Our view whenever we drive home at sunset. 

June 18, 2023

Elder Soderborg: It’s been about two months since our last blog post. It’s been a joyful and stressful two months. 

Curtis and his family came to visit in May and were here for my birthday. Day one for Curt’s family was spent with a child throwing up, and day two was spent in the emergency room in Honolulu. After that, things got better with a week at the Polynesian Cultural Center, playing on the beach, and exploring the island. We had a wonderful time with our two youngest grandchildren and their parents (Curtis and Emily). 

But back to the mission.

Spring semester at BYUH runs from April 26 through June 23 (next Friday). Spring semester is a condensed semester in which classes are taught in about half the time of a regular semester. It was our turn to teach two sections of our Introduction to University Life class, so we were teaching two classes three times a week for 8 weeks instead of one class twice a week for 13 ½ weeks. We had more than twice as many students in class as we did Winter semester. That means twice as many quizzes, papers, in-class activities, student presentations, midterms, final exams/projects, and one-on-one meetings with students in about half the time. We will know next week if we survived.

This past Sunday, we went to a fireside for the two Laie stakes. The speaker was Aaron Merrell, the producer of the Book of Mormon videos. He told us that the participants in the episode about the 2000 stripling warriors in Helaman’s army were from Hawaii. Parts of the video were filmed at the Gunstock Ranch between Laie and Kahuku. He introduced the man who played Helaman in the video and one of the young men who played one of the warriors. They both told about their experience with the production and bore their testimonies. 

We were then treated to a preview of that Army of Helaman episode that will be released sometime next year. The stories and testimonies and video were very powerful and brought tears to my eyes.

We keep finding new ways to strengthen our testimonies. We feel so blessed to have this opportunity and we thank you all for your prayers and support.