Giving Extra

Most of our free time this week was devoted to serving at The Pantry, by Feeding Hawaii Together. This is their website thepantry.org if you want to learn about this organization and what we do. We volunteer there five hours each Friday, and last week Jen Roberts, who manages the volunteer program, said they needed extra help to bag tons of produce and shop for an unusually large number of food orders. We have a good relationship with all of the staff, and she can count on us to help out when needed. We extended the invitation to all of the other senior missionaries on Oahu to answer the call for more service this week. We did two hours of shopping and placing orders on shelves Tuesday, then came back the next day for five hours of bagging carrots and oranges (which can be back-breaking work if you're not careful) in addition to our usual shift on Friday. It was hard, but when the day is over, it's the kind of work that you can look back on with a smile on your face, knowing that your efforts have not been in vain because thousands of people will have the food they need that they otherwise could not afford due to the high cost of basic groceries in Hawaii. We love serving at the Pantry, it is a great nonprofit organization, we've met many wonderful people working many hours alongside them, and we've become good friends with all of the service missionaries and the two other senior couples that also volunteer there each week. We also get to meet most of the full time missionaries on Oahu when it's their zone's turn to help out on Fridays. We feel like our efforts are creating a very positive impression about our church and what we do in the community. 

Now that seminary is over we finally have a chance to relax a bit. We've been trying to have dinner with Karen Fetzer, who teaches the freshmen and sophomores, and her husband Doug for several weeks but our schedules never seemed to work out, until this week. We went to their oceanfront home Thursday evening, and we were stunned by the beauty of their view from their porch overlooking Kaneohe Bay. It was our first chance to sit down and talk with Doug, and our first opportunity to know Karen better than our short conversations after seminary allowed. We had a lovely evening, they were so kind and generous towards us! We really enjoyed it when they shared how they met online through e-harmony and its list of 500 questions to find the perfect match. And in their case, it was! He was in Korea and she was in San Diego, so it would've been impossible otherwise. We love Karen, she's a great friend and teacher, and Doug is an amazing man who's had wonderful experiences in life. They take veterans out on their 70 ft sailboat on Saturdays, and so when Elder Mundell heard this, he volunteered for this veteran family to join them one day!

We attended another baptism yesterday, for Jim Dickson. We are inspired by the wonderful elders and sisters serving with us, and we love to support them and the saints they are bringing into the church by teaching them the gospel of Christ and inviting them to follow their Savior by entering onto the covenant path. Jim and his lovely wife Mary were married last week, and we are hoping that we will be able to see them sealed together in the temple before we leave next year, We've now reached 10 months in the mission field, and the time has gone by so fast. We could not ask for a better situation to serve, the island is beautiful (especially on the windward side), the weather is outstanding most of the time in the 70s and 80s, and the people we meet in the wards and in the community are all very kind and friendly to us. We have no idea what it would cost us if we had to pay the full amount for rent, utilities and a vehicle, but we know for certain it is much more than the $1550 we are charged each month. That has been a great blessing for us and the other senior couples in Hawaii. But as we occasionally pause to reflect on what we're really doing here, it's hard to know if we are making the kind of impact we'd hoped for and getting the results in terms of member reactivation we'd like to see. It's a nagging feeling that we're busy spending lots of hours doing good things, but are we truly achieving our missionary purpose and making the most of the time we've been given as missionaries? We keep trying, we keep repenting, we keep looking at things we can do better, and ways that will be more effective than doing the same old thing each week.