When we submitted our missionary application form we indicated that we would go anywhere in the world … and then we were assigned to the Visitors’ Center in Hawaii. What I hadn’t realized or thought about when we received our mission call is that by being here the world would come to us. And so it has, more than 15,000 people in the month of May alone. Sunday evening as we tumbled finally into bed we both remarked about how much busier we are this year, both in sheer number of visitors at the Center as well as our own work schedule, than we were last year at this time.

One significant difference is the number of mainland Chinese visitors who are coming to the Visitors’ Center. Two hundred or more a day are arriving in tour bus loads of 25-30 people on average. We’ve never seen this before and seriously hope that it continues. Temple Square in Salt Lake City estimates that they get around 60,000 Chinese-speaking visitors a year. Based on April and May numbers here in Laie, if the trend continues we’ll receive between 20,000 and 25,000 Chinese-speaking visitors. From a staffing standpoint that means making sure we have at least one Chinese-speaking sister missionary on duty all the time and, if possible, two during the afternoon. The other day three bus-loads arrived all at the same time. I was taking a member family from Utah on a tour when the Chinese arrived. I explained what was happening to the Utah family and the mother told her 11-year-old son to go say hello to them.

It turns out that the boy along with two of his younger sisters are in a Chinese-immersion program at their school. He was in his third year where half the day is spent communicating in Chinese. He bounced right up front and immediately became a huge hit (see the picture above). They all crowded around him, peppering him with questions. He did very well, understood most of what was going on and responding in good Chinese. He’s now in at least 50 picture albums! I told his mother that the picture-taking would occur to make sure she was OK with it. She was … and she definitely saw the value in learning to speak Chinese!

Whichever direction we drive from Laie we drive along the seashore. Very often we pass people fishing. Usually they have several fishing poles set up along the shore, each with a little bell attached which will ring should anything take the bait. In the picture to the right one pole is visible in the front. Three more are along the shore, not quite visible. The same fisherman had two more poles behind me making a total six fishing poles. Meanwhile, he was sitting in a small tent drinking a cold one, playing a video game on his smart phone. Nina and I both wonder what fish they catch. I’m not a fisherman, but that seems to be a workable method. Actually, it got me thinking about going to the seashore and setting up my ham radio system while Nina scours the beach for all of her treasures.

We made a brief stop at the Kualoa Regional Park on our way down to Honolulu on Thursday. While there wasn’t much coral, Nina was able to pick up five small seashells to add to her collection. This is a very nice beach park along with a large campground. I’ve no idea what a camp spot costs, but it can’t be very much. Budget-minded travelers could easily spend a week at a place like this and have a very nice visit to Hawaii. No one seems to do that, though.

A couple of weeks ago, Trent Toone, a reporter for the Deseret News paid us a visit at the Visitors’ Center and stopped by the Polynesian Cultural Center. He took a number of pictures and wrote up a story that is now online at the Deseret News website: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865654605/Find-and-refer-Missonaries-are-planting-gospel-seeds-on-the-scenic-Laie-Hawaii-Temple-grounds.html?pg=all. A part of this article will be in the center section of this Saturday’s Church News. There’s a nice picture of Nina and me in the article and it’s possible that that picture may even make it to the printed article. In any regard, we’re in the news!

Ta ta for now!

My sister Eileen and her husband Phil have been in Hawaii for the past week attending to Phil’s son’s graduation with his masters from the University of Hawaii. We were able to work an afternoon visit with them into our schedules and we had a delightful visit. We bought tickets for the luau and the night show at the Polynesian Cultural Center (I get a pretty nice discount) and had a great afternoon and evening. They are now living in Knab, Utah … a place that we’ll certainly visit next summer sometime when we’re back from our mission assignment. I think it’s a great place for them to live and a good place for us to visit, but probably not where we would want to live.

Where to live when we get home from this mission is now starting to be a question that we’re discussing and thinking about. We sold our home in Pocatello before we left on the mission. While all of our stuff (and plenty of stuff at that) is in storage in Pocatello, we don’t intend to make that our residence. Our children are scattered coast to coast, none of them in Idaho. We’d like to be a bit closer to some of our family. We want to be close to a temple. We also want to be close to a good airport with lots of connection options. I’d like a little less winter, but that’s not a hard decision criteria. One of the places that fits the bill fairly well is the Salt Lake City area. We’ll be making firmer plans as the year progresses. Tomorrow it’ll be fifteen months since we arrived in Laie on March 19, 2015. Less than eight months left and that time will pass in almost a blink of an eye.

Ta ta for now!

Time really goes by in a hurry when I’m busy … and today is one of those days that proves the rule. In addition to the normal personal stuff today, Nina and I were at the Visitors’ Center from 9am – 2:30pm. Then we were at the Polynesian Cultural Center taking tickets at the Hale Aloha luau from 4pm – 6:10pm. That was followed by coordinating the trams / bus for the Laie Tram Tour from 6:10pm – 7:00pm. All of the normal stuff included: up at 5:50am to take a 1.25 mile walk, breakfast and scripture study, changing clothes a couple of times, driving people to the PCC and others to BYU-H’s Give-n-Take, making lunch in the morning, and having dinner at the PCC after all was done in the evening. We’re both tired and it’s very easy to get a bit grumpy when were both tired!

Mondays and Wednesdays for some reason are slow mornings at the Visitors’ Center. We had fewer than 40 people at the Center between 9am and 2:30 pm this afternoon. That gives the sister missionaries lots of time to do their on-line assignments while Nina and I greet and work with the guests who come in. If a group were to come in, we’d get the sister missionaries back from the computers in the back room to help with the guests. That wasn’t really necessary today. We did have some delightful people come in, though, including a couple of honeymooners. A family of three came in from Woods Cross, Utah. The daughter had Down syndrome with a mental age of around 6 in a 14-year-old body. She was just a delight. This trip for mom and dad was just for their daughter. Because we didn’t have any other guests at the time, I was able to spend a lot of time with them. Those are very special times at the Visitors’ Center!

The tram coordination activity consists of helping load and dispatch the trams and small bus at 6pm, 6:20pm, and 6:40pm. These are by far the busiest times for the Laie Tram Tour. The luaus generally end between 6:15 and 6:25pm and there isn’t a lot to do at the PCC between then and the Night Show (“Ha … The Breath of Life”) at 7:30pm. During those times we have either two trams and a small 25-passenger bus, or if one of the trams needs maintenance, we’ll have one tram and two 25-passenger busses. We generally fill all three vehicles at 6:20pm and quite often fill all three at 6:40pm. When the PCC guest count goes up in June, July, and August, we’ll probably need two trams and two 25-passenger busses to accommodate everyone. So, during the 6pm – 6:40pm time frame, the sister missionaries are talking with the PCC guests and inviting them to take the Laie Tram Tour (this is a 35 minute tour that stops for about 15 minutes at the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitors’ Center). Nina and I load the trams and I coordinate their movement in the very small area available to us so that (fingers and toes crossed … knock on wood …) we don’t have any accidents. It’s a very busy time with a lot of people milling around and a lot of confusion, making this coordination issue pretty important. There are still a few issues to be worked out, hopefully before we need to add the second 25-passenger bus!

Tomorrow is our Preparation Day. I have a doctor’s appointment at 1pm in the pulmonary department at the Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu. We’ll also be stopping by the Hawaii Honolulu Mission Office to pick up some Books of Mormon and other supplies. I think we’ll also do a quick stop at Costco for a few items. In other words, it’ll be a pretty laid-back day. We’re both looking forward to a not-so-busy day tomorrow!

Ta ta for now!

The visitors to the Laie Temple Visitors’ Center come from all around the world. Quite a few were driving by, saw the building, turned around, and stopped. Many others come from the Polynesian Cultural Center in the afternoon on the Laie Tram Tours. Some have read about the Temple and come to see what it is all about. Almost all talk with us about how beautiful the Temple and the grounds are and the peaceful feeling that abides. Very often I hear them call it “The Taj Mahal of Hawaii”.

Last year in January, 2015 Nina and I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to India and spend a day touring the Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is stunningly beautiful and consists of much more than the central mosque. It is simply impossible to get the whole thing into one photograph. I’ve put pictures of the Taj Mahal and the Laie Hawaii Temple side beside at the top of this post to compare and contrast them. One can also go to a beautiful garden on the other side of the river on the backside of the Taj Mahal, where this picture to the right was taken.

The Taj Mahal itself is a burial crypt whereas the Temple is a place of worship. On either side of the Taj Mahal are two mosques, mirror images of each other. Neither of them are used for worship services. We use our 150 temples (the count today … several more are under construction) for sacred ceremonies that have eternal consequences, but only during the week. They are closed on Sundays and Mondays. We hold our Sunday worship services in more than 10,000 meeting houses worldwide. Our Temples are closed to all but members of the Church in good standing. The Taj Mahal is open to all who can get there. Both have beautiful surroundings maintained by world-class groundskeepers. Both have a wonderful feeling that is immediately apparent when one steps onto the grounds. We treasure our visit to the Taj Mahal in India … and we definitely treasure the time we’re able to spend in the shadow of the Laie Hawaii Temple as well as the time we spend inside the temple performing and participating in sacred ordinances and covenants.

Today was our Preparation Day. I had a doctor’s appointment at Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu for a followup with the hematologist (more on that below). Afterwards we stopped by the Hawaii Honolulu Mission Office to pick up some materials and then did some shopping at Don Quixote, a very eclectic and delightful store featuring excellent produce along with just about everything Japanese. They have a large electronics section and I bought a few things that needed to be paid for at there rather than at the cash registers in the front. The fellow saw my name badge, which says that I’m at the Laie Hawaii Temple Visitors’ Center. His face lit right up and he said, “That’s a beautiful place!”

I asked him when he had been there. He said that a group of them went up there surfing a couple of weeks ago and stopped at the Visitors’ Center on their way back to Honolulu and that the people at the Visitors’ Center were so nice. “It’s kind of like the Taj Mahal,” he said. He’d been to India a couple of years earlier on a university trip (he’s finishing up his degree currently at the University of Hawaii) which included a visit to Agra and the Taj Mahal. Another customer came up so I wasn’t able to carry the conversation much further, but thought about that short conversation on the way home. I’m so very blessed that I’ve been able to be both places. I also think that the Laie Hawaii Temple can be called “The Taj Mahal of Hawaii.”

The doctor visit was Very Short. He looked over the lab results from my last visit, said he needed more data (but what was there looked pretty good), and ordered up a bunch more blood work and urine work. I’m to call him in a couple of weeks and he’ll go over the results with me on the phone so we don’t have to make a special trip back in to see him. That’s definitely goodness! One very good result is that my kidney function is improving. The contrast material used when they did the stent placements last year at the Hiranandani Hospital in Mumbai were very hard on my kidneys and the fact that they’re coming back is very good news.

Ta ta for now!

I got a call last week that everything was ready (that is, the auto body shop had received the check in payment) for our rear-ended mission car to be repaired. Yesterday after we completed our morning shift at the Visitors’ Center we drove to the Turtle Bay Resort, about 20 minutes northwest of Laie, picked up an Enterprise rental car, and delivered our car to the Windward Auto Body shop in Kaneohe. We got there about 5pm, just before they closed for the evening. I asked them if all the parts needed for the repair were at the shop. “Most of them,” she said. “We can get started and everything will be here soon.” Hmmm….

I think that’s Hawaiian speak for “It’ll get finished in the next few weeks…”.

So, meanwhile we have a 2015 Toyota Corolla rental from Enterprise being paid for by the insurance company. Our mission car is a 2013 Toyota Corolla, pretty much bare bones. Both Nina and I like our car much better than the newer Enterprise car, even though that car has most all of the available options. For one thing, the driver’s seat doesn’t go as far back and it sits too high. This is one car where the front passenger seat is much more comfortable than the driver’s seat. But, we only have to drive it until our car gets finished. Seeing as how the insurance company has already paid the auto body shop, I think there’s little (if any) incentive for them to aggressively get the car finished and back to us.

At the buffet and luau dinner venues at the Polynesian Cultural Center guests going in for dinner have the option of having their picture taken with cast members participating in the evening show, “Ha, the Breath of Life”. The cast members who are assigned to be in the guest pictures are actually “extras” in the night show and perform once a week. They’re guaranteed 19 hours of paid work, so the rest of the hours are made up of smiling and getting their pictures taken with the guests. When we’re assigned to one of these venues to take tickets, we have the opportunity to visit with these students during slack times. They’re always fun to talk with and they’re all quite interested in getting better parts in the night show so they can perform more often and be picture models less often. Almost always they are in their first or second semester at BYU-H and they all have a story to tell. Talking with them is one of the fun parts of taking tickets at the PCC.

The Indiana Primary Election was today and it’s now looking pretty certain that our presidential choices this fall will be between a bigoted, crazy liar and a should-be-in-prison charlatan. We’re plumbing new lows in American politics, I’m afraid. I generally avoid politics in my blog and only touch lightly on religion. Maybe that needs to change, although I’m pretty sure my lonely voice will have no impact. I’m considering starting up another blog: rolandksmith.com (I own the domain name) as a place to rant.

Ta ta for now!

Each week on Monday Evening the senior missionaries serving here in Laie, whether at the Temple, the Visitors’ Center, the Polynesian Cultural Center, or BYU-Hawaii, get together at 7:15pm at the Heber J. Grant building on campus for a Family Home Evening (FHE). There are around 90 senior missionaries here. Quite often the program consists of testimonies of missionaries who are completing their missionary assignment and will be going home before the next Family Home Evening. Every other Transfer our schedule allows us to go to FHE (on the other schedule we’re on duty at the Visitors’ Center on Monday evenings). Tonight three missionary couples bid their farewell. We don’t get to see the other senior missionaries very often because our assignments are so different, but these three couples have been here the entire time we’ve been here and we’ve had the opportunity to get to know them a bit. They’re moving on to something different and it kind of makes me realize that it’s not very long before we’ll be the ones saying goodbye!

Whenever missionaries are leaving, either at FHE for the senior missionaries, or at our weekly Visitors’ Center Training Meeting held for the Visitors’ Center missionaries, we sing “Aloha’oe”. This is a piece of music written by the last Queen of Hawaii and is revered and loved dearly by the Hawaiians. Whenever someone moves out of the Ward, the entire Ward sings “Aloha’oe” after the closing prayer in Sacrament Meeting to the departing family. It’s also sung as the last number at the Polynesian Cultural Center luaus. Over the past 14 months we’ve sung it or heard it sung quite often and pretty much have it memorized. It’s one of those pieces of music that becomes an “ear worm” … you can’t get it out of your head!

This afternoon we had another assignment at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We were assigned to the exit at the Hale Aloha luau. We enjoy this assignment. Our job is to direct people to the restrooms or people to the entrance when they come in through the exit. We get to see the luau program and generally just sit and enjoy the late afternoon. This week we have two assignments. On Wednesday afternoon we’ll be taking tickets at the other big luau, the Hale Ohana luau. We also enjoy that assignment as (1) we’re in the shade and (2) there’s a lot of people traffic both on foot and on the boats in the canal that bisects the PCC. Meanwhile, this morning was one of the slowest mornings we’ve had at the Visitors’ Center. Fewer than 30 visitors between 9am and 2:30pm came in. I took advantage of the slow time to install a couple of kick-down door stops on a couple of doors that we need propped open fairly often and we’re always looking to find the rubber wedge that seems to regularly disappear. Three more doors need these door stops, so hopefully this week on Preparation Day I’ll be somewhere around a Home Depot to pick up the hardware.

Today was another beautiful day. The trade winds are blowing bringing inland nice cool ocean breezes. The skies are partly cloudy with bright sunshine. It’s a pleasure being here!

Ta ta for now!

Our Preparation Day is on Thursdays this transfer (which ends on May 27th), so today was our Preparation Day. We decided that we’ve been too busy the past while to take time to really enjoy life, so we elected to make this a close-to-home Preparation Day with no hectic. We started the day by going to the Temple for the 9am session. The Temple was very peaceful and refreshing and we saw a couple of people there that we really enjoy.

After the Temple we took a lot of clothes and stuff over to the BYU-Hawaii Give-n-Take facility. At the beginning of each transfer we open up our garage for the sister missionaries to put anything that they don’t need anymore but is still useful or serviceable. They can also sort through whatever is there and take anything that they can put to good use. Whatever is left we then take over to the BYU-H facility. They like getting our stuff because it’s usually fashionable, clean, and in good shape.

After that we drove fifteen minutes to a neighboring town where there is a Taco Stand for lunch. We’ve not eaten there before, but it came highly recommended. On the menu they offered a pineapple drink so Nina ordered it along with a taco salad. I ordered the two-taco meal combo and a medium soft drink. The bill was surprisingly high … and when the pineapple drink came, it became clear why the price was so high. First and last time for that drink! We will eat there again, however. The food was quite tasty.

We then came back home to do some laundry and whatever (after making a quick stop at Foodland). On the way back home our son Daryl called on FaceTime to chat for a few minutes. We stopped at a beach along the way to take the FaceTime call. We had a great chat with Daryl and granddaughter Lilly.

About 3pm I got a text message from one of the sister missionaries about the refrigerator in their apartment so Nina and I drove over there. The fridge is definitely having problems so I called the landlord to get the problem resolved. The resolution may require the fridge to be turned off for 24 hours to thaw out, which will mean more work to do to keep the food cold or frozen as needed. In that apartment was a bunch more stuff to go over to BYU-H Give-n-Take so we made another stop there on our way home. I could finally start ironing my shirts.

Except I had run out of spray starch. We chatted on Skype with Jared and Tania and then I drove once again to Foodland to pick up some starch. The white shirts are all now ironed.

Two of the sister missionaries stopped by for a quick visit on their way back to their apartment after their afternoon shift at the Visitors’ Center. We had some ice cream and chatted with them. Now I’m writing this short blog post and then headed for bed.

Even when we stay close to home, it still turns out to be a Very Busy Day!

Ta ta for now!