And the winds came

Am back online after 2 1/2 days on the Cormandel Peninsula at Waihi Beach at my friend's aunt's holiday batch. Basic accommodation but a very lovely sea side location. For added excitement we got to go through a semi-hurricane which created 150+ mile per hour winds last night, and left the other side of the Peninsula and the North of the North Island without power today. We tried to drive up to the famous Hot Beaches yesterday afternoon but Nicola's poor little VW was getting quite blown about on the sea front roads so we relented and rented some NZ movies & went back to the cottage to weather out the storm. The power was quite fragile, and the old cottage could only cope with 3 plugs being used at any one time, so we had to decide on what was electrically essential. In the end it was the space heater, the tea kettle and Nicola's computer where we watched In My Father's Den in the dark. (BTW--beautiful cinematography but a very sad and slightly disturbing movie, Nicola says many kiwi made movies hold this theme of slightly dark, twisting narratives...)

I am now on a 2 day retreat at Vaughn Park, an Anglican retreat center on Long Beach just North of Auckland, so will go offline for 48 hours to pray, ponder and seek God.