Kaleidoscope

It was a fascinating week for us, as we experienced a kaleidoscope of many different beautiful and wonderful events each day as we went about our missionary efforts. On Monday we used Play-Doh for the people we visited as a means for them to describe various emotions and feelings, such as sadness, shock, playful, happy or surprised. We found the boys at the correctional facility felt trapped and angry, but the girls had a better feelings about themselves. The Play-Doh made a reappearance on Thursday evening when we asked the men at New Hope to create a scene from the Bible and everyone had to try to guess what it was.

Tuesday started with our district council, and our mission leaders were also there, so.we had the privilege to sit and talk with them for several minutes about how our mission was going. We really love and appreciate Pres. and Sis. Andersen, they are genuinely supportive of the senior couples and are interested in us as well as the young missionaries. We later went to Laie to meet with a group of saints from the Marshall Islands who had come to receive their temple ordinances for the first time and be sealed to their spouses. We helped brother and sister Kena from Majuro set up an account on Family Search, and input the names of their family, including their parents, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents to create their own family tree. They only had names, but we told them making their tree is the first big step, then it's easier to get all the dates and places you need later on to make your family history more complete, and then begin doing the ordinances for deceased family members. 

Brother and Sister Kena from Majuro Marshall Islands at the temple

We returned to the temple on Wednesday and we happened to see the Kenas again after an endowment session. They are a lovely couple and our lives have been blessed to help them on the covenant path. We also saw numerous other senior missionaries there; the Clarks, Clawsons, Hintons, Parrys and Sister Yuen who's a service missionary. Elder Mundell was feeling hungry after we returned from the temple, so he decided to eat at McDonald's. He promised Sister Mundell he'd find someone for the missionaries to teach. Little did he realize that the one person he met there was someone HE was supposed to teach. It was a high school student in the Kahaluu ward that is going to be a junior this year. He asked him if he was in seminary, and he said no, so he invited him to join our class when it resumes next month. We also felt prompted by the Spirit to start attending his ward (which meets at 2 pm after we finish with our two assigned wards) so we can become friends with his parents and encourage the entire family to support seminary.

We finished our week by supporting the Waimanalo ward Ohana activity and going to a game night social at the mission home with the other senior couples on Oahu. We asked the Andersens if we could do a Hawaii Jeopardy game to liven things up, and everyone had a great time. It was boys against the girls and ended up in a tie. But the final score wasn't important, what really mattered was seeing how much fun everyone was having answering the questions! We love serving the Lord in the Aloha State.

Game night at the mission home with the Oahu senior missionaries