Day Three.

We just wrapped up our last day of training here in Hawaii, and you can feel the excitement in the air from everybody. We definitely learned a lot of useful information over these past couple days that will apply to our time on the islands. Now all we have left to do is to board the plane and travel to our final destination where we will live for the next 10 months! The SM's going to the more eastern islands are leaving here around 4:30am, while the rest of us going to the more western islands are leaving in the afternoon.

This morning, I woke up at around 4:45am to go to Waikiki Beach with some students from PUC, WWU, and AU. Many of us slowly staggered half asleep to the parking lot to pile into the van. Somehow we were able to fit about 15 people in that one van! After getting to the beach we walked over to a private beach owned by some really nice hotel and just parked our stuff there. The sand there was perfect and the beach looked amazing. Unfortunately, ground was not as nice once we got in the water. There were rocks everywhere, and one girl even stepped on a sea urchin! Nevertheless we still enjoyed swimming around and watching the sun slowly creep up over the back of Diamond Head. 

Here's a picture of the group of us at the beach: 

After the beach we had breakfast in the cafeteria and then went back to sitting in more seminars. For lunch we went to the Pali Lookout, which had a gorgeous view! Here's a couple pictures from there. Our hair is crazy in the one picture because right at the end of the lookout, the wind was ridiculously strong! 

After lunch we went back and listened to some more worship talks and seminars about the island life. We were then instructed to change into nicer clothing to take a big group picture: 

Following shortly after this was dinner, another worship, and then some of us went to Wal-Mart to do some last minute shopping. Many of us decided to buy Lice shampoo because of the horrible stories we heard in the seminars earlier that day. 

After getting back it was time to say goodbye to all the missionaries going to the islands that are more to the East, like Majuro and Pohnpei. Here's a picture of my friend Chris Doellerer and I. He's going to teach English on a small island near Pohnpei called Sapwuahfik. 

I ask that you all keep this awesome dude in your prayers. He is going to probably the most remote island out of all of us. Wikipedia says that the main island, where all of the estimated 433 people live, is about 0.91 square kilometers in size. That's about 0.35 square miles. He has no running water or electricity, and will only have internet every six weeks when he goes to Pohnpei. Although I just met him yesterday, I know he's going to do an awesome job over there! 

So as we all leave to our islands tomorrow, I ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers! Thank you!

P.S. My internet will be extremely slow in Palau, about 220 kb/sec haha so we'll see if I'll be able to upload pictures onto the blog over there. I'll try to update the blog every couple days though to keep everybody updated on how my trip is going. Thank you again for all your love and support!

-Andrew