Every six weeks our schedule at the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitors’ Center changes in conjunction with the missionary transfers. Essentially our schedule switches with the other senior couple, Elder and Sister Andrus. Where they had the afternoon shift the past six weeks we now have the afternoon shift. The same with the morning shift. It’s regular as clockwork … and confusing as well.

We volunteer at the Polynesian Cultural Center to take tickets, count the attendees, or guard the exits at one of the eating venus at the PCC. A senior sister missionary over at the PCC puts together the schedule each month and works very hard to publish the schedule on a timely basis. That means that around the tenth of the month I have to give her our availability for the following month. So, a week or so ago I sent her our availability for May. Except I got it exactly backwards … telling her we were available on the afternoons that we were scheduled to work at the Visitors’ Center.

Dang!

So my big headache right now is arranging swaps with other missionaries. Most of our assignments were on Saturdays in May. We’re among the very few missionaries where Saturdays aren’t any different than other days of the week since we have our preparation day either on Wednesday or on Thursday. Almost all of the senior missionaries except those three couples of us at the Visitors’ Center have their day off on Saturday and they don’t like giving up their Saturday afternoon unless it’s almost a dire emergency. I’ve been able to arrange a swap for one of the weeks. Three more swaps to go.

This afternoon we were assigned to take tickets at the Prime Dining dinner venue. The lowest price dinner is a buffet meal at Island Buffet. Next up the ladder is Prime Dining which has the same buffet as Island Buffet but adds prime rib to the menu. The top of the ladder is one of the luaus. All are priced accordingly. The result is that Prime Dining usually has the fewest number of guests for dinner. Island Buffet usually takes the top spot with the luaus coming in second. Today the total attendance at the PCC was around 1,200 people and 88 people signed up for dinner at Prime Dining. There were some later ticket purchases after the preliminary numbers are published around 10am and a total of 96 people had dinner this evening at Prime Dining. A little over a thousand other people were at Island Buffet, or at the Ohana Luau, or at the Aloha Luau. Some people don’t add a dinner onto the general admission ticket but instead either bring their own food, or get something from one of the food trucks in the area, or go down the road a couple hundred yards to McDonalds.

This week is transfer week so we started our new schedule today for the next six weeks ending the last full week in May. On Wednesday one of our sister missionaries finishes her eighteen-month mission, returning home to Hong Kong, and a new sister missionary arrives from Korea. The sister missionary going home is on the right in the picture to the right helping to raise the flag. She has been an outstanding missionary. She and her companion (the other missionary in the picture) came over for dinner the other night and after the meal she asked us to identify one thing that has changed in us since we came on our mission. We had quite a discussion about that topic. One thing I can say about her (we’ve known her since we arrived) is that she came out on a mission as a daughter of our Heavenly Father, has grown and matured, and is returning home as a Woman of God. We shall really miss her … as we do all of the sister missionaries when they leave.

Ta ta for now!