Day 48– Aug 16, 2005, Tuesday: To Kohala!

Here is a funky plant I saw. Hawaii has the most beautiful, strange plants. On the right is the church we are serving this week.

First day of (mini) outreach. Loaded up the truck. We had a team of 13 people and 2 drivers and 11 seats! Rod and I jumped in the back of the truck. We drove about 1 ½ hours north to Kohala. It’s a nice little town on the very north side of the island. The climate is quite different. It’s cooler and there are more pine trees. We are staying in a house here in town that is empty. Our job this week is to clean the house (which is a big job because this place is way dirty). It is an awesome old house “like Anne of Green Gables” says Ruth. The pastor from the church here is going on a mission trip for 2 years to Brazil. They lived in this house as of last week, and now the church is trying to fix it up. We are planning on doing some things with the youth group at the church here as well.

When we got here we had to clean a bunch just to get to the point of feeling comfortable cooking. We got out buckets and wiped down the walls and stove and got just tons of dirt off the walls. I don’t usually worry to much about being clean, but this place was nasty. We spent the afternoon cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen. Then we celebrated with pizza that we bought from Costco. Hmmm pizza. Right now we are playing Phase 10 while I type. It’s 8:30pm and I am exhausted. Ruth and the kids are already asleep in bed.

Karen said “Rod is a tin bum” some sort of New Zealander way of saying “I love you” I’m guessing. Now she is laughing at me. Apparently “tinny” means you are lucky. So I guess he wins all of the time.

The kitchen was nasty even by my standards. We set off to work as soon as we got there.


Finally! the kitchen was clean enough to cook food in. Here is the team dinner. We were amazed that the house had a table large enough to fit all of us!