It 's December 6, 2020. We’re finally on the plane, winging it back to America. I'm writing this note on the plane. We are traveling in premium economy, which is a nice upgrade paid for by the OGC. We had an excellent salmon dinner, and we actually have extra leg room and seat width, I could get used to this type of travel! Auckland international air terminal was empty when we embarked, most stores closed due to closed borders and lack of international travelers. Completely different than last December (pre-Covid 19) when we were flying to Rarotonga and the international terminal was thriving.
The last 2 weeks have flown by. Besides trying to wrap up as many cases as I could, I was training Elder Reynolds to replace me. I transferred about 45 InfoGuide files to him, not counting a number of IManage files to him, and realized I’d finished and closed around 55 files in the last 18 months. Frankly, I’m a little burned out on the legal work, and am ready for retirement (again). I also cleaned out our office.
In addition to wrapping up work, it
seemed like everyone was inviting us over for a final dinner and good
bye. We were asked to speak at the devotional, to 2 or 3
farewells, and at Church. At Pickleball, Alisa took a plate of cookies and we
said our goodbyes there to our non-member friends. Afterwards, I sent an email out to all
the players thanking them for their friendships, and inviting them to come to
our farewell at last week’s Sacrament meeting. One actually came, Mike Fox, who along
with his wife Trish, have seemed to take a liking to us (I’d given them a Book
of Mormon a couple of weeks earlier, one of 3 that Sis. Gubler and I handed out
on our mission). In the Sacrament meeting Alisa spoke about gifts we can give
Christ for Christmas and played a piano solo. I was the concluding
speaker. Trying to be a little original, I imagined what advice
63 year old returned missionary Elder Gubler would give to 21 year old returned
missionary Elder Gubler. It was my way of giving advice to the young single
adults in the ward, but in a humorous way. They seemed to enjoy it. After the block meetings, the YSA ward
held a linger longer, and surprised us by giving us special Maori necklaces as
parting gifts.
We did most of our packing and cleaning
last weekend. I also turned in our bikes at the mission
office. Tuesday was our last day on the mission. I was happy to be done with all the
farewells, it was really almost too much. However, instead of flying home on
Tuesday, we extended for a few days to visit the South Island. We first flew to Wellington, then took
the ferry across the Cook Strait, then up the Queen Charlotte sound to
Picton. The open water was quite violent, and I must admit
that I was wise not to eat much before traveling for I would have lost it
all! To show how rough the seas were, the evening before,
we were told that it took the ferry 3 times to get from the strait into the
sound! We picked up our rental car in Picton, then drove
around the north half of the South Island for the rest of the week. We spent all day on Wednesday in Abel
Tasman National Park. We hired a boat that took us the full length of the
park via the ocean, then we were dropped off and hiked about 13 kilometers in
the woods just above the shore line, before the boat picked us up again 4 hours
later to take us back to the starting point. We finished around 4:30 pm, then drove
on for a couple of hours to a small town named Murchison. There we found a hostel to spend the
night, the only place in town to stay. It was a happening place, a lot of
mountain biker and hiker types, and there was even a little pizza place the
same owners ran next door, which served up good pizza! Thursday we drove on, stopping to walk
across the longest expansion bridge in NZ, and to visit the Pancake Rocks to
see the strange sandstone rock formations and the ocean at high tide, crashing
through them. Stayed that night in Archers Pass which is in another
national park. We traveled the TranzAlpine road. We drove on on Saturday to Sheffield
where we sampled the Sheffield meat pies, famous throughout NZ, then on to
Akaroa, a touristy town on the east coast with a French theme due to early
settlers from France there. We hired a tour guide to take us to see
the nesting grounds for the blue penguins there. Spent Saturday night in Christchurch
near the airport, so we could catch our 6 a.m. flight this Sunday morning to
Auckland. We finished packing and cleaning the apartment, went
to Sacrament meeting a final time at our YSA ward to say a final goodbye to our
young friends there, ate dinner at the Tanners, and caught this 9:30 p.m.
flight home. It will take us about 29 hours in total to reach Los
Angeles, get a connecting flight to Las Vegas, then catch the shuttle from
there to our doorstep in St. George.
Even though we are leaving a beautiful
NZ island nation without Covid 19 and returning to a Covid 19 ravaged USA, it
will be good to be back home with family and friends again. God bless the USA!
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