FINAL REPORT FROM NEW ZEALAND, HEADING HOME

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!

Another sheep picture

 

Ferry boat ride from Wellington, across Cook Strait, up Princess Charlotte Sound

 

Abel Tasman National Park

 

Overlooking the bay at Akaroa

 

Pancake rock (sandstone)

 

Punting on the River Avon, Christchurch

 

House of Chocolates with the Yamashitas

 

CHRISTCHURCH VISIT

Monday evening Sis. Gubler and I attended an ABBA tribute concert with a few other senior missionaries at the Bruce Mason convention center in Takapuna. Thursday evening we treated Kazuhiko and Tazuko Yamashita to dessert at House of Chocolate, and said our farewells.

 Friday morning we got up early and drove to the Auckland airport, to catch our 8 a.m. flight to Christchurch on the South Island. We attended the International Law and Religion seminar at The George hotel, which Alisa and the Communication dept. had helped plan. Then Alisa and I were free for the weekend. We drove 1 1/2 hours to Hamner Spings which was in the mountains, a very Swiss looking resort town. We checked into The Spa Lodge, and had just enough time to go for a swim across the street at the Hamner Springs resort. This place had around 20 pools, tubs and water slides, all using hot springs water. Then we walked to an Indian restaurant downtown for dinner, before we crashed after a long day.

 On Saturday we slept in some, listened to Pres. Russell Nelson’s address about the importance of gratitude, had an oatmeal breakfast (we brought our own oatmeal and the motel furnished the milk as always), then we went back to the resort, where we tried out the various water slides then soaked for a couple of hours. It was pleasant to ride the water slides with heated water! For lunch, I had a pizza and Alisa a salad at the little cafe on site. Then we hiked in some pretty woods nearby before driving back to Christchurch. There we checked into our bnb (Orari), a restored home from the 1890’s, located in the touristy downtown area. It was about 6:30 p.m. by then, so we walked around downtown but most places were closed.  We visited the Anglican Cathedral which is still undergoing repairs from the 2011 earthquake damage.  We found a nice food court that was open, and had Cambodian food for dinner.

 This morning we attended the Parklands ward for Sacrament meeting. We actually knew a couple of YSA’s that were attending there, and saw the NZ member who is the Olympic champion in women’s shot put the last few Olympics, who was also visiting. Then we visited the Catholic Basilica that was wrecked in the 2011 earthquake and which has yet to be rebuilt, “punted” down the River Avon through their botanical gardens, visited the Canterbury museum near Christ’s College, and rode the tram (electric trolley car) around town. All the wreckage from the 2011 earthquake has long ago been cleaned up, but many of the buildings have just disappeared or are holes in the ground or not yet restored, due to lack of money.  For instance, the Catholic Basilica has yet to be restored because of no finances; supposedly Rome has been approached about financing the repairs.  The multi story Holiday Inn is just a huge hole in the ground.  By now we had seen what we wanted to see, so we rescheduled our 7 p.m. flight to 4 p.m., and flew home early, in order to get a good start on our final work week coming right up!

 

Christchurch tram

 

Punting on the River Avon

 

Catholic Basilica ruins from 2011 Christchurch earthquake

 

Restoration of Anglican Cathedral from 2011 earthquake in Christchurch

 

Hamner Springs

 

ILRS Conference

 

ABBA Tribute Concert at Bruce Mason Center

 

THE LONG FAREWELL

This week began the long farewells.  Monday evening was our last FHE with the Senior missionaries.  It was Alisa’s and my turns to bear our testimonies and say goodbye along with the Walkers, McMurrays, and Burtons.  The Walkers and McMurrays flew out Thursday, and the Burtons will leave a couple weeks after us. The number of senior missionaries here will then severely dwindle due to no replacements coming. We met at the Area office building for the function, and ended up with heavy appetizers which counted as dinner and desert for us.

Tuesday we were back at pickleball after a couple of weeks layoff.  The people there seemed genuinely happy to see us, thinking we had gone home without saying good-by.  Wednesday evening was the farewell dinner for the McMurrays at Al Forno’s Italian restaurant.  Friday evening a young YSA couple treated us to a picnic at a little park, Hilders Park in BeachHaven on the beach, Matt Krull and Maddy Pederson.  We had had them over for dinner previously. 

Saturday morning we had beautiful sunny weather.  I enjoyed my 10 mile bike ride.  Then I spent a few hours at the office finishing up my final review and update of each of my files on InfoGuide, and transferring my files to the remaining attorneys.  My last 2 weeks will be spent training and wrapping things up.  Saturday afternoon we attended a luncheon for the International Law and Religion Symposium (ILRS).  And in the evening we were invited for dessert with Mike and Trisha Fox at their home. I presented them with a Book of Mormon and Meet the Mormons video.  We enjoyed spending a couple of hours with them.  Mike is one of our pickleball buddies. 

Today I teach our last Temple Preparation class, combining the last 2 lessons since we have run out of Sundays.  Then we have 3 YSA’s coming over for our last YSA Sunday dinner.   As I said, things are winding down.  I paid the last installment on my electric fat bike, and we started the process of getting our cars registered and getting insurance.  There’s a lot still to do to get ready for our return to Covid 19 stricken America.

Farewell FHE

 

Mike and Trisha Fox

 

Hilders Park with Maddy and Matt