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!