Greetings one and all from a very quiet evening here in Hau’ula, Hawaii. it’s a nice, warm, humid evening, but we’re home with nothing but writing letters and such on the agenda. It’s been a very busy week (as usual) and we’re enjoying a bit of down time.
Life at the Visitors’ Center continues to keep us busy. While the number of visitors from stateside have declined, the number of people from the Polynesian Cultural Center and the Chinese tour buses are increasing somewhat. We’ve had a very unusual Friday at the PCC and will have another unusual Monday as well. State Farm Insurance is holding some kind of a convention in Honolulu and they have bought out the PCC on Friday and again on Monday for their attendees, some 2,500 each day. Since about a third of attendees each day at the PCC are walk-ins (no prior reservation), they were expecting to have a number of disappointed people. They offered them a 20% discount for a ticket on another day and asked us to run the Laie Tram Tour from 11:30am to 3:40pm on Friday (and again on Monday if there was enough demand on Friday). We had maybe ten people come over on the tram on Friday, so it’s highly likely we won’t repeat the process on Monday.
I needed to go to the VA Medical Center on Wednesday (our P-Day) so we spent most of that day first getting the car we rent from the mission inspected and legal for the next year and then picking up items we needed from the Mission Office, doing the lab work at the VAMC, and doing some shopping. We’ll be OK for shopping for two or three weeks now. Which is good as we won’t have a P-Day next week. The Center Directors have family visiting, so we’re taking their shift next Wednesday so they can spend time with their family. They have done the same for us when we had family visiting and we really appreciate that.
We have another significant treat in store this coming week as well. The Director of the Church’s Missionary Department as well as the Director of the Church’s Visitors’ Centers will be here on Monday and Tuesday. In addition to doing five hours of training over those two days for us, they’re also meeting with all the other Important Persons, such as the President of the PCC and many of his staff along with the President of BYU-Hawaii and many of his staff. We should get some more information about when they might do the long-expected renovation of our Visitors’ Center! Meanwhile, they are also very interested in looking at what we’re doing here that is being so very successful in qualified missionary referrals and attracting all of the mainland Chinese visitors.
The Big Buzz here this past week has been the local high school football team, the Kahuku Red Raiders. The locals are way past fanatic about their football team, which is ranked #17 in the United States for high school football programs. The team was invited to go to Las Vegas this past weekend to play the #1 high school football team Bishop Gorman. The Red Raiders lost 35-7, but apparently played a pretty good game, but still allowed Bishop Gorman their 43rd consecutive victory. Kahuku had a 17-game win streak before this game and will likely take the All-Hawaii title once again (they’ve done that 9 out of the last 18 years and the past 4 years in a row). This area is definitely high school football crazy and people would likely give very good odds for the Red Raiders against the University of Hawaii….!!
Attached is a picture of a Buddhist Temple, the Byodo-In located about a half-hour south of us. We’ve visited there several times, the last time along with Aunt Pam. It’s in a beautiful setting and brings back very nice memories of Japan.
So, another week is in the books. Time is flying by! We love you and pray for you all.
Love,
father/father-in-law/brother/brother-in-law/uncle/grandfather/son/friend/missionary
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