As we were taking tickets at the Hale Ohana Luau yesterday, a big procession started coming by which included the King and Queen of Tonga along with a number of their retineu. Nina used my iPhone to take a few pictures. Unfortunately, it was later in the day and there wasn’t a goodly amount of light so everything is pretty dark.

Later we were talking with the Visitors’ Center Director’s wife, Heidi Swinton, who expressed my thinking exactly: He didn’t look like how I picture a King. There was no crown, for instance. Nevertheless, he was there in person and the Polynesian Cultural Center was certainly very happy to have him and his entourage at the facility. I’ve now been in the near presence of the King and Queen of Tonga yesterday as well as the Queen of Denmark back in June, 2007. We had just arrived in Denmark to take a cruise up the Norwegian coast and spent part of Sunday afternoon at the Tivoli Gardens in downtown Copenhagen. While we were there, the Queen of Denmark came into the Gardens to attend a function. While I couldn’t get a picture of the Queen, I did get a picture of a number of women enthralled at the opportunity to get a glimpse of the Queen. So those are my two encounters with royalty.

Today has been a Very Long Day! Nina’s heading for bed and I won’t be far behind her. All of the sister missionaries went to Honolulu today for a special meeting with Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve (we had a very special meeting with him yesterday). We opened the Visitors’ Center at 9am and were there until 5:30pm. We were the only missionaries there until about noon when Elder and Sister Andrus came over early for their shift which would normally start at 2:30pm. That gave us four missionaries there for the afternoon until the sister missionaries returned from Honolulu about 5:30pm. During the afternoon we had seven or eight (I lost count) Chinese tourist busses come to the Visitors’ Center. At one time I had counted 165 total Chinese visitors and at least two more bus loads came after that.

I used Google Translate to make up a little sign that said, “Welcome to the Visitors’ Center. You’re welcome to come inside. You may take pictures everywhere, both inside and outside. There are free religious materials inside. The restrooms are available inside.” I printed that out on a piece of paper and as the people came off the busses, I would hold the sign so they could read. That worked well enough that most of them at least came onto the Temple grounds and many of them made their way into the Visitors’ Center. We usually have at least one Chinese-speaking sister missionary on duty, but not today. Google Translate to the rescue!

We made a quick trip to the house for Nina to change out of her Visitors’ Center muu-muu and then we went to the PCC to coordinate the loading and dispatch of the Laie Tram Tour vehicles at 6:20pm and 6:40pm. That’s the time when we have two trams and two busses and the loading process can be quite a bedlam. We got home about 7:30pm, where fortunately we had some leftover spaghetti in the fridge for dinner. It’s now time to get the feet up and into that bed. It’s been calling increasingly more insistent for the past hour!

Ta ta for now!