May 23rd, 2008

Well, a lot has transpired since last week. We have helped with a New Zealand Area Advisors conference here in the area office. Our counterparts who do NZ proper organized it with our boss and we helped with set up and Dad did one presentation. We did it in the conference on the 2nd floor the first day. We were invited to dinner with the group that night. They chose a restaruant that has a bar attached. The Lelo's liked the food there so that is where we went. Acutually the food was good but I almost felt like I needed to hide the badge. We went early before it got busy. The second day we met the group at the Hamilton Temple for a session. We ended up taking the couple from Christchurch back to Auckland with us. We always stop in Pokono for wondrful icecream cones. That night I had persuaded the group to change from a really awful restaurant to our favorite (Wildfire). They were all suitable impressed. Our boss told me that if for no other reason than introducing them to this restaurant that was enough for our being here in NZ. I managed to get 25% off on the bill so that was better yet. They all were impressed. Our third day of the conference the elevator was down for maintenance so we changed the conference to the first floor. We had lunches brought in daily and morning and afternoon 'tea'. (Which is really just snacks). We met some interesting people and made good friends. The new exec. Sec. and his wife are visiting the office today trying to find housing for them when they come in August. They seem very nice and will fit in well. Brother and Sister McGloughlin from Farmington. We are headed to Christchurch next Friday for a conference at a Catholic Boy's College. The New Zealand Genealogy assn. is sponcering it. We will have a table/booth advertizing Family Search. It goes Sat., Sun and Mon. We will attend our Sac. mtg. sometime, somewhere there. Tues. and Wed. we are taking time to see Christchurch and the area. We have reservations at Hanmer Springs which is quite a tourist place in the mountains with lots of hot springs. We are not planing on getting in. Just looking. We fly back on Wed. night. Looks like we will go to Invercargilll in early July for a few days. Look on the map. It is pretty close to the Antartic Circle. We will be there for about 3 days to train and help there. The Area Advisors there are in Christchurch and so don't make it down much. We will fly down ofcourse but it is winter so I am glad that I brought my winter coat. We are scheduled to go to Samoa for the roll out in late July and Tonga in last August. We are also going to be going to the north of our north island to Maromaku, Whangarei and Kaikohe for a few days to train. Don;'t know when that will be but it will fit in someplace. So it looks like abit of travel for us. Higley's probable need to plan on coming over at xmas as well as Megan and Scott. That is an expensive time to travel but it is summer here and would be really nice--and everything slows down then for us. Well, it is past time to leave the office for the weekend. We haven't planned anything for it. Scott's birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Scott!

Love, Mom and Dad