve had a nice vacation here.

We’ve had our usual assignments at the Polynesian Cultural Center and our normal shift schedule at the Visitors’ Center. We weren’t planning to go to Honolulu last Thursday on our Preparation Day, but we’d run out of Chinese Books of Mormon and the Mission Office had 25 of them. So we make a quick drive down, picked up the books, and had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. The only reason we knew, or even thought about the Hard Rock Cafe is that Sister Smith’s sister Pam sent over a picture of someone who incidentally happened to be wearing a Hard Rock Cafe Hawaii t-shirt. We had a nice lunch out on the balcony where we could do a lot of people watching while munching down on some good food. By the way, all 25 Chinese Books of Mormon are gone. We’re out again.

There are two kinds of Chinese Books of Mormon. One is written with the traditional Chinese characters and corresponds to the written language in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore,, and the rest of southeast Asia. Meanwhile, about thirty years of so ago, the People’s Republic of China simplified the character set so that many of the complicated Chinese characters had fewer strokes in them. They also changed how books are written and read. The traditional method was top of the page to the bottom of the page, right to left, opens from the left, and what we consider to be the back of the book to them is the front of the book. The “simplified” system writes from front to back, opens from the right (the way our books read and open) and looks very much like a western book, except written in Chinese characters. So, we have two Books of Mormon: Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. The Taiwanese are offended if we offer them a Simplified Book of Mormon. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese for the most part cannot read the traditional characters. Fortunately we have three nice small missionary tracts written in Simplified Chinese that we can hand out … very helpful when we run out of Simplified Chinese Books of Mormon!

Our car is supposedly repaired! We’re to drive down to Kaneohe (about 45 minutes south of here) on Monday afternoon after we get off shift and pick our car up and then turn in the Enterprise Rental Car. I’ll be calling the auto body shop in the morning just to make sure. It’ll be nice to have our car back. Newer isn’t necessarily better….

This week coming up is the last week of the transfer. That means we’ll be doing apartment inspections on Tuesday and Wednesday and on Saturday evening learn what companions are changing and who will be in which apartment. The next transfer is going to be 7 weeks long, rather than the normal 6 weeks. This is to accommodate the change at the MTCs around the world who changed the normal schedule from two weeks back to the three weeks at the MTC, the way that it was back before the change in missionary ages.

May 19th was our fifteen-month anniversary of our arrival in Laie. The time is flying by. Here’s hoping that your week is going to be as good as ours is going to be!

Two pictures attached: One of Eileen and Phil at the PCC, the other of two of our sister missionaries getting ready to pedal away on their bicycles.

Love,
father/father-in-law/grandfather/uncle/brother/brother-in-law/son/missionary/friend

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