Summer Highlights

- February 03, 2022

Our summer has been full of family, friends and lots of swimming… in beaches, rivers, lakes and lots of swimming pools.

Jumping Photo 2.0... now with friends

We arrived back in the North Island on December 20th and enjoyed a week in Lower Hutt with family before a few weeks house sitting in Waikanae. We are grateful to have stayed in two houses with swimming pools over the hot days of summer and also to be close to the beach and river. We enjoyed going to our home church and helping out with the Food Share at church again. It was great to catch up with so many people. It is a bit surreal how we can so easily walk in and out of different worlds.

A classic Kapiti sunset

In January, Roy was able to fit in a two week job in Lower Hutt working for Ignite Sport. This is the first place we did a job away with MMM back in July 2020. At the time, they were only just starting this large renovation project and we were keen to return there to do what we could. They do some amazing work in youth and leadership development through sports and have a huge project on their hands converting old football clubrooms into their own offices and venues. This will hopefully be completed in the coming months. Roy was joined by a few local MMM volunteer’s and another friend we’ve met through MMM who travelled down from Whangarei for the job (or maybe just to hang with us, who wouldn't?). They took on a laboursome part of the project in the summer heat - framing the ceiling and installing 4.5m x 13mm gib sheets to the pitched ceilings above the open plan office area. Seeing this already done would have been a welcome sight to the employed builders after their summer break.

Discussing the finer details of the project

After the project, we returned to Pirongia for the first time since July. We had spent 190 days on the road, staying in a wide range of accommodations in 21 locations. It had been 227 days since we had been together as a family in Pirongia for more than a week.

We’ve all been wondering what our next steps will be and for a long time we have been saying, “our plan is to make a plan in February,” regarding what 2022 will look like for us. So, as soon as we got back to Pirongia we started making some calls to try and get answers to our many questions.

Some of you may remember that in December 2019 we won return family flights to Fiji with Air New Zealand on Channel 3’s ‘The AM Show’. See a previous post about that here. The original prize was to be used in the first 12 months after winning them, but COVID obviously ruined that one. We had continued to stay in touch with Air New Zealand in the hope that one day they would redeem our tickets. This week their answer came back that they are no longer in a place where they can offer prizes such as the one we won in 2019. However, on this occasion, they were willing to give us one way flights to Fiji if we use them by 1 April. So we can now happily confirm to you all that we have booked one way flights to Fiji on March 30 2022.

Before you know it, we'll be there

After two years of the doors continually being shut just before we try to walk through them, the doors are beginning to open.

Now we start the crazy period of so many things to organise and decisions to make. Roy and I have to provide negative PCR tests before travelling and with the emergence of Omicron in our communities we are thinking we might lay low in the month before leaving, as getting COVID at the last minute will really mess up our plans.

If you are ones to pray, we would appreciate your prayers as we continue to plan to leave New Zealand. We have to make lots of decisions on things like insurance, what to take or leave and how to ship it, what to do about a vehicle in Fiji (MMM has a work vehicle there for us to use but we are advised to also have a personal one), as well as reconnecting with Waikato friends and family and saying goodbyes. There are also lots of jobs to get done that are so much easier to do in New Zealand than Fiji. The constant shifting around gets a little bit tiresome on having and holding good friendships, please pray we all settle well in Fiji too.

Jones' Landing, Lake Arapuni/Waikato River

There are a lot of extra costs associated with moving to Fiji. If you aren’t already a regular financial supporter of ours, or would like to give a one-off financial gift and would like to know more about how to partner with us, please get in touch. We can even give you a tax deductible receipt as MMM New Zealand is a registered charity.

Thanks for all your support, we really appreciate it.

Rachael, Roy, Josh, Gabrielle and Kelepi/Caleb

Some Bonus Photos