Since our last post on the blog we have had a couple of eventful weeks, filled with new experiences. Last weekend we took a trip down to an area of the island called Taranaki, which is about 4 hours drive from Hamilton. It is a large peninsula that juts out of the island on the western side. At the center is a spectacular stratovolcano called Mount Egmont or in Maori, Mt Taranaki meaning "shining peak". More on that in a moment. The objective of our trip was to clean and prepare a flat in New Plymouth for closing. About a month age we received instructions from the area office to begin systematically closing down flats we likely will not use for a while. With the reduction of our missionary force and doubts it will change anytime soon, I have identified around 12 flats to close including this one.
Sister Folland and I were accompanied by Elder and Sister Clayton, our office buddies and Sister Epperson, a single senior sister who works in the family history office. Since we have our P-day on Saturdays, we worked it out that we would work hard a couple of days to get the flat cleaned and ready for our office elders to come down and load up the mission furnishings and take it back to Hamilton.(Notice how we smartly had the youngsters do the heavy lifting.) We would then have the weekend to see what the area had to offer.
Everything was going according to plan. We arrived Thursday and got to work cleaning. We were able to get everything ready for the elders by mid-day Friday. The office elders were to drive the mission bus and trailer down Friday to load up. Since we were done with our part and the elders had not arrived yet, we headed off to explore Three Sisters Beach about 1 hour North. On the way we got a call from the elders saying they had arrived. I told them to go ahead and start loading up and then get on their way back to Hamilton to which they asked "You want us to load all of that stuff in the car? You brought down the bus, right????????" Serious miscommunication here. We drove down in a mission van with no room for anything. I thought we were clear on the instructions, but maybe not. Anyway, I sent them back home to get the bus and trailer then they got right back Saturday and got the job done, thank goodness!
Saturday was a special day. We attended a baptism that occured in the Manaia Branch, a small congregation that is located on the South side of Taranaki. This was the first convert baptism in several years there. His name is Dennis Rapana a wonderful man whose wife and children have been members for several years. This baptism was unique in a few ways. It occured in the ocean and his children participated in the service by Zoom from Australia. It was all very cool!!!
Back to Mount Taranaki. It is a 8200 foot volcano that looks very similar to the more famous Mount Fuji in Japan. As I mentioned, the Moari name means "Shining Peak" and we found out why. We were so hoping to see the mountain during our visit but the locals warned us that it is notorious for being bashful, meaning it is usually shrouded in clouds and it had been such since Thursday. On Sunday we awoke to the same clouds hiding the peak. It wasn't looking good to see the mount since we were leaving to go home soon and this was likely the only time Sister Folland and I would be in Taranaki. As I was writing in my journal in the kitchen of our AirBnB, I looked up and the clouds seemed to be parting and there she was glistening in the bright morning sunlight, truly a "Shining Peak". Absolutly stunning! I couldn't keep my eyes off the sight. Truly a tender mercy from the Lord. I feel it was a small sign He was pleased with the work we had done there.
When we returned from Taranaki on Sunday we learned we would be receiving 4 additional missionaries we were not planning on for transfers, that would be occuring the following Wednesday. On Monday came more unexpected news- 2 of our Philippino missionaries would be going home on a repatriation flight. This was in addition to the 4 leaving and 11 new missionaries coming in we new about. It kind of threw us a curveball. With help from on high, we (the mission office staff, assistants and President and Sister Erekson) were able to pull it off. Sister Folland and I were dead tired come Friday night. An interesting side note, the 4 unexpected arrivals are New Zealanders who had come from Kiribati, an island nation in the Pacific. Two of the elders were serving as the primary leaders of the mission in Kirabati. Their mission president's wife had a heart attack and needed to go to Hawaii for care. As a result of Covid, they were not allowed to return, so these two amazing young missionaries shouldered the burden.
A week ago last Tuesday, President Erekson and I were on a bike ride. We got a late start in the evening so decided to do a route close by Temple View we call "out and back". It is short but has a lot of bang for the buck with several steep hills to climb and ride back down. We had completed the out portion and were on our way back. I was in the lead and we were coming down a steep section that has about a 1 foot drop off on the bottom. I had ridden the trail several times and I thought President had been down it before. He had but he had never been on the little short cut section with the drop off. Anyway I made it down and a few seconds later I heard a scream, crash and then terrible groaning. I hurried back to find President laying in a ditch at the side of the trail moaning and in a lot of pain. Thank goodness for all of my wilderness first aid training. I made a quick evaluation and decided I needed to get him out of the water as it was quite cold. With some effort I was able to get him up on his feet and out of the ditch but he was still in tremendous pain, was complaining of difficulty breathing and was very unstable on his feet. We decided the shortest route to where a car could access him was back up the hill. President was very uncertain he could make it up the hill and asked for a priesthood blessing. It was short and to the point-that the pain subside to the point he could get up the hill and that his injuries would not prevent him from fulfilling his duties as mission president. I called Sister Folland to meet us at the top and off we went. It was slow going but we made it and got him to the E-room. The initial assessment of the ER doc was broken collar bone, broken ribs and possible head injury.
Once Sister Erekson arrived at the hospital, we left to go home not knowing what the outcome would be. Well, the next morning, President shows up in an arm sling ready to start transfer planning with the assistants. Talk about the power of priesthood blessings. It turned out he had a partial shoulder separation, bruised ribs, a mild concussion and lots of abrasions on his back. His helmet had a major indentation from the impact but 8 days later we were back out on a bike ride.
Heavenly Father is really there and He has his angels looking out for us. His presthood has great power and we are blessed to have access to it!
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