After church today, we drove to Muriwai Beach to see the black sand beach on the west side of the north island. The west side beaches have waves and there were lots of people surfing there. Muriwai Beach is also famous for the gannet colony. Gannets are birds that are indigenous to this area. They make their nests in November and lay their eggs soon after. The babies hatch in December and January. There were lots of baby gannets that looked like balls of fuzz. Some of the babies were already nearly as big as the parent birds. Below is a huge rock in the ocean that some of these gannets chose to be the place they laid their eggs. I guess this puts a new meaning on being island bound until those chicks get big enough to fly.

Below is a closeup of the gannets. The mothers and fathers are protecting their babies which look like balls of fuzz. After seeing the gannets, we walked on the black sand and it was hot, much hotter sand than the white sand on the east coast beaches here. We hope to visit a different beach each weekend so we can walk along the shore forever if it is low tide and collect gorgeous shells and occasionally some sea glass. There are beaches everywhere, we can even walk to Takapuna Beach in 5 minutes from our office. We love it.

Auckland has a Sky Tower with a restaurant right in the center of town. We can actually see downtown Auckland from our apartment building. Saturday we drove to the American Store and passed right by the Sky tower. Martha's Backyard is the name of the American Store. It was fun to see American brands, but you need to really want an item there as everything is very expensive. We bought Jif peanut butter for $11.50 and chocolate chips for $7.50 for a 12 oz. package. I don't think we will do this again. If you come to visit us, just bring peanut butter, chocolate chips, and pecans.

We are back to the land of year-round flowers and gorgeous planters like this. We walked to the Takapuna Beach, a 5 minute walk from the office, 15 minutes from our apartment and these floral designs were on our way home.

Our Addresses in Takapuna

Many of you have asked us for our address in New Zealand. Well, we have three addresses. The first is the New Zealand POUCH that can handle letters and cards without anything other than the letter or card in them. It requires just a regular stamp as it is sent to Salt Lake City, then put in the pouch and shipped to New Zealand where we will receive it. We think this takes a little longer as it is dependent on when the pouch is ready to be sent. Here is the pouch address.

Elder & Sister Seamons
New Zealand POUCH
50 East North Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84150

Here's the address at the office. If you want to send more than a letter or even a box, it is best to use this address.

Elder & Sister Seamons
11 Huron Street
Takapuna, Auckland 0622
New Zealand

And here is our apartment address.

Elder & Sister Seamons
130 Anzac Street, Apt. A301
Takapuna, Auckland 0622
New Zealand

This is the car we will be driving for the next 23 months. It is a white Toyota Corolla. Notice that Elder Seamons is driving on the right side of the car and in New Zealand we drive on the left side of the road. It is a bit confusing, but Scott has been driving yesterday and today to make sure he is ready to master this. He has done very well. It feels a little unusual to sit on the left side passenger seat and not be driving. We will walk most of the time, but will take the car when we go out of the area or have errands to do that we need the trunk to carry things home.

After a 12 hour non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand, we arrived at 6:25 am with all of our luggage. We were met by Elder and Sister Brereton, the current Executive Secretary and Assistant Executive Secretary for the Pacific Area. We loaded all of our luggage into the van and headed to Takapuna, a 30-minute drive from the airport. We made our way to our new home in Shoalhaven Apartments and spent a little time unpacking and getting settled into a temporary apartment for the next 10 days. Then we took a walking tour of Takapuna and a tour of the Area Office where we will work. That afternoon we drove out to Orewa Beach and walked along this beautiful beach before having lunch in Orewa. We came back to our apartment and finished getting moved in. We forced ourselves to stay awake until 9:30 so we would be on course for our new time zone. We left on Thursday night the 7th and arrived on Saturday morning the 9th so we never saw Friday, January 8th. Crossing the international date line sure changes things. We love it here and look forward to having a wonderful adventure.