Farewell NZ

Whangarei Community Church

  Department of Medicine going away party with the specialist doctors and Linda (front row far left) the nurse who coordinated the lung cancer program Lynn started. Dr. John Mpe was recruited from South Africa as Lynn's replacement pulmonology specialist.
Viv, laboratory manager, and me at going away party. Viv gave me a beautiful almost black greenstone carved in the Maori eternal friendship symbol. She drove half our luggage to Auckland and sat with us in the airport keeping me company over coffee (our favorite thing to do together.....the coffee and the talking not the waiting at the airport). It was a sad goodbye as we boarded our international flight and I had to say goodbye to a professional mentor, a personal friend and spiritual sister.
    Helen from "The Fish Bowl" hosted the medical party and was generally good to us all year. She was the closest thing to a mother and grandmother.
      Zara wrote a song for us. That was a Nichols' first. We also received 3 different paintings given by the artist themselves ( one from a patient, one from Herani at church and one from a friend in our community).
 Iliase (red shirt) is the sleep and pulmonary function technician who assisted Lynn to kick off the sleep apnea program and pulmonary function lab. They named the new pulmonary function machine "Maureen" after Lynn's first patient who was tested on it. The other people in the photo work in outpatient medicine as nurses and echo technicians.
Whangarei Heads community was a gift from God. At the community send off Lynn quoted the bible verse that talks about "man making his plans but God directing his steps". We felt that was true of the area we happened to rent a house in.
The church going away party was fun and I muddled through trying to share what I think God has taught us this year. There may be a reprise at some point if anyone back home wants to hear about it. Our last Sunday was an amazing service with a message about the "Fullness of God" that left us all in tears (the good moving kind of crying). The worship leader happened to pick some of my favorite songs like "Potter's Hand" by Hillsongs and "In Christ Alone". 
Jo made us this beautiful cake of NZ for the church going away party.
The weeks before we left had our last road trip further down the North Island to the Waitomo caves which are a collection of 100's of caves. 5 or 6 are commercially toured.
Phillip and I did the king daddy which started with a 100 meter free repel (abseiling) into the cavern which is pictured above. Then we hiked 2 hours to get out of the cave. It was a guided tour Mom! The rest of the crew did more tame spelunking in caves with water boats and glow worms like stars on the cave walls.

A few weeks before we enjoyed a hike after lunch on Yamana with our sailing friends Pete and Alice we met via Hugh in Charleston. Many thanks to Pete, a professional photographer (pictured on Yamana below), who framed some beautiful photos of New Zealand he had taken. We gave them to the Medicine department as a "Thank You"  and a memento for the department conference room at the hospital.

The kids were out of school on break the last 3 weeks we were there so we tried some homeschooling. Anna was replacing NZ coins with trying to learn our US money.

Lake Taupo was beautiful and reminded me of our Lake Tahoe and the local Lake Tellico. We met my brother there for Lynn's and Rus' birthdays. The boys went fly fishing. The girls walked along the shore to the above dock. The nights had ball room dancing, cards, and a general good laugh in the bach with Loida and Rus.

Anna and Andrew's class at Whangeri Heads. There were some sad faces on this last time with them. We had a wonderful community party that my friends Rene and Sharmaine from school put on for us. We showed a video with all the amazing photos of the kids in the various school activities from the last year. I think the whole community was stunned by how much fun the school kids have in all the hands on activities. We were stunned by the outpouring of love and support from the school families we have shared this year with. Rene's Mom had a near fatal car accident the day of the party so she couldn't make it. We continue to pray for her recovery. Sharmaine and I had wanted to hike up Aubrey at night to see the stars but had to settle for an early morning hike due to cloudy weather all week. We talked about God and watched the sunrise at the top. It was a hike I will always treasure as a memento of our friendship in Christ.

As you can imagine the last few weeks have been busy. We had a wonderful time our last month in NZ but found time for blogging was short. There were lots of goodbye parties, hugs and tears as we parted NZ for home. After spending the first night on an airplane across the Pacific we missed our flight out of LA. After a few hours for a nap and a bite to eat at a close by hotel we spent night number 2 on the red eye to Atlanta then on to Knoxville. Better late than never we arrived last Sunday morning with smiles and hugs. This week has been busy trying to set up a household and get our days and nights straight. Our address is the same 1523 Bickerstaff but we have a new home phone of 865-474-1258. Can't wait to share more in person. e-mails are still good at pnichols@summithealthcare.com