TREES IN THE SUNSET OF OUR LIVES

The tree planting at the camp is in full swing now.  A week ago Saturday we planted over 1000 trees which were in 5 gal. containers using over 130 volunteers.  Yesterday we had some smaller trees and again with a volunteer crew of over 100  we planted another 1500 trees.  These are all native species and are very hardy.  Normally at this time of year there would be lots of  rain but locals report we are in on of the worst droughts they've seen.  You can see that puts us in a bind and requires us to transport water to each of the trees we have planted and water the other 2500 sitting at the camp to say nothing of the 7000 trees scheduled to be delivered to the site next week.  They are in much smaller containers and can be watered with a rainbirds.  That wouldn't be so bad except that the old well used at the camp is over taxed and can run only half the time producing only small amounts of water.  The new well on the site does not have a pump in it yet and will require the electrical connections to that area first.  In the meantime we will continue to haul water from the neighboring farms.  We came on our mission with suits, white shirts, ties, dresses to last the 18 months, but with only one pair of jeans and a few "T" shirts.  Now we wear our dress clothes on Sunday and grubbies the rest of the week.  There are several second hand clothing stores around which helped us to stay in budget.

We are grateful to the missionaries in our zone who helped unload the semi-trucks of trees, manned the augers boring holes, planting and watering trees.

The Area 70, Elder Thomsen, called a meeting two weeks ago with the local stake presidents, the project manager, Adam O Gram from the area office in Auckland, and ourselves.  They confirmed that we would be moving to the house at the camp as soon as possible to allay security concerns. They also directed our use of the Toyota pickup truck left over from the Church College for us to use the remainder of the year, this meant that we would turn in the Ford station wagon we have enjoyed using the past 6 months. I had washed and vacuumed the Ford and it looked very good except for a little dent in the fender and some skuffed up bumpers from our driving around the camp during construction. However, the truck we received hadn't been cleaned for a long time, so we added that to our "cleanup task list" - truck, apartment we're moving from, house we're moving to and the unkept yard, plus watering lots and lots of trees (we do have others helping with that, thank Heavens.)  Sounds like a good week or two to have behind us.

Toyota Hilux diesel 

 The following Monday the project manager took us shopping for furniture for the house.  Sister Olsen  thought it was pretty fun to shop without having to foot the bill. They are planning to deliver the appliances and furniture tomorrow.  Thankfully, we were able to find a painter and over the last few days he has got the majority of it painted; enough that we can get moved in..

Our friends, Elder and Sister Monson, from Orem who serve in the visitor center came up to the camp on their P day and worked the morning with us around the farm house. We took them to the modular building contractor's yard to see several of the cabins being constructed and will be moved to the site over the next few weeks.  We had lunch together at a Vietnamese restaurant and then visited a local arboretum that had been recommended.

Sister Olsen and Sister Monson at Taitua Arboretum

Elder and Sister Monson

Elder and Sister Olsen

colorful rooster and a peahen

 Later that evening we returned to the campsite and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.  I got carried away with the camera, which ones do you think are the most appealing?

farm house on left

to the right of the previous picture

the camp lakes as the light fades

same view from a greater distance

silver lining on the clouds

do you have a favorite yet?

it seems unreal

changing views

divine colors

the sun is down but the colors continue

With the camp demanding more and more of our time, we have less time to help the branch at Raglan where we have been attending.  With that being the case we felt our time on Sunday's should be in the local wards encouraging them to organize service projects for their members especially the YW/YM and YSA.   So we each talked along with the two sisters assigned and the branch mission leader.  The members all brought dishes and we had a wonderful luncheon following church.   Even though we arrived in time for church, the sister missionaries asked Sister Olsen to drive them to pick up 3 children of a family they are teaching. The father favors the Jehovah Witnesses and mother favors the LDS Church.  However, neither one of them wants to attend, but they are glad to have the children go and take a break from them.  When Sister Olsen got there to pickup the kids the mom said the JW's had beat them there and the kids had gone with them.

EVERYDAY MIRACLES

March 17, 2014

"God created only a select number of men with perfect heads;  he put hair on all the rest."  A statement made by our area seventy, Elder Thompson, who is not that old, but doesn't have much hair left on his head.

These past couple of weeks have been faith building, challenging at times and lots of fun!  March 3rd was the latter - just a fun,, enjoyable day. Our mission zone (10 Elders and 14 Sisters) all met for a picnic on the beach in Raglan.  We gave a couple of the Sister missionaries a ride and enjoyed getting to know them better - Sister Hansen from Minnesota and Sister Vodo from Fiji. It was a "Goodbye" to Elder Sua, the zone leader, who is Tongon but lives in Australia.  He is one of the nicest and funniest Elders and definitely the biggest.  He was big to begin with and had to lose some weight to come on a mission, but has gained over 125 lbs while here.  He has not told his mother, however, and said, "She is not going to be a happy mom when she sees me get off that plane."  Anyway, we sizzled some sausages and had some good eats and, of course, with every picnic you either have flies or the wind, at least we didn't have both. One of the sisters was cutting up a watermelon, and I commented, "Oh that's a waterless watermelon," meaning "seedless," as we hadn't seen any without seeds here.  They gave me a bad time about that.  It was fun to see the younger missionaries' P-Day playtime personalities.

Several Sister missionaries in the our zone--Raglan beach

electric grill for anyone to use at no cost

We got home from the beach,  spruced up and went to dinner at the Labrums, along with our baked beans that both Don and the mission president love.  We had a nice dinner with  several other missionary couples, including Pres. and  Sister Rudd.  Afterwards we all went to a concert - SOL3 MIO - like the 3 Tenors, only these guys are 2 tenors and a baritone and are Samoan.  They were excellent!  They sang a number of opera pieces, but also some beautiful songs like Shannondoah, Maria (Westside Story), The Prayer, etc.
Look them up on YouTube and have a listen.  They have earned 3 platinum awards this past year and are very well known here (they must be popular as tickets were $72 a piece).

It is now a few days later, Sunday, again.  But before telling about today, I'll go back to last Sunday as we had such a good sacrament meeting.  Sister and Brother Garisou spoke and used as the basis of their talks a very faith promoting experience they had during the previous week.  The weather has been very dry here, for the second summer in a row.   People do not have sprinkling systems here, because there is usually adequate rain to make that not necessary.  The temple has a sprinkling system on the front lawn, but the rest of the lawn is very brown.  People in towns are on city water that is piped into their homes, like we have.  However, outside of the towns people use water tanks to store water as it runs off the roofs of their houses and they use that to cook, do laundry, bath and some even drink it.  Brother Garisou had recently quit a good job to go into business for himself and it has been taking longer than planned, therefore they have really been struggling financially for the past few months.  Their water tank was getting very low and they could not afford to pay for the city water truck to come out and fill their tank for $200.  They had prayed for rain and had tried to conserve water by bathing at the beach.  One morning after her family had left, Sister Garisou climbed up on the water tank and peered down into it and was dismayed as she could see the water just barely covered the bottom.  She said a quite prayer once more, pleading with the Lord for rain.  She felt a peace come over her that the Lord was aware of their needs and that all would be well.  She climbed down, went in the house and put a load of laundry in, believing though the sky was blue, they would be blessed with a rainstorm.  Time passed and no sight of clouds; she then thought of the story of the widow in the Old Testament who obeyed the Lord's promptings and used the last of her meal (flour) to feed Elijah when he came hungry to her door, even though she only had enough for one more meal for her son and herself.  Sister Gerisou thought that perhaps the Lord would bless them in a similar way, with a tank that never really goes dry.  A short time later she heard a rumble from outside and looked out the window to see a truck coming up the road.  She walked out and saw that it was the city water truck, driven by a man they knew.  She yelled to him, saying you must have the wrong address, as they had not ordered any water.  Peter told her he didn't have the wrong address, the water was for her family.  She tried to explain that they couldn't pay for it, but he assured her not to worry about it, as he had been approached  in Raglan  a little earlier by a man who handed him $200 and told him the Garisou's needed water.  Sister Garisou was so overcome emotionally she sobbed as she hurried into the house.  After composing herself she went back outside and asked Peter, as he was finishing up, who the man was that paid for the water.  He told her that he had promised not to tell, as the man did not want them to feel any obligation to pay him back.  The Garisou family were deeply touched by this experience and were so grateful  to our Father in Heaven for hearing their prayers and answering them, though  in a way they had not even thought about.  They were also grateful to the man who had listened to the spirit and obeyed the promptings he had felt .  It was indeed a great example of the message:  God hears and answers our prayrs, but it is usually through our hands that he does so.

This is going to be a   l o n g  blog; you might need to rest your eyes.  Later last week we had a Zone conference and then all the missionaries, about 8 Elders and 14 Sisters, changed and followed us out to the camp.  We had ordered and picked up pizza on our way as it was lunch time and missionaries are always hungry.  But we were surprised at how much pizza the sisters could put away.  The Elder had them go first and I was concerned there wasn't going to be any pizza for the Elders.  We had bought 9 or 10 pizzas, thinking the sisters would probably only eat 2 or 3 pieces at the most.  It's a good thing I had made some lemon bars and a banana cake for a couple of birthdays.  They were really good workers, however, and there was such a good spirit there.  They laughed a lot and really had such a fun time, they want to come again soon.

Elders and Sisters in our zone

the Sisters worked really hard

Last weekend we met Don and Rosemary White and the Elder & Sister Labrum at the Flying Burrito Brothers restaurant.  There was a cute and friendly Mauri girl who waited on us and when the guys went to the counter to pay, she commented on us being LDS (our tags).  Hine said she wasn't a member, but her boyfriend was and was serving a mission in Ghana.  Dad came and got me to see if I had a referral card, We gave it to her and said that it would be cool if she had the missionaries teach her and she surprised her boyfriend by joining the church before he got home.  She was busy so she couldn't talk very long, however, the next morning she actually called and gave dad her phone # for the missionaries.  She  didn't give him her address as she was moving soon but said she worked at a dress shop, Dotties, in addition to the restaurant.
Dad called in her referral to the mission office and later that day they called back and said that the sisters
were really excited to get it and find out her her name because they had gone into Dotties Dress shop a couple of times and had felt they should  approach this cute young woman who worked there, but didn't want to interfere with her work.  So it was like a confirmation to them that they would  receive a referral  for her.  It seemed more than a coincidence!

Elder Olsen (Don) does a great job of talking to everyone (TWE) and has gotttten quite a number of referrals.  He is just naturally friendly and has the gift of gab (which can be a little annoying if you are waiting somewhere for him).  He is more involved in working with the men that are employed by the contractor at the camp and is not shy about talking to them about the gospel and asking them questions.  Recently he invited two young men, employees of a subcontractor, to get involved with the YSA in doing service work at the camp and they agreed.  They also agreed it would be nice to learn more about the church and why the church is building such a nice facility for the young people. He submitted their names to the mission office as well.

Denise Peacock, our English Lady convert from up North, came down by bus to visit for a few days.  We worked Friday morning and then drove to Cambridge, about 45 minutes away and had some yummy lunch and then went to the Sheep Dog Trials we had heard about.  They were out of town quite away and they don't get a lot of spectators, but we thought it would be a fun experience.  So there were the 3 of us and all these old sheepmen and a few young ones and even a couple of younger women and their dogs. There were 2 types of dogs; the herders and the headers.  In one group the dog ran up the hill and brought down 3 sheep and eventually herded them into a small pen within a 15 minutes.  In another trial  the dog had to herd 3 sheep straight up to the top of the big hill, without letting them veer off to the side.  Some of the men have 7 or 8 dogs, some trained to do one thing and some another and some younger dogs being trained to take over for the old dogs.  There were some pretty smart dogs, but none of them were as amazing as "Babe,"  the pig dog in the movie of long ago.  We are going to rent it so Denise can see it.

a boarder collie moving the sheep into the pen

Yesterday, we worked in the morning and then had lunch and went to the temple.  Denise had a limited use recommend so we went to the baptistry and watched some youth do baptisms and then Denise got to take part in the confirmations.  She was so excited to be able to go to the temple her first time and is looking forward to coming back in August for her endowments. We're glad that she will be able to do so while we are still here.  She was able to receive her patriarchal blessing just before she came down.  She loves to read and study the gospel and is now a teacher in Relief Society.  It is wonderful to see her so happy!  Her ex-husband just got remarried and she went to the wedding and wished them well.  She said it wasn't hard at all because she knows she got the best of the deal - the gospel that came into her life shortly after they divorced.

Denise was able to enter the temple for the first time

Denise with Elder and Sister Olsen at the visitor center

We actually got some RAIN this weekend.  There was a cyclone, Lusi, that came across New Zealand, starting up north.  It did quite a bit of damage up there, but by the time it got to this area it had slowed.  We got lots of wind and rain off and on yesterday and today.  It's the first time it has really actually rained for 3 months probably.  Hopefully it softened the ground enough at the camp to start planting the first of the 10,000 trees that are arriving this week.  We have been waiting for the rainy season and cooler weather to arrive before lining up lots of volunteers to begin planting.

We love the Sister missionaries in Raglan and enjoy working with them.  They had 3 little girls lined up to come to church today so when we got there I drove one of them over to pick them up.  They were cute, about 4, 5 and 6 or 7. The youngest was in pants and no shoes; but you see lots of barefoot children here. The dad and mom both have drinking problems; today the dad was at work and the Sisters felt like the mom loved to have them go to church just to have a break from them for a while.  When we took them back home, however, the little girls were so excited and when they told their mom they wanted to go again next week, she replied that she would go with them.  Hope so!

The Sisters had a cool experience over the weekend.  Sister Hansen was going to put some laundry in the washing machine before going to bed Friday evening, but decided she should wait until morning.  She had a bucket of water she had used for something, but instead of emptying it out she just sat it on the floor by the washer and dryer.  During the night she dreamed that they had a fire.  Saturday morning she put her laundry in the washer: she  returned to the laundry area a few minutes later to see a fire blazing behind the washing machine.  She yelled at Sister Hunt to call the fire department and then spotting the bucket of water, she picked it up and threw it on the fire, mostly extinguishing it and were able to completely put it out by the time the fire department arrived.  The firemen told them how lucky (or blessed) they were that Sister Hansen had returned to the room when she did and that she had that water close by because the fire could have gotten out of hand real fast.  It would have especially been bad if they had put the laundry in before going to bed the night before.  Now Elder Goodman, who is over setting up the apartments for the missionaries, is concerned as it was a new washing machine and the same type he has put in over a 100 apartments.

Barry and Denise made up our Gospel Principles class today. Elder Olsen and I take turns teaching the lesson with the Sisters.  Barry had some good comments and questions today and it was nice to have Denise, a new convert, share some of her thoughts with him.

Elder Olsen just asked if I was STILL writing the blog, so I had better end it here as we have a meeting to go to in a bit.  The busier we are the faster time goes by and the happier we are!  We love all of you lots!

hues of the evening onset

The "Birds"

Sunday evening at the monthly fireside in the visitor center, Elder Thomsen of the 70 and his wife were the featured speakers.  Also a young convert just baptized the day before told of his conversion and how the Elders were able to answer the many questions he had.  Sister Thomsen talked about giving and receiving hugs.  Even though the young elders and sisters aren't to do that, she related the warmth of the spirit to receiving a hug.  When she thinks of hugs, she thinks how "He Understands our Grief." She reverses hugs when she thinks of what we should do for the Savior, "Give an Understanding Heart."

To our surprise and joy yesterday at fast and testimony meeting, Barry, our investigator for the past four months, stood and expressed his gratitude to our Heavenly Father for his many blessings.  He has found a degree of peace by attending church, and seems to be satisfied with life even though he has not mademuch progress towards giving up drinking.

Even though you have wonderful spiritual experiences on your mission you learn quickly that you still have the usual temporal necessities to take care of.  I received a call from the mission car czar, Elder Marsden.  My first thought was that I had another speeding infringement (ticket) which would be my forth since we arrived, however, he informed me our car was to be sold since we had reached 85,000 klm and they would be giving us an identical vehicle with only 73,000 klm.

Last week we had to travel to Auckland to the US consulate to have an insurance conversion application signed by the consular. Afterwards we're able to stop by Martha's Backyard the American Store with many of our favorite foods you can't get anywhere else. One small box, 18"x 12"x 10" over $100.

Two days ago I had to climb on the roof of the farm house at the camp that is being converted for the camp managers.  I had to put some chicken wire over the chimney to keep the blackbirds from coming in and then not being able to get out.  Sister Olsen thought she was reliving Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, when I opened the wood stove and a bird flew out, right by her head and smacked the window.  I cleaned the stove out and removed half a dozen carcasses.  The next day the painter left for lunch and happened to leave the door open to vent the house and when we entered there were five birds that we shooed out.    Unfortunately they had left little white deposits all around the house, on the computer, the printer, in the kitchen and elsewhere.

A new senior couple, the Monson's have moved next door to us in the Nunnery.  They are from Orem and are serving in the visitor center.  They lived in President Monson's daughter's ward and let her know that they were not related to the Prophet since they hailed from Norway rather than Sweden where the Prophet's ancestors are from.  President Monson insisted they are related, if not through Noah, then Adam and Eve.  I guess looking at it that way we are all related to President Monson.  How wonderful.

Our friends from Boise, Brother and Sister Stewart returned home last week after serving 3 months helping put together the history of the church in NZ.  They have done this the past 3 years at their own expense. They also served missions in Micronesia and Siberia, Russia.

The past two weeks we have been doing lots of work at the camp and getting a maintenance building ordered, selecting materials and colors for the cabins and communal shelters, buying tents and supplies, and organizing work parties. Sister Olsen invited her friends the other day to help shape up some of the trails, but who knows they may have spent more time talking than working.

Jackie, Rosemary, Sister Olsen, and Sandra

Roger Hamon, can't stay away from the camp even though he is on morphine and chemo for his cancer.  He loves to see what is going on with the bush he helped preserve.

Elder Olsen and Roger having a tour of the camp.

We have been so busy that we decided to take a break yesterday and go to Rotorua.  On the way there we visited the Blue Springs of the Waihau River,  We hiked a couple kilometers enjoying the scenery as well as the exercise.

Blue Springs of the Waihau

 We had lunch at an Italian restaurant in Rotorua and in the afternoon we visited a long established animal sanctuary at Paradise Springs.  We timed it just right to see the feeding of the lions.

couple of male lions waiting to be fed

Paradise Springs was originally known for the fish that would run from Lake Rotorua to spawn.  So it was good to see so many large fish, also ducks, and pukekos.

Rainbows and Browns

hen mallard

a ram sheep for Andrea

Sister Olsen on the boardwalk

a friendly Pukeko

Elder Olsen exploring a local stream