Another Session Wraps Up

Yesterday I helped welcome some guests from Nebraska, who will be visiting with us through to Convocation, which is next Thursday evening. You always get a fresh perspective of Haggai from new people, their reason for supporting the ministry and how they came to hear about it.
Our current sessions are into the final week and the participants have been a real joy to be around. They have many with gifts in music, we have a magician, two Catholic priests and an interesting fellow from Romania, who I have mentioned previously. Romania has a population of over twelve million, but approximately one in ten suffers from some form of addiction. This individual operates the national branch of an international organization that works with males, drug and alcohol addicts. I found it interesting that his organization doesn't want government assistance, because if they did, first would come cigarettes, then television and then girlfriends. So not everyone thinks that government has the answers to todays problems. His organization has a success ratio over 80 percent. This is the story of one participant. Each of the 48 has an interesting ministry back home.
Today was another breakfast at our favourite restaurant, and it was a beautiful morning. Tomorrow we will go "upcountry" for church to a place named Wiapuna.

More Visitors

One of Marlene's nursing classmates and closest friend from Oakville, is visiting Maui with a friend of hers from Brampton. They are staying at the Hyatt Regency with people from Vancouver at Ka'anapali which is about an hour from us. They have a connection to the Hyatt through employment, so are getting a very good deal. So we rented a car yesterday and went touring the island. The highlight was to have been going up to the crater, Haleakala, but the weather up there was horrendous - cloudy, windy & wet. It was unfortunate for our guests, but it was interesting for us to see the peak in a different light, so to speak. We stopped for lunch "up-country" at an Italian restarant in Makawao and capped the day off with a wonderful dinner at the Hyatt in one of their dining areas. Forgot to get a picture until we were leaving, so that is why it is in the dark.
This morning we had a church service here at Haggai and it was very moving. Lots of music, a very moving personal testimony from a former Hindu from India and the message from one of our favourite faculty members from Brazil. I had picked up this faculty from the airport on Thursday night and he shared about recent happenings in his life and his message this morning was "The Best Is Yet To Come". When you think about it, no matter what stage of life we are in, he is so right!
I managed to get thru another birthday on Friday, but far too much attention to suit me. In a place like this, word gets around much too quickly.

Tsunami (Again)

One of my posts from last year (Feb/10) told of a tsunami experience after the earthquake in Chile. Needless to say it was an experience we didn't need a second time. But as you probably know, the earthquake in Japan did cause a tsunami and it was about six feet tidal surge when it reached Maui. The damage here was light, but since it arrived at 3:20am, it was a tense night and there was preparations to make. There was evacuation for anyone three storeys or less at sea level. But our building is six storeys and we are two blocks from the beach, so no evacation was necesary for us.
The damage experienced here was only vegetation, some boats moored in various harbours, and flooding. I read in the local paper that the tidal surge made it 100 yards onshore in some areas, so there would be buildings that suffered flooding.
As a precaution we moved our all participants to the fifth floor at 2:30am and kept them there until 4:00am.
One of the participants from Romania, walked around the halls during our wait with his laptop using "skype" to introduce his family to all his classmates. Technology does have a way of making our world smaller.
My pictures with this post show some of the debris that the waters left behind, close to our Haggai building.
Marlene and I are on call today, which means we can't leave the building from 6:30am until 10:00pm tonight. We deal with any emergencies or things that can't wait until Monday morning. So it will be a short weekend.

Warren & Annabelles

Last Saturday we did the well known nightclub by the above name. We only did the show but you can do dinner with it. Dinner for us was at "Bubba Gumps"!
Warren is a magician entertainer who inserts a great deal of comedy. In fact he had the place in stitches for a full 2 hours. The fact that he is a great magician was almost an aside. We went to this same place a few years ago, but Warren was out of town at the time, and they had a replacement. But the real Warren was much better and our whole group of seven volunteers really enjoyed his show.
Today Saturday, is very soggy and wet, quite unusual for this side of the island. However, a bit of rain can do wonders to clean things up, since we have a large bird population. Also, we are doing arrivals and departures so we need to stick close to Haggai anyway. This past week we celebrated Praise & Worship on Tuesday, Convocation on Thursday, and Communion on Friday (Marlene's highlight), so it was busy.
My pictures should be familiar to some of you since they are from Gannon's (at Wailea Golf & Country Club), the restaurant we do breakfast at quite regularly, but since it was raining there are no golfers. Our volunteer group includes a couple from Pensicola, Florida, the retired Pastor/Politician and wife from PEI, and a farmer and his wife from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.