A Bleak Hawaii Mission

Sunday February 20, 2022    Email #21   Aloha Family and Friends and Happy Birthday Finn!     I hope you all had a nice Valentine’s Day today.  We celebrated Valentine’s Day and our anniversary together on Wednesday by eating at a wonderful restaurant—Haliewa Joes. Thanks for the gift certificate family!  The food was wonderful and the property it sits on is amazing. We also went to a movie that evening after dinner. We had a wonderful celebration and I want you each to know how thankful I am for my wonderful companion of 44 years.  Scott is a wonderful husband and priesthood leader. I am so blessed to be married to him and to be able to serve with him here.       Scott and I are healthy now--except for Scott’s lingering cough.  We worked the whole week.   The store was much busier this week.  It was nice.  I like to be busy but not “crazy busy”.  We got a shipment of boxes of new ukuleles, wh...

Sunday February 13, 2022    Email #20   Aloha Family and Friends and HAPPY Valentine’s Day to each of you!   I guess it was bound to happen sometime!  It is my turn to have covid.  As you know, Dad wasn’t feeling well last week when I wrote the email.  On Monday his test came back negative and we were happy that he just had “a cold”.  But his cough got bad enough that we wondered if he had bronchitis or pneumonia.  I woke up Monday with a little sore throat and feeling very tired but didn’t feel sick enough to miss work, so I went.  Tuesday, I was also very tired and wanted to go back to bed but again—“I can make it through” and I went to work.  Wednesday night when the cough began, I decided that I better get tested on Thursday so that when the test came back negative--I would be able to explain to everyone that I also just have a cold.  Friday—I felt pretty good and had more energy than I had all week and was excited to final...

Sunday February 6, 2022    Email #19   Aloha Family and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Lucy this week!   Congratulations to Nora on your baptism yesterday!  We were so blessed to be able to be there with you remotely.  Nora, you did such a fabulous job on your violin solo! And we loved y our talk Kristen!  As Jordan took the phone around to each of the grandchildren to say hi to us, I got really emotional and was filled with such love and gratitude for the wonderful people you are. We love each of you dearly.  We are so very blessed.    The store was very slow this week.  We normally get a 12:30 rush—whether it is big or small—when we first open the doors of our store.  But we haven’t had that “rush” in a couple of weeks and then I found out that there has been a change lately that is having an effect on retail.  If you purchase a “luau package” now, you are assigned to be in a group with a tour guide. That tour guide has an agend...

Sunday January 30, 2022    Email #18   Aloha Family and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Bryan!   I hope that you all had a good week and that you are healthy.  I know many of you have dealt with a lot of sickness in your family.  We love hearing about all that is going on with you! Thanks for continuing to reach out.   I have really struggled writing the email this week.  There is hardly anything noteworthy to write about.  The advice from President Jackson when we left to come, was to write things according to the “small plates of Nephi” (spiritual things) and not the day to day things we do. Our mission doesn’t lend itself to experiences with finding, or teaching, or seeing lives changed.  But I will continue to share with you the small things that I do see as tender mercies and how the Lord has been in our life and experiences.  And one of our children told me to keep writing about the normal, daily occurrences because they love knowing w...

Sunday January 23, 2022    Email #17   Aloha Family!   For the most part, work was very slow this week.  January is the slowest month at the PCC. One unusual thing happened. A mother brought in her 10 year daughter who wanted a ukulele lesson.  They purchased the ukulele from us a few days earlier but didn’t have time right then to have a lesson.  I asked the mom to join but she declined.  She said she had to go to the lost and found.  Before I knew it, she was leaving the store and left me alone with her daughter.  They were from Korea and the mom spoke very little English and the daughter was really shy and also spoke very broken English.  She left the girl in our store for about 30 minutes.  The lesson takes about 10 minutes so I kept trying to think of things I could entertain this girl with until her mother returned to get her. I was amazed that a mother from a foreign country would dare leave a child with a stranger ...

Sunday January 16, 2022    Email #16   Aloha Family!   I hope that you have had a wonderful Sabbath day today.  It was our ward conference and both our bishop and our stake president gave wonderful talks in sacrament meeting on the value of giving the Lord meaningful time each day on the things that really matter.  Our stake president got choked up when at the end of his talk he admitted that even though he says his family—(his wife and children) are the most important things in his life, the way he distributes his time in the day might say otherwise.  Our bishop referenced President Nelson’s closing remarks from last general conference (the quote at the end of this letter) and then in a devotional fireside with Elder Andersen this evening, he also gave the same quotes from President Nelson’s talk.  It has been the consistent theme throughout our day and a great reminder to us that we need to make time for the Lord each and every day. ...

January 9, 2022    Email #15   Aloha Family!   We have remained in “vacation mode” this past week with Katelyn here with us.  It has been so much fun to have her here.  We drove her to the airport early yesterday   morning and had to say goodbye.  I have a feeling that she will be back before too long but it was still hard.  Some of our fun together included: the PCC, morning walks, hikes, sunsets, shave ice, ukulele class, Waimea Falls, “water scooters’, snorkeling, lots of games in the evenings (five crowns is a new favorite), and good conversations.  Scott got to do more with her than I did because of his flexible schedule but I was still very grateful that I was able to be with her quite a bit.    The ukulele store was much less busy this week than the previous two weeks. Plus—the students have returned from Christmas break so we are fully staffed once more.   Monday, the mission settlement at the PCC got ver...