Well, we are here. After a long flight (LA to Auckland=13hrs.), we arrived in Auckland a little over a week ago. At the mission home there, we visited with the office missionaries (seniors and Elders [ no, that is not being redundant]).
They assigned us a new car and the next day we experienced driving on the left side of the road. Sister Buchanan did a fine job of the driving the first day, though was definitely hassled by the time we arrived after the 2+ hour drive to Dargaville.
Our flat was one formerly used by the younger missionaries for a number of years and showed the experience. We got all set up and going.
We struggled with jet lag for a while, but participated in Zone Conference/Mission Tour. Elder Meurs and his wife were visiting. We enjoyed a wonderful conference and got acquainted with the many missionaries here in the Northland.
On Sunday, we went to the church, but instead of the normal meetings, we viewed the broadcast of our stake conference. The Stake Center building in Whangarei is under construction, so they met in a different building and broadcast the conference to other church buildings. The picture at the top is our church building in Dargaville. The people are wonderful. It is a small branch. We connected quickly with some of the members and felt the spirit of them. The stake conference included a number of returned missionaries and a short message from each of them.
We had a visit from a member couple who live close to our flat, the Wilsons. They are great people who have done a lot of service in their lifetime. They invited us to their place for dinner last night.
Yesterday, we made a visit to a woman in a local nursing home. Her brother visited our branch last Sunday and asked us to pay her a visit. She is not a member of our church. We had a wonderful visit with her and see a wonderful spirit in her. It also happened to be her birthday (which we did not know) and she appreciated our visit. We will return.
Today, we had a nice visit with a family who had been visited by missionaries in the past. They have two beautiful young boys and seek answers. We had a nice visit with them and left with a prayer and came away with some fresh Swiss chard from their yard.
Following this, we took a trip to Bayly's Beach and our first view of the Tasman Sea and ocean. Below are pictures from that trip. We only live 15 minutes away and this is our first time there.
This is a view towards Dargaville from the west.
Along the road there are often hills, woods and cows.
This shows Sister Buchanan and our car from the beach, looking inland.
They tell us that this is the longest driveable beach in all of New Zealand, above is the view north, below the view south. From here to the Puoto Point at the bottom of the peninsula (south) is about 50 miles, all beach like this. It also extends north quite a ways, just like this.
... a jelly creature in the sand
Sister Buchanan looking out at the sea, taking a picture.
And to close, a funny little story about our learning how to be "Kiwis." We struggled to get the stove/oven to work. The hotplates work fine on the top, but no matter how we tried, we could not get the oven to turn on.
We called the office and they finally said they would contact the landlord to get someone to service the oven. When the Wilsons visited, she said that the timer had to be set to "manual," and it should show a little hand. We tried the timer and turned the clock a lot and could make no progress. Then this morning, I tried again and pulled the little clock time knob a bit while turning and it changed to show times and a bell and finally a little red hand.
The little red area on the left side is now showing a little hand (sorry you cannot see the detail - take my word for it). The oven is now available for us to use. It only took us a week to get that solved.
The Lord is good! We love being in His service here. We pray for our family back home. They have their challenges and know they are in the Lord's hands. Here we know we can be led by Him to bless the lives of the good people here!