I wonder if it’s possible to take too many moon / temple pictures? When the night is as pretty as this one was, it’s hard not to fill up the camera card with pictures. I also chatted this afternoon with a fellow who is here taking pictures of the temple; he’s flying to the Big Island tonight to take pictures of the Kona Temple. He said he’s traveling around the world taking pictures of all the temples. A fellow I know on Twitter, Scott Jarvie (@jarvie), has recently published a coffee-table type book on the temples … this fellow is working on a website that’ll include lots of video, including drone camera video. He spent more than an hour flying his drone all around and over the Laie Temple. He said he’d let me know when he’s published something.

Speaking of pictures, I’ve decided that the most often used phrase in the front area of the Visitors’ Center and outside on the courtyard is “One – Two – Three”. That’s what everyone says when they’re taking a picture of someone. I hear it over and over and over again … and in several different languages during the day. I wonder how many pictures of the temple are taken each day. It’s got to be a big grundle!

I’ve noticed that the posting frequency has gotten less and less often. I’m going to change that … hopefully. Ta ta for now!

Now that we’re in a new year and our Church schedule has changed, our duty hours at the Visitors’ Center have changed as well. We now have our Church meeting block from 8am until 11am and then are to be at the Visitors’ Center from 11:30am until 4pm. Last year we were at the Center from 9am until 11:30 and then Church from noon until 3pm.

The Center is Very Busy on Sundays! We have a goodly number of tourists who stop in because it’s a site they want to see or they were driving past and decided to stop. That’s pretty normal every day. We also get a few tour buses, but not like on week days. The big difference is all the locals as well as visiting Church members who come over to the Center and spend much of their day there. On the earlier shift we weren’t very busy at the Center until about 11am. Now there are quite a few people at the Center when we get there at 11:30am and the number increases throughout the afternoon when we leave at 4pm. All of this is just background information, though.

The special part about today is that President Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was here in Laie at BYU-Hawaii today for a worldwide devotional (it’s available here). Elder Priday, the Center Director felt that all the sister missionaries should be able to go over to the Cannon Activity Center at BYU-H to be at the devotional, so at about 2:15pm, all of the sister missionaries on duty left. Elder and Sister Priday came over to be with Nina and me to handle the crowds. But … there weren’t any crowds! From 2:30pm until 4:30pm we had a total of eight visitors to the Center. The Devotional was being streamed on the Internet, so we put it up on the screen in one of the theaters so we could also watch and hear an Apostle. His remarks were oriented towards young people, a group he classed as “millennials” (somewhat similar to the classification being used by sociologists already). He had very pertinent advice and counsel not only to the young people, but for everyone. Take the time to listen if you haven’t already.

Because of the Devotional, we were flooded with visitors when it was over. People from all over the Island had come to the Devotional and afterwards stopped at the Visitors’ Center before making the trek back home. I had a great time talking to lots of people from all over and exercising my talented point-and-shoot camera skills.

Around noon we also had another interesting and fun visitor. He is from Vienna, Austria and is in Honolulu taking an English class (he spoke very good English already, but was taking a two week class to improve his English). He’s an architectural Engineer by trade and loves to travel. He spent well over an hour at the Center visiting with Nina and me (giving us a great opportunity to exercise our German) and some of the other sister missionaries. He left with a Book of Mormon and some other literature and said that he’d be back next week to visit again. Definitely something to look forward to.

So, we’ve had a very nice Sunday. Sacrament Meeting was excellent, followed by outstanding Sunday School and Priesthood/Relief Society meetings. We had a great afternoon visiting with guests at the Center (including the fellow from Austria), got very valuable counsel from an Apostle of the Lord, all followed by a tasty dinner. It’s been another great day in this little corner of paradise!

Ta ta for now… .

Every six weeks or so the three senior missionary couples at the Visitors’ Center get together for lunch. Since one of us is on duty, we enlist the help of another senior missionary couple serving over at BYU-Hawaii or at the Polynesian Cultural Center who have previously served a mission in a visitors’ center somewhere. Fortunately, there are currently two couples that fit the bill and one of them was available yesterday (Friday) to substitute for Nina and me for a couple of hours. That made it possible for Elder and Sister Priday (the Center Director), Elder and Sister Jensen (the other senior missionary couple), and Nina and I to get together for lunch for the last time. Elder and Sister Priday complete their missionary service next Friday, January 15th. Elder and Sister Jensen complete their service five days later on January 20th.

We had lunch at the Turtle Bay Resort Lei Leis snack bar. They have a limited, but very tasty and well-prepared menu and everyone can find something suitable for lunch (and, they have complimentary fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies). Friday was one of those incredible “chamber of commerce” days. A bluebird sky, upper 70° temperatures, and no wind. We were seated on the patio looking out over the putting green and the mountains to the west. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with both the Pridays and the Jensens. They have been model missionaries and have taught Nina and I more than they can ever imagine. I’m sure both couples are right ready to go home and play with the grandkids, but they will certainly be missed here.

So, how does the turnover work? The new directors, Elder and Sister Swinton, will spend a couple of days in Salt Lake being oriented to this new assignment. They’ve been Mission President before and he has served as an Area Seventy, so there’s not much to tell them before they get here, I guess. They’ll arrive mid-afternoon on Friday from Salt Lake City and will be picked up at the airport by the Hawaii Honolulu Mission President, who will bring them here to Laie. They should arrive here sometime around 6:30pm. Just over 90 minutes later, Elder and Sister Priday depart. The incoming and outgoing directors will spend about an hour and a half together. From there it’ll be up to the Jensens and Nina and me to fill in the gaps. When Elder and Sister Jensen leave, the turnover will be even shorter … at most 20 minutes … and possibly no overlap at all.

So, a big topic at lunch was, what did Nina and I need to know about the Center? I have no idea what we don’t know. Donald Rumsfield, former Secretary of Defense, famously said this:

The message is that there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

I’m actually worse off than Mr. Rumsfield! There were unkowns that he knew he didn’t know. I don’t even have that luxury. The saving grace is that no lives are at risk, no careers are at stake, and the Church will neither falter nor fail based on what happens in the next few weeks as we all muddle through.

As part of the going-away activities, the sister missionaries are putting together a small remembrance book with a page for each of the missionaries. We attach a picture and a few words and they bind the whole thing together to give to Elder and Sister Priday (and will do something similar for Elder and Sister Jensen next week). So, we had a few pictures taken at the Visitors’ Center and printed them at Longs Drugstore. I liked this one well enough that I’ve put it on the blog header (see above). It was time to update the blog header a little bit, anyway. Next is to get a better beach picture. So, here we are, in our missionary attire (Nina in her muu-muu and me in my shirt and tie. I don’t get fancy duds…). We’re not quite ready to say goodbye (is anyone, ever?). Things will definitely be different next week!

Ta ta for now!

On our way home from Honolulu yesterday, which happened to be our Preparation Day, we noticed that the surf was coming in quite strongly on the northwest beaches. We finally found a place to stop and park for a few minutes. The beaches at Sunset, Waimea, and Hale’iwa were all roped off for swimmers as the surf was just too dangerous. On the other hand, scores of die-hard surfers were out in the water just beyond where the waves started to break waiting for just the right one to come along and give them a ride. This sport can be very dangerous, I think. I’ll never know more, as attempting to even stand on a surfboard will never be in my future….

The place where we stopped had some fishermen, but no surfers. It isn’t much of a beach, actually. It was very rocky and a steep climb to get down to the water’s edge. It was also low tide. The tide had turned just about 45 minutes before we stopped. However, the waves were still pretty spectacular. I took a short 20 second video and posted it on YouTube:

It may do a bit of justice to the surf! While we were stopped there, Nina met and talked to a couple from Texas who had also stopped. They were here on the twentieth wedding anniversary and seemed to be having a great time.

We’re on the morning shift on Thursday through Saturday currently. That means putting up the US and Hawaiian Flags every morning. We “draft” a couple of sister missionaries to help with this process, which all of them enjoy doing. The process really takes three people to accomplish as cranking the flags all the way up to the top of the flagpole is quite a workout, so they always want to “share” the workload. The sister missionary on the left is Tongan and the sister on the right is Laotian (specifically Hmong). They are a lot of fun and are great missionaries. Neither of them ever turn down an assignment.

The holiday season is over … the Christmas Trees in the Visitors’ Center have all been taken down and put away for another year. The documentation as to which tree was put where and decorated by whom has been updated. Sometime next November the process will start all over again.

Another major clue that the holiday season is over is the change in the number of visitors to the Visitors’ Center! While a significant percentage of the visitors during the holidays were families on vacation, now we’re primarily seeing adult couples, many celebrating some important life event such as an anniversary or birthday. Many are retired and taking advantage of the slow season prices to come to Hawaii. We enjoy visiting with them and like that we can spend a little more one-on-one time with them. Today we had two couples from Turkey come into the Center and we had a nice visit with them about our way-too-short visits to Istanbul and Ephesus. We certainly have people visit from all over the world!

Another year is well underway. We’re coming up on ten months in Laie. It really does seem like it was just last week when we got here. Ta ta for now!

This year certainly came in with a BANG! Fireworks of all kinds were going off most of the afternoon and into the evening yesterday (New Years Eve). I went to bed around 10pm and slept fitfully for a couple of hours, awakened often by the big bangs that happened every once in a while. Nina came to bed around 11 pm and went immediately and soundly asleep. Just before midnight fireworks went off all over the town and particularly near our house. When that much gunpowder is going off and that much noise is happening, it is strangely reminiscent of some of the rocket and motar attacks I experienced (and survived) at DaNang AFB in Vietnam. I don’t have any PSTD issues from those days, but know some folks who do. I enjoy fireworks (a lot) and am also happy to have survived Vietnam with my mental faculties (mostly) intact.

The Laie City Park lies just to the northwest of our home. A number of very large families had taken up space, including tents, chairs, tables, and cooking equipment in the park. All of them had a grundle of fireworks, most of which were expended around midnight. Nina slept soundly through the entire thing. It took me quite a while to get back to sleep. The reason for wanting a reasonable night’s sleep? We needed to be up around 6:30am this morning to assist with breakfast for all the missionaries in our zone at 7:30am. Breakfast consisted of French Toast with a variety of toppings, sausage links, a fruit bowl, and a variety of drinks. Elder Priday (the Center Director) and I did most of the French Toast cooking, Nina and Sister Priday took over near the end so we could enjoy some breakfast. We had twenty-three sister missionaries, six elders, and four senior couples for breakfast. It went well; everyone had plenty to eat. By 9am we were done and back to the house (and a nap for me).

The Visitors’ Center didn’t open until noon on New Years Day, so before leaving this morning we put up the flags. Most of the time the sister missionaries assist with putting up the flags, but this morning I was able to enlist the Zone Leaders to put up the flags. They seemed to have fun even though it is a lot of work! Once the flags are attached it’s about 130 turns of the crank to get the flags all the way up the pole.

The amount of daylight in the day is starting to increase again now that we’ve passed the Winter Solstice. Over the year the number of daylight hours varies about 3 1/2 hours between December 21st and June 21st. A few times a week I go out for a walk around 6am in the morning and right now it’s quite dark at that time. The other morning as I was walking down our street I could make out that there was something that came out of a house on the left side of the street and was headed right for me. It kind of looked like a big dog or something. I moved to the left, off the road, but it continued to come straight at me. When I could finally figure it out, it was a lady in a motorized wheelchair … and she was moving along at a pretty good clip. I exclaimed something just as she saw me. She missed me, but nearly had an accident with her wheelchair!

A couple of days ago the wheelchair lady came into the Visitors’ Center. She came zooming up the sidewalk and flying through the door (which was being held open by Sister Castaneda, one of the sister missionaries and the other person in the picture). We were finally introduced and laughed a bit about how fast she drives that machine. She was on her way to work that morning and needed to go in early. She usually doesn’t leave the house until 7:30am or so. Meanwhile, I’ve located a reflective vest in the garage and now wear that when I’m out walking to give Sister Watson and anyone else the ability to give me a wide berth!

The new year is underway. We both remembered “rabbit rabbit” when we got up this morning, so perhaps good luck will follow us for the entire year. It’s a funny superstition, but has become pretty much a family tradition for many years. While I’ve no idea what the year will specifically bring, we’ll be here in Laie for the entire year. We’ll get a new Visitors’ Center Director in January and a new Hawaii Honolulu Mission President in July. So there will be some change during the year. It should be a great ride!

Ta ta for now!

Every so often there is a full moon during the night on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day. This year was one of those, although here in Hawaii we don’t see the moon all that often because it’s usually pretty cloudy. The Temple faces true east, which means that the moon goes over the Temple and sets behind the Temple. Even on a cloudless night we usually don’t see a full moon behind the Temple because it’s daylight when a full moon sets. On the other hand, new moons also set behind the Temple, it’s always dark and early evening when they are setting, and I can get a picture (although more than a little bit shaky). The next full moon on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day will be in 2026, for anyone interested.

We came home from shopping last Monday to find a Very Huge Spider on the front wall of the house in just the right position that we had to walk past it to get into the house. I’ve no idea what kind of a spider this was, but it definitely took up some real estate on the wall. It spent much of the afternoon on the wall, then disappeared (hopefully not into the house!). Spiders are, to me, pretty ugly creatures. I’m certain this spider exists if, for no other reason, than to give some other animal (the ferrel chickens?) a tasty snack.

The Visitors’ Center is closed two days of the year … Christmas and Thanksgiving. It is also closed early on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. We open at noon on New Years Day. To give the missionaries something to do on New Years Eve, all of the missionaries in our Zone will gather at the Visitors’ Center around 7:30pm on New Years Eve to watch a movie. We’re planning to watch “The Cokeville Miracle”, a fairly recent movie. They are all supposed to be safely in their lodging not later than 9:30pm on New Years Eve. Sounds like a good time for me, as well. We’ve been told that fireworks galore will go off all night long on New Years Eve. So, it’s a good thing we don’t open until noon. I’ll need a morning nap, for sure!

Cokeville, Wyoming is just across the border into Wyoming on the way from Soda Springs (where I grew up) to Green River, Wyoming (where my favorite brother lives). It’s a very small town (and getting smaller as the years go by), supported mainly by agriculture and the trucks that go through town from I-80 going to I-15. The school hostage crisis occurred in 1986 and is still quite vivid in my memory. Wikipedia has a good writeup on the whole ordeal. I’m interested to see how it all unfolds on the movie screen versus how it really happened. I do believe it was quite a miracle that, other than the perpetrators, no one was seriously injured.

Christmas was a very nice day. We spent much of the day at the Visitors’ Center with our iPads so the sister missionaries could use Skype to call their families. It was fun to watch them make the connection and actually see their family and friends! Sister missionaries can actually squeal pretty loudly when they’re excited…. The absolute highlight for us came at 1:30pm when we logged into a website (zoom.us) and joined a video conference set up by our daughter Jaelene and were able to talk with six of our children and their families. We were able to chat for about 45 minutes. This was a very special treat for us.

Well, the Christmas trees at the Visitors’ Center all come down this weekend, the background Christmas music gets turned off, replaced by normal Tabernacle Choir music. The special display for “A Savior Is Born“, the new Christmas video, will be put away, and by Monday we’ll be pretty much back to normal. The holiday season will be behind us. However, January will not be mundane … not by a long shot. The current Visitors’ Center Director and his wife, Elder and Sister Priday, will leave on January 15th, being replaced by Elder and Sister Swinton. Then on January 20th, the other senior missionary couple, Elder and Sister Jensen, complete their missionary service and will be replaced by Elder and Sister Andrus from Rexburg. We will seriously miss both the Pridays and the Jensens. They have become good friends and easy people to work with. There is one constant in life: change. January will be a month of change around here for sure!

Meanwhile, Life is very pleasant.

Ta ta for now!

All of the beaches on Oahu are public beaches … and there are plenty of beaches all around the island. One thing we don’t see much of, however, are boats out on the ocean. Our drive south along the main highway (The Kamehameha Highway, the only highway on the north and east side of the island) is a two-lane road with 35 mph speed limits with occasional 45 mph limits. It’s a windy road that follows the coastline. We drive it at least once a week down towards Kaneohe and so far, never tire of the drive. The coastline is very picturesque and we’ll often stop at one or more of the beaches for a few minutes.

The other day in the late afternoon coming back from the farmer’s market at the Windward Mall, we stopped at the Heeia State Park and the boat dock. Across the way I noticed a little inlet with a small sailboat anchored in the inlet. It was definitely worth a picture! I still don’t know why we seldom see boats out in the water, though.

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re finished at the Visitors’ Center for the time being today. Our shift was from 9am until 2:30 pm. While we didn’t have a huge number of visitors, we had several families stop in to visit with us for a while. Most of them were going to the Polynesian Cultural Center for the afternoon. One very large group were here for their parent’s / grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary. They all seemed to be having a great time. We very seldom have people coming in who aren’t having a good time … tired, maybe, but almost always happy. That being said, a smaller family group this morning (7-8 people) were at the Center and watched the two new Christmas videos (http://christmas.mormon.org). When they came out of the theater, none of them were smiling. That wouldn’t do. So, I asked them, “You all look like you’re on vacation, but don’t seem to be vacationing!!??” One of the kids replied that they were on vacation and were all Very Tired! They were close to the end of their vacation and the mother said, “I’m definitely going to need a vacation when we get home from this vacation!” By the time they left, however, they were all smiling again. The Visitors’ Center kind of does that for people.

Tonight the Center will close at 7:10pm (50 minutes early) and we’ll have a Christmas get-together with all the elders and sisters in this zone at 7:30pm. The two sister missionaries planning the event have been very busy this morning getting things ready, so it should be a lot of fun. Tomorrow the Center is closed, but we’ll be there much of the day so the sister missionaries can use our iPads to Skype their families back home. They’re allowed about 45 minutes to do that and they all look forward to seeing home and family. Tomorrow afternoon all of the Visitors’ Center missionaries will get together for a nice Christmas dinner followed by a white-elephant gift exchange and we’ll watch a movie in the theater at the Center. We have a special treat … our kids have set up to get on a video call with us tomorrow afternoon as well. We’re really looking forward to that!

So, this is going to be the simplest Christmas we’ve had in a very long time! Well, thinking back, last year was quite simple as were were in Ft. Meyers trying to find a spot on the beach…. This one is simple in a different kind of a way. It’s a very pleasant day and will be a nice day tomorrow. And no snow….

My favorite brother picked up Mother in Soda Springs yesterday so she can spend Christmas with them in Green River, Wyoming. It’s also my favorite brother’s wife’s birthday today. So my brother Perry fired up his Periscope app and put out a short video of the birthday cake and everyone singing Happy Birthday. It was fun to see. Happy Birthday, Chris! Merry Christmas everyone!

Ta ta for now!

Occasionally we have a Preparation Day with no pressing items or appointments. Today was one of those days. In fact, today isn’t even our scheduled Preparation Day. The other senior couple (who would have today as their P-Day) swapped with us so they could take care of something.

So, we pretty much stayed home or close thereby today and took care of a lot of little things needing attention. I fixed the door to the cabinet underneath the bathroom sink and replaced the knob on the middle desk drawer in our living room. Nina hemmed up four muu-muu’s, one of which is needed for a new sister missionary who arrived yesterday from the MTC. We did the laundry as well as some house cleaning.

On Monday and Tuesday of the transfer week we host a small “give and take” in our garage for the sister missionaries to leave anything they no longer need or want as well as for the sister missionaries to browse through the stuff and take whatever is useful to them. Since we had four sister missionaries going home, this time a lot of clothing and food items were brought over. This morning we sorted through all of the left-overs, packed them into bags, and took them over to the “Give and Take” run by BYU-Hawaii for their students. Much of what the sister missionaries brought over will have a second life with a student or someone in their family. This is a very good system, particularly at this time of the year!

The Christmas Tree at the top of the post has all hand-made ornaments. It’s a beautiful tree and gets lots of attention from the visitors to the Center. Quite a few people have come into the Center just to see the Christmas Trees! It’s also kind of fun explaining Christmas Trees to some of the foreign visitors who are seeing this tradition for the first time.

When yesterday finally came to an end, we were both exhausted. Since it was the actual transfer day, the day started at 6:30 am out in front of the house saying goodbye to the four sisters headed home and the one sister going out for her twelve weeks as a full-time prosyliting missionary. Then after they all left to drive to Honolulu, the remaining sister missionaries started the process of moving into their new apartments and getting everything arranged. A couple of them needed Nina to drive them (and their stuff) to the new apartment. All of this before 9am when we were on duty at the Center.

The Center was quite busy all morning long which makes the time go by quickly and helps the sister missionaries not get too bored. After our shift we spent some time helping one sister missionary relearn how to ride a bike! She hadn’t been on a bicycle since she was a little girl and this was quite a new experience for her. Fortunately, she has a very compassionate and laid-back companion who will give her a lot of help and support.

The sister missionaries are supposed to be in their apartments for the night by 9:30pm (lights out at 10:30pm). About 9:45pm I got a call from a set of sister missionaries that they couldn’t get their apartment door locked. They are in one of the apartments down by the beach next door to the apartment that was burglarized while the missionaries were sleeping, so it is important for the doors to be locked at night. Nina and I drove over to find that the sliding door had come off its track. Between the two of us we were able to get the door back on track and locked. We happily fell into bed last night!

Tomorrow morning we’re on duty from 9am to 2:30pm. It should be a reasonably drama-free day. Hopefully that’s not wishful thinking….

Ta ta for now!