There are some Big Happenings planned for November here in Laie since this is the 150th anniversary of the Church’s purchase of all the property where Laie, BYU-Hawaii, and the Polynesian Cultural Center are located plus several thousand more acres. In preparation of that, many things are being changed, upgraded, removed, or refurbished. One significant area of upgrade and refurbishment are the flower beds around the Visitors’ Center. And, as if on key, a whole bunch of Bird of Paradise flowers have bloomed from new plants put in place about a month or six weeks ago. These are beautiful flowers and stay in bloom for a very long time (I’m sure that’s one of the reasons they’re planted on the grounds).

We’ve been flying the flags at half mast the past few days in memory of the students assassinated at the college in Oregon last week (a very sad situation). Putting the flags up takes a minimum of three people and better is four people. The proper etiquette for putting a flag at half mast is to first raise it briskly to it’s full height then slowly lower it to half mast. On this flag pole that’s a lot of cranking. So far the sister missionaries, even the foreign sisters, have been very willing to help out with posting the flags each morning and retiring them each evening. I suspect someday it’ll get old…. Before we were allowed to put flags on the pole, it looked quite out of place and people would position themselves for pictures to exclude the flagpole. Now they have no problem including it in their pictures.

This past weekend was General Conference weekend. We show the conference proceedings live in the big theater. The first session on Saturday and Sunday starts at 10am Salt Lake Time, which is 6am Hawaii time and the second session on both of those days starts at 10am Hawaiian time. In between sessions we have a nice breakfast for all of the missionaries. The three senior missionary wives bake a breakfast casserole which is served on Saturday along with lots of other goodies. On Sunday we have a continental breakfast. All of the missionaries in the zone come, which includes several young Elders. Two of our sister missionaries have matching outfits gifted to them from the Samoan Ward. They definitely look quite spiffy!

On the four corners of the courtyard are four tall pillars with wires sticking out the top. These used to have tall light towers on them. The towers were shipped back to the mainland where a company rebuilt them. The pillars have been barren for more than a year. Finally this week the new light towers arrived and on October 1st they were put into place.

The process seemed to be quite straight forward. The crane would lift the towers and place them on the pillars. After each of the light towers was put next to the pillar and uncrated, it was then lifted into place while the manufacturer’s people guided each of them into the correct position. I thought it was a lot of fun to watch them carefully place these light towers into position. In the picture to the left can also be seen some of the new flowers put in place for the 150th anniversary celebration. These are called “raspberry ice” flowers. I’ve never seen or heard of them before, but they sure are pretty. With these flowers we now have lots of color in the courtyard.

The yellow hibiscus flowers, the blue bushes, the raspberry-ice flowers, the Bird of Paradise flowers, along with the trees, shrubs, and bushes make for a very peaceful and beautiful place and the visitors remark about that very often.

I took a YouTube video of getting the first light tower up and in place.

The lights went up on a nice, partly cloudy day and it took all day to get the four lights into position, the LED light installed, and the glass enclosure put in place. After that, they were all polished. We no longer have these four pillars with wires sticking out of the top. The new LED lights take 13 watts of electricity and provide an equivalent of 120 watts of light.

We walked back down to the Center after dark to see what the new lights looked like. The are quite nice. They don’t really add much illumination on the ground, but do provide a nice feature to complete the look around the fountain.

According to one of the grounds keepers, all of this work is to be completed by the end of October. He said there weren’t any more major projects but lots of small things and cleanup to get completed. Then President Eyring of the First Presidency, Elder Christopherson of the Quorum of the Twelve, and about another dozen dignitaries will come and make all of this work very worthwhile.

Ta ta for now from our beautiful corner of Paradise!