Here is a photo of our growing branch which will be featured in the Church News in the coming weeks.  I called my friend there and suggested they feature our unique branch.  They jumped on it and have interviewed people, accepted our photos and written accounts and are working on an article.  It will be fun to see what turns out.




An almost disaster happened when a huge cockroach attacked Kaye in the kitchen.  She fought bravely but was about to succumb when Dennis came to the rescue with a shoe and killed the monster before he could devour Sister Wright. Here is a picture of the biggest cockroach Mom has ever seen.

Because BYUH is on break, they shut down the campus and encourage missionaries to travel or otherwise fill their time until classes start again.  Our fellow missionary friends (Elder and Sister Rowell of Cedar Hills, Ut) had not seen the islands so we suggested we go on a cruise so they could see everything and we would show them around.  We rented a car at each port and saw the highlights.  

This is our Norwegian Cruise Line ship at anchor off the big island of Hawaii.  It was a small ship but very nice.

As part of our trip we went to volcano national park on the big island of Hawaii.When we were there the lava was not flowing but we could see the steam vents (see below) that are caused by surface water dripping down into cracks leading to the molten lava.  So it is there, you just cannot see it right now.  It was a rainy day, but we were prepared.

As part of our tour we went to a lava tube (cave) left from an underground lava flow.  It was interesting but not much different from those at home in Idaho.  Here we are at the entrance to the tube.

 As part of the trip we visited the Kona Temple on the island of Hawaii.  It is a small temple beautifully situated on a hill in the city overlooking the ocean.  While we were there youth from Maui had come for a week long service project working on the temple grounds. 

We had a great trip and are now home.  We were able to pick up our car which was in the body shop and our Mac computer which was also being repaired so we are now back in business.  A week of preparing for the coming term and doing some family history.