Happy New Year!

Happy

New

Year!

~Well, here we are the end of another year and the beginning of another. Yes, it is about one hour from the new year as I write, here. As I was thinking over the last year, it has been a really great year for us and we hope it was a great year for you all, too. We started our year in a motel in Virginia on our way to the New Zealand embassy in Washington D.C., and ended in Pukekohe, New Zealand, WOW. It was so exciting to see how the Lord brought us here and all he has done this year and we are looking forward to seeing what the Lord is going to do here in this next year.

Christmas Parade

~ Here is a late post, again! Anyways, there was a Christmas Parade earlier this Month and we went down and passed out tracts. So here are some pictures. Sorry, no pictures of us passing out tracts because the crowd got really thick and that made it impossible.

Here is some of the kids getting tracts ready for the parade. One person goes around our oval table laying tracts out, anther comes behind stamping, and another comes to pick them up and that works quite well.

Here is Matthew counting tracts out.

The crowds were massive. You can only see a small part of them here. But I think it was most likely the biggest crowd we have seen in New Zealand.

This picture really shows the spirtiuallity here in New Zealand. The devil just has complete control over them.

And here is what they think of Hell. This is the truck from the pizza chain Hell here.

This was on the back of a big canoe. But there is more of the teke gods that they worship.

This was cute and I thought I would throw this in because there is some of our Bible Club kids in there!!!

Now I think this was the most creative thing there!!!

Now, I was surprised at first to see this one, but it must have been one of the churches in town.

Yes, we do have McDonalds here.

Now thats what you see when you live in Kiwi land with Kiwi's!!!

Here is the little girls on the way home. Alicia's legs got tired so she sat on the front of the pram.

Thanksgiving

Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all of our wonderful friends!!!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here! We all had fun putting a together a menu, shopping and cooking , and of coarse eating too! All the kids also helped at one time or another in the kitchen when we were preparing everything for dinner! We had a great day even if old Tom was replaced by a chicken! A 12lb. turkey was on sale for $65, so we decided chicken would do.

On Wednesday, Mom was at one of the schools here for most of the morning, so I had fun helping the younger ones make "I'm thankful for" signs to hang up all around the dining room. They all had so much fun.

Kids posing with there projects!!!

Linda with some crayons.

The kids project up on the wall in the dinning room.

Thanksgiving dinner in the trolley. After we purchased every thing, we had to fit it all into two push chairs(strollers), which we did but we ended up calling the boys. They came with there bikes and backpacks and took a whole bunch, as we realized that if we went all the way home like that we would break the prams(strollers).

The outside of all the pumpkin here is white, but it is the same inside! You can not buy canned pumpkin here so we purchased two pumpkins and baked them.

The pumpkin crew!!!

Alicia mashing the pumpkin!

ROLLS

We made cinoman rolls for breakfast and rolls for lunch and they came out great. We put three small balls of dough in each muffin tin to make clover rolls and the kids thought that was great!

Ezra and Emmaline made a place mat for everyone and they did a great job!

Pumpkin Casserole; we could not find sweet potatoes here so we used pumpkin in its place and it came out great.

The whole family around the table except me (Jillian)

Crustless Coconut cream pie; it was great even if we did not have any pie pans. As you see the foil, we tried to put foil underneith it so we could pull it out and use the pan for something else but it did not work because the foil was so thin.

Great homemade pumpkin pie and whip cream!

Its a Snyder Family tradition!!!

And here is a picture of it in the making.

HOMEMADE EGGNOG!!!

Alicia eating her pumpkin pie

In the evening us older ones played Risk and the others had fun playing games too. These two were so funny to watch play "chest", as you can imagine!!!

Four Little Girls and Apples

~Here are some really cute pictures of the four little girls enjoying apples! It was a sunny warm day and around the corner of one of the buildings walks two little girls both eating apples. And of coarse when Mercy saw I was taking pictures she had to jump in and then I was informed that Linda was inside in her walker eating an apple. So of coarse I had to take pictures of her too.

On the porch in the back yard!

Mercy comes to join the party!!!

The three youngest

~Oh and I ought to give you a just quick update to let you know how we are all, too. We are all doing very good. It is spring here and we are all enjoying the wonderful, longer, warm, sunny days! We have a few small gardens in our yard and those are doing good thus far. We also keep busy with general stuff around the house and school. The ministry is going well and also is keeping us busy, but we all love it! We are now having Bible Club at the Hall at the Pukekohe North School. That is going well and the kids are becoming more regular. We also go door knocking and letter boxing often. Well, that is the some of what is going on here.

Our Trip to Taupo

This post is old but I thought I would post it anyways. I have not been on the computer much so sorry it has been so long since I have posted anything. Anyways, on October 9th Dad rented a car and Dad, Jillian, Emmaline, and Nicolea went down to Taupo, so heres the post about it.

We started the day early and by 6:30 a.m. we were on the road. We had wonderful home made muffins for breakfast and in about three hours we were in Taupo. We picked up the bike, we had come to pick up, in short order. Then we went and strolled through town and Dad bought us girls some wonderful pastry's at a bakery. We then went to see the lake; Lake Tapuo is 100 kilometers around and is the biggest lake in all of Oceania. It was some what of a rainy day and as they say around here "it was spittin". We drove around the lake a little ways and then stopped and walked on a path by the lake for a little while, but is was beginning to really rain now so we soon returned back to the car. We continued to enjoy our drive around the lake until we noticed the car was on empty, so we headed back for town praying we would not run out of gas. The Lord was gracious and we were able to get gas before we ran out. It was then almost lunch time know and Dad took us to Subway for lunch. It tasted great and we really enjoyed it as we had not had any since before we left the states and that is one of my favorites! And like Dad says that is the only American food here that tastes the same here! After lunch we headed for Bethlehem, which is over by the Pacific Ocean, to pick up something. It was a nice drive by Lake Rotaru and through the hills. The ferns were so interesting as they were so big that they looked like palm trees! After that we went to the beach. We did get out on the beach as it had stopped raining for a few minutes and it was really windy. After that we stopped at a Dairy ( little stores that they have in every town here.In the US they arre called convenience stores ) and got some treats, I really enjoyed the M&Ms, HA HA. Then we drove home, it did stop raining after a while and part of the drive home was clear. We arrived home about 5:30. It was such a fun day! We all enjoyed all of it!!!

I put this video together of our trip. I changed it and worked with it enough that I think I decided I just needed to post it. It is only 2 min. and 47 sec. So enjoy!!!

Today's Adventure

~ Today Mrs. George next door had to go to Auckland to renew her Australian passport (she is Australian!). She invited Mom but she did not have time to go all day so she let Emmaline and I go with her. We had a wonderful day, Thanks Mrs. George for taking us along! We left a little after 10:00 and we caught the 11:05 train. We got to Britomart (the train station up in the city) around noon. We started by going to Australian passport office first only to find out that the picture quality was not good. So we went to a pharmacy and Mrs. George got her pictures done again. We then went and browsed through Stevens, a kitchen ware store, next we went to McDonalds for lunch. Wow, it had been a long time since we had eaten there, almost six months. Next we went to Witcoulls and the streets were so crowed when we went outside, ya I guess that is part of a big city! Walking back from Witcoulls it started to rain but thankfully we were able to stay undercover by the buildings. We then went back to the Australian office, and when we got there we found a very long line of people waiting to go through the check point. Thankfully almost all the people were going to the visa office so the line in the passport office was not long. After that we ran through the rain across the street to the train station. We went home the eastern route so that was neat as that is the route that goes along the water for a ways and we had never been that way, unfortunately it was raining so I was not able to get any good pictures:( When we got to the train station in Papakura it was still raining very hard and we got a little wet as we had parked a ways away from the train station because it was so packed with cars. On the way home we stopped at the Strawberry Shack and Mrs, George got a coffee and bought us home-made ice cream. We got chocolate ice cream with crushed strawberries all the way through it, It was great!!! We had a wonderful day!!!

The Britomart train station.

The Britomart train station, again.

A Train in the station.

The front of the building you came into when you walk up and out of the underground station.

Looking out over the water from the building that the passport office is in.

Another view of the Harbor. Our neighbor says the harbor looks really crowded when one of the big ships come in.

This is where we ate lunch in the mall.

Emmaline and Mrs. George enjoying there lunch!

Mrs. George!!! We love you!!!

She said she did not see this picture on the blog, so here it is!!!

Not a good picture but I thought it was funny that Wendy's was pink!

Looking down a street in Auckland.

Looking up another street.

Yes, they have good ice cream here!

P.S. I took some pictures out the windows, or I should say tried to, but they did not come out good because it was raining.