Elder & Sister Mundell

We hosted a breakfast very early in the morning at 5:30 for all of the seminary students, their parents, and bishops. We talked to a few of the sophomores who will be in our class next year, and hopefully they are excited to have Elder and Sister Mundell as their seminary teachers. The other teachers in our building decided that our Wednesday breakfast would be their last day together, and we were tempted to do the same, but we really wanted to give our students the opportunity to talk to us one on one in what we called an "exit interview" to help us know what they learned, what they liked best, and how we could improve the seminary class for them. So we decided to have class on Friday, and we were very blessed for making the effort to do a little bit more. What we learned is they all loved what we did, it was their favorite year of seminary, and they especially enjoyed doing hands-on activities and being creative with the doctrinal mastery scripture reviews. We were blown aw...

We live on the eastern "windward" part of Oahu, which means the trade winds in this part of the Pacific, which blow from east to west, typically dump most of their rain on on the eastern towns as the moisture from the ocean winds is forced up and over the tall mountains at the center of the island. For this reason, the windward side is much greener (lush jungle vegetation) than the western "leeward" side. This past week was exceptionally wet. The Marine Corps base in Kaneohe recorded over 9 inches of rain, and we had flash flooding and road closures to deal with. It was so stormy on Monday that we just packed it in, and cancelled all of our usual appointments. It was a good thing because the single highway into and out of Kailua and Waimanalo was completely closed due to a landslide, and thousands of commuters were stuck in their cars for several hours waiting for the road to clear. We enjoy some rain, but this week it was a bit too much! We had our stake conference...

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 chu...

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...