Good and Bad News

Again this year, I had both good news and bad news.

One of the good news was Koloa Jodo Mission welcomed 8 new members not only from Kauai but also from Oahu, Boston and New York.

I'm very grateful to all new members for their kindness to support our temple.   However, I'm not satisfied with this increased numbers.  My satisfaction can be attained if I hear your voice of satisfaction with our temple or your good comments toward my services.  Yes, your happiness can be my happiness.  I should be humble to make more efforts to provide good services to the community as well as serving our members better.

One of the outstanding services I started this year was a Live Streaming Buddhist Service through my youtube channel.  The best thing about this Live streaming was that Youtube was able to broadcast and record the service simultaneously.  This means even if you miss the service, you can watch it as a video anytime and many times from many places in the world.   The LIVE service dramatically changed my targets from getting "more local attendants at the service" to do "more and better Dharma Talk."  

The bad thing about this LIVE was quality of the sound and image were not so good.  Also I was sorry for the appearance of the minister was no good.  I am hoping quality of the sound can be improved with a new microphone, but again I'm sorry the looks and quality of the minister remain same.  

However, there were indeed good results as I uploaded more live streaming services.   Very slowly but steadily, I get more subscribers and temple members.   And now I have little doubt that Koloa Jodo Mission can increase some more membership in the future.

However no matter how many new members Koloa Jodo could get, I still have to worry about running temple as our dedicated old timers are dying or getting older.  Lately it was shocking that Mrs. Haruko Otsubo passed away so suddenly and now Mrs. Doris Shimaoka is in the hospital.  They were core members who did so much to our temple and their dedication to the temple cannot be hardly replaced.

Another bad news is that our temple buildings are also getting old and our president Alvin Akimoto is always busy for fixing this and that at our temple. But the worst news was the company which reroofed our temple buildings was gone without fixing the leak at our new temple building.   The leak actually started within a year after they reroofed in 2013.  Then, the old temple building which was reroofed in 2009 started to get rain leak this year.  Both temples looked very nice with renovations and paintings.  However, it is truly lamentable that the local company abondaoned the responsibility and we have to find a new roofer and pay for the same roof again.

Since this is my happy life blog, I intended to avoid writing about this bad news.  However, in order for the future happiness, it is high time now to face the problems.  Your help and suggestion can be greatly appreciated.  At the same time, I want to encourage you to be a member of Koloa Jodo Mission.   Our membership fee is $50 per year and we do have online service.  So you are not necessary to live on Kauai!