As Promised


As promised here is an additional post this week with some pictures and less musing.  It was nice to get rid of the "flu bug", to enjoy General Conference for the second time, and to have an opportunity to visit several places in the North part of the North Island.
Some pictures taken at Rainbow and Horseshoe Falls, which are normally lovely blue but after the heaps of rain they were gushing falls and chocolate brown instead.
Inside and outside of the Puhoi Creamery with couple missionaries the Bills and Seamons.

Matakana Saturday Market place

For your convenience there are DOG MINDERS , they watch Fido and Foo Foo for free!

Eggs are fresh and never refrigerated, rich orange colored yolks from happy chickens.
Matakana Market sells local oysters, manuka honey, jams, eggs, wool and textiles, plants...even local lollies (candy)
Pier in Paihia
Oysters anyone?
Waiting for the ferry from Paihia to Russell NZ
Downtown Russell NZ
Enlarged so you can see a bullet hole or two from the battle between Maori and English near this Christ Church (which received donations from Charles Darwin to build it to "civilize and reform this lawless area" they called the Hell Hole of NZ for a few years) in about 1835.
Dinner at Duke of Marlborough in Russell
The Christ Church and graveyard just a step of two from our apartment for the night. 
Evening at the dock in Russell
Looking down at Russell from flagstaff hill
A reminder where we are....
This area is called the Bay of Islands...there are nearly 100 islands.
At the Waitangi Treaty Grounds where the English and Maori signed the still much disputed agreement bringing New Zealand under the crown of England, called the declaration of English Sovereignty.  

A Maori ancestor
One of the Maori performers, his name is Phoenix and he is LDS.
James Busby home where the treaty was signed Feb. 6, 1840

We got to listen to General Conference alot as we traveled.  So many great talks (2 of our Area Presidency here in the South Pacific spoke, Elder Ardern and Elder Haleck), they all served as reminders to be more Christlike, to be more grateful, to be more serviceable, more faithful, and much more humble...I think it was Elder Holland who stated so beautifully our goal.."I may not be perfect but I'm TRYING to be like Jesus".  We'll just keep trying.

All our love,
Elder and Sister Downs






Comments

  1. Anonymous10 October 2017 at 23:20

    It is beautiful there. Thank you for all the amazing pictures. I feel like I was right there with you! Sending you hugs from Hungary. Xoxoxoxo
    Debbie Ommen

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Little

Image
 A little snapshot while we have a little WiFi...Niue is a beautiful little Island. Most of the coast is just cliffs and caves that drop into the deep ocean.     This is our LMS (London Missionary Society) friend Aggie.  She is a widow from Fiji with great faith and an amazing story.  Her home is one of the nicer homes.  Most of the 1500-1600 residents have very little in the way of things we would call conveniences: *Washers but no dryers *Solar driven Power...most of the time *WiFi...hmmmm...spotty for us and most 2G some 4G *Phones-4 digit numbers but many don't have a mobile phone *Addresses...there are NONE, you just live by someone or something or "just a little down the road" *Stores-one grocery store and several little convenience type stores on the whole island.  If you need something you have to have it shipped in on the monthly boat.  Businesses including government are open very sporadic, convenient to the employees. ...
Read more

Habitats and Sanctuaries

Image
Tiritiri Matangi Island On an open Saturday we were able to take a ferry and go to Tiritiri Matangi Island,  a bird habitat and sanctuary.  It's a peaceful and beautiful little island just north east of where we live,  and it happened to be a nice warm spring day, so we hopped on the ferry...   ... with new-found-friends and fellow-travelers Tom and Bev from Taranaki,  and lots of volunteers.    The wharf where we embarked was a yacht club at Shakespeare Park's Gulf Harbour.     The ferry was less than a 30 minutes sail among heaps of other boats who thought it was a great spring day too.   Our boat was "the Explorer "   Not hard to fall in love right away with the beautiful island bird sanctuary, continuously inhabited only by heaps of happy, mostly carefree birds. Sanctuaries are “places of protection and refuge, safe havens, asylums, even  sacred places. “ We took a 3 hou...
Read more

Cans

Image
It’s a new semester at the Universities, and for us at the Institute (AIB) as well. We set out on our mission thinking we could do and be everything, teach 10 classes each, climb every mountain and ford every stream the YSA's do, stay out late every night with them, go to every activity in all 13 stakes, write every night in our journals, eat 3 square meals a day and cook for the YSA too, change hearts, remember everybody's names and not miss our grandkids and all of you.   Well, we found out quickly we CAN'T.  We CAN barely teach 3 classes, we have bags under our eyes and we can't even pronounce most of their names, let alone remember them. So we are learning to just concentrate on the CANS  The few things at least that we CAN do.    We can teach a bit (Vance is teaching classes on the Book of Mormon, Teachings of the Living Prophets, and The Eternal Family.  Louenda has Old Testament, the Restored Gospel and Christian History, and Teachings and D...
Read more