The Big News of the week is that I am moving my Pics of the Week to a blog. This will allow me to keep a better long-term record of my pictures. If you still want to receive my Pics of the Week, please subscribe to the blog by typing your email in the box provided in the upper right hand corner.
If you type in your email address, my Pics of the Week will still show up in your email inbox, just like they have been, without you having to actually check the blog.
I hope you will do it, because I take the time to send these pictures in an effort to stay close to you, and to remain in contact with an extended family that I care about very much. Writing home once a week is something I learned on my mission, and I have felt inspired to keep up this missionary habit through my weekly pictures.
I hope you don't feel that I'm showing off, or that my life is a lark. It's not. I send the highlights. I enjoy keeping an eye out, during the week, for high points that I want to share with you. I send the smiles, not the tears. When I look back there is the "danger" that I'll JUST remember the many things for which I'm grateful - and that the hard times, self-pitying moments, the messy counters, and heavy bags of groceries won't be all that important any more.
When we drive around, just the two of us, we often take turns picking songs to sing. (Joycie says, "hing hongs" for "sing songs") She almost stumped me one time this week when she asked for the "Golden Dishes Song." (It turned out to be "the Golden Plates")
2. Tuesday night I hosted a combined YW/YM/YSA activity which was a birthday party for a nonLDS girl named Kaley. Kaley's been coming to YW for the last couple of months and her mom does zumba and waka (Maori rowing) with some of the other members of our branch.
3. VB game at Kaley's party. This was a good turnout, which basically includes all our youth and YSAs, - so you can see there really aren't very many of us…
4. Nai, Eno and I at Kaley's party. Little Eno is currently learning 4 languages! Both of her parents have their native dialects, plus Swahili, plus English. Her Mom, Nai, speaks 6 languages! Nai grew up in the bush in Kenya, going to school under a little tree with a few other kids, but was adopted by a Kenyan diplomat when she was 8. (She was actually adopted at birth, but her adopted parents wanted her to live with her birth family until she was 8, which she says is not uncommon in her area.)
Nai joined the church about the same time she met her husband. When they met, they were both studying at university in Ireland. He is from Nigeria. When I asked him why he was so different than other African men I have met, he said that it was because he grew up in the LDS culture, not the African culture. As one of two YM leaders, he has been one of the biggest influences on our boys since we moved here, and I feel very grateful for him.
5. These white flowers are called Japanese Anemone and are growing all over our yard and driveway! They make me very happy whenever I pull up to our house!
(Yes, that's laundry hanging to the right of the kitchen windows. Like many kiwis, we don't own a dryer.)
6. Same view as the previous picture, but taken from the inside of the kitchen.
7. Hike up to Wilkies Pools on Saturday. Missed Mike (in USA) and Noah and Danny (in the middle of a 12-hour adventure race at Hawke's Bay)
8. Feijoas! Pronounced fi-joe'-uz. Has anyone else, besides me, lived all these years on earth without hearing about feijoas? They are in season here in NZ and are growing all over the place. A neighbor brought me this box just yesterday. They are about the same texture as kiwifruit on the inside, but with a very different flavor, and with a strong smell. Kids of all ages take them to school in their lunches; we throw them into smoothies.
Love the pictures Holly, and they are way easier to view from the blog, I think. Thanks for sending them to us!
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