Jurassic Guests

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 taken a deep dive into what he taught them the past two weeks because FOUR of the 12 doctrinal mastery scriptures we learn this semester are from King Benjamin. Elder Mundell also led the Come Follow Me discussion about the same speech on Tuesday evening, and he was reminded of an important lesson to practice what you preach by the class members. We talked about giving service to others, and part of that is allowing others to serve us so they can receive blessings. So instead of taking the bus, the Kohlers convinced him to accept their generous offer of a ride home.

King Benjamin's teachings about serving is also influencing us in another way. We purchased some $10 gift cards for Jack in the Box, and whenever anyone on the street asks us for money, we'll give them a gift card for free food instead. Each card has a brief message from us, and is placed inside a family search pass-along card. So we're trying to do whatever we can to help, while not supporting their addiction. King Benjamin also reminded his people that we should not boast about the service we're doing or make others feel guilty because they aren't serving as much as we do. (Mosiah 2: 15-17) We're only sharing this in the hope it can inspire our friends and family to find ways of their own to reach out and bless the lives of those around them who are suffering, and may need some kindness and love.

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