The first picture is of course the beautiful Laie Temple just a few minutes from my home here. then a picture of me in front of the mission settlement where I spend most of my days. this darling little girl is a visitor from very far away and I just couldn't resist her so thought i would show her off. there is one picture of one of the corners of where I work. Everything there is hand made and some made by me. We have a ton of crafts and then we have lots of quilting things some made here and the big quilts we order from the Phillipines so we can sell them at an affordable price. All the money goes to the students at BYU Hawaii. The students there represent 70 countries or islands at any given time so it is a beautiful rainbow of students and I love them all. It is a marvelous program. 

Thank you for my birthday cards and well wishes. I appreciate everyone so much. Now that I know how to do this picture thing I will add some more recent pictures another day.

I hope to hear form all of you at one time or another.

Love, Brenda

Hi Everyone,

Well here it is the end of Oct. just one more day and I am a year older yet again......wow I don't feel any older.....or do I??? Well, it really doesn't matter because it is happening to all of us isn't it?
Well, I keep checking the news and the east coast is suffering terribly with the storm of the century for them.
We did have a scare last Sat. night as we had a Tsunami warning all over the islands and had to grab water and blankets etc and head for higher ground. We were very very fortunate as it did not amount to anything. Nearly 80,000 people were evacuated from Honolulu. We had to close down the PCC and had a thousand people waiting in line for the Haunted Lagoon. I imagine many of them have returned tonight but thank goodness I didn't have to be there tonight. I will finally go through it tomorrow night andthen only one night left and it is over for another year ir perhaps two years. I think they may cancel it for a year so it is more exciting in 20 14. Well, it all remains to be seen.

Gloria and I are preparing a few songs to sing and play with the Ukes. I am to the point that I can play the chords to a number of songs and she is so good she can do lots of picking to make it more fun. I think I will sing Edelweiss. Remember that one from sound of music. the whole thing can be done with five chords so even I can play that one. We haven't decided for sure which others to do but we will by tomorrow morning.

I did have a couple of great experiences this week with guests that I met who I really connected with and will stay in touch with. There is a couple from Connecticut who may just want the missionaries to visit them but we shall see. I must have talked with them for an hour and somehow learned a lot about her life and her challenges. They were a wonderful couple and I am so grateful to have met them.

Dave and Colleen Newman' s kids came to visit and we spent some time with them and they were darling. they live in Midway and know who Marilyn and Tom Ryan are. They are in love with their home and would give about anything to buy it.So, you two better be prepared to have them knock on your door. they are a super couple and he is a singer and guitar player and bought a great Ukulele from us. that was a fun time.

I had a great experience directing the choir from the Stake and we ended up with about 40 young people. they were simply wonderful. My next choir experience will be Nov. 18th when I am hoping to pull together a choir from my ward to perform for a Relief Society event. I am looking forward to that but haven't picked a song yet. That comes next. I need a two part on faith for women.

We have learned that our wonderful President Orgill who has been the PCC President for 12 years will be leaving next summer and he will be a mission President somewhere in the world with his darling wife. He has worked so hard for so long to prepare for the year 2013 when they will celebrate the 50th birthday of the Polynesian cultural Center and they will miss the biggest month in September. Well, that is what they get for being so spiritual and talented right?

We had an infestation of horrible creepy bugs in our pantry so right now everything is all over the kitchen and we have sprayed several times and now we have a bug bomb in there and won't attempt to put it all back together until tomorrow morning. It is awful to see hundreds of those little critters scurrying all over your pantry walls, makes your skin crawl.

Well, this is the big week of Halloween so I hope all the little ones have a good time and get lots of goodies. I imagine we will need to get in some candy for the neighbor kids as all of you will.

I heard from grandson Jordan today who is serving a mission in Argentina. I sent him a box for his birthday from here so I hope he gets it and it isn't stolen. Oh and Lily got her learners permit yesterday and we are so proud of her.

Hey don't forget to vote, no matter what. Take nothing for granted as this is the most important year in history. I understand Billy Graham has told his followers to vote for the man who is a man of God and a family man and who believes in marriage between a man and a woman. Hummmmm, who would that be??

I love you all and miss you very very much. I love my new friends here and we get along just great, amazing huh?
God bless each of you with whatever you are in need of.

Love, Brenda

We had some surprise visitors at the PCC from my ward. the Littles were there and totally shocked me when they walked into the settlement where I work most of the time. that was so much fun and I will try and get the pictures on here that we took. Also last week the Werner brothers who are friends of Todds were just chatting with me and asked me where I was from and when I said Anthem they said well so are we. the one said do you know Todd woods??? Well he is just my son so I guess we are now friends. Well that was sure fun too. It is so much fun to get visitors that we don't expect and they just show up. Well Todd and Michelle are coming this very week and I am very excoted to show them where I am living for 18 months and spending all my time.
Well I just saw this as a draft I had not published so I don't know if it will go on top of the one I wrote today. this I wrote a week or so ago.
So, I will just hit publish and see where it goes. By for now.

Hello Everyone,

Of course it is another lovely day here on the beautiful island of Oahu. It is always warm and sometimes very very hot and always humid. However we are blessed on the north end of the island with trade winds most of the time except for today which seems very quiet.  I had a fantastic time starting Friday about noon when Todd and Michelle came to see me for a short visit. I am thrilled that they got away for a week on Maui but stopped here to see me first. They were absolutely exhausted after a total comedy of errors trying to get here on buddy passes but it all fell through and it seemed to take two days to get here and no sleep. Anyway we had a half day on Friday and most of the day on Sat. and they were flying to Maui on Sat. night and the plane cancelled so we ended up going to a movie near the airport and they stayed in a motel near there and took off on sunday morning. they finally got there and I hope are doing nothing but resting, eating and exercising. NO WORK whatsoever, either one of them. they soooo deserve it.

Anyway I loved showing them both off to all of my new friends and they loved the Center and the show and remembered a lot of it from over 20 years ago. I know it sounds crazy that our families and friends are allowed to come and visit us but that is the way for service missionaries. One of my roommates is going home to UT for a month to help care for brand new twins her children are trying to adopt and they have the brother already who is only 2. So she is leaving with mixed feelings of course as it is a strange feeling to leave a missions for home and then return. We will all miss her but her children will be really happy for the help.

Well, we have big things happening at the PCC. They started their Haunted Lagoon and the first night we had over 2400 people go through it. we all volunteer to help with this at night so we close down the place where I work all the time at 6 instead of 7 so everything in the PCC is pitch dark. Wow it is amazing how everyone comes out for it. I haven't personally gone through it yet but I can't wait. Maybe i will do that this evening. We work at them 5 or 6 times helping the volunteers to keep from being too hungry and give them hot chocolate and noodles and whatever else we can I guess. We dress all in black and can't be seen of course. This is a big money maker for the kids going to BYU and for the PCC so they are having it every year. Look up Haunted lagoon at the PCC on Google and take a peek at the website. I think it may just be www.hauntedlagoon.com

Also I think I mentioned  that we are assigned to all different wards and I am in a brand new stake ofall freshman wards. got a call yesterday and was asked to show up to help out at a choir practice for the stake conference to be held in two weeks. So I went and there were 4 girls and five boys,. Wow that was challenging. Sooo, I will be calling a few of my sister missionaries to help sings. I also will call my Bishop make sure that these kids come out for this. There are so many beautiful singers but since they are all brand new here so I think there is a lot of shyness. We all just need some time to get to know each other.
Then last night I had another meeting about working with the clubs of all the many countries represented here. Again I am assigned to Australia and just learning what they expect from us. More on that when I know more. At least I don't have to worry about the meeting s being run in another language.

This is a wonderfu,l beautiful place and I love it here. We all listened to conference here although it cme on at 6 am (not a morning person). What a fantastic announcement about the change in ages for missions. Now I think we may  have some grandaughters going now that it is 19. WOW! how exciting. I think of Jordan often and pray for his safety and health. He will be beating me home by a month or two as he goes for two years.

My love to you all. If you are unable to write to me on this site please write to me at brendalwoods12@gmail.com.

Oh I have found another darling girl going to school here and working as a guide whose parents and grandparents I know from Mt. Olympus area. I got to talking with a beautiful tall blond student one day and she said she was from Yuma. I said the only people I may know there are the children of Russ and Naoma Hansen. So, those of you who know them Amanda is the daughter of Marsha. Isn't that fun? And I ran into her when Todd and Michelle were with me and she told them how much she loves it here. OK that's it for now. I love you all and certainly miss you a ton. come on over and enjoy this amazing place. Maybe during the winter for those of you in IL or UT.

Mahalo, Brenda

Hi Everyone,

I just don't know what I hit on this keyboard  I had a whole message written and I hit something and it just all disappeared so here I go again. It is after 10 on Sunday night so this won't be long. I am having a Dr. appointment in the morning just so I have a Dr. to go to if I really need one and he will at least know who I am. He is only five minutes from here so that is a good thing.
I have been assigned to an all freshman ward and I may have mentioned that already but they are just great and I look forward to working with. We provide what they call shadow leadership which means we don't do the work for them but we are here to advise.

We went up to some beautiful falls on Sat with five of us. The walk up to the falls was botanical and beutiful. We found a great restaurant afterwards and just totally enjoyed ourselves for the whole day. there is a darling town up north of here that is just very touristy and we loved it. I will have to take all visitors there.

I enjoyed listening to Women's conference this weekend as well and it was very tender and very beautiful.

Kevin is back at work and doing well in his recovery from what the kids say from home. I am very very grateful to God for blessing him and watching over him.
We at the PCC are getting ready for the Haunted Lagoon that will bring in some money for the kids education. It will be absolutely amazing and most everyone on the island will come here during the month of Oct. as well as visitors from all over the world of course.
Not much else to tell for now. Tomorrow night Colleen Newman and I are presenting a family home evening for the Senior missionaries and volunteers and we are talking about our experiences in the Tabernacle choir. I will be singing a solo as Sister Newman has lost her singing voice due to health problems. I feel very badly for her. She will do a great job talking though as she likes to talk about the choir as well as I do.
I will let you know how it turns out.