SOME POSITIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE COVID 19 RESTRICTIONS

Just arrived home from a pleasant early Sunday morning 3 mile hike, including along the Takapuna beach and downtown area.  A beautiful, crisp sunny day. Saw many people out for strolls and bike rides.  Not a lot of news this past week.  Kept more than busy at the office, cleaning up a real estate transaction mess by our local counsel in Kiribati (who I will never use again) and getting close to resolving a multi-year property dispute where one of our church buildings in Samoa has encroached upon a neighboring parcel by buying the ½ acre infringed upon.  Alisa and I got our annual flu shots (remember it’s late fall going into winter here), and I worked another Saturday to get caught up.  Alisa and I were in charge of the FHE for the remaining senior couples via Zoom Monday evening.  I put together a power point where I taught a brief lesson on “Using our Talents and Gifts, and Second Chances”, then Alisa led a get to know you game and then Scattergories.  I believe it was well received.  The government announced we were dropping to level 2 under the Covid 19 restrictions beginning on Thursday.  0 deaths and basically no new cases in the last week.  So Thursday I walked downtown to get my first haircut in over 2 months since the barber shops were open again.  There were lines of gentlemen who had the same idea I did, but I didn’t have to wait too long for a cut.  It was strange seeing people around the downtown area again.  Saturday morning I went with a group of senior missionaries to play pickleball at a local elementary school, we brought our own net and chalked our own lines.  I played pretty good after our lay-off, the regular indoor courts are not open yet.  Then I went on a 5 mile bike ride around Lake Pupuke, and through Milford.

As I was walking this morning, I reflected on some of the positives to come out of the Covid 19 lockdown since early March.

1.       I got out to exercise more regularly, jogging and biking, as an escape from being cooped up in the apartment.  As a result I’ve knocked off my extra gut I’ve been working on in my sedimentary lifestyle.

2.       We’ve saved money on laundry not having to pay to have my white shirts laundered and pressed on a regular basis.  In fact, I roll out of bed in the mornings, throw on some casual clothes and am at the office (one floor down) in a matter of minutes.

3.       We saved a ton of money otherwise.  I believe we’ve only put 1 tank of gas in our car since early March, due to no travel allowed.  Other than groceries and basic rental and utilities expenses,   not much else to spend money on.

4.       Learned how to chat remotely on Zoom and Teams.

5.       Read 4 or 5 books, which I don’t normally do.

6.       Spent more time with my missionary companion.

Now that we are free again to travel between regions here in New Zealand, and since we still don’t have regular Church meetings to attend on Sundays, Alisa and I spent a couple of evenings this week planning excursions to see new sights.  For next weekend we’ve rented a bnb in Raglan, which is a little resort beach town a couple of hours south of here.  Then a couple of weeks after that we’ve purchased inexpensive plane tickets to fly to Queenstown, which is a winter resort town near the southern tip of the south island.  We got to know a missionary couple whom we roll played with as less actives at the NZ MTC back in February, who were called to be the branch president of the branch in Queenstown, and they invited us down to stay with them and do a little touring over a 4 day weekend.