Farewells and Homecomings

For eighteen months we have anticipated and longed for a homecoming with family and friends.  However, we have discovered that homecomings and all the joy they entail are impossible without many tearful farewells.  Last Saturday we went to Ashburton for the last piano lessons.

Diana, Sala, Me, Mata, and Marina

Esmay, Rita, Trabecca, and Sala.

No protestations could keep these dear people from providing an ample meal.  There is a reason I am returning fatter than I have ever been.

President Pongia did not make leaving an easy thing as he started his speech, “Once upon a time there was a branch in Asburton with no one to play the piano for church meetings….”  After the sweetest of thank yous, he turned the time over to whoever wanted to speak.  Marina said that it had been her dream since she was a very little girl to be able to play the piano.  Our coming made that dream come true.  Parents and students were all so sweet.  

It was such a small thing helping these innately gifted Samoans to play a few hymns, and yet it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my mission.  You must know how proud I am of their efforts and how much I have come to love these beautiful, loving kids.  I wanted to post three of their final pieces.

Monday night was our final family home evening. 

Matt Hill gave the lesson.  Emma Robinson and Luke Katene provided the refreshments.  Emma made a delicious cheese cake, and Luke made individual mini banoffee pies …so impressive.  We played a game and visited for a long time.  It will seem dull when John and I have family home evenings by ourselves.  We have become used to great gospel discussions and lots of laughter and entertainment on Monday nights.

Wednesday night we had a farewell dinner with Sister Chelius, Sister Nation, and Elder and Sister Neider.  We have grown to love these senior missionaries, and consider each one of them a sweet blessing for having served a mission. We are so grateful that our relationships will continue when we’re all back home again.

Last night was our final institute lesson.  If I had planned for 18 months, I couldn’t have landed on a better topic for a farewell lesson.  We talked about Doctrine and Covenants Section 18 (the worth of souls) and Section 19 (Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane).  It was a privilege to bear a final testimony to these kids that I love so much about the Savior, his atonement, and the gift of repentance.  We opened it up for testimonies and the tears were free flowing.  Our YSA have deep and abiding testimonies of Christ and his gospel.  I LOVE THESE PEOPLE!!!!

Last week before class, John asked if there were any announcements.  Trevor, who usually tells of upcoming events, was late.  When John noted that there must be nothing coming up, Jonathan raised his hand and said, “Except the big farewell celebration on the 28th at 6:00.”  So much for the surprise.  Tomorrow night we will attend the YSA farewell party.  I have watched them sneak around for weeks and know they want to send us off with a bang.  Oh how we will miss them.  They feel like family to us.

On homecomings…There have been some particularly happy days in my life.  Three of those were the days my sons returned from their missions.  There was something about seeing those boys after two long years, finding how much they had grown and matured, and having them home safe and sound, that pushed those days into the glorious realm.  I also remember that day in 1986 when my parents returned from their mission to Germany.  They were gone only 12 months and I spent time with them in Europe only three months before they came home, but I was still so excited to have my mom and dad back.  I wanted to sit with them in their home, call them every day if I wanted, and know that they were only an hour’s drive from my house.  My kids were excited to see their grandparents who were a huge part of their lives.  I’m so glad that someone brought a camera to the airport that day (it must have been Paul), because looking at those photos brings back the joy of that moment in time.

I’m sure these strangers were puzzled by the children swarming the gate and blocking their exit.  “There they are!  There they are!”

Andrew was the first one there.

The kids couldn’t get close enough to their grandparents, and I finally know exactly what my mother was feeling as she viewed some of her newest grandchildren for the first time.

Mom’s face in this picture says it all.  It makes me cry just looking at it.

Together at last.  Family as it should be.

Next Tuesday will be a trail of tears.  From the airport in Christchurch to the middle of the Pacific there will be tears of sorrow.  From there to Salt Lake, tears of joy.  I’m preparing for a mammoth headache, red scratchy eyes, and puffy eyelids, but it will be worth every minute of it.  I’m glad I love these people so much it hurts to leave them, and the joy I will feel in seeing my family once again defies description.

Akaroa Once Again

Upon arriving in Christchurch, Janice and I were put up in a motel where we stayed for a few days while looking for a flat. At the motel we switched on the TV to see the local news and came across a local service channel  dedicated to showing tourist sights near Christchurch.  Akaroa, a small village an hour from the city, kept coming up. It became one of the first places on our list to visit, and we did just that as soon as we got settled and had some time. Akaroa in the springtime is beautiful.  When the Neiders suggested we do a final outing, we were excited to see Akaroa in the fall.  Just before arriving in Akaroa, there are some “hills” to climb and once you get to the top you see Akaroa Harbor—literally ‘long harbor’ in Maori—opening dramatically before you, the land dropping steeply to a turquoise sea.  As a guide told us, Akaroa was a place the French had their eye on, and a French immigration company sailed into the harbor to try and claim it, only to find an English flag flying there. The Brits had beaten them there by three months! He told us that the English and French grew tired of fighting over such things.  The English decided to let the French stay and have a part in settling the beautiful area.

The mountains that surround the water were created long ago by the eruption of a huge volcano. Originally there was no water in the crater. Eventually the south east wall of the crater eroded away and the ocean rushed in to create the bay, and what is now, a beautiful, quaint, quirky, French settlement and tourist attraction. It is not unlike some of the tourist destinations in the U.S.A., like Park City, Jackson Hole, Silverado, Colorado, etc. There are fun things to do like “Swimming with the Dolphins”, Harbor Sailing Cruises, Fishing Outings, etc., as well as shops and restaurants. The Neider’s wanted us to go on a sailboat tour of the harbor and see the Dolphins. A great adventure for sure.

We spent some time visiting shops and getting a taste of the local atmosphere. We met some fun people and had a sandwich at a little café on the street.

At a custom jewelry store, we met this Dutchman.  He, like many others, came to Akaroa to visit and ended up staying. He reminded us of Jan DeWolf our Dutch friend from our old Bountiful Ward. He was a real craftsman and made beautiful jewelry. A very friendly man too.

Speaking of jewels, this is mine.

At the café, I heard something overhead, and looked up at the awning shading us, and saw this seagull walking around on the canvas. I took this amusing picture of it’s silhouette.

This is Elder Neider with three members of the crew on the “Fox II”. These girls were from Germany and Holland, and were working for the Captain of the boat, a gentleman from New York City, who with his wife was visiting New Zealand and thought it would be a great place to retire. Little did they know they would decide not to wait for retirement, but find a way to make a living and stay here with their little family.

His wife runs a youth hostel, or what they call here, a “Backpackers” and he is the captain of this sailboat, the Fox II.

This is Roy the captain and owner of the Fox II. His son came along since school was on break this week.

As was mentioned, part of the cruise was to see Dolphins! These are Hector’s Dolphins, some of the smallest cetaceans in the world. We sure saw a lot of them.  It was fascinating to watch them appear, go to the bow of the boat and swim playfully just in front of us. I watched one of them out in the distance jumping repeatedly out of the water as if he were trying to catch a seagull that was flying overhead. He jumped successively, all the way out of the water perhaps 10 or 12 times.  I can sure see why people love these wonderful creatures. We also saw seals, penguins and many varieties of birds on the trip.

This was just barely off the front of the bow, you can see the ship’s anchor hanging off the bowsprit.

In this picture you can see where we were heading, out to open sea through the break in the volcano which let the sea in, forming the the “Long Harbor”. It is truly long, it took forever to exit the harbor and get to open sea.

The “Happy Sailors”.

As the sun started to set on the last leg of the cruise, Roy played the song “Red Sails in the Sunset” sung by Nat King Cole. An appropriate end to a great day!

Just a word about Kenny and Margo.  They have become one of the great blessings of this mission.  We look forward to many more years and eons of friendship. 

Winding Down

We have three weeks left and our emotions vacillate a hundred times a day between excitement and joy about seeing our family and being home, and deep sorrow at leaving the people here that are so kind and good to us.  Our days have been slow and leisurely because university is having a three week holiday right now, but our nights have been filled with parties and farewell dinners.

The Chans had us over for a delicious Chinese dinner. 

Starting at eleven o’clock: Chinese dumplings (something I’ve really learned to love over here), Chinese pancake, rice, green beans and Chinese sausage, and Chinese cucumber salad.  YUM!

Left to right: Wai Ling, Ellen, Daniel, Carol, and Dindi.  Daniel is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese.  Carol is from Taiwan and speaks Mandarin.  They are both converts to the church and when they met and married, they could barely communicate with each other.  Ellen hardly spoke until she was three years old, but when she started talking, she could move back and forth easily between both languages.  The girls are all tri-lingual and Dindi speaks French as well.  They are lovely people and their home is full of love and laughter.  Ellen is coming to Utah for a visit this August.  She has already booked her tickets and her coming eases the pain of our going.  I’m hoping she’ll be the first in a long line of visitors.

Friday night was a birthday party for Brodie and Mele. 

Hayley, Trevor, Brittany, and Brodie.  Everyone had to dress up as something that started with either B or M.  These kids love to do costume events.  John and I have no access to costumes so John was an all BLACK, and I was jus Me.

Mele Tuipulotu and Luke Katene.

Ginger, Violet, Lurita, and Luisa.

Amy in her yummy costume.

Saturday night was a farewell party for Alice who leaves for BYU Hawaii this Saturday.

Hayley, Brodie, Alice, Sina, and Ellen

Trevor, Stephanie, Matt, Wiki, and Emma participate in a rapid charade relay.

Yesterday we went with Alice Cammock to a little Chocolatier’s over by Governor’s Bay for a decadent hot chocolate.  This little girl slipped into our hearts, sat herself down, and will remain there.  We love her and are grateful that she, too, is a traveler.  She and her parents, Pete and Liz, have welcomed us into their homes (they have been rather tossed around by the earthquakes), they have fed us wonderful, healthy food, and they have loved us, prayed for us, and counseled us.  Come to Utah Cammocks.  We will take you any time.

Last night we had dinner with Martin and Margaret Bourne.

We have had many dinners around their big family table.  They were the first to take us in.  They made us feel like we were part of the family.  We will never forget their many kindnesses to us. 

God bless you our lovely Kiwis.  We love you all so much.

The A&P

Janice and I had an opportunity on Saturday to attend the Oxford, New Zealand A&P Show. We had been scheduled to go to Ashburton to teach piano lessons, but they cancelled due to a Primary activity. We heard about the A&P(Agriculture and Pastoral) show which is sort of like the county fairs held in the fall in the U.S. (remember it is just turning fall here), and decided to take a short trip into the country to see what it was all about. We were not disappointed! It was great! A show of Kiwi life extraordinaire. There were thousands of people in attendance, and the farmers, ranchers, sheep men and local craft persons were proud to show everything off. We were directed into a very large paddock (fenced off pasture) to park, then ushered into the fair grounds where vendors sold their wares.

 

As you can see it was held in an absolutely beautiful setting.

One of the first things we saw was stunt riders doing motorcycle jumps from a take-off ramp. They looked like they were having loads of fun and the crowd loved it.

 

Since this is an Agricultural fair, the next display was of tractors and farm machinery of all kinds--brand new equipment and antiques. The New Zealanders love to preserve and restore old stuff and they are good at it. We always see old restored cars when we travel. The Kiwis are quite nostalgic.

 

Next we saw this chopping competition which to me looked down right dangerous. These men were showing off their ax skills and trying to keep their toes in the process. I was surprised to note that most of them were older blokes. They did not look like lumberjacks, in fact they looked out of shape, but they barely worked up a sweat.

The next competition we came across was the Work Horses. They were showing their skills by guiding their horses through an obstacle course of sorts while standing upright on a sled.

We are in New Zealand, so obviously they are going to have their number 1 commodity judged--sheep! Here are the sheep pens and some of New Zealand’s finest.

This was the Grand Champion Marino Ram! “Bahh, Ram Ewe!”

Next up were the Sheep Shearing competitions. Most of you won’t remember the movie starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, called the “Sundowners”.  It was a great movie about Depression-era Australia and a man and his family that traveled around the country trying to earn a living as a sheep shearer. It depicted quite clearly that shearing sheep is hard, hard work. We sat behind some of the competitors of the shearing competition and they gave us some insights as to what is involved with shearing, complete with showing us how the clippers worked. They were such nice guys. They told us their name was Morgan, which is a Welch name.

 

The younger guy, Jared, said that he could shear about 150 sheep per day, the older guy said his best was around 395 sheep per day but said some guys could do close to 700 sheep per day! Oh, my aching back!

In this picture, some of the winners are receiving their ribbons and award money. Competitors came from all over New Zealand. Mr. Morgan said that competitions had allowed him to compete all over the world, including the U.S. and Great Britain.

Here are some other competitors and some of the equipment they use. This shearer was competing in the blade competition. They used hand powered clippers, it was the old fashioned way of shearing. Some of these poor sheep got thrown around and nicked up a bit by the clippers, and we felt sorry for them, but we never heard them complain.  Because using blades is so much slower we wondered why they would ever use this method.  The Morgans told us it was used in colder weather because it left the sheep covered with a short layer of wool for warmth.

Here is some of the wool taken from the sheep during the competition.

This picture shows Janice holding some of the power shears that were used by the Morgans.

I had to shoot this guy’s picture.  He is 100% Kiwi.

A fun and colorful part of the festivities. By the way, here they would spell colorful with a “u”, colourful.

I am not sure what this bloke was looking at.

One thing I regret is not trying one of their battered hot dogs on a stick. They are kind of like an American Corn Dog, but the batter is not made out of corn meal, it is just a batter, like donut batter.  I am sure the Hot Dog was not the same either, but it looked good.

We missed the dog trials where these working dogs strut their stuff and herd the sheep into pens (like in the movie “Babe”) but we had a great day at the A&P Show. We wish we could take you all to see it.

One last picture I would like to share is a photo of a sunflower that Abby, one of our YSA, gave us in a pot when it was a seedling. It is now grown and blossoming. Thank you Abby.