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Away From Home

Nelson Trip, Part One

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We had planned to go to Nelson to visit friends over Easter weekend, but because of the storm had to change our plans. Three weeks later, we were able to go there. As we drove north, we were very thankful we hadn’t tried to go! The scars from the storm were still very visible, and it was obvious that we would not have made it through with our van.

It was hard to capture the destruction with the camera as we drove; these pictures just show a fraction of what we saw.

Vineyards in a valley just south of Blenheim.

Rugged hills and valleys south of Blenheim.

Somewhere between Blenheim and Nelson.

We had the most beautiful day for our trip up there! The sun shone all day, and everyone was happy. No grumping all day—what a blessing!

Oamaru

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We went to Timaru over Easter weekend for a conference, and that Friday evening, Esther had an idea. We had most of the next day free, since the only meeting was at 3:30 in the afternoon. She had  met a girl last June at a conference in Christchurch, and has since had some contact with her online. She was thinking this girl and her family lived near Timaru, and thought it would be nice to visit her on Saturday. I thought they lived in Oamaru (pronounced Ah-muh-roo), about an hour’s drive farther south. We knew their last name, but not her father’s first name. I knew what letter her mother’s name started with, but not her full name. Esther looked in the phone book and found about half a dozen listings with that last name. One of them had a wife with the first initial I remembered, and the street name sounded familiar to Esther from a video the girl and her brothers had made, but that was all we had to go by. I told Esther she could try calling them on my cell phone and see if that was the right people, and it was! We went to visit them Saturday, and were able to spend a couple of hours visiting with that wonderful family. They live in an old house in the Victorian section of Oamaru (the most Victorian city in New Zealand), and took us on a tour of the old downtown section. One of their boys is a volunteer helping to restore old steam engines and because of that we got to tour the place they do that. What a special day!

Look at that hill! I was impressed with the way it went up, and then up again, and up again! Oamaru is very hilly.

There are a lot of old grain warehouses in Oamaru, left over from the time immediately after the city’s founding about 130 years ago, when fortunes were made from wheat. The boom ended after only 20 years or so, when there was a world-wide depression, and the city has never recovered. That means, however, that the old buildings have been preserved, because no one has had money to tear them down and build new ones!One of the steam engines that is being restored. A glimpse of the scenery between Timaru and Oamaru:

Probably a plant for making milk powder.One of many flooded rivers—not sure which one this is.Water across the highway just north of Oamaru.

Timaru

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Easter weekend, Gayle had four days off work. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both national holidays here. We made plans to go to Nelson to visit friends, but God had other plans for us. A cyclone hit New Zealand that week, and hit much harder than we expected! We had torrential rains for several days, culminating in a flood Thursday night. Friday morning, we were still trying to decide whether to leave for Nelson or not when we were told that both routes north were blocked by slips (landslides). That made up our minds—it was not time to go! Instead, we decided to go to a conference we had been invited to at a church in Timaru. The first meeting was to begin at 1:30 that afternoon, but there was no way we would make it for that by the time we made contact with someone at the church in Timaru Friday morning! We kept working away at getting ready to go, however, and finally had the pop-top camper we were borrowing packed, the van loaded, and everything ready by noon. We weren’t sure how the roads would be going south, but they turned out to be fine.  All the rivers were full to the brim, though! The Waimakariri, just north of Christchurch. This one actually wasn’t quite as full as some of the others. I just didn’t get pictures of them!

We had a wonderful weekend of good preaching and fellowship with other believers. We had never met any of the people at the conference, except the one family from Hawarden who invited us, but we soon had a lot of new friends! We stayed at the home of one of the families from Timaru; it was funny how that man and his son argued about whose house we should stay at—they both wanted us! We really appreciated the hospitality we were shown. We set up our camper in their driveway, and they offered us a choice of a bedroom in the house or another man’s camper for most of the children. We chose the camper; the man moved into the house for the weekend. Five of the children slept in that camper, and the two youngest slept with us in the pop-top camper. The couple whose house we were at treated us like family; it felt like old times when we would go to meetings away from home! One of the speakers at the conference (they had two visiting speakers, from Australia) stayed there, also, and Gayle really appreciated visiting with him.

There were two meetings Friday afternoon, and then tea (dinner) was served. Saturday afternoon was another meeting, followed by a barbeque tea at the home of our host’s son. Sunday morning was a regular Sunday meeting, focusing on communion, and then everyone came for lunch at the place we stayed—quite a spread! We were the last ones to leave church that time, and shortly came up behind the person Gayle had been talking to, pulled over at the side of the road. He was driving a 1950 Buick, and had run out of gas because of a faulty gauge! It was good we were behind him and could take him to get some. After lunch, we went back to church for another meeting, followed by tea, and then one final meeting. After that, everyone went back to our host’s home for a singing! We sang, accompanied by piano and organ, for an hour and a half. After about an hour, I took our two youngest out to the camper to go to bed. The second-youngest realized he hadn’t had a snack yet, so I offered him bread. Well, there was a table-full of dessert waiting in the house for after the singing, so he wanted dessert. Thankfully, we had a few bananas in the van, so I offered him one and that satisfied the two of them and they went to sleep happy. After the singing, and dessert, we stayed up late visiting. It was so good to be there! Monday morning we packed up and headed home. What a great weekend!

A Field Trip–On Sunday?!

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I’ll try again with this one, too; it is one that vanished in the past week. Rather frustrating!

This story really starts back in January. We were on our way south and passed a big yellow railroad track fixing machine. We’ve seen those a lot of times, since we drive along the railway so much (it parallels Highway 1, which is the main highway on this island and we drive on it practically every time we go anywhere; the railway is visible from the highway probably half the distance from Christchurch to Kaikoura). That day, my 8-year-old asked me how those machines work. I told him I didn’t know, but that if we saw one sometime that was at a place we could pull off, and if there were workmen there who seemed to have time to talk, and if we had extra time, we would stop and ask. Well, one Sunday morning soon after we moved, all those things came together. As we were driving to church, we reached the coast after coming down out of the hills, and approached the first tunnel that the highway goes through. Ahead on the other side of the tunnel, we saw one of those track-fixing machines, and I told Gayle what I had told our son. As we came out of the tunnel, we saw that the machine was right at the end of a short passing lane, with a pull-off right there beside it, and there were two men standing behind it on the track, talking; one was obviously the operator of the machine! We had a rare extra 15 minutes, so Gayle pulled off and asked the man if he would tell us how it worked. Sure, he was glad to! He explained it all, and then took us up into the cab to show us the computerized controls. That machine clamped onto the rails and pulled them in or pushed them out to make them exactly the right distance apart. There were two or three other machines that traveled in a unit with that one, which did other jobs, leveling the track and I’m not sure what else, but they were ahead, through another tunnel. We thanked him and went back to the van as he started moving ahead again. When he came out of the next tunnel, we got to watch as they coupled that machine to the next one. What a great field trip! It was especially meaningful to me because a man in the church I grew up in, someone I knew all my life and who died just about six months ago, had spent a lot of his life building that type of machines. He didn’t build this one; it’s Austrian-built; but it was the same basic idea.

 

Kaikoura Peninsula

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One Sunday afternoon, when we had visitors from America at church, we went with them to the Peninsula. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon. We really enjoyed visiting with our new friends and showing them around.Mountain climbers.
Very tired and ready to go home–Daddy is still talking!A bed of bull kelp.
Gazing out to sea from the overlook at the top of the Peninsula.

Sunday School Picnic

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The Saturday after we moved, the first Saturday since the beginning of December that we were free to do what we wanted to instead of working on the house, we were invited to a Sunday School picnic with a church in Waikari that we attended one time before. One of their families lives way up in the hills over Hawarden, almost to the mountains, and the picnic was there. After enjoying the meal and fellowship all afternoon, we drove to the end of the road before coming home. The views were spectacular!

 

Gore Bay

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One day last week, we went to the sea for an hour or so. The older four boys rode their boogie boards in the surf, while the little ones played at the edge of the waves, and built a house from sand. The littlest was diligently taking handfuls of sand from the wall his brother built, and patting them down onto another part of the wall!
Just before we left, we saw this container ship offshore.Waiting for the last few to finish dressing.

We went up the hill to look for Banana Passion Fruit. Esther stayed on top of the hill to tell the boys when to come back.

Scrambling down the hill after looking for the fruit.

Oops!

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We had trouble the last couple of days with our cow getting out. We had her behind a single strand of polywire, and for the past several months hadn’t bothered to electrify it because she behaves so well. Well, the inevitable happened, and she figured out that the electric was off, so she went visiting her son down the road. The third time, our landlord’s son found her and told us. He came over this morning to help the boys figure out the problem (they had tried unsuccessfully, yesterday, to hook up her wire). A stretchy gate had broken just a bit, which made it not able to conduct current. While he was here, he told the boys about an accident that happened just down the road, possibly yesterday. A huge Claas combine rolled in a paddock of barley! The driver had just finished harvesting, unhooked the header, and was going out of the paddock. When the boys were finished fixing the electric fence for the cow, they went to see the combine. Our oldest boy took a camera, and I thought I’d share some of the pictures he took. By the way, the owner, who was driving, reportedly escaped unhurt.

This combine was used two years ago to harvest the paddock beside our house.The boys say that it rolled from the edge of the field, in the middle of the left side of this photo.

Sunday Afternoon

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After leaving church late Sunday afternoon, we went to South Bay, intending to stay about an hour. The boys were playing at the edge of the water as the tide was going out, and we were watching them while Esther took pictures, when some acquaintances came along on the boardwalk/bridge above us. We ended up talking to them for a long time, and stayed a total of two hours! The boys, especially the two littlest, enjoyed themselves immensely and didn’t mind staying while we talked. Throwing rocks. Good thing we had extra clothes along for the two youngest!
It’s hard to get such a good picture of this boy!Not hard at all to get a good picture of this one.Snagging driftwood to make a bridge from one rock to another.
Sea anemones
Shags