December 29, 2014

First off, I did notice how un-keen most of the family was in Skype on Christmas. Or rather, Christmas Eve, for you anyway. I could sense the "oh, he's gonna be home in like a month anyway" attitude. So, in lieu of that, and in keeping with the social attitude of my generation, let me just say that I am deeply offended. I have now logged the incident away within my mind, so that upon returning home I can let everyone know just how offended I am by posting an extremely lengthy-albeit completely unnecessary- rant on my Facebook page.

I have some good news! At least, I'm pretty stoked about it. My camera decided it wants to work again! Well, sort of. It now turns on, zooms in an out, takes pictures. Only problem is that I can't take any pictures during the day. For some reason the exposure decided to go off the charts, so if I take a picture when there is any significant amount of sunlight present, it looks like we're on the surface of the sun. Having said that, I'm just happy that I can take pictures again, even if it does have to be either in the late evening or at night. Next problem I noticed (and you also will notice when you see the pictures) is that the lens is all spotty now, and not on the outside where I can clean it. Which has led me to the conclusion that some sort of condensation must have gotten into the camera, which caused the malfunction in the first place. That's what I'm going with anyway.

So, with my camera finally working, I can send you some pictures of our garden. It's doing awesome! Though, last night we discovered a rather unfortunate turn of events. It looks like the neighbors threw a bucket of some kind of liquid over the fence into our garden. My companion's guess is that it was a bucket of hot water. Whatever it was, it pretty much destroyed about half of our Bok Choy and a couple Beetroot plants. We're hoping that they can bounce back from it, but we'll see. Other than that, our potatoes still haven't come up, though if you dig em up they are growing, just excruciatingly slowly. The Tomatoes are pumping, along with the beans. I can't picture myself having a garden back home, but I'm super stoked about having one here. It's cool being able to see the progress every week.
Didn't get much done over the past week. Christmas was good, and there have been heaps upon heaps of townies coming to Kawhia that we've been able to talk to. Though, honestly, nobody really wants us around during the holidays, which I totally understand. Everybody has their families around doing all sorts of stuff, so I'm not too fussed about them not wanting us intruding. Apparently President Rudd is thinking about taking away the Christmas call next year if this week is as unproductive as the week after Christmas was last year. His theory is that calling home gets everyone too home sick so nobody wants to work. I can see where he's coming from, but I don't think home sickness is the issue. Not that it matters to me though, since I won't be here! haha. Sad.
That ought just about ought to do it.
Arohanui!

This took AGES to clean out. It's all that devil grass that I told you about. 

We had to till it up three or four times, but when we finished the dirt was B-E-A-utiful. 

Tiny plants

The Tomatoes are on the left with the bamboo. The beans are climbing the thing on the right.

Where we're standing there's still a lot of open space, so we plan on planting a couple rows of sweet potatoes there. Probably today in fact. 

December 15, 2014

It was another good week. Sorry, still no new pictures. I was really cursing the no camera thing this past week though, since a handful of Orcas came into the bay. We were just leaving our flat, and our neighbor told us that the school had gone down to the wharf to see the whales. So of course we went down too. When we showed up you couldn't even see em, since they were on the other side of the bay. After we'd been there for a few minutes, the school decided to go back, but they should've just waited. Not five minutes after that the Orcas came over right next to the docks, then followed the coast down until they went out of the bay. It was pretty awesome to see them up close like that, just chilling out. Apparently they follow the sting rays into the bay for a munch, but it doesn't happen that often, so we got pretty lucky in being able to see them.

We ended up having a cool experience yesterday at church too. A guy showed up that just moved in to town. He reckons he was baptized back in 1961, but stopped going to church shortly thereafter. He's been staying in Wellington and just moved in to Kawhia a few days back. He must have seen the building, because he came in without anybody inviting him. I love that eh. It's only happened a few times, but every time it does, I'm very grateful. It's gotta be one of the best things to work with somebody that made the first step themselves. So many of the people that we work with we have to coax and guide every small step of the way, but every now and again, the Lord has some mercy and give us somebody that is prepared. So, I'm pretty stoked about being able to add another member to the very small mix we have out here in Kawhia.

We've got a mission conference going on tomorrow in Temple View, so we're looking forward to that. Seems crazy that Christmas is almost here. Funny how, back home, Christmas always took ages to come around. Here though it seems to just come and go. It probably has something to do with the fact that there's no snow, and nobody really gets into the whole swing of it, so there's no build up. All good though. It'll be nice to spend it here basking in the beauty of Kawhia.
I think that should just about do it.

 Ka Kite!

December 8, 2014

It's finally summer here! It was rainy rainy rainy, then the first day of summer came, and all of a sudden there was not a cloud in the sky. I'm pretty stoked about it. The good weather meant that we were finally able to get some service stuff out of the way that we'd been waiting to do for awhile. That translated into a very tiring week. That's good though. Nothing better than being able to fall asleep quickly at night, as opposed to laying awake for what seems like hours on end, which is what's been happening most frequently as of late. For some reason my body doesn't want very much sleep anymore; I can't sleep till late, and when half five hits in the morning I'm ready to get up. I'm actually hoping that this is a bit of a permanent thing. It's always been one of my minor wishes that I didn't need to sleep much. Seems like Matt is always bragging about how he doesn't need much sleep, and I've always been super jealous, so maybe this is the Matt sleep-is-for-sissies superpower wearing off on me.

The week ended up being about average again, but one of our investigators made it back into town! We were teaching him about six weeks ago, and then one weekend he just up and disappeared. I'd sent him a text or two over the past weeks, but never had a reply. Then Friday we finally got a response; he reckons he was in rehab for the last while, and he was letting us know he had arranged for a ride back to Kawhia. Choice! Last we saw him I had a really good feeling about teaching him, he was pretty set on finally changing his life around. He wanted to follow the example of his cousin that used to be on that same path, but went to church and changed his entire life. So here's to hoping that we can get him started on the straight and narrow.
And lastly, I'm not sure anyone really cares or not, but our garden is looking pretty choice! We were able to get bamboo staked up for the Tomato plants, and we made a fence type of thing next to the Tomatoes for some beans that we planted. Should look awesome once it all grows and weaves through the chain link. Only negative turn of events is that our Corn never grew. No good. I was under the impression that Corn was pretty much guaranteed to grow, but apparently not. No worries though, not like I'll be here to eat any of it anyway.

Well. That's all Folks