Second week in New Zealand

Working hard at the office

Auckland from our car

Hole in the rock

March 22
Our first week at the office was one of introductions and getting all our office equipment, email accounts set up, figuring out the phones and receiving our cell phone. Orientation on how to use the printer, phones etc., what meetings were required and we met with Elder Baxter the Area President. There are two other couples that work with us. The Webster’s are from Bountiful and the Clark’s from North Salt. Each couple has certain areas that they are assigned to work with. We have Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Christmas Island.
The people here are lovely and so friendly that you love them immediately. Richard is excited to have us here and has told us that several time. He says that “We get it”. We have had several meetings with him and the other couples and we are getting our jobs redefined. We had a phone conference with Alan Wakeley who is the director of public affairs for Australia and boy did he pile the work on us. We are on the Opinion Leader committee with him and the Pierson’s and we were on the phone for 2 hours getting instructions. After that conference call we both felt exhausted and had to go to Burger King for a coke.

We are still using the GPS "Tom Tom" because we can’t remember how to get to places. This weekend we went to Paihai a beautiful city on the east coast which they call the bay of islands. It was a three hour drive through some of the most beautiful and interesting country side. There were huge palm trees mixed with pine trees and shrubs and hundreds of shades of green. I really do think that this is where the Garden of Eden should be. So many times we wanted to stop and take pictures but there were no places to turn off the highway. I kept thinking that there should be a place for Scenic Overlook but then they would have to have them every 2 miles. The roads wind up and down and all over the place and the speed limit is 100km/hr so the drive was quite exciting.
We took a great four hour boat trip all around the bay of islands and ended up going through a place called Hole in the Rock. What gorgeous landscape all around this island. There was a really cool light house out on the end of the island and I immediately thought of Tricia’s because she has always loved them.
We have found that everything closes early here. All the shops were closed at 4:30 and yet the restaurants don’t open until 6:00 so you can’t eat early or shop late. Even the mall closes at 6:00 PM. I guess the people here just go home early and then stay there because nothing is open past that time.