A Million Voices

The first few nights after we moved into our apartment here in Kona, we went to sleep listening to all this chirping  and thought it was some  kind of night bird. Later when talking to brother Elwood, we found out that it wasn't some kind of night bird, but a tree frog that apparently hitched a ride on some plants from Puerto Rico. There must have been at least 2 of them that slipped into Hawaii without  a passport, or maybe it was part of Obama's path to citizenship program, and ICE failed to apprehend them and have then deported. Well they have multiplied, and now there are about a billion of them because they don't seem to have any natural predators. There may not be a billion, but there are a lot of them. They are named Coqui frogs, named after the sound they make. They come out after dark and only the male makes the sound. The people here hate them and have issued an extermination order. It doesn't seem to be having much of an effect, but they don't like them nevertheless.  They are hard to find, because they seem to be able to throw their voice and they are only about the size of a quarter. They have tried several things. You can make a trap out of PVC pipe or you can cut all the leaves off your plants and spray them with citric acid or you can sprinkle lime around your plants and trees or you can catch them with your hands and freeze them for 3 hours or boil them or steam them or squash them. The traps don't seem to work very well, and the other methods are expensive and they are hard to catch by hand. I guess that they are working on some kind of wonder spray to exterminate them. We find them fun, and we like being sung to sleep every night by a million voices. Here is a link to them if you would like to hear what they sound like.
 
Apparently these links can only be viewed on a computer.

                                 
                                       

When it rains it pours

Where we live, we get rain almost every day. In Kona, it will be hot (by hot I mean 83), we look up towards where we live it will be cloudy, and by the time we are heading home it will be starting to sprinkle. We know because if one drop hits the windshield, the windshield wipers come on.  I have never seen wipers so sensitive. It will eventually pour for a few minutes, just enough to keep the humidity in the 90% range.

Our Temple may be small, but it has great people who serve there. They come from all over the island. There are two stakes on this island and one on Maui that make up the temple district. The workers on this island travel as long as 3 hrs. to work here. The Maui people fly over about twice a year for 3 or 4 days at great expense to them. They start at about 5 am, do as many ordinances as they can until about 9 pm, get up the next day and do it all over again. When the Tongan saints come, the majority of the sessions will be in in their native language. They were here in March and will be here again starting the first week in June. We are looking forward to the experience.

There seems to be a special spirit about the native Hawaiian people. The vail seems to be thin when it comes to them and temple work. They do many more family file cards each day than temple files. We have one family from Hilo who says that it is going to take him 700 years to finish what he has right now. They come once or twice a week. Last week they did 95 sealings.  The sealer said that was a record for him in one shift.

It's hard not to feel the spirit every day. We work mostly in the office, scheduling, recording ordinances, ordering supplies, bug patrol, changing light bulbs and anything else the Presidency wants done. We do get to assist at the Vail and initiatory from time to time, but most of our day is spent doing other things. We feel the sweet spirit of the workers and patrons alike. We also feel the strong spirit associated with the temple itself.  It is not easy to describe, it's just there. We can't think of any place we would rather be at this point in our lives, even though we miss home, family and friends (and our dog).  We know this is where we should be, doing what little we can to move the work along.

Well aloha for now.
 

Real complex where we live. At least for now. we have been given 7 days to get our paper work in to the office or else....else what we are not sure.

Our real church. The temple is directly behind it. you can't see angel Moroni because of the angle picture was taken from.

Real picture of what we have to put up with some nights from our Lani..

Well here It is Sunday again. We have just reached the realization that we have now served over 1/23 of our mission and it seem like we just got here. At this rate we will be finished and headed home in another month or so. Time does fly when you are working hard.

We were invited to a family home evening group for single sisters the other night. We were the guest speakers. They were interested in where we were from and what it was like living and growing up in Manti. We did our best and then had a question and answer period. We were surprised how many have been to Manti and how many of those who had been to Manti have seen the pageant. Connie practiced her hula dancing, then the sisters practiced their Mother's Day song. Not sure what that was all about. I asked if they were all getting up in church and singing to themselves, I don't remember what they said, but I didn't see any of them sing in church. The food was great, the sisters were ever better, and we had a terrific time.

For all those concerned about the picture of our home, well that isn't really where we live.  I just liked the looks of it and I was looking for a little sympathy. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, that wasn't  a picture of our church either. Our church looks like a normal LDS church, except that we do have portions of the roof open over the center part of one area.

On Mother's Day we were invited to the Bishop's home for dinner after church. They live higher up the mountain than we do and about a mile away. We had a good time.  The  Elders that serve around this area were there as well as about 30 other people. It was beautiful up there and then it decided to rain. It was wonderful.

Today we had a speaking assignment at the Ka'u ward. We looked on google to find out where it was and found that it was about 70 miles away and that it should take about 11/2 hours to get there. We jumped up at 6 am, headed out by 7 to make sure we were there on time. We got there an hour and 10 minutes later, rain pouring down so we drove around a little so as to be fashionably closer to the right time. We walked in about 30 minutes early, met the Bishop and found out that we weren't on the program, that they hadn't gotten the memo. They rescheduled us for the 9th of June. We stayed anyway and learned from the High Council speaker that a good High Council talk has a beginning and an end, and the closer those two are to one another the better the talk is.  Our High Council speakers in Manti could learn a thing or two from this guy. It was a good trial run for the 9th.

The members were super, friendly, loving, made us feel welcome and we were glad that we were there. On the way home we stopped at the furthest South point of the U.S.. We love the spirit of the saints here. We have discovered that the church is true here too. What a surprise!

One more....

This is our church. It's not big either but as you can see it has a nice cemetery just in case you die in church.

Just a few pics

This is the house that we live in. It's not pretty from the out side but it is comfortable.

28 days later and still no posts

Well, here it is 28 days later and no posts. This blogging stuff is tougher than it looks. First you have to find the time and then you have to come up with something to say that may be interesting to some one other than your self.

We have been working in the Kona temple now for 3weeks. The first week is pretty much a blur. It was spent with Brother and Sister Elwood trying to help us make sense of what they have been doing for the last 12 months. They understand it very well and us, we'll not so much. The Elwood's are wonderful people and we were sorry to have them leave. Once they left it was up us to see just how much of what they had taught us, we had retained. It turns out, not much but with a little head scratching and a lot of referring to notes we managed to get thru the first week handling the office on our own with out any major incident. At least any that we know of.

We love the Kona Temple and especially all the great people. We are hoping for the day when we can pronounce their names especially those who have true Hawaii names. The native Hawaii people didn't have a written language until the early missionaries in 1820. It is made up of 8 consonants (HKLMNPW), 5 vowels (AEIOU) and an 'Okina which is kind of a stop and looks like an apostrophe, an kahako which is a stress mark over a vowel. This all sounds pretty simple but it all Greek to me. I still pronounce creek with an a in it so you can imagination what comes out when I trying to pronounce humuhumunukunuku'apua'a which is the name of the state fish (there is a kahako over the u following the p). Will its not pretty and it is good for a laugh.

The Hawaiian culture is a very hugging and kiss on the cheek culture which is much different than what we left in Utah. I won't say it's hard to get use to it is just different and not a way of greeting that we are accustomed to but we are adapting.

One of the things about the Church of  Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that continues to amaze me is how you always seem to fit in and belong no matter where you are meeting other members. We love it here, we love the work and we love the people. Time is flying by and we can tell already that it is going be very hard to leave the friends that we are making here.

Tomorrow will be "P" day and we will be doing "P" day stuff. Cleaning the apartment, washing clothes shopping and those kinds of things.

Life is good!
Aloha