On Our Way Home

Some of the places we travel to have flights only on certain days or require an indirect route to get there.  To get from Majuro, Marshall Islands to Auckland, New Zealand is one of those adventures.  In order to get back to New Zealand from the Marshall Islands we had to fly to Hawaii. We left Majuro at 8:00 pm and arrived in Honolulu at 3:00 am the same day.  You cross the international dateline in the process.  The flight from Honolulu leaves at 11:00 pm and arrives in New Zealand at 6:00 am a day later (you cross the dateline again).  We left Majuro on Friday night and arrived Friday morning in Honolulu.  Saturday was Susan birthday so she requested that we not fly out on Friday night so that we wouldn't totally miss Saturday.   So we spent an extra day (on our dime) in Hawaii and lost our Sunday arriving back to New Zealand Monday morning June 1st (Queen's Day). Queen's Day is a holiday in New Zealand and so we had the day to do laundry, shop at the store and get ready for our work week beginning Tuesday morning.  It was an interesting weekend -- two Fridays and no Sunday.

We had a day and a half in Hawaii.  It was just what the doctor ordered even though we couldn't go to Pearl Harbor due to an earlier mishap at the dock of the Arizona Memorial which closed the monument.  We had birthday dinner Friday night and lunch again Saturday at the Cheesecake Factory.  We swam in the ocean Saturday morning, relaxed and prepared to leave Honolulu late that night. We returned to the office on Tuesday morning refreshed and renewed and ready to go to work.

"When men and women lay aside the frantic schedules they are required to keep and the demands of their profession to reach out . . . they will discover a resurgence of their desire to help, and in each instance they will realize that they have returned with no diminution of ability but with a heart filled with gratitude, for they will find they have been on the Lord's errand and have been the beneficiaries of His help and blessings."  Thomas S. Monson "Teachings of the Prophet