our car over to Hamilton one day with Cherry when she went to school, to have the brakes religned. I gave her the money to pay for it and to bring it home at night if she could. When she went in to get the car, they refused the money. They would send her father a bill. She tried again. "Oh, no. We'll send your father a bill." And right there was a large sign, "All labour and material strictly cash unless prior arrangements had been made." I had never been in there, but they knew the car was from the "College."
We had been in N.Z. about a year when I took the opportunity to go pig hunting. I took one of the boys from the college to Taupo, where we met two of his friends who had some good pig dogs. It turned out to be a very rainy day, but we went out to the bush and started walking, with the dogs scouting afield. Sure enough, the dogs started baying. They would lose the scent a few times and have to start over, but once they got on a fresh trail, they could track down the pig. We would follow the sound until we should arrive to where the pig "bailed" cornered. Sometimes the pig would break and run then the chase would resume. Nearly always it would be in dense brush. You could hear them but sometimes could not see them until within 15-20 feet. These pigs, maybe 100 lbs., were very vicious, with sharp tusks. I shot one pig and one of the boys killed a deer. We went to Taupe and shed our wet clothes and soaked for an hour in a hot-springs bath.
The new block plant was being built when we arrived at the "college." In as much as there were several buildings being built at the same time, we had to jump around quite a bit. We started the brick work on the Cowley Bldg. before we finished the block plant. We started work on the David O. McKay building and the temple before we finished the block work on the Cowley Bldg., trying to keep all of the buildings progressing at the same time.
Feb 28, '56, my diary says, "We have the block work nearly completed on the new block plant and about a week left on the Cowley Bldg."
June 27, '56 -- Six months since we arrived in N.Z. I laid the first bricks on the temple.
Mar. 18, '57 -- Today we completed the walls on the temple.
July 10, '57 -- Today I set the top stone on the tower of the temple.
We did not do all the work on the temple before we laid the cornerstone. Dec. 22, '56 -- One year and one day after ground was broken we laid the cornerstone on the temple. Elder Hugh B. Brown, Assistant to the Twelve, officiated. Early in the morning Rod and Cherry took the cornerstone to the temple and tried it for size etc. and got all ready for the official ceremony that followed. I have the trowel before me as I write this. It is autographed by: Hugh B. Brown; Ariel S. Ballif, Mission President; W.B. Mendenhall, Church building commission; G.R. Biesinger, construction supervisor; C.W. Child, masonry foreman; Elwin Clark, assisting mason.
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