Elder & Sister Mundell

This week was the first time we've had family members visit us from the mainland. Cathy's oldest son Cody and his girlfriend Alison arrived on Thursday, and will stay the weekend until Tuesday morning. We have been waiting to experience the Polynesian Cultural Center until our kids were here, and tomorrow we will be making a day of it with Cody and Alison. They wanted to see some of the touristy spots, so we checked out Waikiki Beach and the Ala Moana center on Friday, and then visited the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor in the afternoon. Dan had visited there with his family over 20 years ago, but it was the first time for the rest of us. The movie we saw before visiting the memorial was very interesting and informative, and helped us understand the background events leading up to the attack. It's hard to imagine what the sailors and civilians went through that day, the closest thing to it in our lifetime was the terrorist attacks on Sep 11, 2001. But it's importa...

We are experiencing growing pains as we try to get to know our seminary students better, apply the lessons we're supposed to teach in a way best suited for their needs, and simply do a better job translating our love and enthusiasm for the Book of Mormon into their hearts, to motivate them to have desire to read and study the Book of Mormon each day so they can feel for themselves the joy that comes from knowing Christ is their Savior that is found there. We're supposed to do assessments that measure their progress throughout the year, and after two weeks, we feel that if anyone were to observe our classes and give us an assessment, they would probably tell us we have a lot to learn about teaching teenage members of the church, and that we need to make a lot of improvements to our teaching techniques in many areas. Cathy is more gifted as an extemporaneous speaker and does better connecting with the kids. Dan is having more difficulty reaching them, and needs to be less profess...

It's so nice to live only about 20 miles away from the temple. As we drove there on Thursday, Sister Mundell mentioned how the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves. A year ago, her greatest wish as we were preparing to submit our mission applications was to serve at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, or her words, to "wear a muumuu and a name tag". Instead, we were called to the Honolulu mission, and we've had the opportunity to talk with many senior couples serving at the PCC. Their descriptions of what they actually do there leave us feeling underwhelmed, and we now realize that we wouldn't have enjoyed being assigned to the PCC nearly half as much as we are feeling it in the work we've been called to do. The Lord knew that we would be better servants and make a greater difference in this part of Oahu than in Laie. It's a testament to us that calls for missionary service in the church are divinely inspired, and we go where we are needed the m...

Disappointment is part of life, especially for the proselytizing missionaries. In the two wards we are assigned to, there hasn't been a convert baptism in the five months we've been here. But success on a mission is not measured by convert baptisms, it's by extending invitations for people to make covenants with God that bind themselves to the Savior Jesus Christ, and it's through those invitations we allow our friends to exercise their own free agency and make choices about the direction they want for their their life and eternal destiny. We have been disappointed with the lack of progress for us to do bible study and service activities at state-run facilities. But this first week of January marks a pivotal turning point in our mission. We will soon be extremely busy ... adding two hours of group activities at the youth correctional facility, and another hour at a mental health clinic on Mondays and Tuesdays. And on top of that, we will be teaching early morning semina...