Kona October 15 – 21
Two of five Florals at Church today
Aloha!
Another week has passed so quickly! We see the weather forecasts for Idaho and
Utah and there is talk about wind, rain and snow already. How can that be?? The average daily high in
Paradise has dropped from 88 to about 86 and the lows are about the same as
always. Living without real seasonal
changes gives us a false sense of time passage and I’m sure that it will become
more surreal as the seasons at home continue to get colder. We do miss the autumn in Boise with cool
mornings and warm days well into the month of November. We will not miss low temperatures and snow...well
maybe a little around Christmas!
This was the last week of the Temple closing for maintenance
and cleaning. Because there were no tasks that required Elder and Sister W. and
ourselves, we traveled together to Honokaa for our first Missionary Zone
Conference. While we are not proselyting
missionaries and not required to attend, we were warmly welcomed to the
conference by President and Sister Dalton of the Honolulu Mission. This conference was a real battery recharge
for us by just associating with the 30 young missionaries, both Elders and Sisters,
and three other senior missionary couples.
The age disparity became evident when they invited all the missionaries
who celebrated birthdays between August 15th and October 15th
to come to the front so we could be honored by an upbeat version of Happy,
Happy Birthday and a gift of a candy bar.
My goodness, it occurred to me that I was as old as the combined age of
three and a half of the four other young missionaries that were honored with
me!
The Conference also brought back fond memories of the time
we spent in the MTC. The Assistants to
the President (one of which was from Boise/Meridian) introduced and taught the missionaries
a new door approach that, in summary, was to knock at the door, offer to leave
a blessing, and to challenge the person/family to be baptized…all in 10
minutes. Results of this program in the
Fort Lauderdale Mission where it was first tried have been amazing. The number
of investigators was up; baptisms were up; and retention jumped from 50% to
75%! We so admire these young
representatives of the Lord in their faithful service!
Starting on Tuesday morning, it was our opportunity to
return to the Temple and take part in the final cleaning and maintenance. Tuesday afternoon, we began the task of
clearing everything out of the office in preparation for the laying of new
carpet scheduled for Thursday morning throughout the office area. All the desks were cleared, computers and
monitors were disconnected, printers removed from the network, and everything
movable, removed from the office. We
left the computers on the recorders desk for Wednesday morning so we could
monitor email and the air handling zones for one additional day.
We loved being back in the Temple again but it sure seemed
strange to be dressed in white jumpsuits crawling around under desks
disconnecting and labeling all the cables, routers and power strips in the
nerve center of the TEMPLE! We also
participated in repairing some minor issues discovered during the cleaning.
Since two of the Presidency were off-island and the third member
was going home to the Hilo side of the Island, we were given a key to the
Temple and instructions on arming and dis-arming the security system. We were left in charge…well mostly of
ourselves.
It was a special
experience to open the temple in the mornings and, at the end of the day, turn
out the lights, arm the security and lock the doors. This brought back special memories of the
four years we served as Shift Coordinators and had the blessing of turning out
the lights and being the last ones to leave the Boise Temple. Being alone together in the House of the Lord
is a very spiritual experience and brings to our mind so clearly, of whose
House we are blessed to enter. This is will always remain a precious memory
for us.
Friday was the ‘put it all back together and pray it all
works’ day! With the help of prayer, all
the computers, networks and printers were correctly cabled, connected and
tested! I was even able to successfully
add a second scanner to serve as a backup in case of problems.
While I was crawling around under desks playing with all the
cables, Carolyn finished a final vacuuming of the hallways and cleaning of the
restrooms and the maintenance was completed!
The Temple is now ready to bless the lives of all of God’s children.
Love and Aloha from Paradise!
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