Let’s Dance

Well we thought that you all might enjoy the rest of the dances from our Cultural Night. We already showed you our Hula but there were several others that we just received the videos for. So here they are!

Niue Dance

Kiribati Dance

Tongan Dance

Another Tongan Dance. Notice the ladies walking through the Tongan Dances, they are putting $5 bills in the dancers clothes. I guess that is a tradition in Tonga.

Indian Dance. I love it when the little children and the teenagers participate. We have taught the primary class for most of these young men in this dance.

Tahiti Dance

Samoan Dance

Another Samoan Dance. This young man is also in the Primary class we often teach.

Cook Island dance. Aren’t those little girls cute. They are twins.

Another Cook Island Dance. Understand that we have people from almost all of these islands in our Ward. However most of the people in these dances were not from the Islands they were representing.

This last Friday we had the anniversary of the Relief Society. So they had a 60’s dance to celebrate. Somehow we were asked to do the waltz? I am not sure what the waltz has to do with the 60’s but here we are with our Ward Mission Leader and his wife. We taught them to waltz and they did a wonderful job. We weren’t as flamboyant as some of the other couples but most of them really didn’t do the waltz.

They also had some Young Adults do kind of a hip hop dance. The couple dancing are from our Ward.

Here we are with the Tavaga’s. He is our Ward Mission Leader.

Here we are with the Mohetau’s, some of our friends from the Ward

This is a bunch from our Ward including the other two couples, the Tapatuetoa’s, and Sister Samau, the Bishop’s wife.

Spring is really hitting New Zealand and we don’t have to go far to see the flowers. These are all in our neighbors yard.

We are really worrying that our Mission is drawing to an end. We have another transfer this week and only two more after that. We are happy to note that our replacements have already been called. We love you and miss you all.

Love Elder and Sister Bartlett

Which Island are We From?

I told you last post that I found the Sammie bar. This time I actually tried one. Not so good.

We just finished our last Zone Conference and here are a few pictures including selfies that we took with some of the Sister Missionaries.

These are some of the wonderful Relief Society Sisters and their husbands that prepared a wonderful luncheon for the Missionaries in Kaikohe.

This is the whole Northland Zone with some of the Senior Missionaries. We have two couples serving in the Northland Zone.

We spent part of our preparation day with Elder and Sister Briggs and visited the Hawick historic village. Not much to do with Maori but mostly with the early English settlement of New Zealand.

This is a sod brick house which was one of the early forms of building in New Zealand for the “Fencibles” and their families. Fencibles were usually former retired military who were given 1 acre of land and a small salary to come help defend new settlements against attack.

At least the sod brick house was better than this house build of plants lashed together and palm branches as a roof. These leaked a lot and didn’t keep out any wind. We think we are cold now because of no insulation in the homes, just think how cold and wet they were in the winter.

At least they had some modern conveniences such as this treadle sewing machine.

The officers of course were given better accommodations such as these below and right.

They also had none of the modern transportation. Usually they walked or ran. They even paid a Maori messenger to run mail and messages to other settlements.

They do have some beautiful flowers planted around the homes. Yes everyone I it is almost spring here and flowers are blooming. Of course here flowers bloom all winter long.

Now I want to invite you to our Missionary Cultural Night we had on Friday Night in the Otahuhu Ward. Every member was assigned to study the culture on one of the pacific islands and India. Each group was to come up with food from their culture and to play the national anthem and do a performance.

Our Ward Mission leader and his wife were up most of the night decorating the cultural hall for the event.

We were assigned to the Hawaiian group and this was our table and decorations. We also had our friend from India come.

This was the booth from Tonga.

This is the group from New Zealand Maori. All of them I believe are actually partly or wholly Maori.

The group on the left represented Fiji.

The group on the right represented India.

The group on the left represents the island of Niue. Some of them were actually born there.

The group on the right of course represents the island of Samoa.

The group on the left represents Cook Islands.

The group on the right represents the island of Kiribati.

You might have to look up some of these islands to even know where they are.

The Missionaries from our Ward and another were there since it was a Missionary activity.

The two pictures to the right are performance put on during the program. They were great especially when some of the young children and teenagers were involved. The picture on the left is some of the women and children who wanted a photo. While we were cleaning up the music continued to play really loud and some of the ladies continued to dance to the right while one of the children just couldn’t take any more and fell asleep right in the middle of the floor with balloons in hand.

Below is our performance just click on it and you will see us dancing the Hula.

We have had such a great time here. Sometimes we have some unhappy situations, such as when Missionaries call and say their bikes were stolen because they didn’t lock them up. Luckily two other Missionaries had taken them. All is well. We are already getting ready for our next transfer in September. We can’t believe we only have three transfers left. We love the work and we also love each of you.

Love Elder and Sister Bartlett