Sister Collins takes on New Zealand

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 :)