Weeks 22-26
Aloha Friends and Family and Happy New Year!!
We’ll hit our six month mark in a week and continue to be thrilled to serve here in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission. The mission is thriving under the very capable leadership of President and Sister Andersen. Year 2025 closed with many baptisms which brought steady momentum for the start of 2026. The mission surpassed baptism records along with many other key indicators of success. Missionaries are working hard to maintain standards of excellence which manifests in their success of finding new friends to teach–people who are eager to hear the good news that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings to their lives. The miracles are all around. We witnessed the baptism of a young man named Mitchell who willingly received the gospel with much joy and is now fully participating as a member of our Auwaiolimu ward. He will go with the youth to the temple to do baptisms for the dead this coming Saturday so that his own ancestors can enjoy the blessings of the gospel if they so choose.
In our world of vehicles, the mission went 38 days without an at-fault accident (record is 50 days) which continues to amaze us as we’re learning that most missions can’t go 4-5 days without an accident. Our missionaries are taking such good care of their vehicles, drive safely and are so grateful to even have a car so they can more efficiently do their work. We are piloting a program here on the islands where the church is working directly with the Kia dealership to purchase and provide cars without having to ship them or auction them. Our first five vehicles of what we hope will be another 65 vehicles were distributed this month. We made it a big deal when we handed the keys off to the lucky missionaries who had been driving the cars with the most miles. It was like Christmas morning all over. The Kia Sportage is a nice car with great features and will serve the mission well moving forward. We’ll keep you posted!
Zone conference and district council meetings continue to inspire us with the level of scripture knowledge and teaching skills practiced by our missionaries. They are young in age, but show such maturity on many levels. We continue to enjoy time at the temple with the missionaries in our district. The Laie temple is beautiful with its pristine and well manicured gardens. The covenants we make there bring us much peace and encourage us to continue to serve each other with eager hearts and Christ-like love. 
We were thrilled when my nephew John Bingham and his wife Amy along with their 5 kids surprised us with a drop in visit to our vehicle coordinator office and the Honolulu Tabernacle. They are an amazing family. Instead of gifts this year, John and Amy surprised their kids with a Hawaiian vacation for Christmas. That’s a cool gift, they are a cool family!
Our son Parker, his wife Meegan and their three littles visited us in Honolulu for a day and then we joined them for a few more days in Kauai for what was an amazing get away to this beautiful island with all it’s magic including sea turtles that come up onto the same beach night after night, to napping seals, to gorgeous sunsets and views. We loved being with them and look forward to seeing more of them in months to come. 
Mission life has been amazing and we’re very happy we made this decision to serve and offer whatever we can to assist our missionaries and our mission leaders. Obviously Hawaii is a great place to serve–it’s not without it’s challenges, but we see the hand of God in the work here and are so grateful to play a small part. We love you all and miss you. Come visit–we’ll give you a little tour or go to lunch!