Memories

We have now been in New Zealand for ten years—an entire decade. Ten years tomorrow, we landed in Christchurch with six young children. We were met at the airport by friends who had come ahead of us, with whom we hoped to work and form a home church. They were the only people we knew in the entire country.

Today, we know people from end to end of this country. God has given us more friends than we could have imagined. We are now part of a growing little house church on the opposite side of the island from where we started out. The business we were planning to start with our friends never even began; instead of building and running a sawmill, Gayle found a job at a meatworks, which got us our first visa.

We arrived here with six children, ages nine weeks to eleven years. Over the course of these ten years, one of them died and we lost two unborn babies—but we have also been blessed with another son and two daughters. Now, we have eight living children, ranging from three months to twenty-one years! Also, during these ten years, four of our children have received water baptism as a symbol of their new life after receiving Jesus as their Saviour.

We have experienced great joy—and immense grief while living here in New Zealand. These years have been hard—but good. We love living here and are thankful for so many things. God has been very good to us through everything.

This photo was taken the morning we left the States. A friend advised us to dress the four boys in matching shirts so it would be easy to find them in crowds. They loved those shirts and wore them until they were tattered!

This was taken a week or two after we landed here, when we visited Hagley Park in Christchurch for the first time.

One more photo from that first few weeks! We lived in a rental house near Christchurch for three weeks, and then had to get out. We had no house to go to, so we ended up camping for a couple of nights with some friends near Cheviot. Someone loaned us a horse truck and a house bus to sleep in. I’ve always thought our camp looked pretty funny!

Why are we living on the West Coast of New Zealand, instead of still in Canterbury? Well, strange as it may sound, the answer to this question can be traced back to a little pair of pink gumboots. Hold on, this tale is a bit convoluted, especially since I don’t want to use the names of our friends, to protect their privacy.

This story begins over two years ago. Our Little Miss had discovered the delights of wearing shoes at a young age, and when she discovered a pair of pink gumboots just about her size, which she could put on by herself and clump around the house in, she was delighted. Esther took a cute picture of her and posted it on the Facebook page of a friend who lived in the far south of this island, because this friend likes gumboots and she likes Little Miss.

Our friend in the south happens to have relatives in Texas who, a few years ago, joined a conservative Mennonite church. These relatives had a trip planned to New Zealand two years ago to visit relatives, and in preparation for the trip the lady was looking at the Facebook pages of some relatives she found that she had never met. One was our friend. The lady from Texas, in scrolling through that page, found the picture of Little Miss, and noticed Esther’s profile picture, in which she was wearing a covering. This caught the eye of Mrs. Texas, and she contacted our friend’s mother, her third cousin, asking about getting in contact with us. Our email address was passed along, and, two years ago last week, we got to meet some new friends, with whom we connected immediately (and incidentally, they made our long trip to America last year much more pleasant by meeting us at the Houston airport and taking us to a park for a picnic!).

Our new Texan friends, after spending a night with us, went on to Nelson, where they went to church with some of their other relatives. At church, they met a man who had recently come out of a Christian community over here on the West Coast. They knew we were interested in meeting people who came out of that community, so they got the man’s email address and passed it on to us. We emailed him, mentioning that we were planning to visit the community for a concert in a couple of days and asking if he had any contacts for us while we were in the area. He contacted friends of his and they emailed us.

We had actually heard of these people who emailed us, from mutual friends a bit farther south of here, and they had heard of us from the same friends. We were invited to spend the night with them after the concert, so we did. We fell in love with this wonderful family, and approximately a year later, Simon moved over here to work for them and do his apprenticeship.

So, in case you were wondering what took us to the West Coast, you can blame it on a little pair of pink gumboots! You never know what will happen when you post a sweet picture on Facebook. God can use anything.