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...

After months of planning, this past week we celebrated our Jewish Feasts and Fast Rosh Hashanah,  Yom Kippur,  Sukkot (Feast of the Tabernacles)  and Hanukkah!     Our "3 sided open roof with branches" sukkah ready for the feast. YSA Amokura "jellies" up the doughnuts Our team of "feast" help...Leeanne, Matt, Calla and Eden  Program all ready to go We invited the Senior Missionary FHE group to celebrate with us on Monday night,  and then our Old Testament Class hosted two other classes and several Stake Presidents on our Tuesday night celebration.   We learned so much together… starting with the Jewish new year “head of the year” Rosh Hashanah .   To begin our celebration we got to experience the blowing of the ram's or animal horn, the “shofar” We found a sweet friend Heather who has several shofar and graciously came to show and blow.   She also brought some other items f...