Friday, June 16, 2006

14June06 Joan and Wayland

14June06 Wednesday

Today we spent with the Reyburns.  Dave and Anne are key people in the operation of the Northland affiliate.  Dave is the chairman of the affiliate and also serves on the New Zealand national board for Habitat.  Dave has also served in local government as a councilman and deputy mayor of Whangerai.  Anne is instrumental in handling the arrangements for the global village teams that come to the Northland area to help with builds there.  The Reyburns give a lot of themselves to their church, community, and Habitat.

 

We had a very nice day with Dave and Anne.  Dave took me for a ride around town to see a number of homes that Habitat has built there.  While we were doing that Anne took Joan to do some shopping in town visiting a fabric store there.  After that we went for a ride out to the Whangerai Heads where the oil tankers from the middle east come to unload and also where they load wood chips onto Japanese ships for shipment to Japan.  It was a beautiful overview of the area. 

 

From the Heads we went on out to the Dave and Annes beach bach.  There we sampled guavas from the tree in their backyard.  We also saw there a NZ pigeon which are very large and colorful.  Anne says that they like to eat the guavas.  Their bach has a great view of the Pacific.

 

We returned to town and had dinner at a Thai restaurant and then returned home where the Northland board was coming for their board meeting that evening.  Dave had invited me to sit in on the meeting and it was a real privilege to be able to do that.  It was amazing that so many of the same issues that we discuss back in Portage County are the very same issues that were discussed this evening.  It was apparent that we all share the same problems and issues.

 

After a great day we retired to the KEA remorseful that tomorrow was our last full day in NZ and the realities of having to pack up began to sink in.

 

Pictures include guava tree with fruit, NZ pigeon.

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