January 26, 2015

Hello again everyone :) 

This week was so great! We had exchanges with the sisters in Palmerston, and I was there for about 3 days. Those sisters are also in a 3-some so I got to be in a 3-some for a little bit! I was with Sister Anderson (the Sister that I met up with at the airport) and Sister Gilmore, who is our Sister Training Leader and she's from Scotland. It was so much fun to be in a big(ish) city for a little bit! I had my first Hungi, which is a Maori BBQ where they cook the food deep in the ground, and it was soooo good. Other than that though it was a pretty normal week. 

But, Sister Anderson had lost her carry on bag about a month ago when we first arrived in our mission areas, and it wasn't until this Wednesday that they called and said that they had finally found it, but as we were on our way to pick it up, Sister Anderson realized that she had lost her wallet...so we spent the rest of the day looking for her wallet because she was really stressed about it being gone, and we spent the rest of the next day also looking, but we still never found it. So that wasn't very fun.

I got back in Feilding on Thursday and we taught Latisha again, Latisha has a baptismal date but she lives in a really sketchy situation. We don't even teach her at her house because it's really scary. But on Thursday we went to pick her up at her house and to walk her to the chapel where we teach her, and she was crying, she told us that her boyfriend had just broken up with her and she was being kicked out of the house. We went on a walk with her and talked about it for a little bit, Sister Shaw and I are actually SUPER happy that they broke up because 1)they shouldn't be living together and 2) her boyfriend is a huge jerk. But we didn't have our lesson that day because she had to work.

On Saturday a ward member invited us over to teach their niece, her name is Jade and she's 15 and she's SO awesome! She's already doing Personal Progress and planning on going on the youth temple trip next week to see the temple, and she fasted yesterday to help her overcome her swearing habit. We get along with her really well too and she's so much fun so I'm super excited about teaching her. :) 

So, sadly, yesterday we stopped by Latisha's house to invite her to church, but she wasn't there. Her roommate was there, his name is Aaron, he's a really less active Maori who kind of has mental problems. Well, when she wasn't there, we went to church, and then about an hour later we realized that we had lost our phone.  After church we looked everywhere and couldn't find it. Then we remembered that Sister Shaw had it on her lap when we went to get Latisha, and it must of fallen off her lap and landed on the ground. But when we went back to her house it wasn't there anymore, and Aaron was gone too. Aaron is VERY known to find things and sell them for drug money, so basically our phone was stolen by our investigator's less active roommate, who sold it for drug money! Now we are phone less for now.

Well that's about it for this week! The transfer list came out today and Sister Shaw and I are both staying in Feilding. :) Thanks for all the emails and letters you guys send me! Have a good week! :)Sister Collins

Sister Collins while she was on her exchange in Palmerston

Sister Collins with the Bishops son

A lady Sister Collins teaches owns a goat that she keeps in her home! Britt says it jumps all over the furniture and pees everywhere! Yuck!

January 19, 2015

Hey family! Sorry about yesterday!  It was Wellington's Anniversary or something and everything was closed! There are a lot of Holidays on Mondays here so if I don't email you, just know that I will email you the next day! 

So right now I am in Palmerston on exchanges, and I'm with a set of sisters that are usually in a 3 some so there are 3 of us right now! And one of them is Sister Anderson from the airport, so that''s pretty cool! I'm here until Thursday so we'll see how this goes!

So we have an investigator that owns the mini gold course in Fielding and she let us go there for free yesterday, which was actually super awesome also because it's probably the funnest thing to do in Fielding. 

This week was really slow so there really isn't much to say, i'm really sorry! I'm also a little dazed right now because of my exchange and we're doing a lot today, we have a haungi tonight (i'm not sure how to spell it) but it's a huge Maori BBQ that they do by cooking food deep in the ground and I'm super excited for it.

Sorry about the lame email, it'll be better next week, I'm just super overwhelmed at the moment! See ya guys next week! :)

Love, Brittany

Hello again! :)

This week was really really slow when it came to teaching actual lessons, we mostly met a lot of new people and met referrals from ward members. 

So this week we had District Meeting in Thaihape, which is about an hour and a half drive away from where we are. After district meeting we stayed up there all day and did service with all the missionaries in our district which was so much fun! Mostly because there were 3 groups of sisters to hang out with. :)

So twice a week we drive to a town called Marton and meet with the ward members that live there (they're all Samoan) but ALL of the members there don't come to church because the chapel is too far away from them. They take up about half of our ward so without them there our ward is really small. So we try our best every week to encourage the Samoans to come to church and they always have an excuse to not come, so we're trying really hard to work with them.

If you can remember, about a week or so ago I told you about Maeghan, she's an investigator that the Elders found that works at subway about 4 months ago. She's really good friends with the missionaries and we try not to pressure her into taking the lessons but we try really hard to see her as much as we can and to be her friend. And last week she texted me and Sister Shaw and asked us to start teaching her! Our first lesson was so awesome and when I testified of Christ Maeghan and I started crying so hard, she felt the spirit so strong. Well, we were going to see her this week to continue doing the lessons when the Elders showed up to our flat on Saturday...the Elders told us that they felt really impressed that they should be the ones to teach Maeghan since they were the ones to find her and they said they felt they had a special connection with her...well we talked about it for an hour and a half and finally came to the conclusion that it would be best for Maeghan to be taught by the Elders. I honestly felt like I had just been dumped or something, I love Maeghan so much and I'm so sad that we aren't teaching her anymore. And then to make things worse, me and Sister Shaw were biking past Subway last night and we saw the Elders hanging out with Maeghan in there and I felt like I had caught her cheating on me or something haha, it was a really weird feeling but I know it's for the best that Maeghan is taught by the Elders.

Me and Sister Shaw were really sad about the Maeghan situation, but about 5 minutes after the Elders left our flat, we got a text from Kyeligh to come over to her house. Kyliegh is the ward member who was Less Active her whole life and then when she finally decided to come back to church she found out her records were missing. We went to her house and she told us that she wants to be re baptized! Me and Sister Shaw were SO excited because we LOVE Kyleigh and now we get to teach her all the lessons and help get her ready for baptism! We definitely needed something like this to happen to help us feel better about not teaching Maeghan anymore. 

Anyway other than that, not much happened this week. Kiwis are very laid back and especially since its summer time here, no one is ever around or ever wants us to come around.

 I gave a talk in sacrament yesterday and right after I gave my talk our Bishop asked me and all the other missionaries in our ward to sing next week in sacrament. 

Thanks for all the letters and Christmas cards that you all sent me! I also love getting emails from you and I'm sorry if i don't ever get time to email back, but know that I read them and I love you all so much! Have a good week! :)

Hello Whanau :) (family)

Wow this week went by crazy fast, I felt like I was just e-mailing you guys yesterday! 

This week was pretty good, it started with us meeting with Latisha. (she's white but with a black girl name) She's really cool and super interested in the gospel, but we met with her again on Tuesday this week and she was super super out of it (most likely really high) anyway it was like we were talking to a wall for an hour. But we met with her again a couple days later and taught her for real, and I asked her to be baptised and she said yes :) I was sooo happy, but she has allot of work to do before she can be baptised. So we're working with her allot.

Then we had Maeghan. The Elders met Maeghan at Subway where she works. They met up with her allot and became really good friends with her and so we decided to do the same. We would go to Subway a few times a week just so we could see her (we wouldn't always buy food) but we became really good friends with her. She surprised us this week by texting us and asked if we could meet at the chapel this Friday to start the discussions! So we met her at the chapel and the lesson went so good! She had so many questions and she talked about how badly she wanted to have a family like the families she sees go to our church because we look so happy. She then decided that she wants to be married in the Salt Lake Temple which was awesome haha. She said she wants to meet with us again very soon and we're really excited to meet with her more!

Kyleigh.....Oh Kyliegh, she was a member her whole life but then her records were lost and now she's really bitter about the church. We meet with her once a week just to catch up with her and try to help her in anyway that we can. She's really angry at the church for loosing her records and she refuses to be re baptised. We met with her this week and told her that she would only find peace in her life by turning to God and asking him for it and by living his commandments. And guess what happened? She met with the bishop this week and now she's planning on being re baptised. We're really happy about that! :)

Anyway we had New Years but nothing really happened, we had to be back in our flats by 7 and me and Sister Shaw just watched 17 Miracles and did a countdown to 10:30 which is our bedtime. 

Other than that, things are going pretty good! I passed my one month mark yesterday and me and Sister Shaw celebrated by having ice cream. We're having allot of fun and things are getting much better now that Holidays are over and now that people are done going on vacations. Have a great week!! :)

Sister Collins 

Sister Collins and Sister Shaw celebrating her one month mark!

Feilding is Sister Collins first area that she is serving in. 

Sister Collins is really enjoying the food in New Zealand!

Hello family! :) 

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, our Christmas was very...different. First off, it was super super cold in NZ this whole time I was here, but this last week it was SUPER hot. We were dying and we were just trying to bike around town as fast as we could so that we could get some air blowing on us. So anyway we had a very hot Christmas which was super different. But on Christmas Eve we had a district meeting in Wanganui which is about an hour away from us, and there are two other sister missionaries in our district which is really rare in NZ, so me and Sister Shaw were very happy about that! Afterwards us and the sisters went out to lunch and it was just so much fun to not be around Elders. When we got to Feilding we were walking around and a less active member saw us and he bought us ice cream, which was super nice, everyone here is really really nice to missionaries! Then we went back to our flats and we baked a bunch of peanut butter bars and gave them out with Joy to the World DVDs to our neighbors and investigators. Which was really fun, we were door bell ditching everyone (not really, because no one here has doorbells) and running around so it was so fun. :)

On Christmas we had lunch at the Bishops and then we were invited to a Christmas BBQ held by a bunch of Samoan members, and holy cow it was crazy. They were blasting music and everyone was dancing and they kept asking us to dance, which we aren't aloud to do, so we just sat there. They kept giving us tons of food too, and you can't say no to Samoans... then they gave us this really gross cooked veggies with cream in ice cream thing, anyway it was really gross...then afterwards we had dinner at a less active members house and it was really nice. :)

The next day, unfortunately, i was really sick, ( i think it was the Samoan food...) I couldn't keep anything down and I felt horrible, and we were suppose to skype our families that day so I was so bummed. We ended up calling the Elders and we met them at the chapel so that they could give me a blessing. One of our Elders is the district leader and he's so nice, and the blessing he gave me was so amazing, i felt so much better afterwards, not only from my sickness but just emotionally as well. I was so happy and I've felt so much happier since that day! :) We then got to skype our families and it was so much fun! I also got to skype Jesse for 15 minutes and it was so nice to see him! :) I feel so much better and I"m so relieved that Christmas is over haha. :)

So yesterday we had a lesson and a 18 year old girl in our ward named Safari tagged along, shes a REALLY cute maori girl, and she wants to serve a mission so bad. She's planning on serving a mini mission with us really soon and I'm SO excited! Anyway later that day me and Sister Shaw went door knocking and we met another really cute Maori girl named Takana and she's from Auckland but is in Feilding until February. She was really interested in everything we told her and she even gave her a Book of Mormon, and it turns out shes Safari second cousin! (everyone is related in NZ) We're planning on meeting with her on Friday and hoping to get her baptised before she leaves to Auckland. 

We have a baptism at the end of this month with a girl named Cherish but she's out of town all this month so we might have to push back her date...but she still texts us every now and then and says she's reading the Book of Mormon, so hopefully we get to see her soon! :)

Anyway that's it for this week, it was really crazy and I'm super glad that Christmas is over and done with :) I love you all so much, thank you for everything!:) Arohanui Whanau! (love you family)

Sister Collins and her very expensive flash bike!

Kia Ora family!

Sorry about how horrible my emails have been the past couple of weeks, I only got a little time to email in the MTC and now i only get 90 minutes each week! I'm sure I'll get the hang of it soon!:)

So this week was crazy! I left the MTC very early Monday morning, and don't worry mom my luggage weight was alright ;), and we landed in Wellington that afternoon, and my mission President is the best! He and His wife are super nice and they really care and love all of us so much. Before we went to the mission home, they set all the new missionaries loose in Wellington to do some street contacting for an hour. It was so crazy and so much fun, everyone hates us but allot of people actually listened. After that we went to the mission home, which was so beautiful! New Zealand is amazing and for the record, Wellington is MUCH better than Auckland! We stayed at the mission home for a day and then the next day we went to our new areas. I'm in Palmerston North area, in a small town called Fielding, and my trainer is Sister Shayla Shaw from Odgen Utah, shes 20,  shes so cool! I'm so happy I have her as my trainer for 3 months because she's so awesome!

We live in a small flat, but it's really cute too. It's very clean too which frankly is all I really care about. We also get a car that we share with the Elders in this area, but we like to bike allot:) On our first day we had 2 lessons, one with an 8 year old that comes from a less active family and the other was for a 17 year old names Cherish who lives with a member family. We are really short on investigators at the moment, so most of the time we go street contacting to hopefully meet new people. We also go visit members and non members allot, and everyone here is SO nice to missionaries, especially sisters. They all say the same thing to us "if you ever need anything, just come to our home, this is your home now too, we'll leave the doors unlocked so you can come in whenever you want, and you can take food or money, whatever you want" So many people have said that to us, it's so amazing. So we're very well taken care of here!

One of our investigators is Paul, and Paul is really intrested in the church but he also has allot of questions. We met with him on Thursday and when we came over he had printed out a bunch of anti mormon web articles. which kinda sucked, so we tried our best to answer his questions but we told him that we could only tell him so much, and that he needed to pray to receive his answers. Me and Sister Shaw fasted for him on sunday, and hopefully he'll be more intrested in the gospel again!

So we had a Ward Christmas party on Saturday night was so awesome. So many people came and we just watched little Christmas movies and got lots of food. Then the ward came out and gave me and sister shaw, and the two elders in our ward, 2 HUGE baskets full of food and candy. It was so nice! A ward member also gave me and sister shaw a huge lamb leg! We're very spoiled here.

On sunday me and sister shaw went door knocking, which was my first time ever. It was really scary and we had also been fasting all day so I was so tired. The first guy we talked to was an older guy who was super drunk and said "wow what a great day! Two lovely girls have come to visit me!" but once we mentioned that we were missionaries he went off for like 5 minutes about how religion was rubbish and how dumb it was, it was so funny actually. Anyway we knocked on allot of doors and they all said no, excpect a couple really cool families that told us to try again another time. Anyway it was my turn to knock, and a really cute 25 year old girl answered, i explained who we were and asked if she was intresting in learning more, and she said YES! I was so happy! I set up a time to go visit her again and I was in the best mood the rest of the day! Then after all that we went and broke our fast with lamb leg and ice cream and tim tam slams, so yesterday was awesome!

I love you all so much! I miss you guys like crazy too but I'm doing fine. Everyday I get better and better and Sister Shaw is really awesome about taking care of me and making sure I'm doing good! If you ever want to send me letters or packages, send them to the mission office address. Sister Brittany Megan Collins New Zealand Wellington Mission 324 A The Terrace Te Aro, Wellington 6011 New Zealand. Everything has to go through them first because we move around so much here. I love you guys and I'm so grateful for all of you! I can feel your prayers every single day, and time is going by so fast!! Also watch He is the Gift video, because i love it. Anyway I'll talk to you guys soon! 

Sister Collins :)

Sister Collins with Sister Shaw her trainer

Sister Collins and Sister Shaw enjoying their Christmas leg of Lamb!

Sister Collins at the ward Christmas party

MTC

Hey everyone! So I have FINALLY finished my time at the mtc! I leave tomorrow morning at 6am to the airport and then i am off the Wellington! I'm so excited to leave here because this place kind of feels like a prison. I've made tons of really good friends though, mostly sister Hiatt from washingotn, and Sister Gonzallez from Mexico, theyre my roommates and they're so funny. Sister Hiatt has a boyfriend that she misses allot and Sister Gonzalez missed her family that she was really close to, so i can releate to both of them really well!

We got to go to the Hamilton Temple on Thursday, and my comapion Sister Modranal had never been before becase they didn't have any temples near her in the Phillipeans, so I got to be her escourt in the temple! It was super fun, but it wasn't as much fun to go through the temple without mom around! ;)

So yeah not much has happened this week in the MTC, i spend about 8 hours each day in a classroom, but last sunday we were practicing singing for the fireside, and the MTC Presidents wife heard me singing and she said she liked my voice allot so she asked if I could sing a solo, which was INSANE because I have a horrible voice, but I did it anyway! Also yesterday I gave a talk in sacrament about faith, so yeah theyre are some downsides to being in an MTC where there are only 45 people haha.

I love you guys so much! THey don't let us send pictures here in the MTC, so i'll get more time to email you guys next week once I"m out in the field and I'll be able to send you guys pictures! I love you all so much, please know that I am very happy! I can feel all of your prayers all of the time and I'm so blessed to be in such a wonderful family. Please be happy and know that I will be home bfore you k now it! Remember to pray and stay in church!!!!!!!
brittany bear

Sister Collins on one of her flights to New Zealand with Elder Gagon and Sister Anderson 

Sister Collins with her District in the MTC

Sister Collins at the Hamilton, New Zealand temple

Sister Collins with her companion in the MTC Sister Gonzalez

This was inside Sister Collins room at the MTC, she had 3 roommates

Sister Collins with Sister Hiatt from Washington. Clay and I decided she was a clone of Lindsey Lohan from parent trap days!