Saturday

What a wonderful Conference so far this weekend! Our wonderful mission President was just sustained to be a General Authority Seventy.  He's such a wonderful spiritual man. 

In between sessions we went to a baptism over in Laie.   She wasn't someone we knew personally but the Elder's had invited us to it, turns out she is our friend Eliu Matagi's cousin, so he and Lorraine were there as well.  Small world in the church.

Sister Dutchess Ku'uipo Malepe
Our newest member!

Elder Madina, Sister Malepe, and Elder Lopez

We're had a pretty busy week, just doing our normal work, doing missionary things, temple service, meetings and ministering with food.  This weekend will be quiet with just watching conference and doing our spiritual study.  Ramon's leg is healing slowly, we go to the doctor in two more weeks to see if he can take off the boot.  
I guess I should mention that instead of taking off the monitor on our new car they just gave us another one just like it, but no monitor.  I feel free of driving restrictions!  This one is a clone to the other two, same color same smell etc!

Tuesday

Busy few days!  It seems like we've had meetings and more meetings!  Came home today after 6 hours of meetings and rested a bit while I did laundry.  To tell how busy it was, I ran out of clean garments and had to go buy some at the Visitor's Center this morning as I donned dirty ones after my shower last night, I hadn't washed in so long...well a week or so.  So did laundry in and around meetings and ministering today.

We also went and saw Khloe Anne and she wasn't doing well, stomach problems and had just had a biopsy last week on her stomach, no results yet.  Then ran over to the Travis house with a big plate loaded with cookies.  Their son was baptized last Saturday and we attended the baptism and wanted to welcome him.  This family is coming back to activity and he is 11 years old and needed to be baptized.  His Mom found out last month she is pregnant and due next month!  How do you do that?

We had our old friends and friend of my friend Holly, to our house for dinner Saturday.  Had a nice long visit with them, Lorraine and Eliu Matangi.  We are so busy we haven't hardly seen them at all since being here.

We are running into town tomorrow to get this annoying device off our new car.  Today it was silent but yesterday it kept talking loudly at me to "watch the speed limit!"  "Aggressive driving!"  so today I was very careful and no voice.  But it's really hard to go the speed limit on the freeway here when the speed limit is only 55 MPH.  Can't wait to be released from this monitor, I feel like I have an ankle bracelet on like I'm a prisoner. Today we went in and signed up to take tickets at the Luaus at the PCC.  We will be trained for two days first...how much training does it take to train to take tickets?  We had been supposed to do this when Ramon broke  his ankle but now he's almost back to normal and wants to get it up and running...pun intended.

We are eating at the Geronio's tomorrow and I am bringing two types of chicken enchiladas.  One you just use those frozen burritos and pour green chili sauce over with cheese and bake.  Real easy if they turn out good.

We were notified this morning that we should be doing a 100 day Book of Mormon read and it comes with a study guide.  So easy and it great because it tells us things we didn't know.  We are 13 days behind so have some catching up to do.  It's a mission goal and is to bring us unity.  Oh, I found out today our new Elder Larkin's first name is Kameron.  I love it!  He reminds everyone of Elder Bednar by looking and acting like him.  He's here with Elder Gunderson for the next couple of transfers we hope.  If any of you would like a copy of the study guide let me know and I'll email it to you.

Wednesday - Friday

Wednesday we had our weekly dinner at the Geronio's house.  It was great to have Nick back with us after his trip to Norway on business.

Then Thursday we had a ward missionary meeting at our place.  I fixed soup and salad but the Elders had a meeting and had to take their food to go.  We walked down to the beach after to visit with Melanie and see her new truck, I should have taken a picture of it.  She's happy with it.

Friday we had Zone conference all day and had it at our Kuhuku building.  It was enlightening but was hard sitting for 7 hours.  Then we went into Laie and picked up our NEW car!  We originally thought we were getting a new older car but this one was brand new...55 miles on it.  It is so nice.  It is a Nissen Sentra and silver.  On Monday we have to go into Honolulu and get Elder Walker to take off the car's monitoring device that they use on all the young missionarie's cars, this records the speed and any erratic driving habits.  Us olders don''t need this on our cars, and it is really annoying if you make a tiny mistake a loud voice comes yelling out at you.  So far no voice for me in the 12 hours I've had the car.

Then after that we ran home and grabbed our things for the YSA barbecue.  It was really fun and enjoyable but I and others made way too much food.  Thursday I had cooked up 30 lbs of potatoes for salad and made it up in two huge pans of potato salad.  I cooked up 3 dozen eggs for it too.  Anyway, not even half was eaten.  Another Senior Sister made two huge things of macaroni salad and it was hardly touched.  Anyway, the take away from all this is kids just like burgers, hotdogs, chips and drinks.  We had a lot of fancy desserts from Costco too that didn't get eaten.  Oh well, we learned, I think.  It was a fun night and I took a few pictures when I remembered.

Our cooks, President Fullmer, Ray, JD Gibbons, Christian Fullmer

Playing a table game

Basket ball and the whatever they are called balls.

Shot of leftover food

Too much eating, food coma!

Tuesday March 27, 2019

Well, we are back in Missionary mode today!  It was very fortunate that Marisa came when she did.  We had scheduled most of our medical appointments not on that week and then as days would go by many of our Missionary activities also got cancelled.  So we ended up having so much free time to spend with the girls.  But not this week.

Today started with me making cinnamon rolls for the District meeting at 10:30.  On this day we would usually award the "cleanest" apartment a prize, usually items for them to make a dinner or breakfast for the companionship that wins, but our winners left on an emergency transfer so we didn't have a winner there.  Hence, the cinnamon rolls for everyone trying so hard to win.  But I had to lay down the lay on some cleaning areas that were being neglected and told them I was really going to step up the inspection!  We'll see if my instructions are followed.  Picture below of the leftover cinnamon rolls and milk, I forgot to take a beautiful picture of the rolls right out of the oven!

After our meeting we came home and I worked on the wash after a long week of not washing and having company...then baked cookies for our "ministering" tonight.  Michele (Relief Society President) came over and we drove into Kahuku to get together with a few others to minister to the inactive YSA kids and tell them about the big barbecue we are having Friday night.  We took Michele and Tanner (our Elder's quorum President) in our car with us and had a huge success with finding people at home and all promised to come!  Such good kids.  Fun day of service.

Monday

Today was a sad day, Marisa had to leave to go back to Utah.  I promised to be a rainy day but we said we'd drive the island to find her some sun...so waking up to rain, we went into our VC meeting and came home and headed to the beaches by Ko Olina got a mile down the road and turned around and headed to Hahauma Bay.  It's a long drive but had the only sun we could use and see.  She and I snorkeled a while, didn't see a turtle that I hoped to see.  Then we drove back, stopping at the Valley of the Temples for a quick tour.  Then we came back, got ready to take her into the airport.

Along the way we stopped and saw the Turtles on the way to get Snow Puffies for her to take home to her family.

Farewell Marisa!

We stopped at Costco and then to the airport.  Sure was a fun week and loved having this special girl with us even that short of time.  Emphasizes how important family are even if so far away!

Saturday and Sunday

On Saturday we went looking for a sunny beach, started out early with Marisa and I running over to Shark's Cove, about 8:30.  We gingerly stepped in the water and then were scared by the high waves breaking over the rocks.  I hadn't checked the tide times and thought the tide was coming in.  Needless to say we weren't brave enough to venture out.  So came home, checked the tides and it was okay, was going out but we got Ramon and headed the other direction.  We stopped at Castle beach, she got in but I didn't and Ramon stayed in the car reading!

After an hour we left that beach, went over to Hukilau  where our stake was having Youth Conference, so that didn't work.  We drove on and headed over to Pounders.  Looked at it and decided to ditch the beach idea, it just kept raining!  We came back home, showered, changed and headed to Mililani to a movie.  Then stopped for shave ice on the way home.  That night Marisa and I went over to BYUH to their Cultural Night.  It started at 8:00 and we lasted til almost 10 then came home and crashed into bed.

Sunday we had our usual church meetings, after YSA at 4:00 we went straight up the coast to go to the Valley of the Temples, a beautiful Buddhist Cemetery with different areas for different peoples of the world.  We arrived just as they were closing, who closes at 4:45 p.m. when the sun is still shinning!?!  So that was a two hour trip for nothing!  We drove back and I drove her around BYUH to show her the campus and we stopped at the VC and met Tuituitupo's daughter and her family who were visiting.  Long day, bed early.   We did stop and take some amazing sunset pictures. We want to go to Hukilau Cafe for breakfast tomorrow.

                      Marisa taking a picture

Fun Friday

Unfortunately we had to take Sara to the airport this morning, so we made the best of it...!  We first stopped at the Snow Puffie bakery and got snow Puffies.

Next stop was Kaena Point to show the girls the beautiful coast line.

After that we went over to the Dole Plantation and walked around and got the girls a Dole Whip cone.  Then we fueled at Costco and dropped Sara off at the airport about noon.   She's a great person and we enjoyed our time with her.

After we headed over to the other side of the island, not where we usually go...to Ko Olina and Disney's  Aualani Resorts.  We got our normal parking place and enjoyed the afternoon there at the calm bay.  We didn't snorkel just enjoyed the sun and calm sea. Marisa and I walked around the Disney resort and oooed and awwwed at all the fun stuff and wished we were rich enough to stay there.

Then stopped in Mililani on the way home for food at the Shack, a bar and grill we like to eat at.  Came home pretty tired but to a huge package awaiting us.  My friend Debbie Turner from LA had sent me a large Christmas Santa Hawaiian style.  He had on flip flops and Hawaiian clothing and I love him!  She was so thoughtful to do this.  Fun day!