Typhoons, Talent and TCORR1

This past week was crazy. Haha I feel like I write something like that at the beginning of all of my posts lately. But for real. 

First of all, we had put SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT into coordinating members, performances, food, and decorations for the luau and ALL WEEK LONG we all just had to watch the weather forecast to see if we'd get blown over by a typhoon. 

Friday morning, the day of the luau rolls around, and we wake up to gray skies. The military has codes for typhoons and on Thursday we were at TCORR4, and even though I don't really know what that means, I DO know that TCORR1 means that everyone has to go to their homes, NOT LEAVE, and they don't let anyone on or off base until the typhoon passes. 

Anyway, Friday morning comes, and it's looking pretty sketchy. It's super windy, they sky is all one big gray mass, and members are asking left and right whether or not we're still doing thing. Sister Crosby, one of the senior missionaries, boldly posted onto the Okinawa LDS FB page that we would still have the luau despite the wind and the rain unless it reached a TCORR1 status because we missionaries had worked way too hard to let it go to waste. 

The day went by with little change in the weather as we checked sound systems, put up decorations, cooked rice, cut up fruit, and cleaned the church to make it look nice for the open house tours that we would be running during the first dinner hour. 

Now, I'll admit, I was getting a little discouraged. We had had quite a few people tell us that they weren't going to come due to the sketchy weather, and I started to get really worried about the turnout. We had planned for around 300 people to come, and had tables and chairs set up for quite a few along with enough food to feed an army. What in the world would we do if no one showed up?

So dinner and tours were to start at 5:30, and the show was to start at 6:30. Around 5:00, we gathered as missionaries, said a very humble prayer to our Father in Heaven pleading for the night to be a success if it should be His will, and then we waited. 

No later than 5:15 did we already have at least 50 people walk through the door bringing the side dishes that they had signed up for, as well as their friends and neighbors who had never been to the church before. By 5:25 we had enough non members there to start a tour of the church! My companion and I took the second group which started around 5:35. I was SO impressed with the members that we had asked to display each of the organizations in the church and how informative and spiritual our tour was. Everything was going exactly as we had wanted it to, and by the time we finished our tour and brought our group to get their food and find a table, EVERY TABLE HAD BEEN FILLED! Never in a million years did I expect that kind of problem to occur. We literally had too many people show up! It all worked out as people fit more chairs around the edges of the gym, and children sat on the floor near the stage. 

Then we began the entertainment part of the evening, which my companion and I had been in charge of coordinating, and aside from like two small music errors, we were able to enjoy the talents of the young men doing the haka, the young women doing a hula, various talented members doing maori poi balls, tahitian dancing, and singing in hawaiian. It was AWESOME. However, the most exciting part of the night came when everyone in the room started getting alerts on their phones saying that we had reached TCORR1 typhoon status and we needed everyone to get home NOW. The scene then turned into something I would say is comparable to the scene in titanic when the ship is sinking and the orchestra is playing "nearer my God to thee" except that people were simply trying to clean up as quickly as possible and the background music was Elder Ho's Ukelele and Brother Green's soft voice singing "somewhere over the rainbow" as our final number. 

Let me just testify to you, that Heavenly Father is in charge, the members of the church can be one of the most supportive families we have, and we don't ever need to be concerned because as long as we are trying our hardest, God will take care of what needs to happen. That night was truly a night of miracles. 

We then spent the next 48 hours on lockdown, unable to leave our apartment. Luckily, we had managed to download all of the audio for general conference beforehand, and basically just spend the weekend being spiritually nourished. It was a nice break :) 

Time has run short, but I just want you all to know that the organizations and the members of the church can be one of the biggest support systems we have here on this earth. We should never take our beloved brothers and sisters for granted and take every opportunity to express our love to others. Thank you all for the love and support!

Sister Wells