2014-5- 02

Dear Family!

Hello from Southland, New Zealand!  (That is the name of our “state”—Southland)  We are having a lovely Autumn—some wonderful sunshine today—Yeah!  Rain is fun, too—we get to wear rain coats and use umbrellas—and even wear long underwear!  They have a cool shop where they sell high tech long underwear, Kathmandu—people in NZ don’t use a furnace, so we get to wear long-johns! .  Fuel, whether gas or electric, is just too expensive and rare to have a furnace going all the time.   Doug and I have a pretty modern home—with something they call a heat pump.  I think they have them in the States—but we don’t use them there, much.  We keep ours on pretty much all the time—set at night at 16 degrees Celsius. That’s about 61 degrees Fahrenheit.  Burr!  We actually sleep pretty warmly, though—we have electric blankets that heat up our toes at night, then we can sleep!  

Doesn’t that sound like fun?                                  

                                                                                                                                       

The other day in District meeting we were practicing how to encourage our investigator to read the Book of Mormon.  We do roll plays every District meeting, often with the Elders and Sisters as investigators.  Last Wednesday I got to have Elder Harding as my visiting Missionary—and I was the investigator.  It’s kind of noisy when we practice, so, when Elder Harding “came to my door”, he got a cute smile on his face, and said something like, “Hi Cutie Sister Harding!  How’s my favorite investigator today?”  I giggled and put my hand on his knee and told him he was sweet.  Somehow, all the missionaries were listening, and thought our door approach was sort of unique!  (Red face!) We didn’t think they were paying attention!

We are teaching a lovely young woman named Annette who has been coming to church now for a few months.  She seems to really like being there at church—going on service projects and helping out in Primary.  We hope you will pray for her—I think she is afraid of real change—but she knows the church is true.  We get to loving these dear people so much!  We love being missionaries!  We love our Elders and Sisters so much!  Wahoo, the church is so true!!!

We attended the ANZAC Day ceremony at Dawn on the 25^th of April.  It is sort of like our Veteran’s Day—only theirs is Australia, New Zealand Army Corps Day.  There is a veteran’s memorial in almost every little town and city—sometimes more, as in in Invercargill.  I never really even thought about all the other country’s troops that fought in WWI or WWII. (Perhaps that is why they called it ”World War”?)  The New Zealanders were heavily involved in fighting in Africa, and other places in the war—even suggesting that it was a Maori unit that began singing “Silent Night” during Christmas time in WWI.  Then the German’s began singing it in German—I’m sure you’ve heard the story.  Funny how  universal our experiences can be—we are all so much more alike than we are different!  The ANZAC group lost as many or more soldiers per capita than any other Allied country—kind of hard when you don’t have very many men in the first place!  War is so icky!  Sigh!

We did a service project for the Salvation Army last week—Linda works with the Young Women—so she got to go as well.  We sat in the entryway of the Countdown Grocery Store with a Salvation Army collection bucket—we manned the bucket for 8 hours, wearing reflective vests with Salvation Army on the back—taking two hour shifts.  I was really touched at all the kind words and money people were willing to share!  While we were sitting there, I taught one of the girls how to crochet (I’m working on an afghan for Doug) and was impressed with her attention.  We raised a lot of money—for the poor people of Southland.  The gentleman who came to collect the buckets of money was quite impressed, and rather puzzled that a church of a different denomination would help them out in their fundraising.  Sister McNab, YW president, just laughed and said, ”Well, We are Christians—we love helping out the poor—and you do it so well!  We are happy to help!” Anyway—quite a team building effort!  Loved it!

We are having a Musical Soiree next month—where we have people performing different musical numbers.  It will be at our Church building. We have  tickets and a lot of people participating.  Admission is a can of food.  We are hosting the Salvation Army Band as one of the participants.  Again, just building bridges of faith and understanding if we can!

This is what a swede looks like! 

     Have you ever eaten a swede?  It is a giant root vegetable that they grow here in NZ.  It is kind of sweety to chew on raw, and it cooks up sort of like a sweet potato.  They boil them, then mash them.  I mixed some I had left over with Pumpkin Soup—and it was really yummy. A man who had a beard that looked like Uncle Stevie, gave us a bag of six or seven!  I will be sharing them—the part of one I cooked fed us for 3 meals, and we had company! (I only cooked half!)  So I really do need to share!  There is a lovely family—4 of the children were baptized last week—who probably could use them.  They have 11 children, ages 18 years to 9 months.  Mom is Brookie’s age!  She is one busy lady. (Dad lives in Christchurch, came down for the baptism. Lives in a camper trailer.) Love them dearly!  They grow these veggies for people food as well as for animal food.  I have been told they are a giant Rutabaga!  They are yummy!  I crocheted that afghan in the background—Australian wool.  It gets a bit chilly, so that was a nice addition to our couch.

We’ve been keeping pretty busy with the Family History Centre—we’ve had the YW and the YM in to find their ancestors.  One of the YW found that he was related to the people who came to NZ on the 7 canoes—there was an oral history that had been transcribed onto Family Search.  It went back to the 1400’s—French Polynesia!  He was pretty excited!  One of our Samoan Elders from the Wellington area found a link, on his English side to Charlemagne!  Royalty is fun to connect to—though, probably not so fun to become. Anyway, with the link to Charlemagne, he was able to take his one line back to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve!  It was fun to see it!  (You Richardsons could do it, too,  if you go to FamilySearch, click on your Curtis side(Sullivan Calvin Richardson’s wife was Martha Irena Curtis), follow it back quite a ways, then switch over to the royals.  It is a bit of a search, but I found Charlemagne, too!)  Hah!

Love you dear ones!  The Church is True!  Gets truer every day!  Save for your missions!  It’s a great and wonderful experience!

Love you forever!                                                                                                 This is Sullivan Calvin Richardson born 26                                                                                                                                         Jan 1863.  We think his great-great-                                                                                                                                                   grandson, Steven C. Harding looks a                                                                                                                                                                   lot like him!

Elder Grandpa and Sister Grandma Harding