Busy Week

The purpose of this blog, which we also post on our Facebook account, is to keep family and friends back home informed about what we're doing, and include some of our special spiritual experiences and other interesting but not-so-spiritual experiences as well. This week we wanted to detail most of what we did, starting at Monday and working our way through Sunday. It was quite a week! What made it so noteworthy or unusual from other weeks was the sheer variety of missionary and service activities we participated in. Sister Mundell writes all our appointments and everything else down in a weekly planner, which has been absolutely crucial for us to keep on top of everything we have going on. And here's the kicker: it's going to get even busier for us very soon, within the next two or three weeks. But this is exactly what we signed up for when we volunteered to serve a mission!

On Monday, we had our third and final orientation for the state hospital. Cathy went to Waimanalo and met with the director of a homeless shelter a couple of blocks from the church. She's very nice, and she wants us to tutor the children there on Monday afternoons, and then hold a bible study class with them after dinner. 

On Tuesday, we went to the Maui Relief warehouse near Aloha Tower in Honolulu, and Dan wanted to use his newly-minted senior bus pass to pick up some basketballs and volleyballs from a WalMart several miles away in Waipahu. We want to donate them to the wards we attend because theirs were falling apart. But it his planned "short" trip ended up being more than 5 hours due to transfers waiting for other buses. Cathy was stranded at the hot warehouse without lunch or transportation. Uh oh, Companionship Problems!

Wednesday was another bus adventure. A young man from Laie saw us waiting at the bus stop to go to the Kaneohe Stake temple night, and he offered to drive us there. We soon found out he was being set apart on Sunday to serve in the Guam Micronesia Mission. Dan told him as much as he could about what it's like on Guam and the Micronesian islands, which eased his anxiety considerably and was a great blessing to him. We feel it was more than a mere coincidence that we we went to the temple with him, it's one of those things that happen where you can almost see the hand of God guiding, helping and blessing His faithful children. 

On Thursday we met with a group of displaced, homeless families for the first time, and as a way for them to get to know us and feel comfortable when we visit each week, we played Halloween Bingo with them. It was heartbreaking to see their plight. Many we met were from Chuuk, and had relocated to Hawaii trying to find a better life for their family. We feel like we made dozens of new friends that day, and we know we can do a lot of good there as we serve them in the future. 

Friday is the day we volunteer at the Pantry to distribute food orders, and meet with people in a drug rehab program. Between the two, we went downtown to get fingerprints. When we arrived, it was like a scene straight out of "The Birds" by Hitchcock. Hundreds of pigeons flocked to our car, and as Dan was trying to pay for parking, the birds pooped on his head and both sides of his shirt. After we finished, the car was a total mess, covered in bird poop, so we had to wash it off before returning to our apartment.

We volunteered at the annual Key Project dinner Saturday evening, and we were assigned to oversee their silent auction of various donated items including gift certificates. They planned to have it all done by QR codes on phones, but technology failed them and we were forced to go old school with hand-written bids on sheets of paper, which kept us pretty busy for a while. Dan was the top bidder for four day passes to the Bishop Museum, which we'll use when family members are visiting us. 

Finally, on Sunday we spoke in Sacrament meeting in the Waimanalo ward, and we shared our favorite talk from general conference. Cathy's was "God Knows and Loves You" by Elder Alan Phillips. She spoke about experiences in her life when she felt "Overwhelmed, Exhausted and Alone". Dan spoke about the faithful saints who serve without notoriety or recognition, referencing Elder Bednar's talk "In The Path of Their Duty". He used a bottle of STP as a way to talk about how all the work in a ward always seems to get done by the "Same Ten People (STP)". 

We love serving and helping people as missionaries and representatives of the Savior Jesus Christ. We know we are doing what we should be doing at this point in our lives, and we are being blessed in so many ways simply by being "on the Lord's Errand".