Traveling missionaries

Last Sunday we were informed that our branch choir had been invited to participate on Friday in a program at the theater down town. It was sponsored by the Salvation Army. In spite of the fact we had nothing prepared, our choir director was out of town, and many of our best singers were on holiday, we performed. Our rehearsals I would consider a disaster. We were planning a male chorus but it was so awful the president decided to have a quartet instead. The quartet was formed following our first number on stage. We sang "I believe in Christ", followed by the quartet singing "I Need Thee Every Hour", and concluded with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". It was not too bad, and with a couple of exceptions, compared to what preceeded us we were terrific.

The books Jenni had collected arrived on Monday. They are great and we have already begun distributing them to our Tongan Children. The age ranges from beginner to late teen, just what is needed. Our challenge will be to get the teens interested. They also need it the most.

For our English lessons I have made up a vocabulary list with sentences that include the words in the vocabulary. The words are church related so they can begin to understand things going on at church. A local Tongan sister is translating them for us. Our last lesson on Thursday went really well and overcame some of the discouragement I had after the lesson on Tuesday. Our Lesili- would rather play but Sister Hoagland is really good with him. His mother is working very hard. We are so proud of her.

Today we drove 65k's south of here to Ross to find a member. He was very pleasant but we only talked at the door. Last Sunday we made two visits to locate members and one did not live at the address given and the other we were told was deceased. Hard to tell if it was true because the fellow was not very cordial. I tried to get a specific death date for the records but that made the fellow even more belligerent. The closest I could get was January 2008.

We have a lot of pictures this week. Hope you are not bored by the end.

For those of you in Oregon who are following the rescued -deer saga, it would not be an issue here. They farm both elk and deer as well as have wild deer. This is a farm we found on our way to Ross. We took the pictures of Elk being fed on our way back to Greymouth.
The farmer and his father and daughter saw us taking pictures and came over for a chat. While we were talking an elk (fawny) they had raised from birth came over. The farmer offered to take my picture. These elk come from Canada.
Grandpa giving fawny a little loving care. He was pulling the molt off.
I put this picture in because it shows the home of Sister Scott. It is the one in front of the sheds one of which has white and green strips. Just right of center and facing the camera.

Below are some "free range" chickens we found in Ross. That is a little church through the trees.

Here I am standing in front of some old gold mining equipment used to haul ore from shallow mines. They were powered by horse in the 1860's & 70's.

This is an old open pit gold mine that operated up until the 1990's. It is now, as you see, filled with water. The locals say the water level is constantly going up and down and too cold for swimming.
A children's lighthouse display at the visitors center. Just for Julie

Here is Hokitika from a view point north of town. The regional airport is on this same plateau.

On Monday we drove to Moana to check out a new member to see if they were really there. It is only 40k's from here and is a small resort town on Brunner Lake. It turns out the address was a vacation home and all locked up. On the way we stopped at an historical site on the Brunner coal mine which is located up the Grey river. It operated during the 1880's and 90's. It was of interest to us because in our volunteer work at the library we were organizing historic photo's and there were many of the mine while it was operating. The bridge was used to transport the coal across the river to a rail line where it was taken the short distance to Greymouth and put on ships.
This is Lake Brunner at Moana
Another view of Lake Brunner looking a little north of the first picture.
These last two pictures are in front of the address we were looking for.

We saw a herd of goats up close on this hillside but they took off.