This link takes you to our Hawai'i home!

Walt Flood Realty, specializing in vacation rentals, condominium sales and property management in Honolulu and Waikiki, Hawaii.

This is the amazing view from our 14th floor Oahu studio condo.

We are thrilled and thankful to be gifted the month of June in a beautiful Hawai'i condo, right on the strip in Waikiki. Ken and I leave Monday and are packed and ready to go already! Another couple gifted us the plane fare, and yet another, spending money.

This 20th wedding anniversary will be one to remember!

Mahalo to our friends who made this possible, Shawna for house and cat-sitting, and all our co-labourers who will hold down the mission fort for us.

Enjoy the pictures - another link will get you to the outside of the building, for a shot of the pool and street area. We live in Foster Tower, which is the oldest condo in Hawai'i, and right above the fun, Cheeseburger in Paradise!

If you check out the Cheeseburger Earthcam attached to our building, you might just catch a glimpse of us giddily running back and forth across the street to the beach all day long!

I'm not sure I'll blog while we're away, but subscribe to my RSS feed to be sure you don't miss any of our adventures!

Aloha!

Mile High City Interview

I’m on an airplane to Denver right now, to attend the annual convention of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions (AGRM). I’ve been up since 3:30 so forgive me if this lacks cohesiveness, or substance for that matter! I think I’ll do a self-interview, as a way to bring you all up to speed:

Me: What am I doing in Denver?
Also Me: I’m a board member of AGRM so I’ll be doing board meetings to prepare for the AGM. I’ll be teaching a seminar on “The Joy of Interns” as well as sitting on a panel discussion on affordable housing. It's a busy week.

Me: Are you travelling with your husband, and Director of Spiritual Life, Rev Ken Porter?
Also Me: No, he doesn’t travel well, dislikes conventions, and since 5 of our key church members are meeting me in Denver, someone had to stay back and man the fort.

Me: How IS the Good New Chapel doing?
Also Me: We are faced with the challenges of having a large congregation of addicts, mixed with “normies.” (non-addicts) In two years the church has grown to about 100, sometimes more. In that time, Pastor Ken has been able to take the Wednesday small group through a line by line study of the entire New Testament. We’ve seen baptisms and been blessed to get to know one another more intimately at our weekly potluck lunch. I love everything the Good News Chapel stands for.

Me: What are your plans for summer vacation?
Also Me: Well, we’ve been gifted a trip to Waikiki in Hawai’i for the month of June. We went last year, and thought it was a one time blessing. This was an amazing, last minute surprise. I love the “hub” of the strip, the parades, the nightly concerts, the fish, the cooling rooftop pool, the crashing waves of the ocean, and the “leave all your cares behind” feeling of stepping off that airplane into the tropics.

Me: You just had a big event, didn’t you?
Also Me: Yes, our 6th annual Love Your Neighbour Fund Raising Banquet and LifeChange Graduation Ceremony. 125 businesses, churches and individuals came together to sponsor the event. We grossed $100,000 through the generosity of the sponsors as well as the 660 people who attended!

Me: Who was your keynote speaker?
Also Me: We had Mike Yankoski, author of Under the Overpass, who gave a riveting address, encouraging each one of us to reach out to the poor and homeless by getting involved and giving to Souls Harbour Rescue Mission. He then presented a one year diploma to the LifeChange graduating class of 2009. It was a moving moment, seeing these 5 men and women on the stage, formerly homeless and addicted, now actively involved in their local church and community. What a complete transformation! I'll be sharing their stories on my blog later this summer.

Me: Anything special you`re looking forward to?
Also Me: Two things, actually. 1) My 20th wedding anniversary is this year. I’m pretty excited to have such an amazing trip to Hawai’i to celebrate. TWENTIETH! My parents have each had three marriages each, so how wonderful to break that painful cycle of divorce. God has been gracious. 2) 2010 is the Missions 20th anniversary, so we want to make it a Birthday Bash of a year. Stay tuned for upcoming events!

Michelle Porter is a Founding Director and CEO of Souls Harbour RESCUE Mission. She lives in Regina, Sask with her husband and aged cataract-eyed cat, Shadow.