Welcome 2011

There is a sign in downtown Christchurch that I would be proud to wear around my neck…

Winnie was my mother, and yesterday was her birthday.  She was born 89 years ago, and I spent the day thinking about her and the great good she did here on earth.  Her parents were disappointed when she was born.  They had wanted another son to serve a mission in gratitude for the blessings of the gospel.  As I thought about this, I thought about the obscurity and narrowness of our vision at any given point in our lives.  Grandma and Grandpa Amacher could only see a daughter, a girl, who was unlikely to become a missionary.  If they could have seen the whole picture, they could have seen Mom’s great posterity who could and would fulfill those wishes—I’m missionary number 34.

Mom not only became a missionary, but she and my father provided a loving, inspiring, pleasurable, and safe environment where we could grow and learn things of this world and of the world to come.  She was and is the matriarch of our family.  I am grateful for all she did for me in this life, and I have no doubt that she is still helping me and mine.  I just finished a book by Robert L. Millet, ‘Talking With God’.  He wrote of a very sacred and personal experience.  He told of a son who had separated himself from the Church and from the family.  “He became heavily involved with addictive drugs and buried himself in a hellish world that held out little hope for a return to normal living.”  As parents do, the Millets grew more and more concerned when they didn’t hear from him, wondering whether their son was lost, imprisoned, or dead.  One night after many months with no word, their pain and worry became almost too heavy to bear.  “… as Shauna and I knelt in prayer, broken and torn emotionally and physically weak from worry, we wept through our prayers and pleaded long and hard, once again, for the Good Shepherd to lead his wandering sheep home.  We went to bed and slept from sorrow.”

In the night, Brother Millet had a dream.  His father, who had passed away several years before, came to him in his dream and said quite forcefully, “Son, I want you to pull yourself together.  I am going to help you with those children of yours.  Be patient.”

He sat up in bed, woke his wife and they both wept with gratitude.  Days later they received a call from their son.  “I just can’t live like this any more.  Can I come home?”

When he arrived home, he shared with his father, “I know this sounds strange, but one night some time back, I was on the verge of doing something that would definitely have cost me my life when I heard Grandpa Millet’s voice say, ‘Don’t do that! You have been taught better.  Now get up and go home.’

I’m grateful for the influence that my mother had on us when she was here with us, but I am convinced that her influence now can even be greater.  I’m grateful for that, being so many miles away from my children and grandchildren.  I’ll work here, she can watch over and bless there.

This holiday season has kept everyone busy with their families, and some of them have shared their family time with us.  The Bells had us over on New Year’s Day for feasting and fun.  Winnie and David have nine very beautiful, very active grandchildren and their place feels the most like home. 

The twins; Ella and Eva.  They are promised to Jonathan and Jeffrey—it’s all been worked out between the grandparents.

Miriam holds a hedgehog that the kids dug up in the back yard.  Joven (Miriam’s husband) is in the background relaxing, Kobe, Eva, Ella, Rylin, Candace, Miriam, and Emi.

The hedgehog, who is nocturnal, tries to flee… the children in close pursuit.

Some of our young adults have gone to the north island for a YSA conference.  Each stake was required to put on some kind of skit.  They practiced at the institute building a couple of nights this week.

Tui, Stephanie, and Tui—all great girls!

With everyone away, we finished up two weeks of online seminary training.  We are waiting for some “tweaking” in the central office before we can continue.  In working through some of the actual lessons that have been prepared for the students, we are amazed and thrilled with their ability to invite the Spirit.  We can see the value of this program and actually met one of our online students for next year.  He agreed to give it another go—last year he didn’t finish—and we promised to make greater efforts to help him complete the year.  I love the Doctrine and Covenants—it will be a great curriculum.

We were told that we are responsible for the Institute building.  John takes that assignment very seriously.  Although there are people hired to clean, he cleans and organizes and follows people around making sure that they treat the building with respect.  We have both been concerned about the outside of the building.  We think someone is hired to mow the lawn, but they must be enjoying a long vacation.  We have no tools, but John decided that we could weed and make things look better anyway.  It was a hot day, there was nothing but cement to kneel on, and my back gave out after an hour of bending and pulling.  I did the only thing I could do.

John….he just kept going.

Things did look better when we finished.

We also took a day to do the rest of the flat inspections.  I was pleasantly surprised at the efforts of these missionaries.  I love the young missionaries and I’m learning to appreciate what my sons’ lives were as missionaries. 

Elder Kolia, a missionary from Samoa, bore his testimony in church on Sunday.  He told of his own conversion.  He studied to become a Methodist minister and in 2007 had passed his final exams.  He was waiting to finish the process and embarked on a quest to gain a basic understanding of other religions.  Elder Kolia had a question for which he was unable to find the answer.  He invited the missionaries to tell him about the LDS church.  These missionaries asked him to read the Book of Mormon which he started to do.  He was uninspired by the book.  When the missionaries came back, they told him that he should pray before and after he read.  He decided to do as they suggested.  Before reading the next time, he said a prayer, and the results were miraculous.  The very first sentence he read upon completion of his prayer, answered the question he had long wondered about.  The Holy Ghost bore witness that this was his answer,  he knew that the book was true, and that he had found the true church.  “And now I’m not a Methodist minister, but a Mormon missionary”, he said.  It is a great and marvelous thing the way the Holy Ghost and the inspired words of ancient prophets work together to provide powerful, testimony building experiences and to help us find answers to life’s most difficult questions.  Joseph Smith expressed it perfectly when he wrote about his experience with James 1:5: 

“Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine.  It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart.” 

I have felt that myself as I have sought answers and I’m grateful.

We went into Cathedral Square again on New Year’s Day.  We knew that it would be less crowded and we wanted to see more of the heart of Christchurch.  Here’s some of what we saw.

Statue of Queen Victoria at the entrance to Victoria Square.

Statue of Captain Cook also in Victoria Square.

This is a BIG deal—the Rugby World Cup.  The school schedules have all been changed to accommodate participation.

Grand buildings, and those that are not so grand…..

Some earthquake damage, poor Elvis….

and some that you would like to blame on the earthquake but can’t.  This is the main Christmas tree for Christchurch.   I think it is very much like the one in Time Square…

We have only posted beautiful pictures of New Zealand, and lest anyone get the wrong idea….

Lots and lots of graffiti and the remnants of a New Year’s Bash.

One funny story about John.  He has a few major fears; moose (for obvious reasons), Mexicans (all the killings going on in Mexico), Machete’s (Just after we got here, a policeman was attacked by two kids with machetes.  Pictures of his mutilated face came on our Yahoo home page every time we turned on the computer.), and Arab jihadists.  As we walked around the city, we passed three young men speaking Arabic—or so we guessed.  John became agitated.  He looked to his left and saw this van…

and read out loud in his dyslexic way, “Explode more.”  He’s getting rather jumpy in his old age. 

Life is a great gift, full of heartwarming moments.  We’re grateful for everyone of them.

“I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet”

I wonder if Carole King spent any time in an earthquake ridden country before writing that song.  Since we got here in November, we have been hearing stories about the September 4, 2010 earthquake in Christchurch.  Although it was a 7.4 magnitude quake and did structural damage to many buildings in the city, no one was killed and only a couple of people sustained major injuries.  The people here recognize how lucky they were that the quake happened at 4:00 a.m. when people were home in bed.  Everyone has a story about what happened in his or her house that morning. The quake was followed with hundreds of aftershocks, so many that people got quite used to them.  They had slowed down so much that people were beginning to think the earth had settled down and gone back to her restful state. 

On Christmas night, we were at the Bell’s house hearing their stories about the quakes.  Miriam, their oldest daughter was laughing hysterically about her mother, who rounded up an old fireman’s hat and sleeps with it and a flashlight by her bedside.  Winnie showed us her earthquake gear.

I thought it was funny until 2:00 in the morning when we were awakened by a boom and shaking walls and bed.  I remembered Winnie’s hat and wished that I had one of my own.  We have been having some movement about every hour for the past 15 hours.  Some of the quakes are very mild and short lived, but one or two have been longer and accompanied by a loud noise.  It has an unsettling effect on my nerves.  I guess even the Kiwi’s were unnerved because our attendance at church was down by about 2/3.

The rest of our week was filled with work, missionaries, friends, Christmas, and one little site-seeing trip. 

Monday John and I had an afternoon with nothing to do.  We decided to take a P-afternoon and travel to Akaroa.  Akaroa is a beautiful little town on a bay about 45 miles southeast of Christchurch.  We have heard wonderful things about this place and wanted to go and see for ourselves.  Shortly after leaving the city, we drove through a dry, flat country that looked like Wyoming (certainly not the most beautiful countryside we’ve seen here).  This terrain lasted for about 25 minutes and then the land started dropping off on the right side of the road.  We realized that we were climbing and before too long, we were in green mountains that reminded me of Switzerland.

We climbed up a very windy and extremely narrow road, until at the crest we saw this beautiful sight.

Seven kilometers down more twisty roads brought us to the quaint little town of Akaroa.

It was a bright sunny day by the ocean—all the ingredients necessary for a powerful sunburn.  We have been warned many times by the people here about the danger of the sun.  Apparently the ozone is thinner above New Zealand than anywhere else on the planet.  We were told to bring sunblock (which we ignored) or stay out of the sun.  All of the schools here have mandatory hat rules for children out on the playgrounds.  It is so cute to drive by these primary schools and see each child in a bright red or bright yellow, big brimmed sun hat.  We decided to join them. 

We were hot, but we didn’t get a sunburn.

Wednesday, we met Elder and Sister McIntire at the institute building and together we went to learn about inspecting missionary flats.  Sister McIntire is about 5 feet tall and weighs about 80 pounds—very, very tiny.  And yet, she has those missionaries whipped into shape.  I was expecting filth, and I was so surprised to see how clean these flats were.  She has a checklist that she has made available to each companionship.  They know that she will look at everything on that list and they know they’d better have it clean.  I’m not sure how much they looked forward to her visits, but they did what they were asked to do.  I think she had them scared to death.  The McIntires are leaving for home in a week and John and I will become the new flat inspectors for the Christchurch zone and Nelson which is at the top of the south island.  We are glad that we will follow Elder and Sister McIntire—these missionaries are well trained. 

Thursday was a combined zone conference—all the zones on the south island—for Christmas.  President and Sister Joliffe were down and the spirit was very festive.  It was great to meet all of the missionaries serving on this island.  After some great talks from the president and his wife, we were divided up into three groups.  One group was to be a choir and the other two were to write and perform a ‘roadshow’ based loosely on ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Dickens.  John and I were assigned to the choir and it was another one of those jaw-dropping sessions with a truly gifted islander.  Elder Metusela, a Samoan elder from Australia, was asked to direct us.  With tremendous confidence, but no arrogance, he prepared us to sing 4 Christmas Carols.  He made up moving parts, he sang with each section--basses to sopranos, he played the piano (he plays by ear and reads music), and directed with gusto.  I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to the innate ability of these people.  All my years of training and experience cannot bring me up to his speed.  I love, love being around it.

Missionary choir directed by Elder Metusela.

Scrooge (Elder Tzanis) and the Ghost of Christmas yet to come.

Missionaries singing ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ Kiwi style.

Missionaries from the Islands performing the ‘Haka’.  President Joliffe put a stop to this.  It was interesting watching him.  I don’t envy his calling.  It is like walking a tightrope—wanting to be warm and loving, fun, and yet keep the missionaries within the rules.  I think he does a great job.  He has set difficult goals and manages to exceed those.  He gets these young men and women to stretch.

Most of the missionaries at zone conference.  Hearing this group sing ‘Called to Serve’ was heaven.

Thursday night we had an informal institute class.  Many of the students were away on vacation.  Those that came shared their testimony of Jesus Christ.  It was wonderful.  I really do love these young people and enjoy every minute we spend with them. 

Friday, Christmas Eve, we cooked meatballs and spaghetti—the usual Stauffer tradition.  They tasted different this year—everything I make here has a little different flavor—but they were good.  I also made Jean Ernstrom’s hot fudge sauce and it was the hit of the evening.  We had the Bournes over and the missionaries that are serving in our ward—Elders MacTavish (from Hamilton, New Zealand) and Rowe (from Orem, Utah), and Sisters Motuliki (from Tonga) and Wu (from Taiwan).  Sister Wu told me of her conversion and the difficult decision to come on a mission.  She is an only child and her parents are not okay with the fact that they cannot talk to her whenever they want.  They are both angry with her and she gets no mail from home.  She was afraid to call on Christmas, wondering if they would accept her phone call.  And yet, she smiles. 

Christmas day, we went to Bournes for lunch.  What a spread!  Margaret cooked ham, turkey, chicken, and pork, along with five or six different vegetables.  It was delicious and they always treat us like members of the family.  Lovely, lovely people.

Amy’s pumpkin pie she made to make us feel like we were home.  She used her last ‘tin’ of pumpkin that someone had brought from the states.  It was delicious.

Between everything else, we study our online seminary training.  We will be the online seminary teachers for this stake and perhaps the districts on this island. 

Everyone will be on vacation next week, but we have plenty to keep us busy.  We have more flats to inspect, more online training to do, more potential institute students to flush out, more quakes to ride out, etc.  I love it when we’re busy.  

Beauty is…

Beauty is…the faces of people trying to do the good work of Jesus Christ.  This week we traveled to the very bottom of the south island.  With Brother and Sister Bell (David and Winnie), we drove along the coast and then cut inland to Queenstown.  We met with several of the priesthood leaders, seminary teachers, and some of the seminary students that are in the Dunedin District.

In a tiny town called Omakau, we met Brother Kahukura.  Brother Bell calls him “the prophet of Omakau”.  Brother Kahukura is the seminary teacher for his two granddaughters.  Every morning they read from the scriptures and every evening they study seminary lessons.  This marvelous Maori man was baptized as a young boy and is hoping that these two young women will find the same anchor of faith that he has clung to for so many years.  He is a warm, hospitable, and remarkable man.  His two granddaughters are bright, happy and helpful to their grandparents.  We spent an enjoyable evening in their home.  We had dinner and a short awards ceremony where the girls received their certificates of completion for the year.  It was a special treat to hear each of these girls share their testimonies.

Tyler, Brother Kahukura, Maxine, and Nana.

On our trip we also met with Kim Carpenter who is the Branch President in Queenstown and with Jeff Mitchell the District President in Dunedin.  President Mitchell is a happy, enthusiastic man with a great love for the young people in his district.  The YSA and institute programs in Dunedin are thriving because of him.  Our last stop on Saturday morning was at McDonalds in Invercargill.  Here we had breakfast with three of the seminary students and their teacher. 

Invercargill seminary left to right:  Jared Raivaru, Jessey Kerr, Sister DeAnne Wilson, and Sabrina Morgan.

Sister Wilson, the teacher in Invercargill, was a lecturer of linguistics at university.  Now she teaches the gospel very early in the morning.  Being from Utah, where release time seminary is the order of the day, I can’t help but be impressed by these teachers and students who faithfully attend seminary before school, five days a week.  So many wonderful people putting forth so much effort.  It will be a pleasure to work with all of them for the next year and a half.

Beauty is…green.  I have long known that God has two favorite colors; blue and green.  As we drove through the beautiful rolling hills and sheep country of Southern New Zealand, I was able to see why He loves green so much. 

Green is now one of my favorite colors.

Beauty is…sharing laughs with good friends.  As we drove, and drove, and drove, we had great conversations with David and Winnie Bell.  They are quite indescribable, really.  I have convinced them to take a trip to Utah so that they can meet all of our friends and family.  We shared old family stories with each other and laughed until it hurt.  We found out rapidly that the Bells are rather like the Johnsons;  funny stories soon get whittled down to one word zingers that evoke fits of laughter.  “Where’s your Adam?” was everyone’s favorite.

  

John and David Bell in Ophir—that’s Ophir, New Zealand, not Ophir, Utah.

Winnie peeking out the window of a hut in an old Chinese settlement in Arrowtown.  Arrowtown was an old gold mining town and the Chinese gold-seekers had to live outside of town in these tiny huts.  We thought they were made for hobbits.  Winnie is Chinese and the size of a hobbit so she fit right in.  I can’t say the same thing for me.

I look more like Gandolf.

Beauty is… the majesty of God’s creations.  We got into Queenstown after dark which was late because it doesn’t get dark until after 10:00.  We could see the loveliness of the place, but pictures were difficult to take.  The next morning, it was cloudy and overcast.  The tops of the Remarkables (the only mountain range in the world besides the Rockies which runs truly north and south) was obscured by clouds.  We’ll have to get better pictures when we travel there again.

Queenstown taken from our hotel window.

These pictures do not do it justice.  It is truly a spectacular place.

Beauty is…the wonderful creations of man.  Near Oamaru is a quarry where white limestone is extracted.  Many of the buildings of this city are built using this stone.  They are really quite lovely.

Winnie walking by buildings made from white limestone.

One of the older parts of Oamaru has been restored and turned into a center for artists.  John loved this place. 

The bookbinder in Oamaru.

Beauty is…blue.  God’s other favorite color.  The ocean and the rivers are the most beautiful color.  The rivers are glacial run-off and the water is clear and turquoise.

Bungee jumper—bungee jumping was started in New Zealand.  I know everyone who visits will want to try this.

Beauty is… a good set of lungs and a good challenge.  In Dunedin we needed to stretch before the final leg of our journey home.  We went to Baldwin Street—the steepest street in the world.  The information sheet says that the steepest section is 1 in 2.86 giving an angle of 19.3 degrees from horizontal.  Because I am not a mathematician, that means nothing to me.  But I know it is steep because I walked most of the way up.  Coming down was more difficult than going up and I gave up and took the stairs.  Every year they have a race called “the Baldwin Street Gutbuster”.  The contestants pound downhill and the record is 1 min 56.06 seconds. 

Pictures do not do this street justice.  I am climbing on the left side of the road.  I have had a recurring dream for many years—a nightmare—that I was driving a car up a very steep road and the car fell over backwards.  I think I have been dreaming of this hill and there was no way I was going to let John drive up it.

Beauty is…a chance to do missionary work.  We had 45 minutes to kill before our appointment with President Mitchell in Dunedin.  We decided to spend it in the mall.  Our first stop was at a kiosk where they were selling housewares.  My attention was immediately caught by a mattress topper of memory foam (our bed is too hard and I wake up every morning with a terrible back ache).  As I studied the topper, a girl who worked at the kiosk came over to John and asked, “Could you tell me if your ward is having a service on Christmas Day?”  We all heard her say “ward”,  and knew that she must be a member of the Church.  We told her that since Christmas was on Saturday, there would be no service on Christmas.  She wondered if we had any copies of the DVD ‘Joy to the World’.  David said we would send her one.  We visited with her and found out that she was a lifetime member of the church from England.  She followed her boyfriend and his family over to New Zealand, moved in with him, and became inactive.  She did not want the missionaries to come to her house because she was afraid that she would be excommunicated.  We knew that it had required courage to talk to John in the first place, and we could tell that she still wanted to be a member.  Her boyfriend had pulled away from the church and he did not want her to be involved. 

We asked her about a queen-sized topper and found that one would be delivered in an hour.  We told her we would be back to buy it.  At dinner we talked to the District President about her and he said, “We aren’t interested in kicking people out of this church, we are interested in bringing them in.  We’ll get them back and get them married.”  I’ve already said what a wonderful man he is.  He’s just the person to invite her back.  We had her address and we gave it to him. He already has a plan.

When we went back for the topper, we reassured her that she did not need to worry about being “kicked out” of the church.  She told us how much she had been missing it. 

In writing this, some of the magic is lost, but I know that we were in that spot at exactly the right time.  John was a different kind of missionary—old and approachable and far from scary. Brother Bell said that I even had a bad mattress for a reason and I have to agree with him.  I was so glad we had those recognizable badges.  This morning I mailed her the DVD and a letter. 

Beauty is…New Zealand’s Christmas decorations—NOT!  I have been amazed at the difference between the way Americans and New Zealanders decorate for the holidays.  I said to John, “It’s like they gave our son Jeff a few dollars and asked him to decorate the entire south island.”  Decorations are minimal and seem to be thrown together with very little thought.  Martha Stewart has not made it to New Zealand.  I was commenting about this fact to Winnie and she said that David had hundreds of lights, but he didn’t want to climb on the roof or spend time in the trees, so he just threw them around the garden.  His daughter said that his place was a “blazing beacon of bad taste.”  I love that phrase.

Jeff could have done this,

or this.

Yes, that is a glob of icicles just tossed on the tree.

As we walked this morning, it hit me, we decorate beautiful trees because our trees outside are bare, our bushes are leafless, and our gardens cut down to nubs.  Here, the hydrangea bushes are flowering, the trees are fully leafed out, and Christmas trees get lost in the beauty around.  The stark winters in Utah are a beautiful backdrop for trees and lights.  Here, not so much.  And so we’ve gone rather simple this year.  We keep our drapes open and enjoy the bushes and flowers outside, and inside…

Thanks Connie and Dick, Rob and Mary, and Aunt Leah and Uncle Hap.  Without you, there would be nothing. 

Our flat may be bare, but our hearts are fully decked out with a love of our Savior and deep gratitude for His birth, His life, and His atonement.  We feel so blessed to have testimonies of Him and to have felt His love for us and for our family.  Merry Christmas!!!