It is quite possibly the most beautiful country in the world. But perhaps I am biased. I was born in the North Island of New Zealand, and—stereotypically—was raised into the agrarian lifestyle, farming cattle and sheep. You might have heard of the much-quoted New Zealand statistic that for every person, there are nine sheep! Actually, that number is in decline: a generation ago, it was 22 sheep to every person. Needless to say, on our 760-acre farm, we contributed our bit to that percentage.

We New Zealanders call ourselves kiwis, after our national bird. And while our Australian rivals may mock us for the flightless nature of our bird, at least we don’t eat our national animal!

New Zealand’s size is approximately the same as Italy’s, but with a population of only 4.5 million. Of that, only 1 million live in the larger South Island. The capital city of New Zealand is Wellington, and it is the southernmost capital in the world. The largest city, Auckland, contains about one third of the entire New Zealand population and is home to the Sky Tower, the tallest freestanding structure in the southern hemisphere (1,076 feet tall).

New Zealand was the last major landmass to be colonized by humans (apart from the polar regions). The dark-skinned native Maori population purportedly arrived over 800 years ago, having traveled from the Polynesian islands. Their tribal culture still exists today, although the people, about 15 percent of the population, have been thoroughly integrated into western society. There are some, however, that claim New Zealand was home to a people before the Maoris arrived, perhaps even of a Celtic origin. It would not be surprising at all if the seafaring tribe of Dan had made it around the world to the bottom of the planet and landed in New Zealand!

It wasn’t until around the 1800s that European settlers began to make the trip to this paradise. It was a profitable place of work for whalers, gold miners, sealers and farmers. My own ancestry is a typical example: We emigrated from Somerset, England about 150 years ago and settled down in the North Island of New Zealand as farmers, taking advantage of the extremely fertile landscape.

Growing up deep in the country meant going to one of the very small country primary schools that dot New Zealand’s landscape; mine consisted of only two classrooms. In fact, my dad’s country school was so small that they finally closed their doors when the attendance dropped to six people!

When I made it to the teen years, I began attending a much larger high school. Here I should interject the still prevalent and much glamorized native Maori culture in New Zealand. Snippets of Maori language and culture are inserted wherever possible into the education system. We learn a great deal of Maori history in school. My first day at this new high school was initiated at the nearby marae (a traditional Maori meeting place), where we had the introductions given in both the Maori language and in English, though Maori is essentially a dead language. After the speeches, all the students lined up for a hongi with the members of the school staff. A hongi is a Maori greeting, of the same status as a handshake, involving two people touching noses and foreheads at the same time. Its concept is in sharing the ha, or “breath of life.” Needless to say, it was all a very interesting and unusual initiation to my high school experience!

A teen will typically go through high school up until the end of Year 13 (17- to 18-year-olds). Through the college years, there is a lot of emphasis put on sports, especially rugby, cricket and water sports. Agriculture is a big industry that many young people work in during or after school.

Many of us Kiwis take ample opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors. There are no snakes, scorpions, foxes, badgers, skunks, coyotes, wolves or bears—you get the picture! And only a couple of potentially dangerous spiders, which even then are rarely seen. New Zealand is known as the land of birds. A fun fact about the national bird: They lay the biggest egg in proportion to body size for any bird species. While kiwis are about the size of chickens, the eggs they lay are about 6 times the size of a chicken egg! However, you are unlikely to see a kiwi in the wild. They are an endangered animal, due to feral cats, dogs and rodents. New Zealand is home to seals, dolphins and the world’s smallest penguin, and is believed to have giant squid living deep off one of its coasts. It has the world’s only alpine parrot, the kea, known for its penchant for chewing up the windshield wipers of parked cars! If you are an avid hunter, like myself, you will be interested in the numerous species of deer in New Zealand, including elk, whitetail, fallow, sambar, sika and rusa deer, as well as tahr, a large mountain goat found only in New Zealand and the Himalayas. New Zealand also has the only moose herd in the southern hemisphere; however, while traces have been found of their continued existence, they haven’t been sighted for around 50 years. The giant flightless moa, which unfortunately died out several hundred years ago (presumably hunted to extinction by Maoris), was the largest bird in the world, reaching a height of 12-13 feet tall and weighing around 500 pounds!

We Kiwis take a lot of pride in ingenuity; living in a small country so far separated from the rest of the world usually calls for a spirit of creativity. As such, many inventions find their origin in New Zealand, including the electric fence, the jet boat, and even the referee whistle! New Zealand is home to many famous individuals, including Sir Edmund Hillary (the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest), Ernest Rutherford (pioneering nuclear physicist, first man to split the atom) and Alexander Aitkin. Aitkin is arguably the greatest mental calculator of all time. He was able to recite π to 707 decimals. In Britain, he was asked to state 4/47 as a fraction; after 4 seconds, he replied: “Point 08510638297872340425531914—and that’s as far as I can carry it.”

For me personally, there were many big milestones to reach through my teen years in New Zealand: one, getting my learner license to drive at 15 (the age has now been raised to 16); another, to get my firearms license at 16. I also began taking flying lessons. While there is no set age to begin, one must be 16 in order to fly solo. I thought this strange, seeing that that meant one is able to fly an aircraft solo before attaining a full driving license! And while on the topic of driving: for all you Americans, if you expect to see large trucks or muscle cars in New Zealand, you will be sorely disappointed. The size of the vehicles was one big shock for me upon coming to America; I distinctly remember climbing into hwac registrar Jason Hensley’s truck cab and thinking you could just about play tennis across the front seats!

While New Zealand does have its striking physical beauty (put on the map by the recent Lord of the Rings andHobbit films), any Kiwi will tell you that the country is extremely secular. Religion is a much-hushed subject. I could tell the stark difference when coming here to America, where especially in the South, religion is often talked about in public. It is a sad fact about such a brilliant country; sadly, this seems to be a great Ephraimite weakness, exhibited similarly in Australia and England. While that made things a little more difficult in school, it did help that we had a strong group of families in my congregation and several young people my age. We would often stay at each other’s houses and participated in many local teen activities.

While currently attending Herbert W. Armstrong College here at headquarters, I do reminisce on New Zealand: roaming the countryside with air rifle or shotgun in the plight to defend our watermelon patch from the pesky native pukeko birds, taking flying lessons through the serene autumn skies, waterskiing the beautiful lakes, bathing in the natural hot springs, playing a spot of cricket, helping cut down trees and split firewood for the annual Church fundraisers. New Zealand is the most beautiful of countries. The people there are down to earth and friendly. It is a most welcoming place to travel to. So if you ever have the means, New Zealand is definitely worth a visit and was an incredible place to grow up in, or as we Kiwis say, “Sweet as!”