Every week, usually on Friday, we have a “walk about” up on the hill above and to the south of our apartments. Because of other conflicts, this week’s walk about was held on Thursday morning and was an Easter Egg Hunt. For at least half of the sister missionaries here, they’ve never seen or heard about such a thing.

We prepared 150 plastic eggs with candy and a scripture inside (actually, Elder and Sister Andrus stuffed the eggs, we bought 100 of the eggs to be stuffed) and then at 6am this morning the three senior couples distributed the eggs across the hill. The sisters met at 6:30, lined up, and off they went to find the eggs. They were told that when they had found six eggs, they should then help others who hadn’t reached the six-egg limit. It was a lot of fun. These activities are intended to help foster unity and mutual support as well as provide a bit of outside exercise in the fresh air. This morning’s activity succeeded on all fronts!

Last Thursday while Jared and Tania were here we spent the afternoon at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The place opens at about noon. We knew that there was plenty to do … more available than time would allow … but were quite surprised at how little we were about to do in the afternoon. We had a great time, however! We started with a BBQ lunch at the Aloha venue then walked to the far end of the PCC to the Tongan village. That was great fun and probably the highlight of the afternoon. We were able to go to the Samoa village, the Tahiti village, do the 15=minute Hawaiian Journey movie, and watch the canoe pageant. Nina and I had a ticket-taking assignment at the Aloha Luau while Jared and Tania had tickets to the Ohana Luau so we went our separate ways from 4:30 to 6:30. Then we went to the evening show, “Ha — The Breath of Life” at 7:30. It was a very good afternoon and evening and we finished the day right ready to get some sleep.

On Wednesday afternoon last week we visited the Valley of the Temples cemetery and the Byodo-In Temple in particular. This was a replica of a well-know Japanese Buddhist Temple that was built in 1968 to commemorate the hundred-year anniversary of the first Japanese emigrants to the Hawaiian Islands. The temple was so reminiscent of the Buddhist temples we had visited when living in Japan it was kind of like deja vu all over again! There were a goodly number of people visiting the temple and all seemed to be quite impressed with the building and the immaculate grounds.

More later on some of the other things we did last week when Jared and Tania were here! Ta ta for now. I’ve got laundry in the dryer that needs to be taken care of.