Greetings from Laie, Hawaii. We’re “enjoying” summer weather here which means upper 80° with 80+% humidity. It’s really good weather for your skin (they say). For me it’s just kind of “sweltery”. However, with fans and air conditioning all is well.

We’ve started through our busy season now that school is out across the United States and people are taking their summer vacations. Last Friday was BYU-Hawaii graduation, which always brings a lot of people here. The Chinese tour busses are also continuing to come. All that adds up to very busy days at the Visitors’ Center which further means that the days literally fly by.

We’ve also had a very delightful and personal visit with Elder Dale G. Renlund, the junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Renlund had an assignment to come here to Hawaii for several purposes including meeting with the King of Tonga and attending the Hilo Stake Conference. Two other General Authorities came as well, Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Presidency of the Seventy and Bishop Gérald Caussé of the Presiding Bishopric.

Because Elder Renlund is a personal friend of our Visitors’ Center Director and his wife, Elder and Sister Swinton, the Director arranged for the Visitors’ Center missionaries to have an almost two-hour private meeting with Elder Renlund on Friday morning. That was a magnificent treat. He talked with us (not to us) about the process of becoming more useable by the Lord and being better able to appreciate and understand the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He wove in the ideas of the value of unity and coming together in a full agreement of our goals and purposes. He then took questions from the sister missionaries and responded in detail. It was a wonderful meeting.

Then came Saturday! Elder Renlund was holding several meetings in Honolulu. One was an area meeting with all of the Stake Presidents and Bishops. Another was a missionary training meeting with all of the elders and sisters in the mission. So, all of our sister missionaries went down to Honolulu to the Tabernacle for that event. Elder and Sister Andrus and Sister Smith and I stayed behind to keep the Visitors’ Center open. Of course, it was a very busy day with a number of Chinese tour busses … and no Chinese-speaking missionaries available. It all worked out, thanks in large part go Google Translate on my iPhone. The missionaries made it back about 5:30pm, just in time for the busiest evening trams from the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Several weeks ago a reporter for the Deseret News came through the Visitors’ Center with his camera and took a number of pictures. He wrote up a news story that was published on the Deseret News web site. Well, another version was published in the printed Church News on Saturday, May 22nd. we just got our copy of that Church News this past week, so I’ve scanned the article and attached it to this email for those who might be interested (it’s a pretty large file). Sister Smith and I have our picture in the article! That’s kind of fun!

Here’s to all of us having another great week next week!

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