Diamond Head

Monday we all went to Diamond Head, the famous crater next to Honolulu, and hiked to the viewpoint at the top.  It's a very popular place, so it was different from Northwest hikes where you only see a few people the whole time.  We were surrounded by other hikers.  The crater used to be a military site, and I think part of it still is.  At the base of the crater where we parked we saw these neat old empty military buildings.  Some of us wished we could have gone inside the fence and explored them.

The beginning of the trail inside the crater

A fairly impressive view, but the best was yet to come

After climbing up the inside rim and going through a kind of multi-story bunker in the crater wall, you crawl through an opening in the wall onto a trail that takes you to a lookout at the top. The crowd was pretty thick at the top, but I think it was worth it.

Honolulu

Looking back into the crater

After Diamond Head we drove to the Halona Blowhole and watched it blow repeatedly as the waves came in. 

 

Easter Weekend

On Saturday we had a Passover dinner for 16 people.  We would have had it on Passover, the Monday before, but it didn't work out, so we postponed it.  We joked that it was a "semi-kosher" Passover.  Making everything "Passover kosher" would have been a lot of work.  This was my second Passover dinner and the first time I had helped host one.  It's a pretty neat thing to do.  It makes the history of the Israelite's deliverance from Egypt more tangible, and also reminds us of Christ's Last Supper.  There are certain dishes in Passover which represent different elements of the Passover story.  In addition to those special dishes, we had a normal meal.  I wished that I had gotten more pictures, but here's one of the table for Passover before everyone came.

   

On Easter morning we went to the beach before church to take some pictures 

Anna and kids

Yours truly

We also saw a rainbow on our way to church.

More pics from out and about

This week we took a quick trip over to Ford Island and saw the U.S.S. Utah, one of the ships sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

An old air traffic control tower on Ford Island.

The view from the Pali Lookout on our way to the other side of the island.

On Good Friday we stopped by the beach on the other side of the island before going to church. Anna has asked me to take pictures of the kids, so we took advantage of having on nice church clothes to snap some shots.

Sydney

Mack

Cole

Nora

Shark's Cove

Yesterday we headed to Shark's Cove in the evening after a normal day of stuff like school and grocery shopping.  As we drove over to the North Shore it was raining.  We got out for a little while at Shark's Cove, but it was still raining, so we got back into the van to eat our tacos.  Sydney prayed for our dinner and asked that God would make the rain stop.  By the time we were ready to go back out to the beach, the clouds were breaking and the rain had stopped.  We didn't see much of a sunset, but the clouds created some beautiful pictures.

Cole, Sydney, and Mack had a great time playing in the water and on the rocks.

Nora watched from the shallower tide pools.

Sunday on the Windward Side

Today we went to church on the other side of the island.  Just getting to the other side is a beautiful drive through lush mountains.  The church is a good PCA church, in some ways similar to Westminster, in some ways different.  It's nice to go to a different church, just to remember that we have brothers and sisters in many places and that we all share a common bond in Christ.  After church we went to a small group at the home of a family from church.  They live on a kind of peninsula, so we stopped by the beach on one side of it before we got there.

Their house is right on the beach on the other side of the peninsula.  Prepare to be amazed--the last picture here was taken from their back yard!

 

It was a good day, enjoying church and Christian fellowship in an amazing place.