Aloha!

This week was the first time in my life when I have boarded an airplane in Phoenix feeling cold, and landed feeling the need to take off my jacket because it was so warm outside.  I guess this is what it means to live in the tropics.  Hilo is on the Big Island of Hawaii, so it’s not exactly what most people picture when they think of Hawaii.  The weather is certainly warm year round —the temperature ranges from about 65-80 degrees Fahrenheit all year round—but it is also wet.  Extremely wet, especially for an Arizonan.  Weather has been a big adjustment for me.  Phoenix, one of the driest cities in the U.S., averages about 8 inches of rain a year.  Hilo is the rainiest city in the U.S. by a wide margin, averaging 128 inches of rain per year.  It’s rained multiple times every day since we have arrived, often coming down in sheets suddenly and pouring.  I celebrated a little today when I woke up, as I could finally see the blue sky with the sun shining through.  My teammates and I stared out the window as we ate our breakfast, savoring the bright sky while we could as the clouds rolled up from the sea and covered us again.

It’s been a hectic week with a lot of adjustments.  In addition to the rain, this week I transitioned out of my walking cast into an ankle brace.  (I was in car accident about a month ago and badly sprained my ankle).  This meant I spent a lot of time focusing on walking correctly.  If I retrained my ankle by walking with a limp, it could mess up the muscles in my hip and my back.  I can walk around at a moderate pace now, but the beginning of the week was slow.  Thankfully my team has been gracious not only in helping me by wheeling me and my luggage through several airports, but by also slowing their pace so I wouldn’t be alone.

We also made another move.  We spent the first week at the Pakalana Inn in downtown, owned by a friend of the UH Hilo Staff.  But Christmas is the tourist season in Hawaii, so there was no room at the inn for us this Christmas.  The CCC Staff who works at Hilo are back in the mainland (aka the contiguous U.S.) to visit family for Christmas, so we are staying at their house for the next few days.  Please pray that we will soon get our rental applications approved and we can move in somewhere within the next week.  We are also trying to find some used cars that we can resell at the end of our STINT so we can get around town more easily.  Please pray that we can find cars that are low-priced and mechanically sound.  Car buying has been difficult as many cars sell quickly here and we don’t have a vehicle to visit used car lots or individual sellers.

While everything around me is still changing quickly and it’s hard for me to not feel settled, I am looking forward to the growth that a change of environment and culture can bring.  It would have been much harder to come to a place where I could prize blue sky in Arizona.  And I certainly would have never gotten to experience apple-banana harvesting at home.  These examples are small, of course, but they’re valuable to embrace and remember when I hear the rains sweeping in again or when I am in the midst of struggles that I cannot see the end of.  Most of all I am hoping most of all that this change will bring me through circumstances where I come to know and love God in a way that would have been impossible if I had stayed at home.  We will see what this redirection and adventure has for all of us in the not-too-distant future.

I wish you all Merry Christmas, wherever you may be.  Shoot me an email or a text if you have time—I’m always happy to hear from home.



Our 1st Team Picture in Hawaii at the Airport--minus Kimiyo