Month: September 2017

Only one more week and we will be set apart and entering the MTC. It’s amazing how fast time goes and we are now to the point where we must finish all our preparations this week so we can leave and focus completely on the work ahead of us. Tygr is going to be living in our house and we have been juggling furniture and possessions to make room for him and his goods.

Last week we were invited by the bishop to speak in church prior to our leaving. He gave us the subject of Personal Revelation and John and I worked hard to prepare our thoughts and feelings on this subject. I couldn’t help but share a couple of experiences from our last missions where we were truly blessed with the revelation we needed to perform what was required of us at that time.

John and his siblings: Ray, Kelly (his twin) and Marian.

Many friends and family shared this day with us and I would just like to thank those who came, and even those who could not make it, for their love and support. It is a big step to stop what you have going on in your life to serve a mission, and the support of friends and family always gives us courage to go forth and do what is required and asked of us.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures myself but would like to share a few of those I do have!

Well, not much except that the Lord of the Rings movies were made there and besides loving the elves I think those Hobbit houses are as cute as can be! 

Okay, I did look up a few things……first, it can get cold there! No matter what you think, we are not going to a Hawaiian climate! Because New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s seasons are opposite to those in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore,  it’s summer is the North’s winter and vice versa. It is basically cool sub-tropical in the North with winter temperatures getting down in the 40’s; and cool temperate in the far South where there are mountains and snow during the winter! When we leave we will be going into their Spring and figure we are going to miss the next two winters here in Utah! That’s not all bad! We hope to be able to visit all climates while we are there!

I also found out there are no hurricanes there but they do have about 1.8 cyclones a year and those are mainly around March. (Didn’t Dorothy go to Oz in a cyclone??)  Cyclone’s or not, their winters involve LOTS OF RAIN! One sister missionary told me she had to go buy a slicker from a farmer as her designer raincoat was like wearing nothing in the winter rainstorms!

Why is New Zealand called New Zealand? It was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who traveled the unexplored world and when he found these islands he made crude maps of the North and South lands before going home to Holland. This foreign land reminded him of his homeland region, Holland of the Netherlands, called Zeeland. Dutch map makers then called the islands Nova Zeelandia which literally translated means New Zealand! The name stuck! The Maori didn’t have a collective name before the colonists came  but the name Aotearoa was developed and used to refer to the whole country. This name means: Long White Cloud. I like that!

By the way, Captain James Cook sailed around the islands and claimed New Zealand for Great Britain and this was long after Tasman discovered the islands in 1642! Even after Cook claimed them, settlers did not start colonizing until 1840 when a treaty was signed by the Maori Chiefs. By the way, when Abel Tasman sighted the islands in 1642 he assumed they were connected to land off the southern tip of South America.

Well, enough of the history lesson! Of course this was all very interesting to us since we will be living and serving there for the next 18 months!  All I know is that they speak English (along with several Polynesian languages), but that it will take a while to understand what they are saying in their most unique and pronounced New Zealand accent!

As for the church in New Zealand, there are many stakes, wards and a temple in Hamilton. There are also three missions covering the North and South Islands. The Cook Islands are also a part of one of the missions. Again, we are very excited to serve there and are grateful to be missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!  It will be a new experience for us and very different than it was when we served in Romania. However, all people every where have the same hopes, dreams and desires to find joy in their lives, be happy and have their questions answered about who we really are, where we came from (before our earth life), why we are here, and where we are going (after this life)! We look forward to answering these questions and serving where we are needed.

 

 

John and I were sitting in church one Sunday listening to a missionary couple as they talked about leaving on their mission. You have to know that ever since we returned from Romania we have wanted to serve another mission. However, with my eye problems the doctor has never given us the go ahead until earlier this year. That day, when we asked him for probably the 50th time, he finally agreed that we could go as long as it was to a country with good medical care! We thanked him and decided that we would know when the time was right for us.

That Sunday afternoon as we listened to this couple speak, suddenly we were both struck with a powerful feeling that now is the time. We looked at each other at exactly the same moment.

“Did you feel that?” John asked me.

“Yes! It’s time.” I said.  We both knew that no matter what was going on in our lives, it was now time to put our papers in. The spirit was very powerful and both of us were surprised, but recognized that now was the time.

We went to see the bishop the next week and started the process of filling out the paper work, doing our medical check ups and trying to figure out our finances and other things you need to do to actually leave home and family for another year or two!

We got our mission call the second week of July. Our kids were all excited for us to open it. To make it a special occasion we went to dinner at Sundance and while waiting for our food one of the kids insisted that everyone take a guess at where we would be going. They guessed places all over the world. I was the last one and I said, “Pocatello, Idaho.”

“No, you can’t guess that. Now give us a better one.”

“Okay, New Zealand”, I said.

John had handed our daughter, Nikki, the letter to read to us and right after I gave my guess she started reading. When she read that our call was to the New Zealand Auckland mission everyone was stunned. Me most of all!

Was that revelation? Not really but they thought I had been struck with some marvelous insight and we had great fun with that!

Life got pretty hectic after that! Getting ready for a mission is a big job and now we had to work on getting visas and making plans for our home and a million other little details!

Photo: After our dinner with Nikki and her husband Bart; Brandon and his wife Emilie; Curtis and his wife Giovana, and Hannah, our granddaughter. We missed the other kids but this was a special night for all who could be there!