This week the weather is warming up, in spite of one morning below freezing and quite a bit of rain. We needed to get out and walk more, so we turned our visits into walks, as much as possible.
A screenshot from an online weather video, with a warm front coming from Australia, hence the kangaroo. New Zealand has a maritime climate, meaning it gets its weather from the surrounding ocean and prevailing winds. It is supposed to be an El Nino summer this year, meaning greater than normal heat and humidity. February in Rotorua "is typically the warmest month of the year. Daytime maximum temperatures average around 23°C (73°F), whilst at night 13°C (55°F) is normal." Doesn't sound overly warm to me, we'll see what El Nino brings. It would be nice not to have to bring the (now) large and heavy tomato pots indoors every night.
On Monday we listened to the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is usually Saturday and Sunday, but for us living out beyond the International Date Line, it is Sunday and Monday. The talks were inspirational and comforting. You can find all sessions of October 2023 General Conference here: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2023/10?lang=eng
We were concerned about our indoor-outdoor tomato plants getting sufficient pollination. Elder Rooks discovered that if you brush their teeth every morning with your electric toothbrush, which lets loose clouds of pollen over the self-pollinating flowers, you will achieve Cherry Tomatoes eventually.
Elder Rooks has been very diligent and it is paying off. Hopefully El Nino will provide enough sunshine for them to ripen.
On Tuesday, after District Council Meeting with the young Elders and Sister missionaries, and grocery shopping at Pak'n'Save, we drove to Western Heights to visit Robbie and Wiki, since it is too far to walk. They will be leaving for Hamilton for an extended stay next week, so we wished them well and told them we will be praying for her successful surgery. During her recovery I have promised to help her with family history.
We have been planning a Fairy Springs Ward family activity at the lakeside with Margie and Eddie Barber. I was thinking the Spotlight store on Amahou Street might have outdoor game supplies. So Wednesday morning we set off walking. We passed this vacant lot, which I suggested to Elder Rooks we could build a winter home on, flying here to Rotorua in February, then renting it out as an AirBnB the rest of the year. Unfortunately his standards of construction would render this project unworkable.
We passed this lovely tree, which actually is an oak (see oak leaves below) at the bottom of Kuirau Park on Pukuatua Street. The ground was soggy, though, so we had to walk around it. These two weeks are school vacations so there were many cars in the car parks and lots of families having a good time in the sunshine.
Oak leaves. The Spotlight store turned out to be, in Elder Rook's disappointed words, "Just like a great big Joann's store," although I would add J.C. Penney's onto that since there was not only fabric, yarn and craft supplies, there was also bedding, lamps and the like. I did find yarn needles, however, and some cotton blend yarn. No volleyball nets or soccer balls or frisbees.
On the way home we passed many campaign signs like this one, since there will be national and municipal elections on Saturday, October 14. It will be nice not to have continual ads on Youtube for candidates we will not be voting for.
Elder Rooks is able to cheer himself up by practicing with his new discount golf club, which he is finding is good for keeping his hands and wrists limber.
Wednesday evening we went to see Karla, since our next Family Home Evening isn't for another ten days. We had a short but cheerful visit. I told her I had found the pink New Zealand marshmallows and was excited to try them in hot cocoa.
On Thursday, Mary came over to work on FamilySearch.org. The Maoris have a vital interest in their whakapapa, genealogy. A surprising amount of her family line is on Family Search. Here she is gathering family name cards for ordinances to take to the Hamilton Temple when it reopens later this month.
Mary would rather do anything than cook. She brought us these sausage and egg meat pies, which Elder Rooks had for lunch.
I had seen these Peckish rice crackers in the grocery store but not tried them. Mary recommended them, and they are really quite good with hummus, which Elder Rooks allows me to eat all myself, instead of sausage and egg meat pies.
In the afternoon we wanted to see how Patrick and his wife, Maata, an elderly couple, are doing, so we set off for Kowaha Point. We passed these flags on Fairy Springs Road. I think they are welcoming visitors to a motel. It was good to see the American flag in the sunshine.
We passed the black swans in the Utuhina Stream
...and Mount Ngongataha in the brilliant sunshine...
...the Koutu FoodMarket, and
...a really fine specimen Rimu tree on our way to Bellvue Street. We discovered that Patrick was in the hospital, with Eddie Barber already visiting him. Maata was not up enough to see visitors. So we promised to come back later. It was tiring but good to be out walking.
On her usual Friday morning appointment, Alleen came to work in Family Search with us. She is so excited, having found connections to her Scottish family on the websites Find My Past and Ancestry.com.
When we are not out visiting people or going to District Council Meetings, we transcribe headstone images for Billion Graves. Elder Rooks took about 500 photos and we downloaded them in batches because you have two weeks to transcribe the photos you have taken. After that, they are made available for anyone to transcribe. I haven't even downloaded the photos I took yet.
The Rotorua Crematorium and Cemetery has over 12,000 gravesites and memorial sites. The map above shows the gps coordinates for the photos we have taken in one small part of the cemetery. The yellow dots are transcribed, the green dots are still waiting. Purple means the photo may be too blurry or out of frame to transcribe. We have answered two dozen requests for headstone photos to be taken, from relatives of people buried here.
Transcriptions can be vitally important because headstones often contain the names of parents and children, and other information that public records do not show. The Find a Grave website includes this cemetery but only 17% of the headstones have been photographed.
We will have to return to this cemetery several times and may not finish it before our mission comes to an end. Lenora Winiata, the stake president's wife, is interested in taking her family to participate in photographing and transcribing headstones.
A nice photo of the Eurasian blackbird, with the unfortunate scientific name of Turdus Merula, on top of the heavily pruned magnolia tree. These are true thrushes, related to the American Robin, also of the Turdidae family, Turdus Migratorius. There is no love lost between Elder Rooks and robins, which he accuses of eating his ripening strawberries in an annoying way. I don't think I will mention that Eurasian blackbirds are close relatives of American Robins.
Far less glamorous than Turdus Merulus, Mr. Pukeko is looking downright prehistoric.
He thought he'd wander off to see what was going on at the neighboring AirBnb, which has been busy lately with lots of families staying several nights at a time, to see the sights of Rotorua.
