Gina and Elmer Peiffer

Providing provisions of biblical proportions 

Words Jill Nicholas

Pictures/video Stephen Parker

Delete any notion the couple who’ve spent almost a decade feeding this region’s less fortunate are wealthy benefactors.

To the contrary, they are beneficiaries.

Elmer and Gina Peiffer’s sole income is the Supported Living Payment.  Gina grapples with debilitating health conditions.

In 2010 she suffered a brain bleed, her hearing is impaired, so too is her sight. In addition she has a rare form of Lupus. Elmer’s not the picture of health either. He was

born sickly; chest infections still bother him.

He’s a beneficiary not because of this but because he has no paid employment. His time and energy are devoted to collecting and distributing food and pantry

staples to those in need. 

The Peiffers know first hand the reality of the struggle to put kai on the table. There

are still nights when a bowl of cereal is the most they can rustle up for dinner. 

Yet for 364 days a year, 365 come Leap Year, they work to ensure the ever-increasing number of this region’s cash-strapped have the basics.

Christmas Day is their only day of rest.

They are presently providing provisions for 50,000 people every three months. That’s through food stores and distribution centres.

Food rescuers, distributors

For six years the Peiffers operated under the Love Soup banner. Covid’s first lockdown, followed by social distancing, forced them into abeyance. Last year they

re-emerged and rebranded as Whakaora. In English, that translates to “life-giving breath”.

There’s no government assistance to boost Whakaora’s coffers.

 The organisation operates under the umbrella of a six-person trust, led by the Peiffers.

Whakaora relies entirely on donations to keep its shelves fully stocked and volunteers to staff it. They describe themselves as “food rescuers”.

Supplies arrive daily from Countdown and Pak ‘n Save, local hotels, cafes, restaurants, fast food outlets and bakeries.

 The Auckland-based New Zealand Food Network sends pallet loads of food Whakaora’s way weekly.

Anonymous donations appear at the distribution centre’s doorway, others are left in suburban pataka Whakaora supporters run as collection and distribution

points.

Deliveries widespread

Outside Rotorua, deliveries are made weekly to Tokoroa, Mangakino, Murupara and Kaingaroa Forest.

In town, supplies go to Toi Ohomai, St Vincent de Paul and Ngongotaha’s Trinity Church to be funnelled out into the community.

Rerewhakaaitu was recently added to the areas needing assistance. Rising living costs have hit rural communities hard too.

Local organisations take care of the distribution. In Kaingaroa it’s the volunteer fire brigade, in Tokoroa the Pacific Island community.

 Whakaora’s Depot Street hub opens on Fridays for the elderly. Saturdays are for families. On Sundays food is dispensed from the Peiffers’ Ross Road home.

The spirit of giving isn’t restricted to this rohe.

When Cyclone Gabrielle ravaged Hawke’s Bay, Whakaora teamed up with Waiariki Women’s Refuge and the Rotorua Aero Club to keep up a constant flow

of whatever essentials were most needed.

More than 40 plane loads of supplies were airlifted in when the region’s roads were impassable.

“We put a list of what was required on our website and donations just kept rolling in the door. We asked and we were inundated,” a chuffed Elmer reports on the

well of Kiwi kindness that sprang up in response to the disaster.

That is a potted version of what Whakaora stands for and how it functions.

In a nutshell, it’s the Peiffers doing what they do best – masterminding a non-stop supply-to-meet-demand service.

National, community recognition

Their work hasn’t gone unrecognised. In 2017 Gina was a New Zealander of the Year finalist. That December the Rotorua Daily Post named the Peiffers the city’s

People of the Year. Kiwibank has a room at its Rotorua headquarters named after them.

The Rotorua North Rotary Club has honoured them with a community service award and in May they were presented with a Bay of Plenty Local Hero

award.

You won’t hear the Peiffers crowing about these accolades.

They are below-the-radar types. They scoff at suggestions they are do-gooders.

It’s the hardship they’ve experienced in their own lives that’s given them the edge on empathy for others doing it tough.

Married 20 years this past May, the couple’s countries of origin are 12,835 flying kilometres apart.

Gina’s a Lower Hutt-born Kiwi. Elmer’s from Saskatoon in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It lies in the depths of the country’s grain cropping and mining belt.

Meeting online

They met online when computers were yet to become commonplace and internet dating was still way into the future.

Gina had been given an early model. 

Elmer, who’s always had a passion for “gadgets with wires”, came to grips with computing while working the front of house graveyard shift at a local motel.

It was one of three jobs he juggled simultaneously.

Others were as a salesman in a video store and a cleaner in a supermarket. He slept fleetingly between each. It was a case of “needs must”.  Times were hard in his

part of Canada.

He knew virtually nothing about New Zealand when he and Gina made cyberspace contact, bolstered by phone calls and letters sent the snail mail way.                  

“One time she mentioned it was Waitangi Day. I had never heard of Waitangi Day, let alone being able to pronounce Waitangi. As more and more information became available online I was able to research Waitangi Day.”

His New Zealand knowledge base escalated. Gina had a head start on him. Her father was Canadian by birth.

“He grew up one city away from where Elmer did but the country is so big they are a three-hour drive apart.” 

Over the next three or four years the two developed a friendship that grew to the extent Gina asked Elmer to marry her.

“We had an agreement that if the chemistry we had over the phone was there in person we’d go through with the wedding,” says Elmer.  “I had been married before and got burned very badly.”

Marriage

Gina takes up the story:

“When I arrived at the airport I spotted him standing there in a full-length Keanu Reeves jacket. He didn’t spot me. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked if she was here yet.? I had to laugh because of the Keanu Reeves set up. Who doesn’t like Keanu Reeves?”

Elmer describes seeing Gina at his side in person as “surreal”.

“On the three-hour trip to my parents’ place I couldn’t stop looking at her to make sure she was real.”

Gina chimes in: “I asked him what he was looking at. He said I was beautiful.”

Elmer: “You still are.”

This brings screams of laughter from them both.     

For Elmer, what set the seal on their future together were the first words out of her mouth when she met his parents.

“She called them Mum and Dad. I knew then that this

was the woman for me.”

Gina had flown in on a Tuesday; they married on the Saturday.

His sisters were the bridesmaids, his son his best man.

Oceans of excitement

Three weeks later they landed in Wellington. Elmer was overcome with excitement to be by the sea.

“I’d never seen the ocean before. Saskatchewan is the size of two North and South Islands, it’s landlocked. Saskatoon’s right in the middle of it.”

His first New Zealand jobs were in Paekākāriki and Waikanae petrol stations. He continued pumping gas when the couple moved to Flaxmere in Hawke’s Bay.

Elmer alternated that with orchard work before he and Gina formed their own contracting company.

“We named it Tuatahi, te reo Maori for the first, because I was the first female orchard contractor in the region,” Gina says. “We employed locals over backpackers in conjunction with MSD.

“After eight years the writing was on the wall: orchards were being turned into farmland.”

The Peiffers closed the business and were preparing to return to Canada when a family member asked them to become caregivers to a severely disturbed eight-year-

old in Tokoroa.

They stuck it out into his teenage years but when he threatened to shoot them they took CYF and police advice to leave town.

Feeding the homeless

They chose Rotorua as a safe haven but were struggling on the breadline. Elmer was unable to find work.

He looks back on those times with a degree of cynicism.

“People say to me now ‘Why didn’t you come to me for a job?’. I say ‘I did but you wouldn’t even give me an interview’. It’s interesting to see the look on their

faces.”

In Tokoroa they were close friends with Love Soup’s founder, Julie King.

“We looked at bringing that kaupapa here. Did the homework, saw the number of rough sleepers. I cooked a huge pot of food and took it to Kuirau Park.” That

from Gina.

For two weeks the food and its donors were shunned.

“We wanted to find the homeless; they didn’t want to be found.”

The Peiffers put a notice in the library inviting people to free kai behind the former Community House.

“Our numbers jumped -  one, five then 35, 37. We worked with the council to return to Kuirau Park.

“We were living beside the park. We put tables, chairs and a tent in our back yard and the people came.”

An avid cook, Gina prepared a three-course meal every day.

Several moves later the Maranatha church invited them to set up in its Devon Street hall. It was Love Soup’s home base until lockdown.

In addition to the food they served, they found accommodation for the homeless and worked closely with social agencies.

Post pandemic

Those links disappeared when the pandemic arrived and the homeless were moved into motels. The work the Peiffers previously did is now contracted to other

agencies, hence the new direction Whakaora’s taken.

With the Maranatha hall unsuitable for storing and distributing food, the Church of God stepped in. At the time its Depot Street centre was surplus to its

requirements; that’s changed. Whakaora’s back searching for new premises. The pressure’s on. They have to be gone from Depot St by August 31.  

Helping people through Whakaora is a 24-hour-a-day commitment.

“The clock never stops ticking for us. If I get a call at midnight offering us food I go and get it.” 

The theft in April of Whakaora’s donated trailer was a body blow.

Until then Elmer was making weekly trips to Whakaora’s opposite number in Hastings, leaving at 5.30am, returning with four or five pallets of non-

perishables and frozen food.

 “The theft was really gut wrenching, heart breaking. That morning I’d found out my dad had died in Canada. I hadn’t seen him since I left. I had that emotional turmoil to deal with, then arriving to see the chain link cut and the trailer gone was a really low blow.”

A month later police recovered it near Whakatane.

This is not the only time the couple have been targeted. They aren’t strangers to having their cars vandalised.

Gina views it as retaliation for trespassing those who don’t follow Whakaora’s few

rules. She understands why this happens.

“People are stressed. We’ve had five female-on-female assaults since opening because these women are so strung-out coping with high rents and the high cost of

food.”

The background of those being assisted has changed in the short while Whakaora’s been in business.

Demand’s changing face

They estimate 75 per cent of those walking through the door have jobs.

“We are now seeing the new poor.”

Money doesn’t change hands at Whakaora, despite Gina calling it her shop.

Vehicles are generally fuelled with the aid of donated petrol vouchers.

“We are not shy of asking . . . this is an ‘ask and ye shall receive type’ of operation.

“We are a registered charity, we have a wonderful crew. We are very careful who we bring on board as volunteers. They need to have a darn good sense of humour to match ours. There’s a lot of banter.  Whether giving time here or coming to collect food and essentials, it is a very good social event.”

They put the amount of food they’ve “rescued” in less than a year at 300 tonnes.

“That would have been 300 tonnes going to waste. It’s human nature to be wasteful. We don’t have waste. We have a wonderful relationship with a local pig farmer.

He’s grown us three pigs and two sheep in return for food we can’t use. It’s an excellent exchange.”    

According to Elmer the couple’s kaupapa is dedicated to making a difference.

“In a lot of organisations there’s more talk than getting things done. Talking about it takes too much time away from the real work.

“We have never abided [sic] by the word ‘can’t’. In this field you always have to think outside the box.”

Gina adds: “I don’t give up. I will find a way. I apply that to every part of my life.” 

·      All food donations to Whakaora are graciously accepted.  Each week the need increases.