Teaching In The Tropics II: The Eve of Something Great!

This has been a busy week and fraught with a little drama as we start to establish a gathering place. As often happens, when something good begins to happen in the Church to establish Zion, Satan will use his favorite tools of misinformation, discouragement, and lies to try to stop the work. We have been having the largest gatherings yet at institute since we arrived here with over 150 attending the Wednesday and Thursday sessions. Unfortunately, we were the center of accusations of leaving the oven on in the Heber J Grant Building because we often have baked cookies there. Although that is a remote possibility, we are conscientious in leaving the kitchen in better shape than we found it. We think that a more probable explanation is that when the microwave oven in the vending area was broken, students found the kitchen open and used the oven to heat their lunch. It was as if a certain academic department and the physical facilities department were anxious to point out the inconvenience and outright disregard for following their policies focused on us so that we would be put in place. That little event was discouraging to us and I quickly apologized to those who were concerned and asked what I could do to make sure that it not happen again. At this point, we have been banned from using the ovens for baking cookies which is unfortunate because our apartment frequently is in the high 80's during the day. Using our apartment oven is prohibitive. Accordingly, Janice made no-bake cookies this past week. We will quietly appeal that while Church buildings generally are not to be used for cooking, Institute buildings allow it. Since there is not an institute building here, and we are following the handbook to establish a gather place for the YSA population here, perhaps an exception can be made. We shall humbly wait for the results of that appeal. We have hope that we are laying the foundation of a good work here to bring the YSA's in Laie and surrounding area closer to the Savior, Jesus Christ.

We decided this Friday to make a quick reboot and reserved a nice air conditioned room at a hotel at Waikiki for the night. Janice and I had a great time, we went to dinner on the beach, saw the colors of the sunset there, and shopped at the International Marketplace.

We anticipate that we will be released sometime in January. Our hope for a mission extension did not work out. We are pursuing my employment as an adjunct professor for the Education Department and teach a class and supervise some student teachers. We would only do that for winter semester, then return to our home in April. We have a couple of possibilities for renting an apartment for those three months.