Abandoned vehicles!

Raglan fun

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.

Scenes from this morning's hike: Takapuna Beach and Rangitoto Island

THE ONLY SURE THING IS DEATH AND TAXES--NOT ANY MORE!

More of the same this week.  Lots of work at the office.  People are getting outside more and traffic is picking up as they are feeling more confident now that we are at level 3 in the Covid 19 restrictions.  I see a lot more joggers, walkers and bike riders as people are looking for any excuse to get outdoors.  As my jogging becomes more regular I’m finding that it is becoming much easier for me to do and my stamina is increasing.  I’m even toning up a little more as I’m trying to not take as many seconds at dinner time.

On Saturday morning I got up early and went on a 5 mile bike ride through Milford and around Pupuke lake.  Then Alisa and I drove over some dirt roads to Waitakere Ranges Regional Park and Whatipu.  We explored the caves there and the black sand beach.  We also visited Huia and Don McClean lookout points where we saw some beautiful vistas of the ocean and nearby islets/motus.  We arrived back home around 3 p.m.  For an early Mother’s Day gift I treated us to take out dinner from Steamheads restaurant, some pasta dishes.  Today for Mother’s Day dinner I found a recipe called Herbed French Toast with Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraich  which I’m going to try.

In the evenings this week Alisa and I worked on putting together a power point FHE presentation for tomorrow night.  I will be doing the lesson entitled “Using our Talents and Gifts, and Second Chances!”, then Mom will be playing a get to know you game and Scattergories! which we will do with our Seniors group over Zoom.

The real big news this week was that the Appellate Dept. of NZ finally issued on Wednesday its ruling on my ward missionary fund tax case, which I was in Wellington on on March 17.  The 3 judge panel unanimously reversed the Feb. 2019 High Court ruling, now ruling that all monies donated to the Church’s missionary fund by anyone qualify for a 33% tax credit!  The NZ version of the IRS has disallowed all such credits since 2015.  The High Court ruling was handed down before I arrived in the mission field, and held that missionary fund donations by the missionary, parents and grandparents were not subject to the credit because the missionary received a benefit (the mission experience) and thus it wasn’t a true gift.  The High Court also strangely ruled that siblings, aunts and uncles, and anyone else could claim the tax benefit, in essence splitting the baby.  The Appellate Dept. ruled that there was no direct benefit to the payor, regardless of who that was, and thus that it was a gift and qualified.  This is especially good news in that Church members in NZ can now go back to 2015 and claim the credit for each year that they donated to the missionary fund, and good news is a little scarce to come by since Covid 19.  The Commissioner now has 20 days to appeal, which I think she might not do since the Crown’s counsel got beat up by the judges at the March hearing.  We’ll let the general Church population here in NZ know about the ruling once we find out if there will be another appeal.  I’ve shepherded the appeal through local counsel since I got here.  As best I can tell, this may be the reason I was called to NZ on this mission!

Beach views with black sand at Waitakere Ranges Regional Park

Pampas grass vista