A Visit to a Hawaiian Church

On 9 October 2011, which was our second Sunday at Maui, we had the privilege of attending a Hawaiian church at South Kihei Road.

This kind lady took 8 of us to church. That's the church behind us. 
She had to make 2 trips.

 The church also calls itself 

"The Little Church by the Ocean Spray"

 The church bulletin

 One of the musicians with her ukelele

The whole service was so laid-back and casual. We were each given a flower to wear in our hair and most of the people involved in worship were bare-footed!

The service started out with the members of the congregation choosing songs and choruses from a song book for the band to play and the whole church to sing along. Then they sang their church song.

After that the they blew the conch shell and the service proper started with a procession of Hawaiian girls saying some chant in Hawaiian followed by an elder and the Pastor who came down the aisle with a staff in his hand. That reminded me of Moses and his rod.

 One of the many hula dances during the service.

Click here to see the hula dancers dancing to the church's theme song.

 An elder (or was he the ex-pastor?) 

giving announcements barefooted! 

Shaking hands with the pastor. Notice the staff in his hand.

When You Are Undecided...

...a simple and speedy solution is to get one of everything.

From L to R: Water, red wine, Chinese tea and sarsi

It Followed Me Home From Maui

The week after I came back from Maui was super hectic. I was recovering from jet lag, settling back to the daily life, preparing my lesson plan and slides for FIS (Facilitator Initiation Seminar) on 10 November and getting to preach on 13 November.

I only had time to finish my unpacking after all the hoo-ha was over. I was clearing the handbag I used in Maui when, to my horror, I found.....

...my room key at HI!

I was very certain that I handed in my room key so why is it still with me? It must have followed me home!

That started a whole process of getting the key back to Maui via King, our HI SEA Regional Representative, and Albert Cheam, an ex-TOPian now residing in Johor Bahru, who was heading for Maui to attend the M1111x session.

From 2 Pieces to 20 Kg

Speedi shuttle came to pick us from HI at 5.30am on Sunday, 30 October 2011. That's 11.30pm on Sunday night, Malaysian time.

After 4 planes and many hours of waiting in between, I finally stepped out of the Penang International Airport at 3.30pm on Tuesday, 1 November 2011. That's a total of 40 hours of traveling!

The actual flight time was only about 32.5 hours. The rest of the time was spent waiting in transit. We even had to spend a night in Manila because there was no connecting flight to KL when we arrived at 5pm.

To complicate matters, Hawaiian Airlines would not hold luggage for more than 4 hours so we could not check through our luggage all the way back to Malaysia. We had to collect our luggage and check-in again the next morning at 4am!

That was the start of our problem. We were only allowed 1 piece of luggage weighing 20 kg per person on Malaysia Airlines whereas we checked in 2 pieces of luggage on Hawaiian Airlines from Maui to Manila.

Malaysia Airlines wanted to charge us for excess weight. Thank God for steady Jean who stood her ground and went on like a broken record insisting that they allow us to check in 2 pieces of luggage each because we were coming in from the US. They finally gave up and she got her way. Kudos to Jean!

Moral of the story: It pays to trust in the Lord, persevere and have two ohers pray while you fight the battle. Reminds me of Joshua and Hur holding up the hands of Moses.

 2 pcs check-in luggage + 1 pc hand carry per person 

for the 3 of us added up to a huge mountain of luggage

 All that's left of our luggage after we won the check-in battle. 

That's super steady Jean with me.

Last snapshot of the 3 Haggaians at KLIA before Jean left 

to collect her luggage. Boey and I had a 3-hour wait 

for our flight to Penang.