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!