"WELCOME" TO A MARAE

Yesterday, Saturday, 23 June 2012, we were invited to a special program at a marae in Korongata (Bridge Pa).  The occasion was a visit from President and Sister Bleak (pronounced "Blake" but is the Irish spelling of that name), who is the New Zealand MTC President.  Along with them were one of his counselors, President Armitage, and his wife, who is a Maori from Bridge Pa.  The NZ MTC is closed for three weeks for cleaning, etc., so they have some free time to do a little traveling and wanted to come to the Maori origins of the LDS Church in New Zealand, which are both in our area:  Bridge Pa and Te Hauke.

This turned out to be one of the most incredible memories we will have in New Zealand, turning into a very tender experience as the Maori people here shared their traditions and their hearts with us.  When you've never been on a particular marae (and they're all over the country but run by different tribes), you must first be welcomed onto the marae with quite a formal ceremony (a Powhiri, "poh-fir-ee").  We, along with the Bleaks and the Armitages, were those being welcomed.  We were led in by someone who could speak Maori...and greeted by chanting done by senior members of the tribe.  This is shown below.

This is President and Sister Bleak.  Prior to being the NZ MTC President, he was Mission President in the Marshall Islands.  Sister Bleak is President Gordon B. Hinckley's niece.

Here is President and Sister Armitage.  Behind them is the lady, Agnes Nuku, who  led us onto the marae and chanted in Maori who we all were (the response is called the Karanga).  This particular marae is on land donated by the Reid family and is called the Mangaroa Marae (on Ruakawa Road).  There is an older marae in Bridge Pa, too, called the Te Aranga Marae (on Maraekakaho Road).  We have been welcomed on both of them now.

Not the best picture, but these are the ladies chanting and motioning us onto the marae. Women almost always do the welcoming, and the men do the speeches after we go inside.  Once we were in the marae, those who belong to the marae are seated on one side, and we were seated on the opposite side (men on the front row, women in the back).  Then two different men gave welcoming speeches, which were all in Maori, not a word of English, but they were just incredible, and we could feel their sincere love and respect for us.  One of them was an LDS bishop, Bishop Jerry Edwards; the other man the Mission Leader of the Hastings 2nd Ward (our master carver, Taka Walker).  Their messages were so touching that all I could do was cry.  Then the spokesman on "our" side spoke in Maori, too, thanking them for their hospitality and promising continued friendship from us.  When the speeches were over, we shook hands and "rubbed noses" and are now considered "part of the family", which is tangata whenua, meaning "we belong".  From this day on, all of our family are welcome on this marae and treated like family.  When the Maoris greet each other, they don't really rub noses; they press their foreheads and noses together for a brief moment, sharing in the same air, which then makes them kindreds.  It is not uncomfortable at all and, actually, is quite meaningful.

Following the welcoming ceremony, we were invited for snacks over in the dining hall...and when Maoris serve snacks, they always serve a feast.  These people live so simply and have so few material goods, but they love to share what they have...they're the most generous people we have ever met anywhere.  I wish I had taken a picture of the huge table filled with all kinds of food.

While we were eating, we were also entertained by a choir of Maori singers, along with a wonderful man, Tommy Taurima, who shared with us the history of the LDS Church in New Zealand.  During the years long ago, when Christianity was first brought to New Zealand, there were a lot of different churches coming here.  The Maori people asked their chief which church they should join, and he said he would meditate about it.  After several days, he told them that the true church had not yet come to New Zealand but when it did, their preachers would come in twos and teach them in their own language in their homes.  When the LDS missionaries arrived, they were recognized almost immediately from the chief's description, and Maoris joined the church in droves.  This dear narrator shed tears almost the whole time he was telling us about the church's history here; so, of course, I cried, too!  Here's a few more pictures of those who entertained us.

Many of their songs have hand gestures; you can see that Sister Armitage joined the singers.

This was their very poetic spokesman and music director, Tommy Taurima, who had all of us enthralled. He also shared with us various Maori words and their meanings...they love rainbows and have six different words for "rainbow".

One of the singers is a good friend of ours, Poppy Maere, who everyone calls "Auntie".  Her mother is our friend, "Mother Marae", who is 93 and still going strong...does a radio show on Fridays and works at a youth facility for troubled teens on Thursdays.

The young missionaries knew President Bleak was in town but were not allowed to come to the marae, so President Bleak was invited to a baptism in Napier that evening, which we also went to.  All the young missionaries from any of the South Pacific Islands and New Zealand and Australia come to the Missionary Training Center in NZ, which is located in Auckland, so they were all quite excited to see President Bleak and his wife again.  Here are some of the pictures we took last night after the baptism.

BACK ROW:  Elder Levy (Samoa), Elder Aiono (Tonga), Pres. Bleak (Nevada), Elder Aumua (Samoa), Elder Heinricks, ZL (Alberta Canada)
MIDDLE ROW:  Sister Hemi (NZ), Elder & Sister Armitage, Sister Bleak, Elder Haiane (NZ), Elder Tamale (Tonga, now Hamilton NZ), and Elder Barnes (Farmington, UT).
FRONT ROW:  Elder Eneri (Kiribati), Elder Hunt (Samoa), Elder Wehipeihana (Hamilton NZ), and Sister Tito (New Zealand)

President & Sister Armitage, Sister & President Bleak, Sister & Elder Farnes, Sisters Tito & Hemi.

BEAUTIFUL SUNRISE

A few weeks ago, we happened to glance out our back window and saw the most gorgeous sunrise.  I grabbed my camera, took a few snapshots through the window, and was surprised at how well they turned out. The building you see below the sunrise is the Greek Orthodox Church that is behind us...our "beacon" to find our way back to our flat when we first came here to Hastings.

MUSICAL "TALENTS"

Unfortunately, there are times at our small wards and branches in New Zealand that there is no one to play the organ, so Elder Farnes and I have decided to step up to the plate and share our musical talents.  Fortunately for these good people here, we have digital organs, so all we have to do is find the hymns we want to play and press the button. We can even press a button to play an introduction, another button to change the tempo, and even another button to put the music into a lower key, so it's quite easy to appear rather talented.  We just love these organs and are hoping to teach some of the members how to play them.  I think most of the members think these are regular organs and are scared of them.  These valuable tools need to be put to use.

CEMETERIES IN NEW ZEALAND

Oh my, you're probably thinking I've really gone off the deep end now; but because of Clyde's interest in genealogy, we have spent a considerable amount of time visiting cemeteries in the United States.  Therefore, it just came natural to us to stroll through cemeteries here in New Zealand, especially since many of the LDS churches are located next to or near cemeteries, plus all the towns have cemeteries.

The traditions here vary somewhat from what we usually see in the USA.  Generally, the grave markers are put on the grave sites here one year following the death of the loved one.  That is a very special day when family and friends gather again to tell stories and share memories about the person who has passed on.  The graves are very, very respected here, and absolutely no one desecrates them, steals flowers, or takes mementos that are left at the grave.

Most of the families make use of whatever surface there is on the monument to leave messages, names of survivors, pictures, etc.  They are so interesting that I wanted to share some of the pictures we have taken.  As always, my husband and I feel a great sense of reverence in a cemetery for the feelings of people when they lose someone special to them; so I share these with you to show how various people express their losses.

This is the cemetery in Hastings, where there are several walls like this...each little box is for the cremated remains of loved ones.  As you can see, some of them also have tiny vases, plaques, or messages on them.

Other cremated remains are either buried here OR taken somewhere else, but a rose bush is planted and a plaque put in place to honor the memory of the deceased.

This is a huge cemetery in Hastings that is quite old, and the headstones are very close together...it is almost full to capacity, so the city council is looking for a new site.

Now we're at the Maori cemetery in Bridge Pa, which is right behind the Korongata Ward Chapel.  I know you can't read what's on the stone, but it is an example of the long messages left to this baby that had passed away.

Many of the grave stones leave no doubt that these were LDS people.  Bridge Pa was one of the strongest LDS towns in all of New Zealand for years, but that has sadly declined, and we're doing our best to re-ignite their testimonies.

Starting with "Princess Bubbles" these four pictures are from the cemetery next to the Te Hauke Branch.  You can see all the mementos here that are never disturbed.

This is the gravesite of the Branch President's wife, who died 5 years ago, and he continues to serve faithfully.

 Another tribute to the loss of a young daughter.

The Maori culture expressed

This picture begins the cemetery next to the Omahu (Oh-mah-hoo) Chapel, which sadly, is only used once a month for the YSA (Young Single Adults).  It's quite tiny, but it's also a lovely building that used to be a lot busier.  The families all go to the Omahu Ward, which now meets in Napier.

 Maori culture again

 All Maori carvings are painted in the "Maori red".

 Not uncommon to see banners and large pictures.

 Recent death, some of the loved one's belongings will stay there undisturbed.

Many of the graves are quite close together.

And, lastly, the rest of these pictures are gravestones in another larger cemetery in Bridge Pa that we visited just today, Monday 4 June 2012.

Note the heading on this one:  "Foreva 17"

 Nickname says it all.

 Much of the language seen is Maori or Samoan or Tongan.

 Another Maori carving

 Most common terms of endearment here are Mum, Auntie, and Nana.

This stone is for the husband of our dear friend in Bridge Pa, Mary Reid.  We don't know what the S.T. stands for, but everyone called him Tori.  He played rugby with the All Blacks and was much loved by everyone.  He died 8 years ago, and people still talk about him a lot.

 Another Temple couple...plus I loved the nickname "Gooch".

 This lady was born on Christmas Day...then died on Christmas Day 38 years later.

 Who was this little boy's hero?

 And this man was a truck driver.

 Have you ever seen this on the back on a gravestone?

This is the front of the "Whatever" gravestone, and there are several pictures of the man it memorializes.

 This is a close-up of one of the pictures.

A tribute to an only son...very sad.

And, finally, I love the message found on this stone.  It's so true!

MASTER WOOD CARVER

On Saturday, 2 June 2012, we visited a man in the Hastings 2nd Ward, Taka Walker, someone we had previously only known (and admired) as the ward mission leader.  We found out that Brother Walker is also a master carver, close to 80 years old, who has been asked by the Church to do some huge wood panels for the Maori marae at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii.  The original carvings (about 50 years old now) have been infected with wood-eating bees and need to be replaced.  Brother Walker is the only carver still living who worked on the original project.  Because he is under contract by the Church, no pictures can be put on internet sites like Facebook until the panels are installed, so I can't put pictures on our blog either, but here is a picture of Brother Walker and some of the other wood carvings he has done.

This is a Maori chief and his wife, each carved out of one huge block of wood.  The chief is 9 feet tall, his partner 8 feet tall, and he represents a great grandfather of Brother Walker's 19 generations back.  The Maori people learn to recite their genealogy back through all these generations and call it their whakapapa (fah-kah-pah-pah)..."wh" in Maori is always pronounced like an "f".   The wife has a cloak of kiwi-bird feathers, and each feather is hand-carved.  The painting around her mouth (or chin) is called the moko, and we still see Maoris today with mokos.  Interestingly enough, today's mokos are basically just tattoos, but in the early days, these mokos were carved into their faces with a albatross bone, leaving the skin with grooves rather than a smooth surface.   Owwwwwww!!!!

MISSION COMPANIONS

As you probably know, the "young" missionaries do not count months or years on their missions, they calculate time spent by number of transfers.  Transfers in the mission occur every six weeks, but not everyone is transferred each time.  Usually, a missionary spends about 3-6 months in each area where he or she serves, then moves on to a new companion and new area.  Well, as you can probably guess, we senior missionaries definitely do not get new companions, and in our mission, we aren't transferred either, so we'll spend our entire time in the Hawkes Bay area.  We'll never even meet senior missionaries serving on the South Island and rarely see any of those on the North Island either, although we are getting a new senior couple in Hawkes Bay in July.   They'll be serving in Waipukurau and Te Hauke, about an hour's drive from us, but they'll be in our same Zone, so we'll probably see them at least monthly.  It'll be fun.  We know their names, Elder and Sister Webb, and that they're from the USA, but that's it, so we'll have to "introduce" you to them in a later blog entry.

With all that introduction, I really just wanted to tell you another story coming out of our trip to Hamilton to the New Zealand Temple.  We met a lady at the Church Museum across from the Temple, who was visiting her sister, Rangi Parker, who runs the museum. Anyway, as we were talking, the subject came up about my having been in the convent prior to my conversion, and a couple of them asked if I had written down my conversion story.  I had written it (in the form of a letter to my family), and a couple of the ladies wanted a copy of it.  The lady visiting there, Dawn Sayers, was from Australia and was going home that day.  When she got home, she read my email conversion story and then shared it with her husband.  Well, surprise of surprises, her husband and Clyde were companions in the New Zealand Auckland Mission 45 years ago!  She and I have exchanged several emails now, along with pictures, and I thought you'd enjoy seeing the "before" and "after" pictures of these two young men.  Elder Sayers was Clyde's only Australian companion; all the rest were from the USA or Canada.  They served together in a town called Waihi.

Notice how BOTH of those young elders had lots of hair...well, you all know Elder Farnes today...here's Elder Sayers in a recent picture, must be something about where you served your mission.  We're hoping they'll visit New Zealand again before we leave, so we can visit with then in person.