The Latimers in Tonga: Kia Ora New Zealand!

Alas, the time has come to bid a very fond farewell to beautiful New Zealand. At Mary’s last check-up, the doctor said Mary’s eye is completely healed and she is cleared to fly, so we are heading home to Tonga on Monday. Such a blessing two weeks earlier than expected!

Farewell, New Zealand!

We have so enjoyed our month “break” in New Zealand. Some of the highlights:

We have attended the Mandarin branch in Auckland during our time here. What a delight to be with the Chinese saints again! We were blessed to attend the baptism of a young brother and sister. Because the font in the chapel was under repair, the baptism was held at a nearby beach.

Beach baptism

There is a large Chinese community in Auckland, and the city puts on big celebrations for Chinese New Year and the Lantern Festival. The beautiful lanterns were impressive.

Lantern Festival

We mentioned in our last blog the lack of coincidences in the lives of missionaries. We had a few more “coincidences” here. The Church’s area legal counsels held their regional conference here in New Zealand. We enjoyed a wonderful morning with Steve and Barbara Toronto from our Hong Kong (and Beijing) days taking the ferry to Devonport and walking up Mount Victoria for some beautiful sights of Auckland.

View of Rangitoto Island (a volcano) from Mount Victoria

We also enjoyed an evening with Kathy Teng, a wonderful fellow missionary friend from our Taiwan missions. She works for DoTerra and was in the Pacific area for meetings.

Dinner with Kathy Teng and Gina Truman, a fellow missionary

We met with Dr. Rob and Andrea Ferguson, co-founders of “Amanaki Fo’ou,” an organization in Tonga working on the prevention of diabetes. They were on their way home to Utah after meetings in Tonga. We were aware of the organization but were not aware of the Fergusons’ involvement. We are looking forward to working together with them.

Elder and Sister Hutchison, a local service mission couple handling the wheelchair program for the Pacific Area, picked us up one morning and took us on a wonderful driving tour of the beautiful bay beaches that line the coast of Auckland. They then hosted us for a tasty lunch at their home.

Beautiful bay beach

Another crazy “coincidence” – We recently realized that Mary needed a refill of a prescription, and we had been looking for someone who could bring it to us. As we visited with the Hutchisons, we learned that they have a daughter who lives in Daybreak (!) and was coming for a visit. They called her up and we arranged for Eliza to bring her the prescription and it is now in our hands.

Finally, we took a couple of days to travel south to Rotorua for some fun. We toured the Whakarewarewa Maori Village and enjoyed a fun cultural performance.

Maori Village Cultural Performance

We visited Lake Taupo and were awed with the natural power of Huka Falls.

Powerful Huka Falls

We finished the day traversing an elevated walkway in a huge forest of giant redwood trees. Amazing!

On our way home to Auckland the next day, we of course stopped to tour the Hobbiton movie set. When they made the Hobbit movies, they built the set out of permanent materials instead of the temporary materials they had used for the Lord of the Rings movies. It was charming to see the small homes in different sizes which made the hobbits look small and Gandalf, the wizard, look large. There was some misty rain, but not enough to obscure our view of Hobbiton which is located on a working sheep and cattle ranch. The green hills undulated to the horizon. Lovely.