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Honoring Mothers

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This weekend was a special time to show appreciation to our mothers and honor them for all they do, and the positive influence they have on our lives and those around them. The Waimanalo ward hosted a breakfast for the sisters, and it was especially gratifying for us to see so many people show up that we've never met before who rarely if ever come to church. We made the effort to get the word out to as many people as possible, and it was nice to see everyone thoroughly enjoying themselves. We feel our purpose as senior missionaries is to encourage the spreading of the gospel from within by giving the ward members opportunities to love one another so that those who may feel distant or disconnected from their ward family will feel the desire to return into the warm embrace of the Savior's love for them. Sister Mundell spent most of the day on Saturday baking hundreds of chocolate chip cookies. It was a joyful experience for us to share these cookies with the sisters today at chur
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Jurassic Guests

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We love it when family members visit us in this island paradise. This week Chad and Averi stayed with us and we had a great time exploring Oahu with them. They booked an ATV excursion at Kualoa ranch where the Jurassic Park movies were filmed, and they had a memorable time venturing out on their own. They loved getting out into the lush valleys a few miles north of here, and ended up getting a nice coating of  Hawaiian dust and dirt  along the way! We also went to the Polynesian Cultural Center and learned a little bit about the Hawaiian language we'd never understood before, for example all words end in a vowel and two consonants are never together in a word. Very enlightening and interesting! A lot of our normal missionary activities are put on hold when guests are here, but we continue to teach seminary in the morning. We're currently in the first part of the book of Mosiah where King Benjamin is giving a "general conference" address to his people, and we've ta
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Getting Together

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It's not easy being a full-time missionary, even for retired senior couples. We're away from our family and friends, we miss our homes and familiar surroundings, and adjusting to a new routine can be stressful, especially if we start having health issues. But the greatest blessings in life come to us by doing things that we may find difficult or unpleasant, and it's the growing and stretching required to accomplish our mission that molds us into the kind of disciple of Christ our Savior wants us to be. This week we had the difficult task of helping a sister in our ward with the funeral for her husband, who passed away at the early age of 47, leaving her with three young children and one on the way. Funerals are never fun, you feel awkward and don't know what to say to comfort those left behind. This particular funeral was especially hard for us because we had met the deceased only briefly one day, and we weren't close friends with his widowed wife. But we persevered
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Seminary Success

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We feel extremely blessed to serve as seminary teachers. It's not something we've done before, and it's really hard to get up early in the morning prepared to enlighten and inspire teenagers day after day. We have wonderful examples in our stake like Auntie Nette Makua (who's been teaching seminary for 26 years) to follow that offer to help us, but we feel like we still have so much to learn as we try to motivate our kids to read the scriptures, participate in class, and do the online assignments. When we have days like Monday, it feels like it's all worth it! We have eleven junior and senior students, typically around 8 or 9 each morning. Sometimes we only have 2 or 3 there when we have an opening prayer, song and devotional at 6 am, but within a few minutes most of the class is there. We were talking about the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5, and gradually our hearts overflowed with joy each time we had to keep adding more chairs - because all of the class s
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Miracles

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We always look forward to conference weekend, and the opportunity we have to receive guidance, counsel and revelation from God through latter-day prophets and apostles. Sometimes we get instruction on a wide variety of gospel topics and principles, and other times the talks are more focused on a single theme or message. This was certainly true this weekend, as nearly all of the speakers emphasized the importance of covenants and the temple, including President Nelson in his concluding address. I loved the talk by Elder Renlund because it reinforced the basic fourth article of faith principles and ordinances of the gospel we know as the "doctrine of Christ". I always try to remember to apply the "virtuous cycle" of faith in Christ, repentance, partaking of the sacrament to receive the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end in my own life as we strive to become more and more like the Savior Jesus Christ and become perfected in Him. But one talk in particular made a deep i
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Resurrection Sunday

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This is our first spring in the Hawaiian islands, and we didn't know if they celebrate the Easter season differently than what we're used to on the mainland, so this was an opportunity for us to observe and participate in some of their island traditions and church culture that are unique to this part of the world. It's traditional to get together on Easter Sunday for family dinner and socializing, and bigger is definitely better. The whole extended family comes from near and far to eat and drink. Unlike the rest of the US, ham isn't the main meat dish as much here, although other types of pork in many varieties usually are, along with chicken and fish. We attended two different wards today, and both took their individual own style and approach to remember the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. The Waimanalo ward had multiple musical numbers with ukulele and guitar, in both Hawaiian and English, which was very nice. The Olomana ward had several youth speakers,
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Happy Birthday

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Today marks an important milestone in the life of Sister Mundell, it's her 60th birthday, and unlike some people she doesn't mind letting them know that she's turning the big 6-0. She makes quite an impression upon people when they first meet her, and those who get to know her well absolutely love and adore her! She has such a big heart, she's kind, generous and thoughtful. She loves her family, especially the kids she raised She loves talking to people, and is always trying to help them. Being a missionary is the right thing for her to be doing right now because she truly loves serving others.  Happy Birthday Cathy! Looking good and feeling fine! One extra special benefit we're discovering from serving is a greater understanding and appreciation of the Book of Mormon. We've read this sacred record of scripture many times before, but being seminary teachers and preparing for the weekly Come Follow Me class in the Waimanalo ward has made us dig deeper into the ve
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