Saturday, February 29, 2020
WAIHEKE ISLAND AND HUMP DAY
Today is officially “hump day.” We’ve been on our mission 9 months, and 9
months from today, Dec.1, we will conclude our mission. Looking back, it seems like the time has sped
by, but I suspect it will pass by quicker going forward. Bump, hump, slump, then dump!
This was leap year, giving us 29 days in February. My father Darwin Gubler passed away 5 years
ago as of Feb. 28. I still miss him and
mom.
We had some great news this week. Rachel and Brent safely delivered Redd Grant
Smith (at least that is the latest version I’ve heard of his name) on Feb.26
(or maybe the 25th with the time difference?), 8 lbs. and 21 inches,
at home with the help of a midwife.
Also, Ed got word the same day that he had passed all his board exams to
become licensed as a dentist. I know
that he will enjoy life a little bit more now.
A project I got to work on this week was to help clear title
to property in Neiafu, island of Vava’u, in Tonga for the new temple that has
been announced to be built there. The
location is still under wraps while more due diligence is being done by the
legal department.
Friday evening Alisa and I attended a bbq at the home of our
friends Michael and Trisha Fox. We met
Michael at pickleball, and he seems to enjoy our company.
The rest of the weekend was action packed also. Saturday morning we awoke early, quickly packed
our things, and took a bus down to the wharf in Devonport. There we caught the ferry to Waiheke Island,
about a 40 minute trip, past Rangitoto Island with its volcano. This was our first trip to Waiheke, and we
were met at the dock by Mike and Dot Hilburne, who are the grandparents of one
of Lora’s former roommates, Kailea. We
finally found a good weekend with nice weather to visit them. They drove us around the island, with its wine
grape vineyards, cute downtown area and beaches. Then they took us to their
retirement village, where they have a nice home. Their boat was parked on their front
lawn. We decided to go on a picnic. It turns out their boat is an amphibious
craft. We got in, and Mike drove it down
the street, across the beach and right into the ocean! We ended up circling the entire island. We stopped in one cove to have our picnic
lunch. Then we went into another cove
with a small town and long beach. We
drove right out of the ocean and parked on the beach, with plenty of people watching. After playing in the water we had gelato cones
then headed back out to sea. Finally, we
made it back to where we started from.
After a swim in their retirement center pool and hot tub, we showered
then went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant downtown, with a beautiful view of
a harbor with locally owned boats moored.
I treated the group to dinner since I figured the Hilburnes had spent a
bit of money on the gas for their boat.
I woke up refreshed after a good night’s sleep. Then we all drove back to the downtown area
where we visited the meeting hall which our Church has rented out. The Church used to have a branch on this
island but it was shut down a number of years ago. There apparently are a number of less active
members on the island currently. So the Church is trying to get up and running
again. This is the 3rd Sunday
which they have met together, with Bro. Hilburne (a former bishop) as the group
leader. The Hilburnes used to take the ferry
every Sunday to come in to Takapuna to go to church. Anyway, counting us, the Hilburnes, and an
older brother who came on the ferry this morning to teach Sunday School, including
2 babies there were 15 of us present. It
reminded me of starting the old Ijiri branch in Japan as a young
missionary. Anyway, the Hilburnes had
invited Alisa and I to be the speakers, so we were. I spoke about miracles, and how with faith
this little group will grow and thrive.
Then the meeting was opened up to testimonies for the remaining
time. After Sacrament meeting, Alisa and
I said our goodbyes to everyone, then walked a kilometer down the hill to the
dock where we caught the ferry ride back to Devonport, then the bus back to our
apartment. We dropped our stuff by the
apartment then walked on to church in time to attend Sunday School with our YSA
ward.
Saturday, February 22, 2020
ANOTHER WEEK
Another week. Work
progresses. Wednesday afternoon Alisa
and I took off work a little early to go be filmed with the local New Zealand
choir at a beach at Wenderholm Regional Park.
It is for General Conference in April.
The Church has asked 6 or 7 countries around the world to have a choir
to sing “We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet” which they’ll show with the Tab
Choir I think at the Sunday morning session.
We previously pre-recorded the music and this was for us to be filmed in
a NZ setting, of course a beach. Don’t
expect to see much of Alisa and I, they were more focused on the ones who look Polynesian. But we had fun participating anyway.
Friday evening for a date, Alisa and I watched the new Lady
and the Tramp Disney movie at home, and had a spaghetti dinner as part of the theme.
On Saturday, we had planned to visit a coastal island for
the day. But the day turned cloudy and
rainy (the rain is appreciated as it has been a drought filled summer here), so
we decided to stay closer in. For a
diversion, we drove again to the Otara farmers market, what I consider the best
one in NZ. As usual, we came away with a
good supply of local fruits, vegetables and melons. Afterwards I took an early afternoon nap, and
dropped by the office for a few hours to get on top of a few old legal matters
that I hadn’t quite finished up during a busy week of new projects. Then we had a glutton free dinner for two
senior sister missionaries, Ellen Bunker and Kate Lucas, whom we had been
intending to invite over for a while but hadn’t due to their dietary
restrictions. Alisa fixed so much of the
burrito bowls for them that we had a ton of left overs. So we have invited over 2 other senior couples
today who have similar dietary restrictions to help us eat it all.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
Friday was Valentine's Day.
To celebrate, after work Alisa and I drove to Devonport to the historic
Vic Theatre to watch Jane Austin’s “Emma” movie. You can guess who chose that, it wasn’t
me. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices
to demonstrate our love. Even Alisa had
to admit it was a yawner. Then we drove
back to downtown Takapuna for dinner at the House of Chocolate. That choice was much more successful. Alisa ordered a chocolate encrusted waffle with
hazelnut topping. I ordered a chocolate
encrusted waffle with salted caramel ice cream and other assorted
toppings. We walked back to the
apartment to work off the calories afterwards!
Saturday we slept in a little. Then we drove about an hour to Mercer Bay (a
regional park) to do the loop walk there.
We had some nice views of the cliffs and ocean. We also hiked to Kera Kera falls. Back home again, I barbecued hamburgers on
our little fire pit, to go with corn and a cucumber salad and some chocolate
chip cookies for dinner. We invited over
Elder and Sister Reynolds who are newly arrived from Utah, and Sister Tazuko
Yamashita (who’s husband was out of town) for dinner.
I have been enjoying reading “The Pacific: In the Wake of
Captain Cook.” It gives some interesting
insights into the Pacific islands and their peoples. I’m about 2/3rds through the book, just
starting Captain Cook’s third and final voyage in his ship Resolution (a
replica of which Alisa and I saw a few months ago in Auckland harbor).
Saturday, February 8, 2020
YSA CONFERENCE AT TEMPLE VIEW
It’s Sunday evening and Mom and I just pulled back into
town. We left work Friday afternoon around 3 p.m. and drove 2 hours to Hamilton
for the New Zealand YSA national conference being held there. First we drove to the bnb we were staying at
that night. It was in the home of Rosana
Harrison, the LDS mother of one of the local attorneys that I work with. She actually let us spend the night for free
(her son and daughter-in-law had spent the night in our St. George house
recently on a vacation). We unloaded our suitcases then headed over to the David
O. McKay center at Temple View, where we had dinner, visited the health center
where we would spent the weekend helping out, then went to the evening
performance. There were over 1,000 YSA’s
signed up for the event that lasted from Wednesday to Sunday. They had spent part of the day learning a
dance routine from one of the Pacific island nations they each were assigned
to. For the program, each group got up
and performed their dance routine. For
example, the NZ group did the haka dance.
There were some fire dancers, and some skits as well.
Saturday Alisa and I mainly worked at the health center. We had supplies to treat those who got
injured in the various activities. I treated
one girl who thought she’d been stung by a bee, and handed out aloe vera for
those with too much sun or scrapes. I
even did a triangular bandage for one young man who thought he’d sprained his
arm coming down a water slide. Handed
out a lot of ibuprofen. I also made 2 runs to the store to buy supplies for the
health center. I attended a devotional,
and just hung out some. Pre-dance, I took Alisa out to dinner at a Mexican
restaurant in downtown Hamilton. Not
super authentic but fun. The best activity I attended of the conference was the
50’s dance put on in the humongous cultural hall in the McKay building that
evening. They had decorated the place nicely,
and even had a live jazz band of about 10 instrumentalists with a singer or
2. Alisa and I danced quite a bit and
showed some of the YSA’s some of our disco moves for those that asked. We lasted until around 10 p.m. before going
to our 2nd bnb, this one we paid for, which was just down the street
from Temple View.
Today we mainly attended church services, where the area
presidency spoke. After Sacrament
meeting I was amazed at how many showed up at our health clinic with miscellaneous
health “concerns”. I think some of them
were hypochondriacs, many we had seen the day before. But they all seemed to appreciate that we
were paying them a little attention for their owies! A fun weekend for the YSAs and for us.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
HAPPY GROUND HOG DAY!
Happy Ground hog day! 8 months down and 10 months to go on this mission. It continues to be a warm summer here in New
Zealand, not as hot as CA or UT summers but with a bit more humidity without
air conditioning at home (but we have it at the office).
After 8 months, I’m feeling comfortable and competent in the
legal work I’m doing for the most part.
On occasion I’ll come across something new to figure out. A lot of the
tender contracts I’ve been reviewing have been dealing with Pacific temples,
maintenance, landscaping, even have an issue about whether a new temple can be
built on existing land the Church has under long term lease.
I’ve put in a lot of long days at the office the last 2
weeks just trying to keep up with the work.
So, rather than write about that, I’ll write a little about our trip to
Australia last week.
Sis. Gubler and the Communication department (formerly
Public Affairs), went to Australia for a week for some training. I was invited along but decided not to spend
a full week there due to my work load.
Instead, I worked until Thursday early afternoon, then hitched a ride to
the Auckland airport and flew from there to Sydney, Australia. When I walked out of the Sydney airport I was
greeted by a blast of hot air, full on summer there and much hotter than
NZ. I took a taxi to the temple
apartments in the suburb of Carlingford, about a kilometer from the temple
there. The apartments weren’t bad, and
had a/c. That evening Elder and Sister
Low, who are serving in our Sydney OGC office, were nice enough to drive us to
Costco! I had fun restocking up on
socks, shirts, a book about Switzerland, dried squid, and the triple chocolate
brownie mix. Then we went to the food
court where I got the AUD$1.99 hot dog and soda special (USD$1.50), which was
pretty good except it was an all pork instead of beef hot dog! Still better than any hot dog I’ve had in
NZ.
Friday I met with Elder Low to review his litigation cases I’ll
be taking over when he leaves in March.
Then he and I rode the train into downtown Sydney where we met over lunch
at a fancy restaurant with local counsel Philip Stevens and his partner
Angus. We also took a tour of their law
offices. I’ll be working with them quite
a bit on my Australia cases. That
evening Alisa and I and her group of over 20 met and drove down to the water front,
for a cruise around Sydney harbor. We sailed for about 2.5 hours which included
a buffet dinner. We got to view the
Opera House and the bridge across the harbor, along with the skyline. We started early enough that we got to see it
all as the sun was going down, and again on the return trip in the dark with the
skyline lit up. The evening cooled down
nicely such that we could sit on the back deck of the ship and feel the cool
breeze. We got back to our apartment a little later than we anticipated.
So I slept in Saturday morning. Alisa and her group attended the 7 a.m.
session at the temple, but I finally got up and attended the 10 a.m.
session. There were only about 8 total
in my session, a little disappointing for a Saturday morning. From there I hiked across the street to an indoor
mall to do some shopping. I bought a new
pair of church shoes, since I’ve worn holes in my other pair, got a haircut and
bought a bento lunch. I walked back to
the apartments and read until Alisa came back.
In the evening the entire group went out to a nice Italian restaurant
for a dinner of pizza and pasta.
Sunday morning we attended a local ward. Afterwards, Alisa, Thomas (their intern) and
I visited Koala Park, where we saw a koala, emus, many kinds of kangaroos and
wallabies, dingos, exotic birds and
more. Then we caught the evening flight
back to NZ.
Yesterday and today was Stake conference. In the morning we helped one of our YSA's Tatiana move. Then Alisa and I joined the YSA ward members in
providing the music for the Saturday evening session. Our group actually sounded pretty good. Then after the meeting we all went to Denny’s
where Bishop Dil treated everyone to dinner (his bribe to get the YSA’s to sing
in conference).
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