May 2018

Sunday evening we drove to Sunset Beach to watch the sun go down along with several folks already on the beach. Sadly the clouds covered our sunset but we saw something even more amazing. We kept seeing fins appear just off the shoreline.  We must have seen them appear 3- 4 different times. We all assumed they belonged to Dolphins. All of a sudden the strong winds and waves pushed the shark almost up on the sand and we saw the whole body parallel to the beach. If it hadn't been Sunday I would have been in the water up to my knees which is about where the shark was right in front of our beach chairs. We couldn't believe what we had just seen and fortunately we weren't in the water.

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Did you know this is how pineapple grow? One fruit per large plant. The sword like leaves can grow up to 5 feet long, so when growing them you must leave plenty of room between plants. Each plant bears only one pineapple and it can take 16-24 months before they flower and form their first fruit. Sometimes pineapple are only $1 at home, most of them here are $5 each. They take so long to grow I'm surprised they're not more expensive.

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 Every Laua gets a pig cooked in the ground, called an Emu. They uncover them during the luau and then pull them apart to serve, quite delicious. Not sure I like looking at his head though.

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This is Bill and Karen Garf from Salt lake City. Every missionary has the opportunity to speak for about 5 minutes at family home evening before they leave for home. We have made so many wonderful friends and hate to see them go home. This is when our ukulele orchestra plays while everyone sings. When these good friends leave, it brings tears to everyone's eyes.

Aloha 'Oe

Now is the hour when we must say good-bye

Soon you'll be sailing far across the sea.

While you're away, oh, friend, remember me

When you return, you'll find me waiting here.

Far away places, with strange-soundin' names

Far away over the sea

Those far away places, with their strange soundin' names

Are calling, calling me.

Aloha, 'oe, Aloha 'oe

E ke ona ona noho i ka lipo

One fond embrace,

A ho'i a'e au

Until we meet again.

Once a month there is a BYU-H women's organization luncheon that many of the sister missionaries attend. With our donations we give about 20 students a $300 scholarship to use as needed. Tori, on the front left, works with me in the registrar's office. She is one of the recipients. She is from Sweden and served a mission in South Africa 12 years ago. She is a single mom and came back to finish her degree this year. We also served a free meal the night before finals to many hungry, stressed students. At Christmas time there was an angel tree for children from the married students' wards . Today's luncheon was on the back patio of the President's home. He and his wife, Susan, hosted the luncheon.

I caught BYU-H President JohnTanner while he was helping out at the luncheon. He's such an amazing, humble man and so highly educated. The students love him and his wife. Remember Susan Tanner was Young Women's General President several years ago.

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These are the sister missionaries I work with in The VOICE program. L-R, Tina Mueller from Utah, Bev Stephenson, Philly, me and Lucy who is actually a teacher.She wants to improve her English because her students have a hard time understanding her strong Filipino accent. She started reading the dictionary from the beginning to help herself!

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Ha! Olive and her new husband showed up at church today. He is tall but she's way under 5 ft. also. Several inches shorter than I am.

We celebrated our 18th anniversary by attending an ancient Chinese classical dance production in a "Grady Gammage" type theatre in downtown Honolulu. Photos inside were prohibited so this is the large banner on the outside of the theater. The dances are a combination of modern ballet and gymnastics.

The beautiful printed program explained how China's ancient civilization is deeply spiritual. "Traditional Chinese culture is based on the idea of harmony among heaven, earth and humankind. But the Chinese Communist Party teaches just the opposite; officially atheism." I was surprised how they printed that sentence in the program and how blunt they were to say these performances have never been seen in China because the communist party will not allow them.

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One early Saturday morning, a group of about 20 missionaries carpooled out to enjoy several hikes that were located near  each other. First we walked through a dense forest to the King Kamehameha's Summer Palace below. They are now just ruins of course but still very sacred. Folks leave gifts of leis, money, food, etc. on the plaque. If you take anything, bad luck will follow you.

If you can read this, it says they had a luau attended by about 10,000 people. I would hate to cook for them, I hope it was potluck!

From there we moved on to the 2nd hike, the Judd trail with stream crossings. It was a loop trail on the side of a mountain. the 3rd hike was a really dangerous hike up a peak from which we opted out. Besides it was behind 'NO TRESPASSING' signs.

We had missionary friends, Wilf and Tina Mueller in our car traveling to the hikes. Because he's a retired Marine he showed us around the Marine Base in Kaneohe afterwards. There are dozens of different bases on Ohau. Wilf (he's 66) was born 10 days after his folks arrived on Ellis Island from Germany knowing no English. His mother was in Hitler's youth camp and his father fought in WWII for Germany and spent 4 years in a POW camp in Yugoslavia. The interesting thing was that his gr'grandfather was Jewish from Gdansk, Poland. He converted to Christianity and changed his name to Mueller. No one ever knew his true heritage and of course that saved his life and his posterity.

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Salote (Charlotte in Tongan) has worked in the registrar's office for about 30 years. Prior to that she danced in the night show that continues on today. She's from Tonga and went to BYU-Hawaii many years ago. Her son just graduated with his PhD this past weekend from UH and her daughter is working on her PhD at UCLA, both on full scholarships and stipends (the daughter has 3 children). Education is very important to Tongans. She received this haku wreath on Mother's Day and didn't want to wear it anymore so she gave it to me.

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Great mission friends, Bill & Karen Garf and Dave & Sherri Anthony. Because there was no access to this beach from the road we had to climb quite a ways over huge black volcanic rocks to this secluded spot where the turtles hang out. You can hardly distinguish the turtles from the rocks. There were about 12 turtles swimming in and out of the ocean right at this spot.

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Let me introduce you to Prince. It's hard to miss him on campus because he has only one arm and he's also from Ghana. But most of all he is one of the most kind and loving young men on campus. he has quite a story. Below is his story from the 

Ke Alaka'i student magazine. It doesn't give his full story so I will fill you in on a few details.

PRINCE OWUSU

Senior from Ghana studying political science

WHAT WAS IT LIKE FOR YOU GROWING UP?

“I come from a family of 10, and so with my mom and dad, we are 12. My dad was the one who took me [to the orphanage] when I was 10 years old and said, ‘We want you to care for our son,’ which was crazy. I was the only one of my siblings they took, but I didn’t believe I could fight with my dad in doing that. I never questioned them as to why they took me. It’s a rough story, but I think it was all part of the process. Everything about me changed when I went to the orphanage. I loved it. It was one family. When I go home, I don’t feel like I belong to any place but the orphanage home. That is where I spend my time because that is where I feel like life started for me. The Lord knew what he was doing.”

When Prince was 10 years old a bully at school injured him and broke his arm. The family had no money to go to a doctor and his arm became so infected it had to be amputated. Because he was a burden on the family his father took him to an orphanage and left him to there to live.

HOW DID YOU FIND THE CHURCH?

“I found the church through a member who had studied over here in the states. He owned the orphanage school. His name is Abraham Fokuo. I consider him my father. This is where I learned about the Church and was baptized as a member. He said if you want to be like me, the key is the church. Living with him as a father, he taught that it is part of your responsibility as a man to go on a mission. So even throughout the process, you have the mindset that you’re going to serve a mission. Most of us under him went on a mission. Even though it was a big fight between him and my family, I went on my mission to the Ivory Coast Cote d’Ivoire Mission from 2010-2012. I didn’t tell my mom or dad, and by the time they knew, I was already out in the mission field. I never regretted that decision to go.”

HOW DID YOU END UP COMING TO BYU-HAWAII?

A friend introduced me to the school. Initially, I wanted to go to Idaho or Provo, but then I met a friend in the Missionary Training Center because I was a teacher over at the Mission Training Center in Ghana for three and a half years. She said that BYU-Hawaii could shape me well. I think she understood my perspective of the future wanting to help people and changing society and stuff. I’m more of an activist so she said that’s the main reason why BYU-Hawaii was created. So she helped me throughout the process until I got accepted. It was hard to get an I-WORK scholarship because they were clear that their boundaries didn’t cover Africa, so I had to fight for it. They realized that I deserve to be here so they gave it to me, and I’ve been grateful for that.”

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO AFTER GRADUATION?

“I want to go get my master’s in international relations for now. I want to be an ambassador. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I know it’ll work out. That is my main goal. I want to work with the government, but I don’t want to be a politician. I want to be behind the scenes working to change certain things in the government like corruption. I want to make sure things are done right. There are so many people with degrees and so I feel like I need to do more than just have a degree. It doesn’t matter what certificate you have to make a difference, but with the state in which my country and many African countries are in right now, I feel like I need to get more education in order to be on a level to change things.”

Several years ago Prince went back to his hometown and visited the 'bully'. The bully was afraid he had come back to take revenge on him. But Prince thanked him for what he had done because he never would have gone to the orphanage, been introduced to and joined the Church. He wouldn't have gone on a mission, nor studied at BYU-Hawaii and gained his education. He has been accepted to Penn State where he will get his masters.

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Mission Tidbits:

We like to have 'experiences' to celebrate important dates and events in our life. So for Mother's Day and Father's Day we took the DNA tests. Stay tuned for the results in a few weeks.

I love the names of some of the international students around here; Prince, Princes, President, Hollywood, Honey, Sunshine to name just a few. It's interesting how many of the Oriental and Asian students choose an American name because their names are hard to remember or pronounce. At THE VOICE we have a Roger, Savannah, Bob, Abby, Ashley, etc.

It's surprising how much you can get done when you don't have a TV. That's the first thing we said we would buy when we arrived. Strangely, we've been just fine without it. Even with our many different assignments and fun adventures, Steve and I have both love to read. We've enjoyed the biography of Joseph F. Smith, son of Hyrum Smith and 6th Prophet of the LDS Church He came to Hawaii at the age of 15 as a missionary, and had a great love for the Hawaiian people. President Smith announced the building of a Temple in Laie on the island of Ohau. He passed away before it was dedicated in 1919. We also loved the biography of Russell M. Nelson, our current and 16th Prophet. We've enjoyed some John Grisham books, Steve enjoys Louis L'Amour and I'm in the middle of Ron Chernow's 700+ page book, 'Alexander Hamilton'. I had to see what inspired Miranda's Broadway play, 'Hamilton.' We finished reading 'Jesus the Christ', which our Mission President asked us to read, and we continue to read The Book of Mormon. I'm still crocheting around baby burp cloths, cross stitching a grand daughter's Christmas stocking and other embroidery work.

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One morning when I walked up to the temple they were taking pictures of all the missionaries in the Hawaii Honolulu mission. They are turned toward President Becker on the right hand side, he must have been giving some instructions. They came from all the islands for a Mission meeting with Elders Jeffrey R.Holland, David Bednar, Robert Gay, Kim Clark and Sister Jean Bingham. The Devotional this particular week was a Q&A session with these visiting authorities. Needless to say it was wonderful.

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