Friends in High Places

We have a friend named Christoph who is here from Germany training to become a helicopter pilot. He will take his test to obtain a commercial license in just a couple of weeks.

He recently had instrumentation training which required a four-seat helicopter so Chris and I were invited to ride around the island for two hours while he practiced flying by instruments only. For the exercise, he wore blinders so that he could not navigate by landmark. So we climbed into a helicopter with our blinded student driver who - no joke - had to ask his instructor how to start the chopper.

All kidding aside, we could see that Christoph is already a skilled pilot and I was completely comfortable flying with him. I've seen our island from the air before, but I was just as stunned as ever by the beauty. Incredible!

Christoph works his way through his preflight checklist before we leave Kona.

Christoph prepares to land in Hilo with his blinders removed.

The entire flight offered views like this one of the Kohala Coast with Hualalai peaking up through the clouds.

Feeling Blessed

I was going to title this post "our acre in paradise" to show off the new home that Chris and I recently purchased that, in my opinion, really sits on one acre of paradise. But I decided the real story is in how blessed I feel and how apparent it is that we're really being taken care of.

On moving day, lots of church friends and some co-workers came to help us with the big project. We started at 8 a.m. and by 10:30 we were all moved out of the old house and all our belongings had been placed in the new house. Amazing!

Our new home met all our criteria: close to work (less than 15 minutes), big garage, big yard, and as a bonus, it has a pretty nice view of the ocean and coastline. We've been working hard, and we have a long way to go, but it feels like we really scored.

Living room is all set up but we still have a lot of boxes to contend with.

Our new house after hours and hours of weed clearing.



Moving day: with all the help we had, the garage emptied out fast.

An Unfortunate Disaster


After looking at photos of Japan I am grateful we only sustained a little damage by comparison in a small tsunami that struck Friday morning. I forget how powerful nature can be until something this catastrophic happens- it's hard to even comprehend the destruction in Japan.
That's why I thought West Hawaii Today's headline, "It's Total Devastation," was a bit overstated even if it was a quote from a cop. Besides being kept awake by tsunami sirens all night I was not even inconvenienced by the waves that hit our coastline. However, I sure feel bad for the businesses and homeowners that have a lot of cleaning up to do, or lost their homes entirely. If the waves had been much bigger I'm afraid my workplace would have been swamped, so I'm grateful it was spared and we even got a newspaper out on time. Read today's local tsunami coverage and see photos or post your own on our newspaper's website.

An amazing You Tube video someone took at Kailua Bay.


A shopkeeper cleans up his store in the King Kam hotel after wave action cleaned him out.


King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel just finished a two-year renovation. Now their beautiful restaurant is filled with rubble.

A bulldozer cleans up busted concrete by the Kailua Pier seawall on Alii Drive. The ground was littered with debris from stores and restaurants: bags of Kona coffee, tables, bathing suits. etc.