FATHER'S DAY IN SEPTEMBER

Here it is, now we’re in September.  Some of my thoughts in that regard are that Sister Gubler and I are settling into the routine of missionary work, we are familiar with our surroundings now and are developing confidence in our abilities, and although we miss our family, it feels like the time is passing quickly and we can last the full 1 ½ years.  The weather this past week has been dry, sunny and quite pleasant, maybe we have survived winter and spring is on its way.

Thursday Alisa and I worked until around 1 p.m. then packed up the car and drove to the Auckland airport.  We caught a JetMax flight to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.  It would have been about a 6 hour drive, but was barely an hour by air, and the tickets were quite reasonable, about NZ$90 each way.  Since Alisa is working with the Public Affairs department of the Church here, they had some meetings in Wellington on Friday, and I had to go along as the spouse on this one.  We all stayed at the Bolton Hotel, in the downtown area not far from the waterfront.  Actually, I thought Wellington was one of the prettiest and cleanest capitals I’ve seen.  The part of town where the government offices are is surrounded by the bay on one side and hills on the other.  Geography-wise, it felt somewhat like San Francisco, just smaller and cleaner.  The group walked down to the waterfront Thursday evening after we had unpacked in our hotel rooms, and found a nice restaurant for dinner.  I had a nice ribeye steak and chips. On Friday, while Alisa was in classes, I had free time.  So I hiked to the Wellington cable car station, and purchased my ticket.  It is very much like San Francisco’s cable car lines, except this one just travels up the side of a large hill to the top, about 120 meters in 5 minutes, one line only!  I had a stunning view of the bay and of the city from up there.  I toured the cable car museum, then instead of taking the cable car back down, I just walked back down through the botanical gardens.  Quite impressive, many native plants, a rose garden, an Australian garden, begonia house, flowering trees everywhere.  I changed into a suit and had lunch with David Thomson, a local stake president and a civil servant employed by the Ministry of Primary Industries in their agriculture division. We visited about his job and how the national government works, and he treated me to a lunch of Subway sandwiches.  In the afternoon I took a tour of the Parliament building, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.  After Alisa finished her meetings around 7 p.m., we walked down to the water front again for dinner at the Crab Shack.  It is the annual Wellington hamburger festival, and each of the many restaurants have concocted a specialty burger to entice customers and to be judged by.  My burger was quite good, some type of pulled beef and seafood burger. 

Saturday we slept in a little.  Then we hiked along the waterfront to see an Underground Market, a band, boats being rowed and sailed.  We hiked until we reached the Te Papa museum, a well known museum throughout NZ.  We spent a few hours there visiting Maori history exhibits, artwork, and my favorite, a section devoted to the fierce battle of Gallipoli in WWI, where over half of the NZ soldiers were killed.  On the way back we stopped by the Underground Market again, where I had a wonderful bratwurst sandwich for lunch.  We checked out of our hotel and caught a taxi to the airport for the return flight to Auckland.  We arrived back at our apartment around 5 p.m.  I had some free time left, so I watched a couple of videos from the video collection at the office.  The first was an old Clark Gable western entitled The King and Four Queens.  As soon as I saw it I knew it had been filmed in Snow Canyon in Southern Utah, and confirmed that by researching online.  I believe this is the movie that Uncle Shelby helped the camera crew and actors with for horses and scenery shots, since he was familiar with the area.  The second video was an old Doris Day romance entitled The Glass Bottom boat, filmed around Catalina Island.    

Today was Father’s day in New Zealand, don’t ask me why they celebrate it in September in NZ.  I got to speak with our kids by telephone, and we had a Father’s day program in church then a linger longer, with soups and bread.