25 January 2020

The Cream Bun Bakery people are back from Holiday and the Bakery is open for business doing what it does best!!! 

We may or may not have had cream buns 5 times this week. Life can not get much better than this.

We have had a very quiet, catch up week. NO accidents, NO phones lost in the ocean because the tide came in and took them out to sea while the district was hiking, NO lost gas cards or living expense cards, NO floods in apartments, NO hospital visits. Supplies arrived on time. The only thing that I did that may cause some real problems down the road was type a baptismal record wrong and when I went to go back to correct my error, I pushed SUBMIT instead of CORRECT and sent it to Salt Lake. The guy's name was Bycroft. I typed his name as BYUcroft. I don't know what I was thinking and why I did that! Poor guy if he ever needs to find his records...(Scarey to think that I'm all they've got at the front desk.) There are ways to make this right and I will. 

As we were driving 100 kph down a country road the other day, a question came to my mind.Who does God hire to trim his trees to perfection in New Zealand? Every tree is perfectly shaped and trimmed. Look at that bottom! You can't tell me someone goes out in the bush and trims EVERY LAST TREE to look like this!

 BUSINESS OF THE WEEK AWARD GOES TO:

The Barber Chop!
Would you get your hair cut here? Me neither.  I think I'm pretty open minded when it comes to things of this nature. When we lived in Las Vegas, our family dentist was DR. MEAN. (He was the only one that had an immediate opening.) My OB's name was DR. MAYBE...But, the Barber Chop? And the flowers in the middle of the road have grown so high you can barely see the other side of the road. 

This rubbish bin was FULL of birds. It was in front of the Pizza Hut and there was lots of food in it. Plus it had a lovely shaded umbrella for them.  There are so many birds in New Zealand. Every building, restuarnant, store, church, has birds flying in and out of it because doors are always left open during business hours. I think it is a cultural thing. When the door is open, you are welcome to come in. Different than our upbringing, but a lovely concept because you don't have to question if you are bothering someone when you go visit. (I do see a potiential problem with this when it's -50 below.) Because there are so many trees, there are heaps of exceedingly HAPPY birds. Whoever made up the phrase, "Up with the Birds" must have lived in New Zealand. These lovely creatures start singing a little after 5 EVERY morning.
I don't know what they have to sing about at that hour but it goes on quite loudly and steadily for several minutes. It becomes deafening! Then some cranky bird with a nasty honk, barks a blood curdling squak at them and it goes dead quiet. His squak is so loud it startles Dwight and I. Then one by one they start singing again. So who is Squaksquatch? Is he the bird police? The bird choir teacher? The bird principal? The bird seminary teacher? The only fact I have here is that every little bird listens and shuts their tiny, noisy beaks when he squaks...



I just wish our birds would eat our ants. But then I'd be complaining that the birds were in our house wouldn't I. (if anyone is coming over, I need a few ant traps...)

We are enjoying the summer fruit here. The flavor is so real. I have said this before, many times you bite into a piece of fruit in the States and want to spit it out because it is not worth the calorie because there is no flavor. This fruit takes me back 50 years ago to when I was on the farm before Genetically modified Food made its way to our supermarkets.  I wish I could bring some to each of you to taste. Oh, and those little round things in the middle? Lychens? Linches?I can't remember what they are called. Where have they been all my life? They have a brownish red bumpy outside you peal off and eat the fleshy whiteish thing in the middle. But don't swallow the seed in the middle. 

One thing we DON'T eat here is watermelon. For $46.68, I may never find out what a watermelon tastes like in New Zealand. 

So this is at the top of Mount Ngarawhahia. I won't even try to pronounce this one for you. (I do know nga is a throaty Nawgh. ra is daw. wha is fa. hi is hee. a is uh.) I DID NOT take this picture, or will I ever. One of the "FIT", Senior Missionaries who loves to hike

walked up the 1349 steps to get to this point. This picture is as close to these steps as I intend to get. (I'm out of breath just looking at the 20 steps I have to walk up to the office each day.) 

Sister Thacker=Overachiever

And that's why I avoid sweating. I want to keep my fat happy.

I would love to know the story behind this police emergency. Looks like it has been an emergency for quite sometime.

I found this at the store today. Can't read a word of it other than concentrated liquid.  

Today is our P-day. P-day stands for preparation day. All missionaries get a P-day. It's our day to prepare for the rest of the week. Elder Clayton had a good day today. He puttered around the house fixing little things, and painted his newest rubbish find. Went to the hardware store a couple of times, (always such fun)... He found this old BBQ grill and decided to clean it up and paint it. It looks pretty nifty. And the steak was delish tonight. 

Rugby is big here. Tonight is a Seven's game. (I bet you said SEVEN. It's the SEE-ven's game if you are from around here) So many people were on their way to the game dressed up like it was Halloween.  

It was quite an interesting grocery shopping experience today.  

The Flinstones won my heart and posed for us. 

Here is a little over half of our missionaries. This was our Zone Conference. When a visiting authority comes, we always try to make things nice. It's also good to at least appear like we are a bit organized and in control. But alas, Life has a way of humbling us. 

Everything was set up and ready to receive Elder Yamashita. The sound system, the TV, the projector. The tables and chairs in the cultural hall for the luncheon. Some dignatary didn't plan his death very well and his funeral was the same day as our conference. We were asked at 9:00 the night before if we could move to another building for our conference because so many people would be attending the funeral. President called Dwight and told us we needed to be set up in the other building by 8 am the next day. The building we were going to didn't have enough tables and chairs. We had to transport them from other buildings. We had to reset up all the technology. Several of the missionaries didn't get the memo we had changed buildings and attended the funeral for a short season. People kept walking in our meeting for the funeral and we had to keep getting up and telling them it was in the Stake Center. Talk about mass confusion. 

But it all worked out. Everything always does. 

The next day went smoother. And we even had a place to take a decent picture.

You may have noticed a purple circle around a sister in our mission in the picture before this one. There is a reason for that. Elder Clayton and I were watching a video the other day called "Compelling Witness". As we watched it, we both said at the same time, "That's Sister Low!" So if you have a minute, watch the following video and spot our movie star missionary--Sister Low!  

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/youth/video/compelling-witness?lang=eng

Besides finding Sister Low, The video is definately worth your time. It may even answer some of your questions regarding the Book of Mormon. First and foremost, the Book of Mormon does not replace the Bible. The Book of Mormon goes hand in hand with the Bible. A prophet of old, Mormon, stated in his final words that the Book of Mormon was written for the intent that we may believe the Bible more fully.

We were invited to tea at our Branch Presidents house. This was the view from his balcony. I wish my camera could catch the real beauty. The color isn't right and you can't see all the fern trees. The Branch President is 62. He still surfs, and dives. He had gone diving the day before and brought home

FRESH LOBSTER! Oh. My. Gosh. I have never had REALLY fresh Lobster before. He sent this one home with us for dinner tomorrow. We also discovered that He and Elder Clayton served in the same mission 4 years apart. They had a grand time talking about the Great Australia West Mission.  

Last but not least, I want to talk about being perfectly imperfect. Each one of us have our own set of flaws. Sometimes in life, bad things happen to us. Sometimes we just don't do life the right way and we feel like failures. I learned this today:

our Teacher wrote the word 

F

A

I

L

on the board. Do you know what FAIL means? Then she put the following words beside each letter.

    F.  First

           A. Attempt 

I. In

            L. Learning

Failing at something isn't a bad thing. Maybe that "F" is FIFTH (attempt in learning) As long as we  pick ourselves up and keep on trying to do better tomorrow, we are on the right path. Life can be hard, but what comfort it gives me to know that it was not part of the plan to do this alone.

One of our Elders pronounced our name in Tongan. Clayton would be 

Kelaitoni

kay-lei-TOE-knee

So, without further Adieu

Much love,

Elder and Sister Kelaitoni

Kia Kaha!