A guest wrote to us asking if we could tell her the name of the beautiful song sung in the Hawaii village about mother, father, grandparents and baby. I had no idea what the song was so I walked over to the village. I asked these two handsome guys if they knew of a song like that and they did! Kaipo wrote the tune! They said they wrote it to teach hula but it had no title. They kindly let me record them singing it and gave permission to share it. (I sent it to the lady who wrote to us)
Kaipo Manoa on guitar and Aaron Watson singing the untitled song of Hawaii:
Laie is a fun place to be during Laie Days. On Friday we invited our friends, Ron & Nina from Sequim, over for dinner. Foodland makes a yummy Chicken Lau lau so that was our main dish.
The chicken is wrapped in taro leaves and then in tea leaves and steamed into a lovely moist dish. I just love the taro leaves! Mmmmm (you throw away the tea leaves)
Also that evening we went with the Jones's to the Cook Island performance in the marketplace.
Saturday's Laie Days included the now once a year Hukilau at Hukilau beach which is less than a five minute walk from our apartment! :)
Pulling in the net
Chris helped this cute little guy untangle the fish from the net.
From Chris:
Yesterday
they had a hukilau on Hukilau Beach. We
all gathered while the fishermen rowed a boat out into the bay and set the net
in a big arc. It was a blustery day with
25mph winds and larger than normal waves for a low tide. Under direction of the fishermen, we pulled
the net into shore which yielded about 50 fish – mostly goatfish with a few
what I think were akule. Everyone had a
great time; there was great joy that we actually caught some fish. This was a reenactment of earlier days; days
that I vividly and fondly remember. I
was able to help a young boy untangle a fish from the nets; a shadow of the
past. This celebration was a part of
“Laie Days” and only occurs once a year.
I thought of bringing my uke but most of the sounds of the day were
drowned out by the surf and winds.
Here are some photo's (used with permission) Elder Bob Decker took:
Preparing the net
Taking the net to the water
This is a cool photo Nina posted. Her hubby Ron,
went under water to help with nets
These last two are Elder Deckers:
Pulling in the net
for some reason this is tradition! Yes, the
fish is still alive! Eeewww!
A LITTLE HISTORY: The church purchased 6,500 acres of land in Laie (for $14,000) back in 1865. Hukilau was used to earn money for the building fund. Not many people came to that north side of the island. Servicemen would often stop & offer to pay if they could help pull in the nets. Children would sell them coconuts and dive for lobsters. Hukilau became a grand luau. Not only did the men pull fish from the sea but Relief Society sisters would cook and they sold the food and had dancing and singing with the ukulele. Tickets were printed and left with tour groups in Honolulu. Dancers would hula along the side of the road to let people know there was something happening at Hukilau Beach. The Hukilau's popularity grew & in 1948 a popular song writer, Jack Owens, visited and wrote a song about it called "Hukilau Song" that is well known today. ("Oh we're going to the Hukilau...)
This is a statue of Hamana Kalili but tourists call it
the Shaka Statue and it is a favorite photo spot.
A bit of history:
Hamana Kalili of Laie, lost the three middle fingers of his right hand while working at the Kahuku Sugar Mill. Because he could no longer work there, Kalili was then shifted to guarding the sugar train that ran from Sunset Beach to Kaaawa and his "all clear" wave of the thumb and pinkie evolved into the "shaka" as children imitated the gesture. No one is really sure where the word "shaka" came from or what it means.
Tonight we loved our assignment to take tickets at the Prime Dining restaurant.
This is beautiful AJ standing by the impressive
doors to Prime Dining Restaurant. We love working
with AJ in the Research Office.
Have
you every heard of silent dancing? A girl in church was talking about how
she and a friend were watching a group out on the lawn dancing but there was no
music. It looked so strange. They were invited to join in but felt
weird dancing to no music. Then she noticed how they all had earbuds in
and were all listening to the same music from their phones. She thought
about how weird it would have been for her and her friend to start dancing just
to fit in only to realize afterward that they were the only ones not hearing
the music. Then how awkward for everyone else there to realize the two of
them were just dancing along without the music. Ha ha. This made me think about a really good conference talk (The Music of the Gospel) by Elder Andersen, about adding music to the dance steps of our marriage, family life etc. and to keep practicing to hear the music of the Gospel.
We were given an assignment by the Guest Experience Committee to take the canoe ride and report on our experience. The guide was funny and made it a delightful experience! I do have some ideas I will share in the meeting but riding down a lagoon in a beautiful place such as this... can't help but love it.
We just happened to get in the front of the canoe. Here we go under the bridge!
Past the pretty waterfalls and bougainvillea.
From Chris:
Back in 1967,
Uncle David enlisted me, his son Arthur, and a couple of my friends to come to
the PCC as volunteers. We would dress up
in our lavalava’s and bring our cane poles and fish in the lagoon. Uncle David asked us to fish out ALL the
tilapia as they were eating the Koi eggs.
We would sometimes catch 30-40 tilapia in a single day. We would give them to the villagers at the
PCC to eat. We never did complete our
assignment – I guess that is why I am back at the PCC as a volunteer – too see
if I can complete an assignment.
There is a fish pond in the lower right. Little fish swim
through the sticks you can see sticking up. They feed in
the pond and then they get too big to fit back through the
sticks.
How fun that it ended at the Cook Islands! Just for a few weeks, performers from the Cook Islands are here with their unique drumming, dancing, music and costume. Their government paid to send this group of about 15 islanders here to promote travel to the Cook Islands. The PCC is excited to include them in the Villages!
This is the chief. They are setting up to perform. We will come back and visit with them soon.
Smoothies and Viafala are beautifully prepared
in pretty pineapples! They are delicious!
Today our Luau committee was very happy about how popular their smoothies & viafalas were. Sales have been up.
I asked Lani what viafala was and she explained that it was a Samoan drink. As we were leaving the committee meeting, which is held at the Aloha Luau venue, Steve and Lani asked one of the servers to give us a viafala to try!!! Mmmmm it was wonderful! Kind of a pineapple mango fruit smoothie with lovely chunks of fruit in it. I could live on Pineapple and Coconuts!
It's fun to dress in our alohawear & head over to Luau
after being so busy in the Research Office
An interesting thing about being a PCC missionary is that once or twice a week we
are assigned to work at a Luau.We wear
“Alohawear” and serve at various venues with varying assignments. Last night we had our second experience helping with Luau!
Today we were in a three hour Sales and Marketing Meeting. I'm remembering a line from a movie "If you build it, they will come." I'm learning that building "it" is not sufficient without some marketing. Marketing is so important to keep people coming and keeping people coming is important to help the PCC be more self reliant. We have around 5,000 guests per day.
The PCC is so good at listening to the guests comments and continually works to improve the guest experience.
We have four students working with us in the research office and they are just
delightful! We have already become Ohana
(family). Our students are from Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Philippians and Missouri. One
of our assignments is to help them build skills that will prepare them for life
so that when they step off the plane in their homeland, they will be ready. We do that by starting each day with prayer
and a spiritual thought and a short training from the PCC handbook. Then we all go to work on our many
assignments.
Our
mission call is to serve in quality control which means we become a part of so
many divisions. Once a week we have a staff meeting which includes a live chat with Dell from San Diego. Also once a week we attend the Sales & Marketing Meeting, & Luau Committee Meeting. Twice a month we attend the Guest Experience Committee Meeting, the Ticket Takers Committee and a Kokua Committee meeting which is just Chris & I and the BYU-H VP over Marketing. All these meetings keep us informed of much of the workings of the PCC and help us know how we can best be of help. We have a lot of notes and a lot of stuff to work on and we are exhausted at the end of the day.
This is Hawaii! No, ha ha it is not a vacation but we are having a wonderful time and experience. We work hard and sweat alot and then at the end of the day Chris will often grab a boogie board & walk to the beach! When I'm not too tired I'll get in too ha ha! The water is just wonderfully warm and so refreshing!
Other news: Chris recently got called into the High Council for our YSA stake.. His assigned
area is auditing. A
member of the stake presidency is a Laie friend of Chris's from long ago.
They were in scouting together. This
week has been filled with many faces and many voices and I don't feel much
further along than the week before but I'm sure I'll find my groove at some
point. I am grateful for the kindness of the faces and voices. My body
got tired of sitting so I went outside to walk and heard a kind voice from
somewhere say "How are you doing today, Auntie?" I turned to
see a Polynesian security officer and he was speaking to me! Ha ha. I'm
auntie. :). I like that. Message
from a Tahiti brother in the Devotional: It's good to not do something
bad. It's better to do something good. It's best when we do the
right thing no matter where we are or what we are doing.
Message from Br. Tuia in Sacrament Meeting. Say much, much
mistakes. Say less, less mistakes. Say nothing, no mistakes.
But I have to give a talk so I must say something & hope I won't make
mistakes. Ha ha. He then spoke on Pres. Uchtdorf April Conf address
"Perfect love casteth out fear". I loved the reminder of that
wonderful talk.
This past week we had our first assignment working with
guests at the PCC. We dressed in our matching Aloha clothes and worked at
the exit of the Aloha Luau. Our task was to show the Luau guests where
the bathrooms are and let them back in when they return from the bathroom and
also to keep those who didn't purchase the Luau from coming in through the
exit. It was really fun to be there and watch the show and a great perk
after each assignment is that we get to dish up a plate of food! Once or
twice a week we'll get free Luau food! Tomorrow we are assigned to work
the exit of the Ohana Luau.
Besides work this week we got our Hawaii license plates and we also walked to
the beach a couple times. Dad is so happy boogie boarding. Believe
it or not, I haven't gone in the water yet! Silly me. Just enjoyed
digging in the sand, watching the pretty kites (3 of them) flying in the
breeze, children playing and a dog having an absolute blast in sand and
water! There are lots of people in the water and lots of people like me,
just enjoying watching the water. Ha ha.
