BAY OF ISLANDS AND MISSIONARY WORK

This week at the Church offices things were a little slow. The area presidency and some department heads were still gone for meetings in SLC.  Instead of any large projects I worked on a bunch of small projects, mainly reviewing tender/bid projects involving food services at various Church schools in the islands.  One new potential project that came in over the weekend looks like it will be fun to work on if it goes forward.  The Marshall Islands mission covers 2 different countries, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati.  Because of the distance between the 2 island nations (cost of air fare), and because they speak different languages (English and then whatever the native tongue is on each), apparently the missionaries assigned to that mission spend their entire mission in one or the other country.  The mission home is in the Marshall Islands, but it has proved cheaper to send the missionaries going to Kiribati directly there than to have them go via the Marshall Islands mission home going and returning.  So the Church rented some rooms in a hotel in Kiribati which the mission president flies to so he can use it to welcome new missionaries directly there, and for zone conferences and for missionaries’ farewells.  Anyway, to make a long story short, the country of Taiwan has a 25 year land lease which they built their embassy on in Kiribati, which they still have 10 years remaining on. For whatever reason Taiwan has decided to shut down their embassy.  Because they like the Church, as a good will gesture, they have offered to let the Church have their embassy for the final 10 years for free, except that the Church would have to pay the annual rent for the underlying land, which comes to about $1,200 per year.  This possibility just arose a few days ago, so once the local leaders and missionary department decide if they want to go forward and accept this offer, I will review the leases and make sure that everything is in good order with the Kiribati government and landlord.  The other interesting prospect is that last week in General Conference Pres. Nelson announced a new temple in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, which is in our Pacific area.  Our Office of General Counsel office is speculating that the Church is thinking about using 17 acres that it has a long term lease on there, but which land is in litigation, or on an adjacent 4 acre parcel the Church is in the process of buying (this is speculation, nothing official has been announced).  In the upcoming months I will be taking over the real estate matters, and in March the litigation in that area.  So one way or another I’m hoping to be involved in securing the land for the new temple.  One possible scenario is that the temple would be built on the 4 acres to be purchased, with ancillary buildings, parking lot and landscaping on the adjacent leased land?  In the islands, in some countries you can’t even buy land, it is owned by the government, so many of our Church buildings in the islands are built on lands covered by long term leases.

Thursday evening, I was walking home when a nice looking fellow, probably in his 40’s, at a gas station I was passing looked at me, saw my name tag and said “hello Elder”.  I stopped and said “You sound like you know something about the Church,” which led into a nice conversation about his family. His name was Jason and I believe he said that he was from Samoa originally and came from a very large Mormon family.  Many of them have immigrated to Utah. He said that he was the one who didn’t go on a mission, is inactive, but that he has fond memories of the Church growing up and had mentioned it to his own children. I visited a little more with him about the Church and about my senior mission, then I asked him if he had a copy of the Book of Mormon, which he did not.  So I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a wrapped Book of Mormon and gave it to him along with the video Meet the Mormons.  I also gave him my card, and suggested that it was time he go back to Church with his own family, that they’d be warmly welcomed.  It made me feel good to have a more traditional missionary experience here in NZ.   I felt like a young missionary again in Japan doing street proselyting, my first street contact in over 40 years!  I hope that meeting will be a blessing in Jason’s life, and I felt fortunate to have been the tool to deliver the message.

Since office work was on the slow side, I got permission to take Friday off.  As I mentioned previously, here in NZ the wards don’t have regular church services this weekend, many of these wards will show last weekend’s General Conference on Sunday at the church houses, and have a pot luck in between sessions, using it almost as a social.  Our YSA ward wasn’t meeting and our Self Reliance class we are facilitating got canceled. So since Alisa and I had already watched all the sessions, we decided to take a trip.  We left Friday morning around 7 a.m. and drove about 3 hours north to a touristy area known as the Bay of Islands.  Cruise ships land there weekly to let their passengers off.  They claim there are 140 islands in this bay.  On the drive there we stopped and hiked into the Waipu Caves.  We had to wade through a stream inside the caves about 2 feet deep, but were rewarded to see glow worms all over the ceilings of the caves.  There were two young Germans we visited with who had camped overnight in this out of the way area who are touring here for 10 months!  Apparently NZ is a popular place for Germans to tour, and they usually fly in to Auckland, buy a converted van, in their case paying NZ$6,000, which has shelving, a kitchen and a sleep area already built in, sort of like the hippy VW vans from the 60’s.  They’ll drive all over NZ for their 10 months here, then resell the van to the next tourist, and fly back to Germany to go back to college or jobs.  Anyway, we finally made it to Paihia, which is the town we were staying in on the Bay of Islands (there are a lot of small towns in this touristy area).  We first walked around and got our bearings.  Then we took a ferry across the bay to a town called Russell.  It was the first English settlement in NZ in the 1820’s, and was the capital for several years before it was moved to Auckland, and eventually to its current site in Wellington.  Anyway, back then Russell had 30 saloons, many brothels and was known as the Hell Hole of the Pacific, until the Maoris made the English clean up their act.  Anyway once Auckland became the new capital and center of commerce in NZ, things quieted down there, and Russell is now known as the city of Romance!  It looks like a cross between New England and Catalina Island.  We had lunch at the Duke of Marlborough establishment, one of the original hotels there.  After lunch we walked around and visited the little shops, and toured their original Anglican church know as Christ Church, NZ’s oldest church.  It is a traditional looking wood sided church house with steeple and surrounded by a church grave yard.  The wood siding still has a few holes made by musket balls back when the town was still known as the Hell Hole of the Pacific! We caught a ferry back to Paihia, and drove to our BnB.  It was in the downstairs apartment of a home situated up on a hill overlooking the bay, and for $75 per night was quite the delight.  It had a nautical theme. This area looks like a cross between CA and Hawaii, many tropical plants along with citrus, avocados, grapes, kiwis and even some loquat trees! After we rested some, we drove about 25 kilometers to the Ngawha natural hot springs to soak some.  The water temperature was around 110 degrees, and the place was a little run down, but only cost the equivalent of US$3.50.  Drove back to Paihia, stopped at a grocery store, then went home to bbq some steaks before bed.

Saturday morning we drove to the Waitangi Treaty grounds to explore their museum and their grounds.  It is about 1,000 acres which is where the original treaty between the British and the Maori was signed calling a truce and allowing England and the King to be the new rulers, Feb. 6, 1840.  It was quite impressive.  They have the world’s largest canoe there made out of the native Kauri tree, 117 feet long and able to carry 160 warriors.  That would have been a scary sight to be greeted by! They actually take the canoe out on the ocean once a year on Feb. 6, their treaty day celebration. The original local governor’s house still stands there.  There is also a Maori meeting hall on the grounds and we were treated to a Maori song and haka show.  Then we took a charter boat out into the bay for a 3 hour trip around the islands, to Hole in the Rock and back.  We even saw a school of dolphins. In the evening we went out to dinner at Green’s Thai and Indian restaurant.  I had Thai and Alisa had Indian. 

Today we drove over to KeriKeri to see that historic town.  We visited their farmer’s market, the old Stone Store, which is the oldest stone building in NZ, and the house next door, which is the oldest house in NZ.  This town is more inland, but still with a view of the bay and the Pacific ocean.  I also stopped to check out one of their orange orchards and a kiwi farm.  They have gone organic here, which means they stopped spraying their orchards, and as a result their citrus and trees don’t look very comely.  I suspect their local industry is dwindling as they import more of their fruit from the US and elsewhere, and the old farms are being replaced by housing and development. We stopped by Rainbow falls for a short hike, then drove back home this afternoon.  We felt fortunate that while we saw plenty of clouds and some sprinkles, for the most part we had warm sunny weather, and the tourists haven’t really descended on the Bay of Islands yet, the place is supposed to be packed come summer time (December).