Pacific Ponderings

I had never heard of Children’s Day when growing up. As a child, it seemed unfair to me that a Sunday was set aside each year to honor mothers and another to honor fathers but none to honor children...

Becoming Temple Guardians and Gardeners

At a party game with Susan’s cousins over Christmas, I was asked what I would want to be famous for. The occasion called for short amusing answers, not serious ones. So I did not say what I really thought. This is what I wanted to say.

What is the first word that the Lord speaks to the Church in our dispensation? The Doctrine and Covenants begins, “Hearken, O ye people of my church” (D&C 1:1). As the opening statement in the Lord’s own Preface to these revelations, “hearken” may be regarded as both the first word and the first commandment given to the Church in these latter-days.

Yesterday I attended a presentation by Kathy Pulotu about the labor missionaries. It was informative and inspiring. Just wonderful! Kathy invited her father and father-in-law, Sione Feinga and Tuione Pulotu, to speak. Both served here as labor missionaries. Today, in fact, marks the anniversary of their arrival on island as labor missionaries on March 8, 1960. I especially enjoyed hearing the voices of these great and good men as they shared their memories and feelings. They spoke of hard work and lessons learned; of fun and camaraderie; of skills acquired and of their love for the Lord and for Laie. I wish that the whole campus—no, the whole community—could have heard the presentation.

We sang one of my favorite patriotic songs in Church on Sunday, “America the Beautiful.” It has a charming history. It was written by Katherine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, when she was visiting Colorado College in 1893 to teach summer school. On her journey across the country, Bates witnessed first-hand vast “amber waves” of wheat covering the Great Plains. She also admired images of futuristic gleaming white cities in the Chicago World’s Fair. But above all, she was stirred by a beautiful panoramic view of America atop Pike’s Peak. The thrilling experience of being surrounded by “purple mountain majesties” with “fruited plains” stretching far into the distance below led Bates to write “America the Beautiful,” a poem originally entitled “Pike’s Peak.”

Social psychologists have discovered that individuals are less likely to help a victim when bystanders are present. In fact, if you are a victim, the more people around you the less likely it is that one of them will intervene. Why? Because there is a diffusion of responsibility in a crowd. This is called “the bystander effect.” If you want to watch some disturbing videos, look up “bystander effect” on YouTube. The videos show actors playing victims moaning on the sidewalk in a big city and even crying out “help me” while people pass them by, sometimes for a very long time, with no one stopping to help.

Tomorrow is Joseph Ah Quin’s funeral. I shall miss Uncle Joe. His beautiful voice welcomed Susan and me to Laie on the day I was announced as the new BYU–Hawaii president. I’d love to hear him sing just once more.