Valentines

Sister Mundell loves holidays because it's an opportunity to do service activities around a holiday theme. One of her most favorite holidays of the entire year is Valentine's Day.  Each year in our seminary class we do what she calls the "seven days of love".  The idea is for each student to pick the name of another in the class and then secretly give them something on the last day in a gift bag.  We had to adjust our schedule this week because the high school had a teacher in-service day on February 14th, so we moved everything up to Wednesday instead, and also had a nice breakfast for the kids. The other seminary class of freshmen and sophomores surprised us with a shower of hearts as a sign of their love for us they called a "heart attack".

Seminary breakfast table for Valentine's Day, the students decorated the bulletin board.

On Friday we hosted a special Valentine's Day activity at One Hope Ministries.  After a church service, we were invited to help the men there write positive affirmations about everyone else on a paper plate hanging around their neck on a ribbon, what we call a "dog tag".  Then we played a game of Valentines bingo that they really loved.  Of course we made sure to include the decorating of heart-shaped sugar cookies. Having this activity immediately after their church made a huge difference in the amount of participation.  Normally we meet with only 3 or 4 guys, but this time there were more than a dozen there.  A greater number of people involved makes it so much better for everyone.  We hope we are making a small difference in their lives by doing these kinds of holiday activities.

This is what the "dog tag" activity looked like

We haven't mentioned pickleball very much in our blog, but it's something we do at the ward building in Waimanalo almost every week.  We'd never played it before our mission, but it's a fun way to exercise and socialize.  We have a regular group of about 4 to 6 non-members who are there every Tuesday who love to join us and the full-time Elders in this enjoyable and engaging sport.  Sometimes our pickleball friends ask us questions about the church, but our purpose is to simply show love for everyone who shows up.  We know it's a very positive experience for all of us to have some fun competition together.  We plan to continue playing pickleball in Florida after our mission is over.

Setting up the pickleball net in the church gymnasium 

We took advantage of deep discounts in the price of Valentines candy on Saturday to purchase some things people can share with those they love and care about.  We feel like sometimes we aren't doing enough gospel-focused efforts along with all of the community service we do each week, so today we issued a challenge to the members of both wards to share a box of premium chocolates with a non-member or less active family.  It's always a blessing for us to help the members be better missionaries with their friends and loved ones.

An invitation to share our love of the gospel with others

Last month we had a gale force storm blow through the Hawaiian Islands with extremely strong winds and heavy rain.  In fact, it forced our mission leaders to miss their flight from Kona to Honolulu for an island-wide zone conference with Elder and Sister Bragg.  Anyway, the lesson that we learned from some of the damage we saw from this storm is -- no matter how strong you think your testimony may be, there's always adverse forces acting against you that can topple you if we're not vigilant and nourish our spiritual roots each and every day.  It's like the scripture in Matthew 7: 24-27.  When (not if) the floods come and the winds blow, we are able to stand firm because we are built upon the Rock of Jesus Christ.

This huge tree with massive roots near the Ala Moana Center fell during the storm