The LDS Church bought 8,000 acres of land on Ohau’s north shore in 1865 as a gathering place for the Polynesian saints. That resulted in the Lai Hawaii Temple in 1919, the Church College of Hawai in 1955 (now known as BYU-Hawaii), the Polynesian Cultural Center in 1963, and the Visitors’ Center in 1964. This year is the 150th anniversary which will culminate in November with a cultural festival. Leading up to that big event are several smaller events including six firesides at the Visitors’ Center, two each month. The second of these firesides was held tonight.

The Goo family has been an integral part of Laie since the mid-1950’s when they were asked by regional Church authorities to move to Laie and open a general store. The family talked this evening about their family history coming from China to Hawaii, eventually joining the Church, then searching out their ancestors back in southeastern China (Cantonese speaking area) and doing all of the associated temple work, literally thousands of ordinances. The Goo line has been traced back some twenty-five generations and related lines further than that. That’s definitely the blessing of good Chinese record-keeping over the years! Needless to say, Nina and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to their story. We’ve had a delightful day and evening!

About a half-hour or so from here on the west side of the Island is the Dole Plantation Visitor’s Center. James Dole started growing pineapples in Hawaii around 1900 starting a company now known as Dole Food Company. In the area where James Dole first started growing pineapples the company has built a visitor’s center. The place has every possible kind of pineapple-related souvenir one could imagine and many, many more. It’s actually a fun store to browse through. Last week we stopped their on our way to WalMart and had lunch at their grill followed by (incredibly sweet) pineapple ice cream. When browsing through the store I ran across a display of Hawaiian-brewed beer labeled as “Liquid Aloha”. That sounds pretty Hawaiian to me. However, even if I was a beer drinker, this wouldn’t be on my agenda due to the very high premium beer prices. But, it was worth a picture.

Another hurricane is making its way through the area south and west of Hawaii. Today we’re getting the effects of this storm with periodically torrential rain downpours. No sunshine today. Also, no lunar eclipse, either. If the sky was visible, the eclipse would have been well underway before moonrise. Alas, thick cloud cover has ensured we don’t get to see any of the eclipse in person, only what’s showing up on the Internet. There won’t be another lunar eclipse while we’re serving in Hawaii. Tomorrow is supposed to be partly cloudy for much of the day. The temperatures are a bit cooler as well. Paradise is improving!

Ta ta for now!

There are many people who come to Hawaii for special reasons. Some are celebrating a wedding anniversary, others significant birthdays. I talked to a couple of ladies that were here celebrating their recent divorces from their ex-husbands! And, of course, we get a lot of young couples on their honeymoon.

The honeymooners are usually easy to spot. They stand close to each other, really close. They hold hands or have their arms around each other. They look at each other often, really often. They giggle a lot. In other words, it’s pretty clear that they’re recently married. The couple in the picture came to the Center tonight on the last tram from the Polynesian Cultural Center. I met them and we chatted a bit. I asked them if they were here for a special occasion, like their wedding anniversary. “No,” she replied. “We haven’t had an anniversary yet!” “You’re on your honeymoon?” I asked. “Yup,” he said. “We’ve been married twelve days today.”

We had a fun conversation. I asked him how they met. “Playing cards at the senior citizens center,” she said. “Then I asked her to a dance, and the rest is history!” he added. Pinochle was their card game and they plan on playing every week at the senior citizens center, but not as partners. “We don’t want to start arguing, yet,” she explained. Everyone has a great story if we take the time to let them tell their story.

I also chatted for about fifteen minutes with a fellow on a temporary duty assignment from Hill Air Force Base near Ogden, Utah. He works on C-130 airplanes, the kind that I flew on when I was in the Air Force some fifty years ago. He works on the E, G, and J models. I flew on the B models, none of which are still flying in the USAF. Some foreign governments still fly a few B models and there are several B models as firefighting airplanes. One of the B models I flew in way back then was turned into a firefighting tanker and crashed in a fire in northern California, not the most glorious of endings for an airplane!

Today was transfer day with four sister missionaries completing their missions and on their way home. Today they left Laie to go to the Mission Home in Honolulu. Tomorrow is a “play day” for them to visit some of the tourist spots and do some shopping at the world-famous Honolulu Swap Meet (warning: link automatically plays music when opened). They’ll fly home on Friday. Two are returning to the US, two back to their home countries in Asia. They’ve all been excellent missionaries and we’ll miss them. In missionary slang, a new missionary is called a “baby” and a missionary ending their mission is “dying”. The person who trains a new “baby” is called their “mother” and the last companion of a missionary finishing their mission “kills” their companion.

One of the sisters returning home is from Taiwan and was an incredibly effective missionary with the Chinese guests who came in on the tour busses. She’s responsible for hundreds of Books of Mormon going home to China with Visitors’ Center guests. Her last assignment was training another Chinese speaking missionary and it looks like she’s done a good job of passing on her passion for doing missionary work with the Chinese people. Four sisters went home, two new missionaries arrived, and one sister came back from her full-field prosyliting assignment. We now have 25 sister missionaries at the Center and four missionaries out on their three-month full-field assignments.

The task for us is to quickly learn the new companionship assignments and their shift schedules. Every companionship except one changed this transfer and every companionship is in a different bedroom. We’ll just get it figured out and the end of October will be here and we’ll start all over again with a new transfer. As it currently stands five sisters will finish their mission next transfer and five new sisters will come from the MTC. Stuff happens, though, so the reality at the end of October may be different, particularly if there are any visa issues.

Ta ta for now!

Flags that go up in the morning have to come down in the evening (unless, of course, we put lights up in such a way that the flag is illuminated all night long, which has a very high probability of never happening). During a normal week (on a higher level, most weeks are normal. On a macro level, none of them are), we come into the Center at 9am four days a week, have one day off, and come into the Center at 2:30pm two days a week. Right now that is Friday and Saturday afternoons. This transfer ends on Saturday night, so our schedule swaps next week.

So, we’ve been responsible for putting the flag up this week on Monday through Wednesday. We had our Preparation Day on Thursday, and were back in the Center this afternoon. This was the first night that we’ve been responsible for taking the flags down.

Taking them down is as big a deal as putting them up in the morning, just a little bit easier. It takes four people to take the flags down and again, it takes about fifteen minutes. The easier part is that it is much less strenuous to crank the flags down than to crank them up. With four people, one pushes in the crank, a second person cranks the flags down, a third person catches the Hawaiian Flag while the fourth person unhooks the Hawaiian Flag. These two then fold up the flag and give it to the person pushing in the crank. The third person catches the American Flag while the fourth person unhooks the flag and the two of them fold up that flag.

We take the flags down right now after the last tram goes back to the Polynesian Cultural Center which is a bit after 7pm. It’s dark by then, a bit later than we should be taking the flags down. I don’t see us being able to do that while we’re working with the guests who come from the PCC every twenty minutes from 3:10pm through 6:50pm.

It is nice to have the flags up, though. The pole looks very barren without them and the pole is high enough and the flags large enough that they look quite nice up in the air.

The day is done and so am I. Ta Ta For Now!

Even though whether or not the flagpole is straight enough or not is still a subject of debate between the Temple Engineer, Salt Lake City, and the contractor, we’ve finally been given the go ahead to put up the flags each morning and take them down each evening. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while, as have several of the sister missionaries. So, this week as we had the morning shift on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (today), we’ve been putting the flags up each morning and the afternoon shift has been taking them down about 7pm.

By flags I mean the United States flag and the Hawaiian State flag.

The flagpole is, I think, 120 feet tall. That turns out to be a very tall pole! The flags are huge, as one would expect on a pole this tall. The process is to first, using a key, unlock the place where the crank can be inserted to raise of lower the flags and then bring the hooks low enough to hook on the flags one at a time while raising the flags to keep them off the ground. Once both flags are attached, then crank the flags to the top of the pole.

It all sounds simple enough on paper. In reality it’s a Big Job. We need at least four people to put the flags up and one of them needs to have some pretty good heft to push the crank in far enough to unlock the mechanism. The spring behind the crank mechanism takes at least 50 foot-pounds of pressure to release. That means that one person has to put all of his/her weight behind pushing the crank in while a second person turns the crank. Two other people manage the flags, one person for each flag. The entire process takes ten or fifteen minutes to get the flags up and a little less to take them down. The sister missionary in the picture pushing in on the crank is from Cambodia and she was pretty tired by the time the flags were completely up. Her companion said that she needed to go sit in the air conditioning and get dried out after she got the flag to the top of the pole. Only problem was that when we got to the Center this morning, the air conditioning was not working and it was warmer inside the Center than it was outside! It took the whole morning once the engineer got the chillers back online to cool of the front part of the Center.

This morning as we were putting the flags up, a family from Utah was nearby. It was quite touching to watch them standing there with hands over their hearts as we put the flags up and then they recited the Pledge of Allegiance! Turns out the kids are home schooled and they recite the pledge every morning at home.

If either or both of the flags are wet when they come down, then they have to be hung on a Very Tall clothesline in the electrical switch room overnight to dry out. I can’t reach the line, so I’m pretty sure we need some kind of a step stool, or have a pretty good arm to toss the flag over the line.

We had our all-time (since we’ve been here, anyway) low visitor count for the morning shift this week on Monday. That meant we had plenty of time to visit with each of the guests who came into the Center. Nina was able to talk with a couple of women who came in that morning and had a great conversation resulting in them taking a Book of Mormon with them when they left. So, it’s kind of a “six of one, half dozen of the other” type of a quandary. We like to have the visitors and be busy, but sometimes when we’re really busy it’s not difficult to overlook someone who might want to know a little more about the Church but doesn’t know how to ask or may be too shy to ask.

The standard conversation starter for us is, “Where are you from?” Everyone has a story and most people really want to tell their story! This morning after we got the flags up, I walked over to a couple who had just come onto the grounds. As we talked, it turned out that they were on their honeymoon as a second marriage for both of them. The wife had been to Hawaii 24 years earlier, not yet a member of the Church, and had toured the Visitors’ Center at that time. Four years later when a co-worker introduced her to the missionaries, she told them about her one experience with the Church when she had visited the Laie Temple Visitors’ Center. Apparently we had made a good impression on her. She joined the Church, her then husband did not.

As a result of her visit to Hawaii, she had decided she wanted to marry a Polynesian fellow. A few years after her divorce she met the man who married her in the Phoenix Temple a week ago … and he is Samoan. Wish finally fulfilled.

They had a great story and today I had time to listen to the whole story. They’re clearly in love with each other and are having a good time getting to know each other now as husband and wife. I wished them both a good life as they left the Center to go on about their honeymoon.

Life is a delightful narrative!

Today turned out to be a pretty full Preparation Day! The street in front of our house is being re-paved and this morning the machinery came to mill the old asphalt. That meant putting our car over at the Temple parking lot otherwise it would be hemmed in until they were finished. That turned out to be a non-issue. By noon they were finished milling, moved everything away, and didn’t come back. I’ve no idea when they’ll actually put the new asphalt down on our road!

The house cleaning, laundry, and shirt ironing were all pretty much underway by noon, so we decided to do something unusual … go out to lunch! We drove over to Subway, had a nice sandwich followed by some ice cream at Angels Ice Cream Store, and came back home to finish things up.

As I was finishing the ironing, a couple of sister missionaries called and asked if we wanted to go out for Thai food for dinner with them (translation: take them to Thai food for dinner). Sure. We didn’t have anything pressing (note the pun) so we picked them up and drove west to Sunset Beach and the Elephant Truck Thai Food establishment for some excellent Thai food. That made two meals out in the same day. We haven’t done that since we got here.

The sun was setting as we ate, so we stopped by Sunset Beach to take a few pictures. I parked on the pavement particularly, since the young missionaries aren’t allowed on the beach (“Your mission ends where the sand starts!”). We had a lot of fun and a great conversation on the way back home about a conference talk “Is It Still Wonderful to You?“. This has reference to the gospel and Church being “a marvelous work and a wonder” and whether or not we have become so complacent in our lives that it has ceased to be a “wonder”.

One of the sister missionaries is from Cambodia. She’s a real dynamo and an outstanding missionary (they all are, some more than others, though). She talked about how the Temple was so very far away from her and the other members in Cambodia (the closest temple is in Hong Kong). Since she couldn’t get to the temple, or even to the grounds around the temple, she put up a large picture of the Salt Lake Temple in her room so that she could have the feeling of being close to the Temple. Kind of made me tear up a little bit. They in Cambodia are so excited for the new temple to be built in Bangkok … it’s only a twelve-hour bus ride for them! So, a new goal: keep it wonderful.

Life is blessed.

Lots of little things are going on at and around the Visitors’ Center. Time to catch up on a lot of them.

Today we had our quarterly interviews with President Warner, the Hawaii Honolulu Mission President. He presented our training meeting this morning before our shift at the Visitors’ Center on conflict management when a companionship is having trouble getting along with each other. One interesting side comment was, “Don’t ever hit. One strike and you’re headed home.” I liked the baseball metaphor. The missionary guide book (or rather the Missionary Bible) Preach My Gospel has a section on conflict management and how to do a “companionship inventory” as a means to figure out how to get along. It was an interesting training. We had our interview right after our shift ended for the day. His main question seemed to be whether or not we’re getting along with each other now that we’re together 24×7. The answer is “Pretty much. No big, and very few little issues.”

There is a lot of work going on in and around the grounds. A few days ago all of the yellow hibiscus plants were ripped up along both sides of both of the sidewalks going out to the street and a deep trench dug. It turns out the Royal Palms that line the walkway and the road going out to the ocean are “strangling” the flowers; stealing all their water and nutrients. The solution? A “root barrier”. In the picture above left the root barrier is being installed. New hibiscus flowers will follow Real Soon Now, we’re told by the grounds keepers. That means sometime by November or so, I think.

The contractor brought in a big crane to (1) install a new flange around the base of the flagpole and (2) tug on the pole to make it straight. While the pole is more straight than it was, it still is not completely straight, so the Temple Engineer overseeing the project isn’t accepting the flagpole until he’s told by Salt Lake that he has to do that. There’s enough flex in the pole, in my opinion, that when both the US Flag and the Hawaiian Flag are on the pole, it’ll flex into what ever direction the wind is blowing. Oh well. We’ll continue to wait.

There are four Sea Grape trees on the grounds, two on either side of the Visitors’ Center and two opposite on either side of the statue of Lehi blessing his son Joseph courtyard. Every six months or so, the groundskeepers “square up” the trees. The locals call them “sea grape trees”. Wikipedia doesn’t know them by that name. I’ve written about them before because of two peculiarities. First, the limbs and branches grow into each other. Secondly, the leaves act kind of like paper. You can mark, draw, or write on them with a sharp instrument and the impressions stay, even when the leaf dries out. For a long time before recorded history, they were used like we use paper today for exchanging notes between lovers.

There’s a bike rack off to the side of the Visitors’ Center for the sister missionaries to park their bikes. The Zone Leaders (who have a car) also park their bikes in the rack so when they’re in this area they can park their car, ride their bikes, and save miles (they have a limited amount of miles each month they’re allowed to drive). A few days ago this green bike, one of the style called a “beach cruiser” showed up in the rack with a flat rear tire. After asking around, I found it belonged to one of our regular guests, a young man with plenty of issues who comes into the center each day to charge up his cell phone and lately a tablet. I asked him about the bike. He said he was trying to figure out how to fix the flat tire. That may become a service project for me if it’s still there in a day or so. He’s one of a couple of people who may or may not have a place to live or even a steady place to sleep at night who regularly come by the Center for a little respite.

This summer has been hotter than usual longer than usual according to some of the locals. Evidence of that is at the Polynesian Cultural Center where a bunch of these triangular sails have been put up along the walkways providing the guests with a lot more shade. About once a week we’re at the PCC on an assignment from 4:30pm until 6:30pm. The PCC opens at noon and most guests have been there since it opened when we get there. There’s always a line of people waiting to get into the luau when we get there (the luau’s open about 4:45pm) and they’re always happy, hot, and tired. Before these new shade sails were put up, one oft-mentioned complaint was the lack of places to sit in the shade. This is a complaint that obviously has been heard and acted upon.

This Tuesday, after I we got back from my doctor appointment at the VA Clinic in Honolulu, our next task was to take tickets at the Ohana Luau. This is our favorite venue! It’s on the west side of the walkway, in the shade, beside the canoe canal, with lots of people going by. I think the luau can seat upwards of 600 people, but with the major vacation season ended, this week there were just under 300 guests for the luau. Just as the patronage at the PCC goes down when summer ends and school starts in the US, the visitor count at the Visitor’s Center plummets as well. Last week the Center had had half as many guests as we did the first week of August. On the other hand, the locals have started coming during the week and on Sunday now that the Center isn’t so crowded.

And, as part of the 150th anniversary celebration, the Center is hosting two firesides a month featuring descendants of the early Mormon settlers who came to Laie, turned it into a thriving community, and built the fifth temple put into operation after the Church moved to Utah. Not only will those firesides help with the visitor counts, they’ll also be fascinating insights into the people who came here from all across Polynesia. The Polynesian Triangle goes from Hawaii in the north, southwest to New Zealand (Maori), east to Tahiti, and back northwest to Hawaii, taking in Samoa and many other islands in the south Pacific. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that these people traveled by canoe and navigated by the stars among these islands.

After our ticket-taking assignment, the volunteers are allowed to have a free meal at the Prime Dining buffet. So we all gather together at a couple of the tables and help take care of the left-overs. The menu is unwavering and unchanging, so it’s a bit difficult for the folks (like Nina) who crave variety in their meals. I have no problem with it at all, this said by the person who has had the same breakfast almost every morning for the past 65 years….

While were were eating on Tuesday evening, Nina got a text message over an app called “WhatsApp”, probably the most popular texting application in the world. This app was developed to communicate using data rather than the Simple Messaging System (SMS) provided by the phone companies, who charge for each text message. By using the data plan, people avoid paying money for each text message. The text was from Sabey, Heather and Ty’s driver in Mumbai, India. Sabey is a delightful, kind, compassionate, and savvy guy who runs a business supplying cars and drivers to people. He was incredibly helpful with the Indian complexities when I was in the hospital in Mumbai having the stents put in place. Anyway, Sabey and Nina text each other occasionally. It was fun watching her smile and face as she had a brief texting exchange with Sabey who was inquiring about how things are going for us here in Hawaii. We had one of the other missionaries take a picture of the two of us in our “Aloha Attire” so Nina could send it to Sabey. Maybe she’ll post the picture somewhere….

This afternoon near shift change time, a large family came into the Center with their father who has Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He’s confined to a wheelchair, but communicates by blowing into a tube that selects words and letters on a screen in front of him. When he’s satisfied with what’s on the screen, a text-to-speech system reads aloud what’s on the screen. His daughter had just returned from her mission and they were at the Center taking a lot of family photos. It was touching to watch how caring the whole family, including the little tykes, weas with their father, making sure he was at the center of everything going on. The whole thing reminded me a bit of Stephen Hawking, perhaps the world’s most brilliant theoretical physicist who also has the same disease and communicates in much the same way, although I think the fellow at the Center today is further along the disease path.

The Christus Statue is the centerpiece of the Visitors’ Center and is the first thing everyone sees when they come into the Center. The other evening I was sitting in the bench seats in front of the Christus, but facing out towards the windows and noticed the reflection of the Christus in the window. Wondering whether or not the reflection would come out in a picture, I took one with my iPhone. The result is to the left. I rather like how the reflection looks like the Christus is watching over everything.

The tour dialog that we use with guests at the Center tells them that the statue is symbolic of our strong belief in Jesus Christ, but that we don’t worship the statue. That’s important for many of our Asian guests who are used to venerating statues of Buddha or Confucius or any of the multitude of Hindu gods and goddesses. The original Christus is in Denmark. All of the Temple Visitors’ Centers have a copy of this statue. We’re privileged to have one from marble from the same quarry that Thorvaldsen used for his original statue. Ours weighs 26,000 pounds and stands on top of 28,000 pounds of concrete.

I’ve put this picture up before. The surf continues to be strong and our weather continues to be very humid and hot as a result of the multitude of hurricanes out in the ocean east of the Islands. In a couple of months the beaches on the west shore will be closed to casual people as the competition surf will start coming in. I’m looking forward to watching some of these surf competitions at Sunset Beach, about twenty minutes west of us.

So, tomorrow is our Preparation Day. We don’t have much planned beyond having four sister missionaries over for brunch tomorrow, doing laundry, and cleaning the house. It’ll be nice to have a quiet day with nothing pressing on the agenda.

Life is pleasant!

The Terminex folks did their magic this afternoon at the sisters apartment where we’ve been battling the bedbugs for the past couple of weeks. Here’s their report:

We want to follow up with you on today’s Terminix service as the treatment is complete.  Terminix said that they have thoroughly liquid treated the entire unit, including all bed sets (frame, topper, mattress and box), all external luggage suitcases, all chairs downstairs, and wicker three seat sofa (frame and cushions).  Corner to corner treatment.  Found live bed bugs in the bedroom on the Oceanside.

Well, we knew the bugs were there. The bug guy comes back in a couple of weeks for a followup and the work is guaranteed for 90 days. However, the preparatory work to get the apartment ready for the bug guy took several hours! All the bedding and all their clothes had to be washed in hot water and then dried for extended periods of time on high heat. Everything had to be taken up off the floor and the place thoroughly vacuumed. Nina spent four hours helping and supervising. She was definitely tired when she finally got back (after taking the sister missionaries out to lunch). While she was doing that I finished cleaning our apartment, doing the laundry, and ironing my shirts (11 white shirts and three other shirts).

But wait, that’s not all! Yesterday one of the sister missionaries in another apartment reported finding a bedbug crawling on her arm. So, yesterday afternoon and evening was spent treating that apartment. Again, everything had to be washed and dried, carpets vacuumed, and bug spray applied throughout the apartment. Meanwhile, I drove south to Walmart to buy mattress and box springs zip-up covers — an hour down followed by an hour back. Nina has spent eight of the last 24 hours fighting bedbugs. Those little suckers (pun intended) better be dead, that’s all I can say!

On the other hand, we now have two very clean and very tidy sister missionary apartments.

In the middle of that effort yesterday, we got on a Google Hangouts call with our son James and his family in Kentucky to watch our grandson Steven open his mission call. That was great fun! He’s going to the California Fresno Mission (English speaking) and reports to the MTC on October 7th (33 days from now). He’s beyond excited! We’re so very happy for him. He’ll be a great missionary! His brother James Jr. isn’t far behind. He’s got a (minor) medical issue they’re waiting to verify that it’s cleared up and his paperwork will be submitted.

We’ve had a full day of rain today. A low pressure trough passed through the islands today bringing thunder and copious amounts of rain. One rain storm parked itself on the east side of Honolulu for about 45 minutes causing some serious flash flooding and closing parts of the freeway for a period of time. Up here we just got rain pretty much the entire day. There aren’t any hurricanes close by at the moment although there are three active hurricanes in the Pacific at the present time. Combined with the low pressure and the after-effects of Hurricane Ignacio we have had heavy surf all along the east shores.

That meant we needed to go see this heavy surf. After finishing up the bedbug work, Nina and I drove out to Laie Point (about a mile and a half from our home) to watch the pounding waves. The tide was going out, but still we were treated to quite the wave action show! A couple of pictures are at the top of this blog entry.

So, that’s the story of this Preparation Day. We will be back at the Visitors’ Center tomorrow afternoon and will have time to do some family name sealings at the Temple in the morning.

Life is potentially bedbug free….

This has definitely been an active weather season in the Pacific Ocean. The hurricanes are coming our way about once a week. Hurricane Kilo went west of us; hurricane Ignacio is currently passing parallel to the Hawaiian Islands about 150 miles offshore. Hurricane Jimenez is four days behind Ignacio but current forecast is that it, too, will pass well east of the islands. Meanwhile Tropical Depression 14E is forming down near the equator. It’s too soon to tell where that one is going. It’s quite unprecedented to have this many named storms in the Pacific in one year. So far, though, they’ve not been able to target the Hawaiian Islands.

As Nina and I sat at the Polynesian Cultural Center at the Island Buffet Exit this afternoon, we reviewed the past several days and how full our days (and evenings) have been! Between bedbugs (still ongoing), apartment appliance issues (mostly tripped circuit breakers), bicycle repairs (all flats, nothing major), missionary firesides, and shift assignment changes, we’ve not had much time to even sit down for very long. Tomorrow, though, looks like it may be a much less stressful day (and by saying that, I’ve probably jinxed it!).

Clearly school has started in the US as the number of families coming to the Visitors’ Center has dropped dramatically. It’s quite reminiscent of last March when we got here just before Spring Break brought the flood of college students and vacationing families over. There is a benefit, though. With fewer guests we can spend more quality one-on-one time with them rather than having to handle them in larger groups.

I had a fun experience last Saturday. I was outside in the courtyard when a lady walked up to the gate (which was open) and stopped to take a picture. I asked if she’d like to have her picture taken and she couldn’t understand what I was asking. It turned out she was from mainland China. I told her (slowly) that there was someone inside the Visitors’ Center that spoke Chinese. When she understood what I was trying to tell her, she got a huge smile, turned and ran, literally ran back to the parking lot to a large white van, opened the door, and brought all fifteen of the passengers with her back to the Visitors’ Center.

We didn’t have a Chinese-speaking sister missionary assigned to be in the Center at that particular time (they were on the tram busses over at the Polynesian Cultural Center), but hoped that one of the off-duty missionaries would “just happen” to be inside. My hopes were answered. One of the sisters from Hong Kong had just come in with her companion and walked to the front of the Center just as the Chinese visitors came in the front door. They had a great conversation and the whole group spent more than a half-hour touring the center and peppering the sister missionary with questions.

As they were leaving, three of the guests asked to take a Book of Mormon in Chinese with them. That was gladly provided along with info on how the contact the Church in China. I was thinking later that it would be interesting to know how many Books of Mormon have gone back to mainland China with guests who have visited the Center. It would be a couple hundred just in the five and a half months we’ve been here. I understand that each Chinese citizen can bring back one religious book with them when they travel internationally. When China finally opens up for missionary work, the missionaries will find a lot of Chinese people who know about the Church and the Book of Mormon because of their visit to a Visitors’ Center somewhere in the world.

Life is worth pondering today!