Spring is here!

From Teresa:

September 27. Our senior missionary zone attended the Bledisloe Cup rugby match between arch-rival national teams: New Zealand's All Blacks vs Australia's Wallabies. I took a crash course on YouTube before the match because I knew nothing about the sport. It paid off; I actually enjoyed the match. The strength, ball handling, team work, agility, and running speed were great to watch. I especially liked the way the game moved from one play to another without time-outs. New Zealand won, which made it even better!

Another thing I liked was that we all sang the Australian and then the New Zealand national anthems--a friendly gesture before a hard-fought game.  

In the New Zealand anthem, the first verse is sung in Māori and then again in English. We include a link here because we like the music and the words in both languages. This version from YouTube was sung at a different rugby match, but it is similar to what it sounded and looked like at the game we watched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCgcZ0efAA&list=RDmhCgcZ0efAA&start_radio=1

We also include the English lyrics for all 5 verses because they express many of the desires and feelings we have for our own country.

Now, back to July and August:

July 7. Beautiful sunsets can be found everywhere. Here is one I captured from our balcony.

July 21. Our daughter Karen came to visit us for about a week. We enjoyed exploring nature with her, including a cruise on the Hauraki Gulf on a dolphin and whale-watching boat. We lucked out and saw both! This is a Bryde's whale--similar to a blue whale but smaller.

We saw dozens of common dolphins:

July 23. We took a ferry over to Tiritiri Matangi Island, a special bird refuge. Here is Karen with a kererū, a really large pigeon endemic to New Zealand.

July 23. A couple of months ago, our car suffered an anonymous fender dent while it was parked, and the office had us take it to this business. In New Zealand, auto body shops are called "panelbeaters." A good, descriptive name! In the background is the tallest building on the North Shore, just one block away from the Area Office.

Aug. 13. Three pictures. The first is of Ra and Rick Chadderton, new missionary friends. They are from New Zealand, and Ra is of Māori descent. They were here at the Area Office for a couple of months while waiting for their Papua New Guinea visas. We really enjoyed their time here, and they both helped Larry a lot with his father's pictures and journal entries. Ra even found some of her ancestors among his pictures.

I took the second and third pictures at Costco.

I thought dried New Zealand ling fish maw must be a strange Pacific snack, but it isn't. A maw is a fish's swim bladder. It is rehydrated and then used as a highly nutritious food ingredient or a skin collagen booster. It costs about US $160 per pound!

The picture above shows durian fruit, which grow in southeast Asia. Each piece is bigger than a football and costs $100 NZ (about $60 US). When cut open, its smell is so strong that it is banned in some places. Some people think it smells like raw sewage or rotting onions, while others think it smells like tropical perfume. Weird!

Aug. 22. A young sister missionary serving in Tahiti had been ill with a respiratory virus, but she didn't get better. She became so exhausted and weak that she had to use a wheelchair. Tahiti didn't have the medical care and testing capabilities to find out what was wrong, so she needed someone to escort her home to Minnesota. I volunteered since I wasn't that busy with work. Because of flight scheduling, I had a day in Papeete (the capital of French Polynesia). Unfortunately, it wasn't a tourist visit, but I did swim in the hotel pool and take a picture. It was a privilege to escort that dedicated young missionary home to her waiting family.

I asked to be routed back through Salt Lake City in order to have some time to enjoy family and take care of some stateside work. Here is our youngest grandchild giving me the spa treatment,

From Larry (He is writing about some of our actual mission work so that you won't think we're just out having fun all the time):

"My work on this mission is mostly a distillation of all the most difficult types of emotional problems missionaries face. This includes serious suicidality, psychotic symptoms, severe depression, and severe OCD. In many ways this makes the work both more important, but also more discouraging and less satisfying. At the same time, it needs to be done.

I just completed a long interview with a remarkable woman whose mother has uncontrolled bipolar disorder and whose paternal grandfather has severe OCD. She has some symptoms of both. In some ways, this mission allows her to safely face both issues. In the end, she may have to go home for care, but if she does, she will have a much greater and more hopeful understanding of these illnesses. 

I also continue to enjoy doing our French-Canadian genealogy. Sometimes I am given astonishing guidance from God in order to find and correct many of the records in Family Search.

We love interacting with the incredibly diverse group of people who make up the congregation we attend here. This week Teresa and I, with two young sister missionaries, held our first free English class for immigrants at our Panmure church building. The 11 people who came included 6 from Sri Lanka and 5 from the Philippines. Ten of them were not members of our church. It feels good to provide this service for the community. The friendly, safe learning environment seems to help them have the courage to continue coming."

We wish you all the best! Elder Larry and Sister Teresa Dewey