Mother and Son Make The World Their Classroom for a School Year: January 15, 2015 (Auckland, Hamilton, Matamata, NZ)

Well, each day I have tried to write in my blog at night and have fallen fast asleep while uploading photos before I can even type a word. There has been a lot I have wanted to share too. Our first proper day here in New Zealand, after a good night's sleep at Gill's, we enjoyed a tasty cold breakfast in the kitchen looking out onto her beautiful gardens. The whole setting is so lovely and reminds me so much of our home in Laguna Beach when I was newly married and our kitchen was bright and light and looked out onto a courtyard of brick and greenery.

Today we were beginning our day in Hamilton. We learned the distances were much further than the google maps originally suggested. We drove an hour and 45 mins to Hamilton and onto Temple View Drive where the LDS Temple was built back in 1958. The road leads right up to the top of a hill where the temple stands really majestically over green pastures and an old LDS college that had been built here back in the 1950s to support local education. It was a big move to build a temple in New Zealand, but there are many LDS Members on the "Aisles of the Sea" as was written there would be in Book of Mormon, our other scripture and testament of Christ.

The Hamilton LDS temple grounds were beautifully decorated with flowers and a great view. As we were entering there was a string of Polynesian looking young women that were just coming from the temple. They directed us which way to enter. As it being summer vacation they must have come to do their family temple work as well. The work that is done in temples includes baptism by proxy for those family members which have died and which we believe is the first saving ordinance. The other ordinances that are performed there are for adults to do which include blessings and promises that each one of us is entitled to in this life and if not in the next that bind our families together eternally. We do these for ourselves once in our life and then afterwards we do them for our family. Our doing work in the temple for our family is the greatest gift we feel we can give to our loved ones and ancestors that have passed away, allowing them to receive all the blessings and promises that our loving Heavenly Father has for each of us and the greatest being eternal families. We believe these ordinances must be done on this learning/testing ground Earth but then our family members can choose whether to accept or not the work that is done for them as they reside in a state of Paradise after they have passed away from Earth.

As we came into the baptistry of the temple to do our family work, there were maybe 20 other young men there. It was such a sweet experience to watch these young men perform sacred ordinances for their deceased brethren. They were each dressed in their Sunday best on this Thursday morning. As we waited for our turn Sam and I spoke with these young men. They were from New Caledonia. We were moved by their great commitment as they don't have a temple in New Caledonia, an island between here and Australia. They come each summer for 3 weeks with their families and stay in the housing the LDS church has built on property for visiting families from around the Pacific that come to do their family temple work. They come each morning to the baptistry for a couple hours and serve together. They do this every day the temple is open for 3 weeks! Their parents come and do work all day for 3 weeks. To feel the sweet spirit in the temple, to see young men starting at the age of 12 being part of sacred ordinances for their ancestors moved me. It was sweet to see them whisper to Sam to ask what he likes to do, for Sam to ask them about New Caledonia. We had to speak slowly since they primarily speak French. They explained to us that there are 200 of them that come, their families save their money all year so they can come for these weeks in summer and do the work. What amazing young men they were.

Following the temple we went into the Visitors Center. They had a Christos like the one in Temple Square at home. We looked through the displays taking time to refresh our memory on the photos of our current 12 apostles and learning their names and me telling stories about many of them since I have met many of them who have been friends with our family throughout the years. We then met with a missionary couple who told us more about the history of the LDS Church in NZ. They told us the stories of the first missionaries in NZ, how they came over in the early history of the church- around 1850s. This first missionaries had far to travel and even up till 50 years ago this was a three year mission. We learned stories of a young man called here in the early 1900s. He was called when he was 16 years old. He arrived when he was 17 years old and learned the Maori language well. He was asked to extend his mission so that he could retranslate the Book of Mormon more correctly and stayed on his mission for 5 years, returning at 22 years old. Wow, I can't imagine! He later was called by the LDS Church to serve back in New Zealand as an adult, although he didn't live long enough to see the temple built here, he witnessed the many miracles that led up to it. He was said to have performed many miracles here due to the faith of the Maori. The Maori King Tāwhiao had said that one day the church of God would come to NZ and they would come in pairs and teach the word of God and that a temple would be built on this hill, which was a sacred burial ground for the Maori. The King believed in the words spoken by the LDS missionaries and many Maori joined the LDS Church and continued to after the temple was built on the hill.

The missionaries suggested Lolo's a local restaurant where we stopped and ate before heading out to Hobbiton. Our route on the GPS told us to go over hill and dale to get there. It was such a BEAUTIFUL drive through rolling hills with sheep and cattle all around and bright colored trees, and huge fence hedges of trees and bushes dividing up the land. It was such a gorgeous drive, felt like we were driving through a fairytale landscape. We ended up in the town of Matamata and boarded a bus that took us the rest of the way to Hobbiton. Wow! I didn't know what to expect but I could have believed little people lived in these hills, that we had stepped into a parallel universe. The work began in March 1999 on this place, after a location scout found this property that belonged to a family. They agreed to let the movie studio work on their land, which involved building an extensive road system to be able to build the set 1.5 km into the property, which the core of civil engineers of NZ built. This was the government's donation to the project which they smartly realized would bring greater tourism to the area. The scout was looking for a impressive tree, a pong and a hill that was the backdrop to the two. They found it here and with all kinds of machinery dug out little hobbit holes all throughout the hill. There has to be at least 2 dozen of them. They then precisely landscaped each of these. And the request of the owner of the property was to make this set of a more permanent nature- rather than of temporary supplies, knowing that it would make a great attraction after the fact. The final result was just a location that you can't decide is it real or imaingary. It is so perfectly maintained with flower beds around each home, details of each hobbit displayed outside their home with real potatoes out of the potato farmers home, gardens that are growing real vegetables, window treatments that are being kept up and all things small. It is beyond charming and the backdrop of the grassy hill, large imposing trees and charming walkways and fences and wooden gates are all just fairy tale perfect. You can't help yourself,...I took hundreds of pictures.

The tour ends at the Green Dragon pub which is lit with fires, serving ginger beer for those of us who don't drink and all other kinds of ales for those in the group. Sam and I had our drink overlooking the pond and played backgammon on our little travel board. It was just a perfect setting, meeting and exceeding all expectations.

Back in the town of Martamarta we enjoyed a tasty Italian dinner off the main street, which in some strange way really reminded me of Fort Collins, CO. Following dinner we decided to hold off and go to Pokeno for dessert at an ice cream stand that the missionaries had told us about on the way home to Auckland. Driving along the roads while the sun was setting was spectacular. I could hardly keep my eyes on the road and had to pull over to try and capture the photos, none of which captured the beauty of the setting sun through the rolling hills. At one point we realized we might miss the ice cream place, since it was nearing 9 p.m. Just when I decided I might need to get on it, there was a car infant of us, one of the few we had seen driving back. Decided to make a pass, feeling zippy in our stick shift rental and invigorated by the night, to find out we passed a police car!! Well, we met a friendly local police man who promptly gave us a ticket and wished us well in our adventures and pointed out the way to the ice cream shop just 3 km away ;) hahaha Well, grateful we weren't booked and made it to the Tip Top ice cream shop. It was now after 9 p.m. but they were doing construction so they were open- yay! We picked up a scoop from the little girl who had to be a 7 year old Cambodian girl. She was just running the show giving us samples, etc. So darn cute. He father scooped the ice cream and we stood and chatted with him for a bit.

We made it back to Ponsonby after dark. Gill had gone to sleep but we just came home and climbed into bed. Tomorrow would be a busy day as we head back in that direction. We should have probably stayed in Rotorua rather than drive back, but it was nice to have one home base of this trip and tomorrow we would be riding in a nice bus and could simply enjoy the scenery of the drive and cover even more ground. Great day!