New Zealand Wellington Mission Blog SEP & OCT 2020
New Zealand Wellington Mission Blog
Kia Ora to our friends and family. YouTube Video about the Meaning of Kia Ora . Please Click to follow the hyperlink to see and hear what that means (2.5 minutes). We do mean it when we say Kia Ora. We do love and appreciate you, our family, and our friends.
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| Elder & Sister Hurdman at the Tawa Chapel where we go to church |
We hope that you are doing well through this COVID-19 Pandemic. We do follow what is happening in Canada and the USA and you are in our thoughts and prayers. We also feel so blessed that we were able to come and serve our Mission here in New Zealand and for all the experiences that we have enjoyed as we serve our Lord and Saviour here among the Maoris, Samoans, Tahitians, Tongans, I-Kiribati, Fijians, Filipinos and Pakehas (New Zealander of European descent). This is a land of many cultures and languages. Even the English is a New Zealand English, and we are loving it.
Here in this Blog post we will give you a bit of an update on some of our experiences since we last posted to our Blog. As we share this with you, we hope that you get a sense of the magnitude of Joy that we feel as we serve. This truly is a great blessing in our lives, to be able to serve the Lord as a full time Senior Missionary Couple.
At the beginning of September, we had an InTake and OutTake day. That is the day when new missionaries come into the mission; missionaries that have competed their missions go home; and some other missionaries are transferred from one area to another. We have these days once every 6 weeks, so it is a regular experience, and we repeat all the work that goes along with this each time. The InTake/OutTake accommodates these arrivals and departures and it also gives the Mission President and his Assistants opportunity to receive revelation for which missionaries need to be moved for experiences that they need to have. The Lord definitely has His hand in these decisions.
This day is a very exciting one for us in the office because we receive the new missionaries and get them oriented and then send them off to their first area of service. It also takes a lot of preparation to get ready for this day. Sister Hurdman organizes and books the mission travel for all these missionaries and she also prepares intake and outtake packets for each of the missionaries that are coming in or going out. We also prepare a lunch for all the intake and outtake missionaries. This is a very intense few days, but Kathy does a great job of it and I can see how she has really blossomed as she serves in this capacity. It is interesting how the Lord blesses us with capacity that we did not know that we would have as he magnifies our service to Him.
On September 1, we had nine new missionaries come into the mission. Four of them had been serving in Kiribati (pronounced Kitabis) and they had been in isolation in a Wellington Hotel for the two weeks prior to coming to our mission. When they left Kiribati, they were able to take very little with them, so they arrived wearing sandals and a Lavalava (Samoan wrap). After they arrived, Sister Thomson took them shopping and got each of the three Elders a suit, coat, and shoes. She also took the Sister shopping after the intake that day. These missionaries are so brave and just go wherever they’re assigned – and when they’re reassigned, they go there too. They are wonderful young men and women!
One of the things that we really appreciate about being on our mission are all the little tender mercies of the Lord as we watch His hand in our lives. It is a fairly regular occurrence that we will be doing something and then have something come to mind of something that we need to do for a specific missionary to make sure that they have their passport renewed on time or a visa issue taken care of etc. It is really neat to see the work of the Lord moving forward and to recognize that He is in command of His work.
We should also point out what our general schedule is. Kathy usually gets up just before 5:00 AM and Fred gets up a little earlier. That way we are able to have our breakfast, get ready for the day and be out the door just before 6:00 AM. When we leave at that time of day it only takes us around 20 minutes to get into the mission office. When we first get into the office, we take the opportunity to either study a conference talk or scriptures or both to start our day off on a spiritual level. We find that it really helps if we are more in tune with the Lord as we prepare ourselves that way.
Just to give perspective on the timing of us leaving to go into the office, the other mission couple that serves in the office lives close to the same place as we do and they usually leave a little bit closer to 7:30 AM and it usually takes them at least 50 minutes to 90 minutes to get into the office. We prefer to go earlier so that we’re not stuck in traffic for a long time and then we usually leave between 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM. That way we miss all the rush-hour traffic at the end of the day as well. Sometimes we are tired by the end of the week and you will find us taking a little nap here or there.
We try most days to also go for a walk after we get home from the mission office. We usually walk for around 40 minutes to an hour. We have some little walks that we go on from our flat and other times we will drive a little distance and go for a longer walk out in the woods and nature preserve. The walks from our flat are often times up to the grocery store so that we can get some fresh fruits and vegetables or other perishables. It’s really neat because it gives us the opportunity to get the blood flowing, get some exercise and also have a neat opportunity to talk with each other. We also get to enjoy the beauty of our surrounding areas, of which there are many.
Here are a few pictures of some of the beautiful sights that we see as we walk:
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| These trees are very different from anything we have seen before |
Another thing that we really appreciate, and that we can do fairly regularly, is to either use FaceTime or Facebook messenger to have video conversations with our family. In New Zealand we range from being 4 hours to 6 hours behind Alberta time, but we are the Next day (in other words, Alberta is 18 to 20 hours behind NZ time depending on who is on Daylight Savings Time and who is not). Because of the time difference then we have to make those calls as soon as we get home or on the weekends when it’s easy to connect. Sometimes we even connect from the office, especially, if it’s time to have a conversation with one of our grandchildren and sing them happy birthday.
And one other thing that we appreciate is having our magicJack phone here in New Zealand. It allows us to have our Alberta home phone number here in New Zealand and we can use it to call anywhere in Canada or the USA for free. MagicJack is a VoIP service that we purchased a few years ago before serving our first mission in 2017. Fred also uses this phone line quite a bit to talk with Salt Lake when he’s dealing with different mission issues or to call Bank of America with regards to different bank card issues for the missionaries. It’s really nice to be able to call from wherever we are as long as we have the Internet. It works really well for us.
Another great experience that we had was on September 11, 2020 when we had a country wide mission ZOOM conference with Elder Garry E. Stevenson of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. This was a great experience where our mission gathered in 3 separate groups plus some of our missionaries participated from their flats on their phones. We received some great counsel about how we deal with issues like this pandemic and how it can be a blessing in our lives if we approach it the right way.
Even though we have been very busy in the office we have had the opportunity to explore some of the beauties here in New Zealand. On September 12, on our preparation day, we decided to visit a place on the south coast of Wellington called Red Rocks. The night before, we had looked at the map to see where it was and how to get there. When we started the trip, we put it into Google Maps and followed it to a wind turbine which was up a skinny little winding road going up a lot of elevation and Kathy was very nervous all the way up.
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| Skinny two lane road up to the wind turbine |
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| Vista from the top by the Windmill |
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| Elder & Sister Hurdman by the Windmill |
We then plugged Owhiro Bay into the Garmin because we knew that the Red Rocks Visitors Centre was just around the corner from Owhiro Bay. This time we found it with ease.
The visitor centre was at the trail head and then we walked all the way down to where the Red Rocks are and continued to where the seal colony was. It was so much fun to watch the seals. At first, they kind of blended in with the rocks and were hard to see, but once we started picking them out, we saw heaps of them! (Heaps is the New Zealand word for lots so we thought we should use it.) Most of them were laying in the sun but we did see two of them have a fight over some territory. The seals looked like they were enjoying their day.
We also hiked to Devil’s Gate which is a hole through some rocks that 4-wheel drive vehicles sometimes try to go through and over. We did see some do it but it’s very precarious for them.
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| Devil's Gate |
There were also beautiful vistas to be seen as we walked along the ocean. There were mountains on the South Island, crashing waves on the rocks, and tons of different rock formation. It’s a very rugged coastline but there was a very nice walking trail and 4-wheel drive trail. It was definitely not a trail that any non 4-wheel drive vehicle could go down. It was a beautiful hike!
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| Mountain on South Island seen from Red Rocks |
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| Red Rocks Shoreline |
One of our wonderful senior couples went home in the month of September. Elder & Sister Brown, who worked in the office before us and trained us when we first got here, left on September 25 to go back to their home in Arizona. We were very sad to see them go. We had a nice dinner for them on the Wednesday before they left. All the senior couples in the Wellington area met at the Mission home to say farewell to them. We even had some very yummy seafood chowder because that was one of their favorites.
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| Elder & Sister Brown eating Pavlova at farewell dinner |
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| Elder & Sister Hurdman saying goodbye to Elder & Sister Brown |
We had another InTake/OutTake day on October 13th and welcomed 8 new missionaries into the mission. Surprisingly, we were able to welcome one Sister from The United States who was able to join us (a little later than the others) after a 2-week quarantine. We didn’t think that she was going to be able to come over but she had New Zealand citizenship because her mom is a Kiwi and so she was able to fly over as a repatriated New Zealander. It was very exciting. We also had 5 missionaries who went home that day.
On another one of our P-Days, Saturday, October 24, we decided to drive to the Cape Palliser Lighthouse. It is one of the places that we have wanted to visit on the North Island. We heard that it was really beautiful there and that there were beautiful views of the ocean from the lighthouse. It was a beautiful clear sunny day and fairly warm as well. Because we left so early there were hardly any cars on the road and it was easy to get out there. We drove through the Remutaka Mountain Range which are some large very forested hills that were very beautiful.
When we drove out of the hills, we drove into some farmland where there were lots of sheep and cattle. We stopped along the way and took some photos of different beauties that we saw and Kathy got some great pictures of some sheep up close. The Remutaka Mountains were in the background and that was very beautiful as well.
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| The Gorge through the Remutaka Mountains |
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| Farmland with Remutaka Mountains in background |
After driving through the farmland for a while, we saw the ocean to the right of us. The colours were so beautiful that day. They ranged from aquamarine to a deep, deep blue and we could see the mountains of the South Island in the distance as well. There were some places on the road that had washed away a little bit and it was pretty skinny but there wasn’t much traffic, and it was a good drive.
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| Sister Hurdman with beautiful ocean |
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| Elder Hurdman with Ocean and South Island Mountains in background |
When we got to the lighthouse, we parked the car and climbed the approximately 250 stairs up the side of the hill to get to the bottom of the lighthouse. The views from up there were spectacular! We could see right out into the ocean and there were some fishing boats out there and it was just so pretty. After taking lots of pictures at the top, and enjoying all the views, we climbed back down the stairs and spent a little bit of time across the road on the beach. It was such a beautiful day and we enjoyed watching the ocean and the waves coming in. There’s something about the ocean that we never tire of. Perhaps it’s because it’s so different from the prairies of Alberta.
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| Elder Hurdman at bottom of 250 stairs |
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| View of Ocean and South Island from top by Lighthouse |
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| Sister Hurdman on Beach with Lighthouse in Background |
We have found that some of the holidays that we celebrate in Canada are different here in New Zealand. They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving at all. We thought we might have a special little dinner anyway but found that turkeys are super expensive here (over $100 for a small turkey). We discovered that we could celebrate just as well with some pork chops and mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy!
Hallowe’en isn’t as big a holiday here as it is in North America, but it is celebrated to varying degrees. About 4:30 PM on Hallowe’en, we decided to go out for a walk and see if there were many decorations up in the neighborhood. There is a family in our Ward, Mike and Avril, that live on our walking route and they told us they were really going to decorate for Hallowe’en. We wanted to see their house and their decorations, and we weren’t disappointed! They were all dressed up including the kids, the parents, and the grandma! And they had tons of decorations around their house – blow up and other decorations. They really get into Hallowe’en! We didn’t see very many other decorated houses though. And we did see some kids out trick-or-treating even at that early hour.
One of the highlights in October (which comes every year) is the opportunity to watch the General Conference of the Church. We enjoy being able to listen to our prophet, President Nelson, and the other apostles and church leaders. Many of this year’s talks were centered on how to deal with trials and challenges and how to find comfort in our Saviour, Jesus Christ. If you would like to listen to or read any of the talks, you can follow this link:
And finally, as Christmas time is here upon us, we want to share with you a link to one of the most beautiful depictions of the Nativity (18 minutes) that we have ever seen. We hope that you find peace and joy as you watch it. Here is the link:
We do wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. This will be a different Christmas, but we trust that we will all find ways to connect with our families and loved ones. Thank Heaven for the modern technology that allows us to be far away and yet connect with each other at the same time.
May the Lord bless you and your families. We hope that you feel of His love during these difficult times. We send our love - please know that you are in our thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Elder Fred Hurdman
Sister Kathy Hurdman
