Britt and Angela in Hawaii

Aloha!

Our first plane ride on Monday was canceled (it lost an engine--eek!)but we arrived in Oahu a day later and were greeted by Ralph Aona and two bright magenta leis.

We have had one really relaxing day and one really busy working day so far, so it all balances out.

Yesterday we had the day off so after eating a papaya with a spoon for breakfast, we caught the bus into the city (Honolulu) and got off at Ala Moana shopping center/national reserve beach. I (Brittany) talked to everyone on the bus and made about a dozen friends the first day. Mostly local Hawaiians would talk to me as I incessantly asked them questions about their lives/cultures. I met a fellow trekkie named Dave, and Angela got hit on by a pot-bellied plumber named Pete on the beach.

We shopped a little bit, and gathered up souveniers for our family and friends and walked across the street to the beautiful Hawaiian Pacific Ocean. We avoided sharks and coral and managed to escape only with mild sunburn and our fix of sand, sun, and water.

Angela and I returned to the house of our host family, Millie and Steve, two incredibly beautiful and generous people, and ate rice and spicy sausuages for dinner before feeling jet lag kick in and going to bed early.

Today was a little more Service oriented. We woke up early to spam and eggs cooked for us by Uncle Steve. We met a few other people from the mission center and put up 11 tents during the first couple morning hours for the upcoming reunion. Already exhausted, we continued to clean out the kitchen fridge, unloaded CostCo trucks full of food, organized the food into the kitchen, cleaned out rancid containers, crawled into rubbish bins with spiders to wash the bottoms out, and worked out in the garden. All this before 5 p.m. so we are sweaty, red, and wiped. But our host family works just as hard as us if not harder every day doing the same things. We are lucky to have them, and they feel lucky to have us to help. :)

In the upcoming week we will continue preparing the campgrounds, live in a tent, be teaching the class for 4-5 year olds at reunion, planning recreation for the afternoons, helping plan services at night, cooking and cleaning in the kitchens during reunion, and planning a Vacation Bible School that we will be leading in a week or so on the island of Hilo.

Mahalo (thank you) for reading this now novel length blog and Aloha until next time.