A LITTLE THIS AND A LITTLE THAT...

I recently spent an afternoon down in our cute little yard and just had to get some pictures. Even on the warmest days it's so pleasant under the shade tree. We actually have a lawn, and the garden edging it is full of camillia bushes. It's really a very pretty little place, just down at the bottom of the steps up to our apartment. The tree reaches clear up to our dormer window.

This was a very beautiful sunrise we caught early one morning out of our dining room window...

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..and a beautiful sunset from the opposite window another night.

Okay, a little bit from around Takapuna. This is our little Korean vegetable stand across from the office. We're only there about three days a week getting fresh stuff.



This pretty little park is about a block from the office, right downtown.




After a week's hiatus, we just had to be out exploring again. This time it was a pretty peninsula called Shakespear Park, and we spent about four hours wandering around it, but not until after Dad participated in the rescue of some guy's car. He had backed his boat trailer into the water to float his boat onto it, only to find his car sunk into the wet sand clear up to the axle.

Dad's favorite thing is these rocky beaches, but this one was especially interesting because he found a couple caves! Look at the way the cliffs had been twisted at some point in time.

The hills and sheep have to be my favorite part of the walks we take.

We even found this guy wandering around near the sheep!

Even after a couple months, my ears are still so sensitive to the different English here. These are more little ditties I’ve heard:

Flash: maybe snazzy would be a good substitute, “He has a flash car!” or "Those big flash houses above the beach."
Prezzy card: gift card
Sunnies: sun glasses
Yum: the same as yummy, only shorter: “Lollies are yum!”
Kindy: kindergarten
Uni: university. They go “to Uni”, not to "the university." They also go “to hospital”, not to "the hospital."
Diary: calendar. “Mark this date in your diaries.”
Ut: an SUV (I guess utility?)
Crims: criminals
Hire: as in, to rent: You can hire a car at the airport, or hire a video to watch.
Says: not “sez”, but say-s

Panel beater: how about body shop repair?

Figgas: figures, as in numbers

Shed-ule: schedule

Flatted: having to do with where you live - "They were flatted across the street from the store."

Telephonist: a sign in an a hospiital elevator said if you pushed the red button it would ring the hospital telephonist.

Ring, of course is call. You always ring someone, not call them.

Chihs: Cheers - like, goodbye.

I saw a poster of three teenish looking girls, all wearing the same polo with a logo on it, one holding a tray of cookies, one a rolling pin, and the other a mixing bowl. The sign said, “Guide Biscuits, fresh from the oven all during March.” Hmm, Guide Biscuits. Somehow that just doesn't tickle the tastebuds like Girl Scout Cookies!

A family in our ward is moving to a different house this weekend and they were setting up men to help with the move. The bishop asked if they were ready for the Saturday morning shift. I thought maybe there were a couple teams assigned to help them at different times. Not so. A move is a shift. They were shifting, not moving. Kind of like the people who ask where you stay, not where you live. Sounds a little transient.

We were at an activity where they passed around a bowl of candy. There were Cadbury eggs, and I thought, “Yum!” Not what you’re thinking - they weren’t Cadbury Creme eggs. They were chocolate covered marshmallow eggs, the eternal New Zealand marshmallow. Quite a disappointment!

One of our Village retired ladies has a passion fruit vine growing on her fence. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before. She brought us a bag the other day and said to wait until they started looking wrinkly. They’re dark purple and about the size of an egg. When you try to cut into them, the skin is like leather covering Styrofoam. But when you get inside, it’s full of tiny little black seeds in a real slimy jelly-kind-of stuff, and it’s all pulled away from the sides, which do look like Styrofoam. You just scoop out the jelly and seeds and eat it all. So good! And very tropical tasting.

We're due for a pretty big storm this weekend, so aside from helping with the "shift" I think our weekend will be at home reading and baking bread. Sounds good to me! Our week has been pretty much of a hassle, so reading and baking bread is about all the adventure I'm willing to take on for this time.

All Work and No Play . . .

All work and no play probably makes for a pretty dull Blog. Not only don’t we have very many pictures, we didn’t even go anywhere new this week. (What a bummer). Actually, we both agreed that we needed to spend some time cleaning our apartment, doing laundry, and stocking up on groceries – things were in pretty bad shape after weeks of play, play, play... at least that is what it probably sounds like for our recent reports. It really hasn’t been all work and it really hasn’t been all play. We work hard, then we play hard, then we go to church and get ready to start a new week. Whew!

We don’t have any pictures of our own, unless Diane took one of me scrubbing the kitchen floor, while I wasn’t looking. But I have captured some pictures from some recent activities we’ve had at work.


Numero uno, were the wild fires in Victoria, Australia. There were 400 separate fires burning at one point. Several hamlets of 400 -500 people each were completely destroyed. About 1800 homes were burned to the ground, leaving more than 5000 people homeless. Many other homes and a lot of property were damaged. Diane included a couple of photos in her last update. We worked pretty non-stop for several days, trying to determine what relief could be provided.

The Australian government established a special fund and asked the Red Cross to manage it. The Red Cross agreed to do so, without levying any administrative fees (normally their administrative costs are pretty significant). A committee of well respected community leaders was formed to establish the criteria upon which the donated funds would be dispersed. All of this red-tape and administrative gobble-d-gook paved the way for our feeling comfortable with making a recommendation for a significant cash donation to the Victoria Bushfire fund. The church accepted our recommendation and approved a donation of $250,000. The funds for this donation came directly from the surplus Australia Fast Offerings. The local priesthood leaders are now mobilizing to help with the clean-up efforts. Our involvement in this new effort is yet to be determined.

Ingham, Queeensland, Australia – February 2009

While the bushfires in Victoria were running out of control, several hundred miles to the northeast Queensland was being inundated with rains that spun off of a seasonal tropical cyclone. The cyclone season here runs from November through the end of March. One of my daily activities is to check the weather reports for all of the South Pacific Islands. So I check everything from Western Australia on the west to French Polynesia on the east, and from the Marshall Islands on the north to southern New Zealand on the south. That is a huge area, big enough that something is happening somewhere almost every day. Back to Queensland; the town of Ingham was isolated from the neighboring cities when the local river overflowed its banks 38 feet (almost 13 meters) above normal. I stayed in almost constant contact with the District President assessing conditions and opportunities to provide relief. There too, we will mobilize the “Mormon Helping Hands” to assist with the clean-up efforts.

Rebuilding a road in Guadalcanal

I believe it was the same cyclone that fed the Queensland floods that also spawned the floods in Guadalcanal, the main Island of the Solomon Islands. As mountainous as this region is water doesn’t build up, like it did in Australia, but almost all roads and bridges washed out. This made it impossible to provide relief supplies over land. The Red Cross made arrangements for several ships to take supplies in from Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea to Guadalcanal. You’ll have to be a WWII expert to know about Guadalcanal.

Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia

When we aren’t responding to floods, fires, or cyclones we pick up on our Humanitarian Initiatives. Some that we are currently working with include distributing wheel chairs in Papua New Guinea and a very complicated literacy program for the Aboriginals in Alice Springs Australia. I won’t bore with the details of these, but I remarked to someone today about the wheel chair project: “That project has been snake-bit from the beginning.” “Snake-bit” isn’t a term they use here, so she just laughed and laughed. But she understood what I meant. Nevertheless, I am still amazed at how difficult it can be sometimes to just do good.

Lastly, to disclose a little personal info – which I don’t indulge in very often – but I believe I achieved my personal best this week by running 4 miles in less than 40 minutes. Actually, I'm sure it is my "personal best" since I don't believe I've ever run 4 miles before. Cycling and walking -- yes, but not running. It wasn’t a race, just a normal workout – I probably would have done a little better if I hadn't brought my hand weights along. My course (around Lake Pupuke) must be a popular one. I counted 105 others on Tuesday, and 115 on Wednesday. They were split about 50/50 between cyclists and runner/walkers.

What A Week!

What a week! You've all heard or seen news of the bush fires in Australia. What a huge disaster that is! The pictures above are from our papers here, but I'm sure they've been all over the world. The temperatures in Australia have been extreme to begin with, and then the fires have been burning for days. The authorities suspect arson, and for that reason, are considering most of the area a crime scene. So there’s no way to get aid in at this point. Rather than send in people, the church is sending money. Later on when recovery efforts begin, there will be a major ongoing work parties, similar to the Katrina/Rita stuff we dealt with in Houston. But the kind and length of help needed isn’t even known yet. There are hundreds and hundreds of families who have lost everything, including family members. We have either sent or received literally hundreds of emails and dozens of phone calls between Australia, New Zealand and Salt Lake, just trying to keep everyone in the loop.

And then just the opposite problems exist along the upper east coast of Australia where they’ve had major flooding for the past couple weeks, with whole towns under water there. Apparently, neither fires nor floods are uncommon to Australia, but to have them one on top of another keeps us on our toes. First we had flooding in Fiji, then the Solomon Islands started flooding, then Australia, and then the fires hit. Whew! How is everyone at home set up for emergency supplies and storage??? It pays to prepare for whatever the problems in your region may present!

To complicate things, our supervisor, Steve, wasn’t feeling well on Tuesday morning and decided to go have things checked out. He was admitted and they're running tests to find out what further action needs to be taken. So Dad has had to step in and work his role for the time being. Lucky that he’s had a lot of disaster experience before.

We received an email from Bennie Lilly, who has been the person in Salt Lake over emergencies in the Gulf Coast Region for the past several disasters, and who was bishop of Lewisville I the same time Dad was bishop of Lewisville II. They have asked him to go to the Dominican Republic for the next three years to be the Area Welfare Manager there. That includes such places as Haiti, Cuba, etc., the places that get hit so hard with hurricanes and tropical storms. So he will be living right in the middle of that, rather than “visiting” it for a couple days, as he did in Houston. They’re excited to go and anxious for the experience. He said when we were done here, we could go to the Dominican Republic and be his Area Welfare Specialists! Umm, we'll see...maybe.

Okay, so things have broken loose, work-wise here. But before that, we had another three-day weekend. February 6 is Waitangi Day, the day the Maoris and Europeans signed a treaty agreeing to agree. We had already determined that we weren’t going to all the busy holiday spots, so decided to go south, where we haven’t visited much. Now, believe it or not, us old fuddy-duddies decided to invest in a GPS. Really! There is way too much to see here, and our time too short to waste it being lost. Armed with that, we headed south to see something a little different than the beaches and bush we’ve been doing around here. What beautiful country that is! Once you leave Auckland, no more highways, just two lane roads. The little rounded hills are beautiful.

We can’t wait to see them in the springtime. They’re a little brown now, but still beautiful. One of the cool things they do here is plant hedgerows in their fields. Sometimes to separate their pastures, or to separate property lines, or to keep the cattle out of the fields, or just as a wind or erosion break. They’re so pretty! If you look real hard or enlarge the picture you can see them.

The countryside was so beautiful, and we went through area of corn fields and lots of dairy cows. Very rural and very pretty! We wound up in the little town of Matamata, which probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but just outside of town on a sheep farm is where some of the movie "Lord of the Rings" was shot. We took the tour and loved it! There is almost none of the set left, but learning the story behind the year of absolute secrecy there while the set was being built and the movie shot was great. There are several “story boards” placed around that have pictures of how it looked when the movie was being filmed. The whole location is very secluded and very pretty. It was chosen based on this humongous tree beside the pond. For those of you who are Lord of the Ring fans, maybe you will remember some of these places.

The Party Tree

The pond beside the Party Tree

A little of both

This is the picture board of what the area looked like with the set built...

... this is the same place now.

The little valley where it's located

This is the story board picture of the Party Tree and the Party Field, the actual set during the filming of the movie...

...and this is what it looks like now.

Put Hobbit Dad in the picture.

Nestled in the little round hills around the Party Field are the Hobbit holes. Originally there were about thirty eight I think, but after the filming was complete they started to dismantle the set and some were torn down. But someone saw a profit it leaving the rest and giving tours of the location, so the ones left are really all that you can see of the original set. They don't have the pretty little gardens or fences or chimneys like they did in the movie, but you can still imagine what they were like. Notice the sheep now grazing all over the hills.

None of the filming of the inside of the Hobbit holes was actually done there. They were just facades, and the inside shots were done in a studio. However, one was built big enough for people to actually stand in it because some filming of the Party Field was done from the hole. Dad took this shot from inside that hole across to the Party Tree and Party Field. It was a really fun tour.

(just so you know we were really there)

Before taking us back to town, they took us to a real sheep shed and showed us how they shear sheep.

They said the world record for shearing is 800 plus sheep in 9 hours. Whew! After that they brought out four little lambs and gave some of us bottles to feed them.

I was so tickled at this little guy who squirmed and guzzled and wagged and flipped around his tail till I thought he was either going to shake himself apart or beat himself to death. What a fun couple hours that was!

Then we drove on to Hamilton, taking dozens more pictures along the way. It was all just so beautiful! We went to the Hamilton Botanical Gardens and enjoyed that. Here are some of the things we saw there:

A cool, refreshing sight on a hot summer day

There were several ethnic gardens. This India one was so brilliant with color!

How do you like the size of those pumpkins? Dozens of them this size in good old fashioned raised garden beds. There were actually a couple dozen raised beds with great looking stuff!

We went back to the Indian restraunt we ate at a couple weeks ago in Hamilton and loved it again. Then on the way home that evening we stopped in a little town called Pokeno where they have great ice cream at a little tiny roadside place. A triple scoop for $2.80, which is only about $1.50 US. Not bad. It’s rapidly becoming our favourite stop on the way home :o). We got home exhausted after a wonderful day of touring.

The next morning we were up and at it again. This time we drove to Hamilton to the temple and spent a couple hours there. The grounds are so beautiful.

From there we proceeded south and took in more beautiful countryside. In spite of my researching, somehow it escaped me that the north island has mountains! Hills, yeah, but not mountains! Wrong. We stopped at a famous cave and went through the museum, but opted not to do one of their tours. These caves have “glowworms”. In the museum we learned that the “worms” are nothing more than snotty strings that are spun by a cave-dwelling larva to attract their prey. The strings they spin really do glow in the caves as they hang down. It looked like it would be very pretty, but not at their price. So we’ll just say we were there. We left from there, headed for the west coast, which we haven’t explored before. But the adventure was the trip.

Oh my gosh, it was a windy, narrow, steep mountain road – for about three hours. We twisted and turned so much I spun for the next three days! We finally got to the bay, only to discover it was about 6 pm and the only way we were going to get home that night was go back over the mountain to the main north-south highway. Along the way we saw so many great vistas, valleys below us,

a beautiful waterfall, a natural bridge with a stream under it (used to be a cave with a stream, but the roof caved in, leaving just the natural bridge), and a small cave.

We picked blackberries, and had a wonderful time. But by the time we started back over the mountain, we were exhausted, and although it was another road, parallel to the one we had taken to get there, it was equally windy and tedious. Another wonderful day in the beautiful outdoors. The only disappointment was that when we reached Pokeno, the ice cream place was closed up. We had our mouths set for fish and chips and a big tall ice cream cone. Next time!