wikipedia image  Our last blog for New Zealand will be a bit delayed while we spend a few days in Sydney, Australia going to the temple with one of the stakes here in New Zealand.   web image Love you!

 There are lots of good things in our lives that happen just once. Each unique sunset  (this one just across from our flat) is never exactly duplicated, it just happens once.    Kenau Taranaki and Ana Saulala  had a "once" kind of day this week...they got married.  Then they headed off to Fiji to get sealed in the temple.    These past two years have been full of many “once’s: "Once we..." lived in a place with fresh ocean air, walked daily on the beach,  tried new food and saw new places, met new people, wore missionary badges and taught the words of Christ,  and we got to see the world from a different place and perspective. Once we lived by the Ocean We will miss being able to start our day with a walk on the beach.  We will remember all the "once's" we saw and felt and breathed in on those walks.  On our walk this week we met a sand dollar who also did a "once" thing that we're sure  he hopes

 Just a few weeks until this incredible mission for us comes to a close. Oh how we will miss wearing the badge with His name, being in His service with these great YSA in New Zealand, this beautiful country and all of the adventures we've been given. Close  ("klohz") can mean an end.  But it can mean heaps of other things as well...all appropriate for our time here it seems.       In the "City of Sails" close is a nautical term. "Close to the wind" is the direction opposite from which the wind is blowing.   And we've been told that no other big city in the world is even close ("klohs"-nearby) to the number of sail boats per capita as there are in Auckland.  Close also means compact and tight.  We've been to no other country in the world with lanes on roads and car parks so close and tight.  On the sidewalk we are basically 12 inches away from the road and the big buses.  Took a bit of getting used to we confess.