The Cost

We spent an afternoon with Elder and Sister Stosich in the Auckland War Museum.  As a resident (we are official now and even have a library card) it didn’t cost a thing…but the history cost the participants heaps. We have already shared with you much about their fierce patriotism and some of their war efforts. 

An old beautifully hand-carved Maori Marae.  The time and effort it cost these Maori carvers hundreds of years ago leaves us in awe ...

(but not sure we’d want these faces in our house late at night).  

The rooms were filled with things and war and history that someone paid some kind of price for…a cost to someone.

It probably cost a heap of time to learn to sail one of these (Moana knows)  but if you are on one in the ocean in a storm it was probably well worth the cost.

If you think about it, there is a cost to everything.

The cost to use our car park is a bit pricey…$12 an hour.  That adds up quicky and will certainly stop you from dilly dallying too long downtown if you're parked here.  Glad we have a pass.

Elder Vern Henshaw was a teacher and School Superintendent in Utah for many years while he grew into the great educator he is today.  Whatever it cost him, it was our treat when he taught us at devotional this week. 

Vern and Susan Henshaw and a few of our AIB lovelies...Val, Sylvia and Loisi

The food is great, but because lots of it is imported the cost is often steep...pricey little green onions...and  costly "golden" eggs.

The air in NZ we think is clean and clear and fun to breathe.  Along with the fresh air coming from the ocean breezes, we don’t see many factories or heavy industrial facilities that often add to poor air.  The good and the bad...it makes for clean air but that's probably why so many things have to still be imported.  Hence the high costs...

NZ does have some oil, but not enough to sustain their needs, so oil is another big import.  Gas prices are on the rise here, in fact they went up at midnight last night after I snapped this photo of our nearby pumps.  Before last night the cost was $2.30-2.40 a liter, (at almost 4 liters to make a gallon the cost would be about $9 a gallon for gas to a Kiwi).

Dinner with Calvin Periera and family last week.  Calvin is enjoying Japanese “katsu chicken” with “tako yaki” (fried balls of octopus, actually pretty good). Don’t know what the cost to buy the chicken and octopus were for his mom, but it “cost” the chicken and the octopus dearly.

September 15-23 was Conservation week in New Zealand. New Zealanders are pretty keenly aware of the delicate balance here with ocean and land, and the native creatures who live in both. We learned of a cool new program: Conservation dogs. 

nzconservation dog web photo...a stilt chick

Trained dogs here in New Zealand help protect, find, and tag native bird species; as well as find, "point out" , and help eradicate non-native pests (possum, stoats, rodents and rabbits).

conservationdogs web photo

The protected and rare Takahe bird and a puppy in training to protect it.  You GO dogs!

We thought this was fun: They even have a “Pestival” where folks get together and work to help rid beaches and locations of unwanted pests -pretty clever.

Friendship: One of the things (not bound by age or location) that you can give and get that doesn’t cost money … friends Eden, Dinah, Chenoa and Losa. 

Here are two great friends, Awanui and his "mate" ("friend" in Kiwi) Cory.  Awa was baptized a year ago.  He shared his story and love of the gospel with his work mate Cory.   Could have cost Awa a friendship but that didn't stop Awa...and Cory loved it as well.  Last week Cory chose to be baptized by Awa.  Couple Sarai and Awa on each end, with Cory and his two sons in the middle. 

Caught this "eastern rosella" all alone (no friends) trying to sneak into the church for Cory's baptism.  Love the birds in NZ!

Doesn’t cost much to fill up the font for baptism, but the one being baptized has to pay a price to prepare to take on the name of Christ and covenant to try to be like him.  That’s a life-time cost, a promise that you never stop working to keep, but it will “keep” you as you keep trying.

 On Saturday another YSA, Star Rawiri (in the red shoes at our "oodles of noodles" Friday), made that choice to be baptized as well.  Both Star and Cory paid a price leaving family and their old life in choosing the Gospel. Each spoke of the peace but also some of the challenges from the outside as they made that choice.  

Seems like all of our choices come at a cost one way or another.

I asked Star why this church.  

She said, “I have attended many churches looking for the truth.  In all my search this was the only one that felt right.  I know it’s the truth.”

The Spirit speaks in many tongues and many ways.  Sometimes with words and logic and reason, sometimes with an audible voice or a vision, but always with deep poignant feelings. 1 Cor 2:11 “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? 

Even so things of God knoweth no man, but by the Spirit of God.”

Star Rawiri's baptism at Ascotia Place Ward

We met another couple with a conversion story this week, Angela and Craig Walters.  

Their story as they related it to us:

Their son Jeremy had attended our church with some friends as a young adult and found answers he had been looking for all his life in other churches (about where he came from, why he was here and where he would go after this life). His dad had gone to our church when he was a very little boy but his mom knew little about it.  Jeremy introduced his mom to the church and they were all baptized in 2011. There’s usually a cost of some kind.  Besides Angela leaving her family’s faith, Jeremy had been a young television star here in NZ, and had been offered a recording career in the US as well.  When he joined the church he gave it all up to serve a mission and share the truths he loved with others.  All of them have been out serving and on fire every since, they are awesome people doing much good!  

 Oh how we LOVE every YSA we get to hang out with here in New Zealand (like Will Rogers said: "We've never met a man-or a YSA- we didn't like").  These are from the Mt. Roskill Stake.  Just want to take them all home with us!  That might “cost” a heap and I know we couldn’t feed them

Camella Ezekiella, fresh back from an Australian mission with President McSwain (from Farmington Utah) 

Tuesday night Institute classes feeding their bodies as well as their souls...we feel a great responsibility to feed them more than just the chicken cordon bleu or the "chicken soup" but to teach them truth and where to find it themselves.  ..

There is a price we each individually must pay, a cost to know truth for ourselves, each of us must "…study it out in your mind, then you must ask me (God) if it be right, and if it be right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you, therefore you shall feel that it is right.” D & C 9:8 (like Star said) “…and by power of the Holy Ghost (you) may know the truth of all things.” Moroni 10:5 
Nobody can pay THAT price for us.  Then when we've covered that cost
the Savior steps in and covers the rest of the cost that is beyond our ability to pay.  He's got the rest covered if we, in faith, accept and obey Him.  And what a glorious and priceless cost has been paid.   

HolyLandMinisteries web photo

We testify He lived to show us the Way, and suffered and died to provide that Way.
And He lives still.

We love you,

Vance and Louenda

Elder and Sister Downs