New Zealand Hamilton Mission

We traveled to South Auckland on Wednesday to tour two homes that were possible apartments (flats) to lease for four sister missionaries.  We need to turn over their present apartment, as the owners are moving back in.  Usually, the property manager lets us know within a week whether we get the space.  But this time our job was made much easier because the property manager let us know that we were chosen right on the spot.  Their company has other properties that are leased to the Church, so she was happy to let us have the house.  This house has an amazing view from the ceiling to floor windows in the lounge.  The bay and reserve provide a nice backdrop.  We canceled the tour of the other home, took eight missionaries out to lunch and visited with them, and arrived back in time to the office to work several hours there.  We were very grateful that our lives were made easier by getting this house right away.  Good rentals are hard to find in ...

Well, after several weeks of hard work and using at least part of our P-days playing catch up, we again had a little chance for relaxation and exploration.  On Thursday, we took a business trip and added some pleasure to it.  We traveled to Nuhaka, a very rural town 5 1/5 hours from the mission office in the most Southeastern part of the mission.  We have a missionary flat there that was recently sold so we needed to remove all of our furnishings and do a thorough cleaning before tuning it back over to the owners. We left at 7 am and our office elders followed us down driving the mission bus and trailer.  We visited 2 companionships along the way to drop off stuff they needed.  We also took a few minutes to allow the office elders to see Huka Falls, which is the origin of the Waikato river, the longest and largest river in the North Island.  It starts at Lake Taupo in the middle of the country and flows northward through Hamilton and eventually empties in...