Kona February 4 - 10

Kona February 4 – 10

Aloha Dear Family and Friends!

It is good to see that some of you are experiencing some slightly warmer temperatures that bring the promise of spring being not too far away!  While we have noticed little evidence of seasonal changes here, we have noted that the shrubs and trees across the Island have passed through their “winter” and are now putting on their springtime explosion of new growth and colorful blooms.  The first sign of fall seemed to be the shedding of leaves by the Frangipani (Plumeria) trees and the drying of the leaves on the Kiawe trees.  As this is our first long-term experience in Hawaii we weren’t sure it was a seasonal change or the results of our ongoing drought conditions.

We are most grateful that it apparently was seasonal changes because now the Plumeria is pushing those beautiful and fragrant flowers we love so much.  Bougainvillea is bursting in color from white to lavender, pinks, reds, copper and all the shades of color in between!  The Kiawe forests are turning green; Poinciana trees are ablaze in orange while some trees we don’t know the name of are turning into huge bouquets of lemon-yellow blossoms.  It will be a blessing to have two Spring seasons this year…one in Hawaii and one back in Boise.

 

Ed the Gardner

These changes are also taking place on the beautiful Temple grounds which are lovingly groomed by Ed the Gardner.  Ed works for a landscaping company that has the contract for maintaining the temple grounds.  He is not a member of the church but the care and attention he gives to maintaining the grounds is very inspiring.  Other than making sure our “Orchid Aisle” gets water and fertilizer, the work of Ed and the members who maintain the orchids has created a very peaceful and beautiful setting for the Temple.

Tall Palms around the Temple

Speaking of peaceful…this Wednesday afternoon as we were leaving for the day, we heard a cacophony of noise coming from the tall Palms and other large trees surrounding the temple grounds and parking lot.  At first we thought it was a flock of Myna birds having an argument over something.  As we proceeded down the walkway the squawking grew louder and we saw three or four flocks of about 15-20 birds each, flying through the tree tops.  We had never seen this type of bird before in Hawaii.  They were the ones making all the racket and looked and sounded like large Parakeets as they flew.   They were a dark grey in color with a reddish-orange head. 

The next day, we saw Ed and asked him about the birds and he said they were a variety of Parrot.  It is likely that someone brought a mating pair to the Island and that they probably escaped into the wild and have been flourishing ever since.

This week in the Temple brought a new learning opportunity!  For the last several months we have been experiencing random computer network outages.  We have learned to ‘reboot’ the modem by unplugging the power for a few seconds then plug it back in to resolve the problem.  The outages drew the attention of the Church’s Network Operations center and they recommended we install a new modem to correct the problem.  Facilities Management (FM) installed the new modem on Thursday.  Friday morning, we began experiencing outages to our network again.  This time, our ‘reboot’ solution only worked for a few minutes before the network would fail again.

To make a long story short, we spent most of the day troubleshooting all the network components and more importantly, without the ability to access the Temple Scheduling, Prayer Roll, Email, and Temple Entry systems.  I finally asked FM to reinstall the old modem which re-established the network and we were solid all day Saturday.  Tuesday will bring another round of diagnosis and investigation to locate and eliminate the problems.  I have gained a greater appreciation for those technical gurus who worked with me in my past career!  We characterized the experience of not having access to all of the systems that make our Temple work efficient and accurate, to the world before the Priesthood was restored!

Much love and aloha from Paradise!