Auckland hosts annually a festival of illuminations called Bright Nights.  They invite world class lighting artists to create a work in lights  (with emphasis on  sea life and sustainability).  The exhibit in the above photo was built by lighting artist Matt Liggins, and based on  Leonardo Da Vinci’s "Vitruvian Man". (Short on perfect models, these two missionaries had to do for now) We love going down to the wharf when it's  illuminated!  Friday night we invited our senior missionary friends to meet us down at the Viaduct Wharf to explore Bright Nights... and be  illuminated too!  That night even the host of normally dark boats in the wharf were bathed in a bit of the colored  lights from  the surrounding harbor.   I'm not sure my camera adequately reflects the fun colors, but there was color everywhere.   The event was packed with families and wide-eyed kids (often bringing alo...

This week everywhere we turned we met another great tree.  We ran into trees that were loved,  and clothed in homemade sweaters with open invitations to tree huggers woven into them by  sweater-crocheting people.  We met many  other trees about to become unclothed... of their leaves. We stood under one of our favorites here, the unique ever green Norfolk Pine,   and we saw many of these southern most Niku palms, one of our all-time NZ favorites.   We recalled all we learned about red vs. green coconut tree while on Niue... who would have thought there was a difference.  They are all beautiful in their own right. Joyce Kilmer wrote (and we agree...):  "I think that I shall never see A poem as lovely as a tree..." We love to recall the sunsets on Niue, which we think would be empty without images  of the plentiful coconut palm trees  (not to mention how empty the wo...