Thanksgiving Plans

We just wanted to send a quick email to let you know how much we are missing you on this Thanksgiving holiday! We send our love and hope that each of you have a wonderful day. We hope you get lots of turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie to fill you up good! Have a joyous time with family and friends and know that we love you!

We will be going with our student ward to the Aloha Center for a huge dinner. The Bishop is having 9 turkeys cooked in the emu that the ward dug and built in his yard. (This is how the polynesians cook their food). Large hole lined with banana leaves and burlap, then the food is wrapped and put in and it is covered and cooks for 8-10 hours. We will have to tell you more about it when it all comes together. We are cooking 50 lbs. of potatoes, having 20 dozen rolls, also sweet potatoes, fruit salad, homemade gravy, etc. We will be eating about noon (which is about 3:00 p.m. Utah time). After that we will be playing games and doing things with the kids for the afternoon. In the evening all of the Sr. missionaries are getting together for an evening together to have left overs, dessert, etc. We are doing that at one of the couples home that have a large living room area. It is out on Laie point and is beautiful there.

We don't have to work on Fri. so we are planning to go to the beach. We are hearing that there are some BIG surfing competitions this weekend on the north shore and there are 20 foot waves predicted. Those that surf are sure excited about all of it! We hope to see some of that! The weather has been nice. Rain has stopped for a bit and it is about 80 degrees with a constant breeze to keep it cool. We just can't love it enough!!!!!So that is our plans.

Know of our love for you and for the gospel. We love Hawaii, we love our mission. We love the polynesians and the center. We are very blessed and we feel that our family is also being blessed in our absense. Count your blessing always!!!!!!

Love forever and always,Your Hawaiian missionaries!

November Update

We are loving all of the emails, blogs, pictures, cards, letters, etc. that each of you send to us. Keep them coming! We have found our life here at the PCC becoming quite routine but each day has its challenges and new adventures! Probably the biggest thing we have been involved in lately is the Haunted Lagoon!

The PCC decided to try a haunted lagoon because they were looking for ways to get some income. This was the first year anything like this has ever been done on this island, or any other Hawaiian island as far as we know. The lagoon of the PCC is a water way through all of the villages which they give canoe rides on and also have a “Canoe Pageant” each day where the canoes float down with dancers and performers from the different islands for people to watch.

The true story is that some years ago a lady from Laie came up missing for several days and was eventually found, her body up on the shore line along the bank of the lagoon. So they took this event and made a story about “The Haunted Lady of the Lagoon”, who comes to haunt those that ride the lagoon during this event. We don’t have many pictures of it as it was at night, but go to this website and click on the Haunted Lagoon Clip…it actually was pretty good and scary!

The ride was about 20 minutes long with a lot of water monsters coming out of the water and grabbing people on the boat. One person was actually “planted” on the canoe so that they eventually pulled her off and drug her to shore. They had lots of things hanging across the lagoon on ropes and from the trees that would go across and in front of the people, chainsaws, floating graveyards, spiders as big as a car falling down over the bridges…oh, it was something else! There was a lot of loud sound effects.

A lot of the special effects, Bob and the “Blue Men from Maintenance” helped build and work the effects during the 7 nights that it ran. They all had a great time!!!

It was a lot of work because they had to set everything up before dark but have it all taken down for the next day so the routine shows and events for the PCC could continue. There was a lot of hours put in by the Polynesian workers and students and the missionaries. All of the time was donated. They had a goal of having about 6,000 people come. (The cost of a ticket was $8.00.) They had much larger crowds than expected with people coming from all over the island and a final tally of around 14,000 people came through! It was a huge success.

Here is a picture of the Lagoon. Not too good, but maybe you get a little idea????
This is part of the floating graveyard. They had a casket where a skeleton came up out of it. There were caskets and headstone floating all around.

This picture of Sister Dewey (that works with me in the Island Office) is holding up one of the shirts that we made each day for the Lagoon Water Monsters to wear. We used a black T-shirt and hot glued fresh leaves on them. We made 6 every day! The monsters in the water would come up out of the water with these shirts on and really look like water monsters! It was a big job every day, but they loved it. So the Haunted Lagoon was truly a success and everyone at the PCC is anxiously awaiting next year so it can be BIGGER and BETTER! Now they are wanting to know what we are going to do for Christmas!!!! Any suggestions???

Well, we were exhausted from this event, because not only did we have to do our normal daily jobs, but we helped with the Lagoon also. So when it was over, we went one night to Sunset Beach. We stopped first at Ted’s bakery for a sandwich and took our lunch to the beach. It was so beautiful and we had a very restful evening!


This is a flower that grows here called a type of ginger (I can’t recall the exact name). It is so beautiful and we don’t see them around much. The petals are hard, like a wax candle. I loved watching it bloom.
One day I called Bob and told him I was sending him on a “Where’s Waldo Hunt” and told him he needed to find where the lily pads were blooming. It took him about 3 days, but he finally found them! This picture only shows a few out blooming because they bloom in the early morning and then close up during the day. Look closely and you will see the pink heads of a lot of them that are closing.
This is, of course, The Bird of Paradise flower. We see a lot of this and they are very beautiful. This particular one was at the Punch Bowl. We took two new missionary couples for a day around the island showing them the shopping places and some of thetourist areas to see. We did this just this past Sat. (Nov. 1st) and we really enjoyed it.
We are looking forward with great excitement for Rick, Teressa, and the kids to come on Nov. 13th. We know it will be fun to have them here.

We haven’t seen very many people that we know since we have been here. My cousin, Bonnie Edwards McMurdie, from Texas was here one evening and called us and we met and visited with her for a little while. They were on their way to Maui for a week in a condo timeshare. It was good to see here. Also, one afternoon Bob called me from work and said to come and meet him by the Imax theatre. When I got there, there was Kevin and Gayla DiStephano, from Heber. That was a fun surprise too. They knew we were there and had asked missionaries about us and the missionaries called Bob. We took them for a shaved ice while we visited. It was great!

The tourist population is increasing a little and we have about 2,000-2,300 coming each day now. If things go like normal years, it gets really busy from now through the holidays and then continues busy up through the summer months. We hope that is the case, as the PCC really needs the tourist trade!

Bob is busy doing everybody’s “special projects”! He just ordered 300 wheels for casters to replace on the carts in the cafeteria. They are badly rusted and corroded and needed some work. He spent 2 days on a bobcat leveling out the PCC farm. Today he helped take the large canvas sides off from several of the handicraft booths and they took them to the seamstresses where the huge industrial machines are that they use to make costumes, and they replaced the zippers. Then the “Blue Shirt Men” put them back up again. I continue to work in the Island Office taking care of all of the paper work, files and time sheets for the students that work in the villages. This morning was our managers weekly meeting and my boss sent me to the Hukilau Café to get breakfast for them. They ordered plates of rice, eggs and protugese sausage, and large pancakes with extra butter and syrup! Boy do they love to eat! Have we told you that the Polynesians say if you can hold your plate of food with one hand, there is not enough food on it! And they truly live by this rule!!!!!

We have been to the Hukilau Café to eat a couple of times for breakfast and really enjoy it. I love the coconut pancakes and Bob likes the eggs, sausage, and pancake breakfast. We have taken our friends, the Nebekers, with us and the love it also! It is truly a favorite place of all of the locals!

We are really kept busy with our ward callings. Sundays are certainly not a day of rest for us, but we love it. We love being with the students and being a part of their activities. The ward had a Halloween party which we attended and it was a fun time with lots of relay games, bobbing for apples, carving and painting pumpkins, and of course they had refreshments!. The kids really like us and treat us like their best friends. I know they like having a few adults around as they miss their families from their home lands.

We work in the restaurants once or twice a week at night too. If you think this is a vacation…THINK AGAIN…!!!!! We have never worked so hard before! We might be living in paradise, but this mission is certainly not for “pansies!” Would we trade places with anyone? NO WAY!

Must close for now. Love to all of you.
Brother and Sister Remund (Dad and Mom…Grandpa and Grandma)