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