A trip to Tauranga

I was supposed to have a meeting with the Boomerang Bag group this afternoon but it was cancelled via email around noon About the same time, Elder O'Neal was reading an article in the Church News about a new park that was renamed in Elder Matthew Cowley's honor in New Zealand last Saturday. In looking up the location of the park, he realized that it was only about 3 hours away from us. Sooooo, we decided that since our afternoon had just been freed up, we'd go see it. Tauranga is a place we've never been to and of course the drive was really windey but worth it. Here's a couple of pictures of the park (which is Matthew Cowley spelled in Maori and the phrase on the bottom is one he used all the time which meant to be humble, loving and kind or sincere)

It was beautiful little place and well worth the drive. Elder Cowley is rather famous in this country and was instrumental in converting a huge percentage of the Maori's in the early 1900's. Lots of streets and other locations are named for him.
After that, we found an old part of the town that has been turned into a little shopping area:

It was closing time so the streets were bare- just perfect!

Mary