clean linen

Photo of the day - steep cliffs, soft sand and blue sea with lapping waves - at Whakapiti Beach: After breakfast at home, aunty Joy drove me out to the White Pine Bush Scenic Reserve for a walk that lasted about 30 minutes. The whole place was just so quiet and peaceful; so full of greenery and it had just rained so that it was just so nice to breathe in the cool fresh air and be in the midst of God's beautiful creation:) About midway through our walk, we came to this huge tree that is called the King Kahikatea. It is estimated to be about 800 years old: From the White Pine Bush walk, we drove to Whakapiti Beach, which is part of the quiet Whakapiti village. The scenery was just wonderful  I'd absolutely love to have a holiday home here to come to... Then we headed back to Hastings and had lunch at this restaurant called 'Ten Twenty Four'. Aunty Joy wanted to give me the experience of having a meal at this kind of restaurants, whi...

Photo of the day is of Mt Ruapehu, with Chateau Tongariro at the left corner of the photo, which is this nice and expensive-looking hotel at the foot of the mountain. This mountain in the background is the mountain on which I did a whole day of skiing for the first time in my life: So, I got up at 4am. Took a bath, washed up, got ready, and left the house at about 5:30am when Dave drove over his 4-wheel drive with Jorja in the car. Jorja is his oldest child, aged 9 years old. This is her first time skiing as well so she was SUPER excited. Apparently she couldn't fall asleep the night before. After close to 4 hours' worth of driving, we arrived at Carpark No. 6 of Whakapapa ski field at Mt Ruapehu. We had rented our skis, ski poles, ski boots, gloves and goggles from a store at Turangi before this, which is a 40-minute drive away. The weather was perfect and there were SO many people out to ski. Just look at all the cars: Here's Dave and Jorja in the free shut...

It was a very cloudy day yesterday. The sun did come out in the afternoon, but it was drizzling on and off, and in the clouds you still see dark patches. Today's photo is of the cloudy sky and the driveway out of the Connells' home: I could wake up at  little later, at 9am, because there was nothing planned for me to do. So it was a slow morning. In the afternoon, after John had gotten his afternoon nap, Sarah took me out to Napier with John in tow. This is John looking out of the car window to see his mum Sarah filling the car with fuel at the petrol station: We walked a little along the roads of Napier. This photo of me looks like the sky/background has been superimposed or something right?? haha We did some window shopping along the main shopping street at Napier, which reminded me alot of Beeston, and it also looked like a small scale of Nottingham's High Street. And Sarah bought me some make up!!! I was all ready to pay for it but she went ahead and p...

I am supposed to blog about what I did today, but I am going to push it off till tomorrow because tomorrow I aim to get up at 4am to have a shower before leaving the house at 5am. Why 5am? Because I'm going to ski with Dave and his eldest daughter Jorja! Goodnight for now!:) -Signing off at 9:30pm NZ time-

Photo of the day - a piece of bone from a sheep, left in the house by David: Aunty Joy had boiled this big piece of bone so that she could cut it up into smaller pieces to use for soup stock. Why would this be my photo of the day? You can watch the video clip which should be at the end of this entry. It shows my amusing end to the day today:D Anyway, we left the house at 9am this morning. Aunty Joy went to see a chiropractor for some issues with her back, while uncle Mike drove me up to Te Mata Peak. It was a cloudy morning so I didn't get many nice photos... On good days, apparently you can do hang-gliding from this place: We didn't stay very long at the peak because the wind was just TOO strong! When I was trying to take photos, I lost my footing once or twice because the wind blew me off-balance! Towards the end of our short stop at the peak, uncle Mike started running towards the car saying it was just too cold. I ran behind him, but at that time, a strong g...

My photo of the day shows Dave's jetboat grounded in one area of the river, with a whole row of cattle standing in one line, looking on in curiosity: Anyway, today, I visited the Farmer's Market at the park opposite the Connells' home. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of it... Maybe next Sunday? haha. Well, it's actually like a Sunday market with all kinds of stalls that sell honey, cheese, fig, olive oil, coffee, muffins... All kinds of things! I didn't buy anything though. Just went around the stalls with Sarah and baby John eating the samples laid out on the tables. Then I had a quick breakfast before heading out to church with uncle Mike and aunty Joy. It was a great experience! Surrounded by 'ang mohs', anointed (although musically a little messy) worship, great sermon by uncle Mike on generosity and giving. Seeing the couple in action just reminded me of how I see my parents in action right from the moment they enter the church car park....

My photo for today is of the seminar manual and small programme pamphlet printed for uncle Mike's seminar that had sessions last night and the whole day today from 9am to 5pm: So I spent the entire day today at Bay City Outreach Centre for uncle Mike's seminar on Deliverance and Healing. Aunty Joy packed lunch for us and we just heat it up using the microwave at church. It was a really great day of learning and getting to know more people. And it was really fun to learn how to just rely on the Holy Spirit and experience Him  move through us as we prayed (practiced) on each other.  Uncle Mike probably covered some of this material when he came to teach at our church sometime around end August 2011. But this has more detail, and he set aside a bit of time for us to have a hands-on experience, praying for each other, and also seeing him pray for a few people up front to see how we can handle different kinds of bondage or blockages or issues that crop up when we pray for...

My photo for today is of uncle Mike and his son David filming a short programme for Isaac TV, a channel primarily for people in Pakistan but is also aired on satellite TV in other countries (the photo is of lousy quality because I took it with my handphone from a lousy angle because I didn't want to attract too much attention while taking the photo): So I slept until 10am NZ time this morning. I think I could have slept even later if not for my handphone alarm going off... I set the alarm as a back up plan to make myself get up, if not I would get up too late. It took me about an hour to get all washed up. Then I went down for a late breakfast with uncle Mike and aunty Joy. Uncle Mike fried eggs and placed them on toast. It was nice! We then had to leave for David's house for the 1:30pm filming. I accompanied uncle Mike while aunty Joy went about running her own errands. It was a very interesting experience for me to hear and watch David and uncle Mike doing the filming. ...