We had a great time with Pauline and Dave Marble, Sister Bartlett’s sister and brother-in-law. They will probably be the last visitors we'll have from the US before we return home. We of course had to get a picture of the Middle Earth statue at the airport. Our first stop was Hobbiton and we had the same guide we had last time we visited.
We next visited Rotorua. The picture is in a park with geothermal lake and the video is of a geyser that popped up under someone’s fence and is right next to the sidewalk. Makes a loud noise.
We did attend a different cultural event this time we went to the Te Puia geyser field and watched the Te Po cultural night.
Our next stop was Waitomo Glow worm caves. Of course they will not let us take pictures in the glow worm cave so I took this in the Ruakuri cave which is sister cave of the glow worm cave. This is the man made spiral ramp to get into the cave.
This is an example of some of the stalactites in the cave. It was pretty awesome and we have not been in this cave before. Not too many glow worms in this cave.
We also took them to see the Gannet bird colony near Muriwai Beach. Dave and I braved going out on a large shelf of rock. Shortly after this picture Dave was splashed by incoming waves.
We can’t let anyone who comes to New Zealand leave without collecting shells at our favorite Red Beach. We all had fun and they went home with heaps of shells.
We also visited Maritime Museum and stowed away on a sailing ship. They made Elder Bartlett work for his passage by helping to hoist the sails.
Elder Bartlett and Dave were not worth their weight so they were asked to walk the gangplank. Look ma no hands!
We also took them to Hunua Falls. They have these lovely picture frames at different locations. Pretty cool. We did finally have to say goodby to Pauline and Dave. We will see them in a couple of months.
While they were here we did have Zone Conferences we had to attend and do presentations. We will miss our dear friends and Senior Missionary couple the Stosich’s who leave this week. They have been so faithful in fulfilling their callings in the Mission Office.
We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get another picture with Elder Decker (Elder Bartlett’s second cousin twice removed).
We will not even attempt to explain the following pictures of Missionaries at Zone Conference. Needless to say they all love selfies.
We love seeing all of these Missionaries, we get to see them at least every 6 weeks and most of them are friends on Facebook now that they have technology.
We named this one Happy Birthday Sister Bartlett because this last Saturday was her birthday. She wanted pumpkin pie for her birthday, so Elder Bartlett made it for her. We were able to have dinner with our neighbors on Friday night and they shared some of their New Zealand venison with us so we shared pumpkin pie with them. First time they had tasted that. So Sister Bartlett did have a Happy Birthday! They don’t do Thanksgiving here but we did have some turkey leftover from our Family Home Evening with the other Senior Couples. All in all it has been a quiet holiday except for broken bikes and sick Missionaries. We bid you all farewell for this session.
Love Elder and Sister Bartlett
