Adventures in Paradise Volume 2 #53

Kia ora! Our excellent adventure continues with some thoughts concerning a phrase that I recall hearing my grandmother voice on many occasions. When my grandma Martin found herself in some sort of tizzy, she would often exclaim that she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. That phrase always personified to me a state of unease or unrest. I had visions of her running around without direction wringing overworked hands while nursing and equally overburdened brain.

As our time in New Zealand grows shorter, Ward and I are experiencing much the same angst as did my frenzied grandmother. We cannot properly define whether we are coming or if we are going and that dilemma is beginning to weigh heavily on our minds and hearts. In fifteen weeks, we will be wondering if we are coming home or if we are going to be leaving home. Is it possible to be doing both? Such is the state in which we find ourselves as we yearn to see the faces of those we have been missing, while at the same time begin to imagine goodbyes from the faces we know we will long for almost immediately after sharing one last hug.

We are coming to the conclusion that returning home is going to be difficult. When leaving Utah for New Zealand, we knew that we would one day be issued a release and in the first difficult days of our stay here, we avidly looked forward to that day eighteen months into our future. What we should have recalled from our experience in the Cooks is that that release day comes much more quickly than we could have imagined and in the blink of an eye, we are expected to pack up our experiences and friendships and vacate a land that we have learned to love.

It’s not that we don’t know whether we are coming or going; rather, it is simply the fact that in our case, “coming” means “going” and we are beginning to feel our hearts breaking. We are coming to the end of our time with the Tomatia family and we know that we are not going to see two darling boys grow up in person. Samantha and Jason have been diligent in their missionary efforts and we can credit them directly for helping in the conversion of two people (possibly a third!) and we are going to miss them dearly. Samantha is totally blind, but she has taught me how to appreciate and view the world much differently that I once did. I am coming to anticipate just how much I am going to miss Sam and her little family

We are going home, but happily realize that some of the missionaries that have become our adopted children will be coming back to homes and schools near us. We look forward to continued relationships with the dedicated, directed and spiritual young people that they have become. We are also coming to appreciate just how easy it is to stay in touch and in the near future we are going to be very grateful for both the miracle of the internet and the ability to travel easily. We have already promised those attending BYU Hawaii that one day soon we will be in the audience of the island show at the PCC. Ward has indicated that a trip to Tonga to visit a sister is a must and tomorrow, as we bid farewell to our cute sister from Eastern Europe, we will be reminding her that we will see her in the Czech Republic before the end of the year. The hard edges of the reality of our going home are softened as we formulate travel plans that will find us again sharing company with some of our favorite young people.

An interesting byproduct of our going is that we are finding ourselves in high demand as speakers. As others are coming to realize that we are not going to be here much longer our stock has gone sky high. The little branch to which we were initially assigned has not seen us for the past three Sundays and we now must inform them that we may not be in attendance again until sometime in February! To clarify; it is not to say that we are not working with and visiting the residents of our little community, it simply means that we have no opportunity to interact with them on Sundays. I have had to laugh as I consider how popular we feel and how wonderful it would have been to have had this many invitations when I was a young woman hoping for a date! This morning for example, found us traveling two hours up the beautiful New Zealand coastline, so that we could participate in a special fireside. Unlike the young missionaries, who are restricted to a certain defined area in their mission zone, we have the opportunity to travel widely and we have found it a wonderful experience. Our goings have allowed us to come into the company of many lovely people and we look forward to staying in touch with them in the future.

So, as always, we are happy and trying to work hard. Our comings and goings are much more frenzied than they were when we first arrived and that is to be expected. Part of our stress simply comes from the fact that we can almost hear the clock ticking and time is passing much too quickly.  In a much earlier blog, I referenced a Jim Croce song entitled, “Time in a Bottle” and those lyrics play over and over in my mind as I wish that somehow I could actually preserve a little time so that I could uncork the container in moments when the days seem to be moving much too quickly. Having wished that, I am also more than anxious to come home to friends and family that we have dearly missed. Please know that you are almost constantly on our minds as we view a calendar whose days keep slipping away. My grandmother never did figure out whether she was coming or going and we can’t either.

Love, Ward and Susan    Elder and Sister Belliston, serving in Gisborne, New Zealand

Coming and going up the coast this morning, we were treated to this view. Ahh, New Zealand!