PICTURES OF BRYNN'S ARRIVAL IN WELLINGTON

5TH LETTER WELLINGTON

This week has been SO hard. It has finally hit me what missionaries mean when they say this is hard. Everysingle thing i do is for the benefit of others. there is no time to stop and do something for myself (except for on mondays... but even then im still helping and serving others) I broke down the other day for a million different reasons. But one of those reasons was because I cant ever just stop for 5 min and do something for myself (like draw or take a picture, or check our mailbox, and sometimes we dont even have time to eat cuz we have appts to get to -but dont worry... i think its a good thing because i eat SO much at members houses) But ANYWAY I dont even have time to read the scriptres for myself. If i am reading the scriptures i am reading and looking for scriptures to use in our lessons. And its hard too because we do so much to prepare for people or help people and most of the time they arent there for our return appts or they just dont have time for us. so lame sauce. But i am so blessed. In the mtc i said so many prayers to heavenly father listing all the things i wanted in a companion and everything i prayed for i got. My companion sister carter is SO much fun and we get along SO well. And even though we have so much fun she pushes me to be a hardworking missionary. She is great though and there isnt ever a moment where i am not laughing my head off with her. So a few days ago some guy from the quorm of the 70 came down and gave a talk at some missionary conference. During his talk he talked about people having dreams they saw two missionaries and then that next day they saw the missionaries they saw in their dream, or they had dreams that they needed to meet with the missionaries and then the next day missionaries came by. idk a tom of stuff. So while he was talking about this i said a short simple prayer in my head asking for Heavenly Father for an experience like that. So later that day me and my companion were going around visiting investegators and she wanted to stop by and say hi to this one investegator that she hadnt visited in months so long story short we sknocked on his door and he answered the door and told us he had a dream that he died and God asked him if he was ready to meet his maker and then he woke up and wanted to see the missionaries and he prayed to god that he would see us. so then later that day we just so happened to stop by. it was so cool.
ok i only have a few minuites left... the library is shutting down early... grr i hate this. i wish i had all day to email.
By the way i am in upper hutt... thats the area im in haha just so you know.
ok for my mission plaqe i want ether 12:27 and ill attach my picture:)haha ok I love you all! 

4TH LETTER WELLINGTON NEW ZEALAND

OK. so all those times we went on those family bike rides... i have learned that i dont ride way behind everyone cuz i like to stop and take pictures... its because im freakin slow. haha. The 500 dollar bike we got is really really nice. My companion is really jealous and always tries to ride it.... haha. But we bike EVERYWHERE. I got a new Zeland DL but i am way to afraid to drive... and my companion got her DL taken away cuz she crashed a few times... so neither of us can drive, so we just bike everywhere. My legs are going to be so  toned when i get back;)

This mission thing isnt as hard as i thought it would be. My companions name is sister carter, and the first night i cried myself to sleep becuase i thought she was going to be really strict and i was going to have a really hard time with her... but i LOVE her so much and we get along so well. She workds me really hard. we are out talking to people from 11-9 every single day but its fun. I love the people here they are all so kind and loving. But very honest. We were at this one investigators house and they told my roomate her face looked really ugly and she doesnt know how to put on make up. So she brought out all this expensive make up and put it on her and let her keep it.
It is so beautiful here. I just wanna take pictures of everything but biking and taking pictures is really hard... especially for me (im mentally challenged on my bike...haha) I dont think you realize how slow i am. My companion is always SO far ahead of me... its embarassing:)
So the food. On my first day we had 5 appointments with 5 different investigators and every single home we went to they offered me a cup of milo. I thought it was so good until i foundout what it was. It tasted like a watered down hot chocolate... but dont be fooled. its malted barley with sugar. i dont drink it any more. its groddie. They eat a TON of eggs here. they have some sort of egg side dish with every meal, but i have some how been able to avoid eating them the whole time ive been here. but then again ive only been out for 5 days. Every morning i eat a bowl of yogurt and meusli (i think thats how you spell it.... but what it is is granola, and it is the BEST GRANOLA i have ever eaten in my whole entire life. I will have to send you some. Another thing i eat a lot of is cheese. the cheese here is so delicious. Their milk is really creamy it tastes like half and half. I eat a TON of nutella and peanut butter sandwiched. I eat lemons like nobodys business (cuz they are growing everywhere around here) and the thing i eat the most of is chocolate. I eat so much chocolate its not even funny. Its SO good here too. 70% of my diet consists of chocolate. But its so weird. ever since ive gotten out here i eat SO much. way way way more than my companion, like 3xs the amount of food as my companion. no joke.... and ist not like shes super small or anything haha. so get ready for me to come back fat:)
But nah i excersize every day and i bike everywhere (which is why i think i eat so much)
So our investigators... we have a ton of investigators. I taught this atheiest lady last week.... its just super hard though cuz she believes in evolution and that prayers that people say arent answered by god they are answered by good vibes (idk its really hard to explain haha) and i dont know what to say exactly... its hard teaching someone who doesnt believe in god period.
This other investigator named suzie. She is this older lady and her husband went missing for 3 weeks. They were together and then they got in a fight so he moved out for a few weeks and then one day he just went missing. nothing was taken from the house and he wasnt answering any calls and the police have been trying to track him down for a long time and they havent been able to find anything and suzie has been really really really sad. So yesterday she came to church and the elders gave her a blessing and in the blessing the elder blessed that everything will turn out ok. And i was really worried when he said that cuz 3 weeks is a long time and i was sure he was dead haha. so this morning we got a text saying that he showed up on her door step. He was out with friends for 3 weeks. So crazy.
So the other day we got this guy to commit to baptism. Rememebr how i was before my mission how i was so against being pushy with that kindda stuff.... well ive been completely brainwashed and i want every one to be baptized now.
New Zealalnd is the perfect mission for me. EVERY SINGLE PERSON HERE OWNS A CAT. And they walk around everywhere. Ive probably seen around 500 cats atleast since ive been here haha. Its wonderful.
Right when i got here my companion, joking around asked me to talk in church, and i took her up on her offer! It was suppose to be her speaking assignment but i wanted to give a talk so bad. I gave a 15 min talk in church on putting our trust in christ. I love talking so much ive already been assigned to talk at some kids baptism next week and i have to give a talk in front of this guy from the quorm of the 70. i get so excited when i get speaking assignments.
I love you guys so much and i miss you so much. i have so many crazy stories to tell you guys but i dont have heaps of time. Ive been trying to write you but i dont ever have time... but i do have one letter i need to send you guys... so if i can ever get stamps...
Send me some black leggings. i have one pair and i wear them every day and they are starting to wear out. Ohh and send me some pepper spray too. its really creepy around here.... especially at night. I hate our flat. its so scary and old and its down this really scary street. but the lord will protect me. i love you guys a ton!
Uhh. ok put all of these on my blog. so people know im alive.
Did you get my pictures yet?

3RD LETTER NEW ZEALAND MTC

MOM. You hate me. You didn’t even email meL i still love you though and care about you guys so much. Last night we were watching some devotional at the provo mtc (i totally saw Cameron foster in the video) but elder nielson was talking and he was saying how we need to pray and ask Heavenly Father to send us for specific people who have passed on to help us with our mission. So then I got thinking about it... isn’t it weird that grandpa died like right when i left for my mission? I know he will be there to help me throughout this journey.

I think i jinxed myself last week when i said i don’t know why everyone says a mission is so hard. Right after my email me and my companion had to go teach a progressive investigator... and we did so bad. My companion doesn’t even talk. It was just me talking the whole time and when she does talk it doesn’t make sense and she teaches false doctrine. So my teacher (who was the progressive investigator) got really mad at us (mostly her). Because we are a sucky companionship. Haha then he made me tell her everything that bothers me about her and I was yelling at her telling her how sucky of a teacher she was... haha it was so bad and I was so frustrated. This past week has been so hard and stressful. There hasn’t been a single moment where I haven’t been on the verge of tears.

Tomorrow I leave for wellington and I am so scared. Its weird not knowing who im going to be spending the next 12 weeks  with/ where im going to be sleeping/ wether or not im going to be good at this whole thing. I am so scared. Pray for me.

Tongans are so strange. I thought they were cool at first but the more I am around them the more weirded out I get haha. Like they don’t brush their teeth, they haven’t showered once since theyve been here, they blow their nose into their hands... haha its so weird.

Me and my American roommate (sister Bromley-whos going to wellington too) are really good friends. We stay up really late every night and just talk. We both just love talking and once we start talking we cannot stop talking. I love her so much. She reminds me of Tasia Kimball alot. She is so fun and everyone LOVES her. I am so blessed to have her as a roommate and im begging heavenly father to let me be companions with her before I come home.

I wish i had more time to write. I only had 30 minuites to write you today. But im writing a letter. I would have sent you a letter sooner but they don’t give us stamps in here. I love you so much. I hope everything is going ok with everything. Hey can you send me another skirt extender and more undershirts.

Ohh and I got like 30 free pairs of silky garment bottoms. They are the old ones too so they fit really well!!!

2ND LETTER NEW ZEALAND MTC

OK I LOVE THE TONGANS. Their lives are so different from ours. So in the MTC i room with 3 other girls. Theres me my companion who is tongan and Sister Bromley who is from Utah and then her companion who is also from tonga. Our companions speak very little English but they are the sweetest, loving and happiest people I will ever meet. So I just learned there were 17 of us that came from the united states. We are the only Americans. The rest of the people here are from tonga, somoa, or austrailia... but out of the 70 people we are here with in the mtc atleast 60% of them are from tonga. Most of them speak little to no English so its pretty safe to say that ive picked up a lot of tongan. Im not fluent but im getting there;)

The first thing that happened when me and sister Bromley met our tongan companions is they asked us if we knew any of the people they know from America. I don’t think they realize how big America is. I think its safe to say though that i have learned more in this past week than i have learned in my whole life. And most of what ive learned is about the tongan people. Here are some of the things Ive learned are:

-Kissing is NOT allowed in tonga. If you kissed a boy you are not allowed to turn in your papers to serve a mission (and no they are not kidding, me and sister Bromley have had many deep discussions about this with them). When i first asked my companion how many guys shes kissed she said “OH MY GOSH NOBODY!!! But i have seen two people kiss”. Not make out... but  kiss. They said they consider each other brothers and sisters and so kissing them is a BIG no no.

-They have absolutely no filter. The other night me and sister Bromley were sitting in our beds and one of the other sisters was over in our room going through sister Bromleys pictures of her family and she stopped and said- “OH MY GOSH SISTER BROMLEY (she has a really deep voice... it kindda sounds like a man) YOUR FAMILY IS SO BEAUTIFUL WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!?!? YOU ARE SO UGLY!”. And she was SO serious. Ok for one Sister Bromley is SO beautiful... idk what was up with that Tongans eyes but second of all if I ever said that to anyone in America... They would probably go shoot themselves. It was so funny. We DIE of laughter every time we think about it. And they call eachother fat all the time.. and they mean it.

-At lunch all the Tongans sit don with a stack of about 8 slices of bread on their plates. In between every two slices of bread is literally half a stic of butter. They probably eat about 3 sticks of butter for every meal.

- They have never seen broccoli before so when they saw it they were freaking out

-Showering while you are on your period BAD. If you shower while you are on your period you will not be able to have kids (lets act like adults here...)

-New Zeland food is so INCREDIBLE (especially their chocolate) it puts American food to shame. The one tongan that called my roommate ugly has spent 200 dollars on food in the vending machine within the past 4 days... and no she isn’t fat.

-they call whiteout liquid, rainboots gumboots(that sounds so stupid), they have never head the term French fries

-21 is a big age for them because its the age were they can get married(?)

 -They laugh at everything in the whole world and they all have these ginormous laughs that make you laugh. There has not been a single second that i have been here where i haven’t been happy, and i really believe it is because of the Tongans and their good sprits.

-They are so lazy its not even funny.

-They have never mailed a letter

-They say only married ladies use tampons (lets be mature here...)

-In NZ, and everywere else, they don’t have breakfast foods. We have spaghetti for breakfast all the time.

-They eat dogs and cats all the time

-Sister Finau (the tongan thats my roommate that isn’t my companion) Gave up her cell phone for a whole year before her mission in order to prepare

-They know a lot but they are really bad teachers

-They don’t wear swimsuits in tonga they are very immodest. They wear clothes to swim.

There are a ton of other cool things i have learned but i don’t have time to write about it all...

I gave a talk in church on Sunday. And i did a really good job. I have come to realize that I LOVE talking and im pretty dang good at it too. Me and my companion have been teaching a fake investigatior the past week and it is SO frustrating because she doesn’t know English that well and when she does talk to our investigator she is just spitting out facts and it sounds like she is reading out of a text book. And she talks really quiet and you cant really understand her wen she talks so i hate having her talk... i feel bad for saying that but its just not one of her strengths. So the past two lessons ive been the only one teaching. But its ok. I LOVE TEACHING and im really good at it too? I thought I was really bad but after a few practices ive gotten really good. Im so excited to get out there and teach for the next few months!

 People always said that a mission was hard... i don’t know what they are talking about. I haven’t experienced the hard yet i guess. I am never tired. I go to bed at 930 ish every night (except last night me and sis Bromley stayed up till 1 talking)... and i wake up at 5:30 every morning. And its the weirdest thing I am NEVER tired when i wake up. Instead I am SO full of energy! I love it here. I love it with all my heart. I thought i would hate the feeling of being in church 24/7 but i actually have come to LOVE it.

Ok my blow dryer. Catches spits out fire every time i turn it on. I think it has something to do with the outlets here...

The presidents wife told me I have to take off all my rings. GAHHHHHHHH. Someone get here and shoot me.

I love it here and i have met some of the most incredible and most amazing people out here. This is awesome and I hope all of you (brooke and jack...and hopefully alec) decide to go on a mission one day. This is the best thing ever.

MEH there is so much more i want to say but I have no time. I will write again next weekJ

OK I LOVE THE TONGANS. Their lives are so different from ours. So in the MTC i room with 3 other girls. Theres me my companion who is tongan and Sister Bromley who is from Utah and then her companion who is also from tonga. Our companions speak very little English but they are the sweetest, loving and happiest people I will ever meet. So I just learned there were 17 of us that came from the united states. We are the only Americans. The rest of the people here are from tonga, somoa, or austrailia... but out of the 70 people we are here with in the mtc atleast 60% of them are from tonga. Most of them speak little to no English so its pretty safe to say that ive picked up a lot of tongan. Im not fluent but im getting there;)

The first thing that happened when me and sister Bromley met our tongan companions is they asked us if we knew any of the people they know from America. I don’t think they realize how big America is. I think its safe to say though that i have learned more in this past week than i have learned in my whole life. And most of what ive learned is about the tongan people. Here are some of the things Ive learned are:

-Kissing is NOT allowed in tonga. If you kissed a boy you are not allowed to turn in your papers to serve a mission (and no they are not kidding, me and sister Bromley have had many deep discussions about this with them). When i first asked my companion how many guys shes kissed she said “OH MY GOSH NOBODY!!! But i have seen two people kiss”. Not make out... but  kiss. They said they consider each other brothers and sisters and so kissing them is a BIG no no.

-They have absolutely no filter. The other night me and sister Bromley were sitting in our beds and one of the other sisters was over in our room going through sister Bromleys pictures of her family and she stopped and said- “OH MY GOSH SISTER BROMLEY (she has a really deep voice... it kindda sounds like a man) YOUR FAMILY IS SO BEAUTIFUL WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!?!? YOU ARE SO UGLY!”. And she was SO serious. Ok for one Sister Bromley is SO beautiful... idk what was up with that Tongans eyes but second of all if I ever said that to anyone in America... They would probably go shoot themselves. It was so funny. We DIE of laughter every time we think about it. And they call eachother fat all the time.. and they mean it.

-At lunch all the Tongans sit don with a stack of about 8 slices of bread on their plates. In between every two slices of bread is literally half a stic of butter. They probably eat about 3 sticks of butter for every meal.

- They have never seen broccoli before so when they saw it they were freaking out

-Showering while you are on your period BAD. If you shower while you are on your period you will not be able to have kids (lets act like adults here...)

-New Zeland food is so INCREDIBLE (especially their chocolate) it puts American food to shame. The one tongan that called my roommate ugly has spent 200 dollars on food in the vending machine within the past 4 days... and no she isn’t fat.

-they call whiteout liquid, rainboots gumboots(that sounds so stupid), they have never head the term French fries

-21 is a big age for them because its the age were they can get married(?)

 -They laugh at everything in the whole world and they all have these ginormous laughs that make you laugh. There has not been a single second that i have been here where i haven’t been happy, and i really believe it is because of the Tongans and their good sprits.

-They are so lazy its not even funny.

-They have never mailed a letter

-They say only married ladies use tampons (lets be mature here...)

-In NZ, and everywere else, they don’t have breakfast foods. We have spaghetti for breakfast all the time.

-They eat dogs and cats all the time

-Sister Finau (the tongan thats my roommate that isn’t my companion) Gave up her cell phone for a whole year before her mission in order to prepare

-They know a lot but they are really bad teachers

-They don’t wear swimsuits in tonga they are very immodest. They wear clothes to swim.

There are a ton of other cool things i have learned but i don’t have time to write about it all...

I gave a talk in church on Sunday. And i did a really good job. I have come to realize that I LOVE talking and im pretty dang good at it too. Me and my companion have been teaching a fake investigatior the past week and it is SO frustrating because she doesn’t know English that well and when she does talk to our investigator she is just spitting out facts and it sounds like she is reading out of a text book. And she talks really quiet and you cant really understand her wen she talks so i hate having her talk... i feel bad for saying that but its just not one of her strengths. So the past two lessons ive been the only one teaching. But its ok. I LOVE TEACHING and im really good at it too? I thought I was really bad but after a few practices ive gotten really good. Im so excited to get out there and teach for the next few months!

 People always said that a mission was hard... i don’t know what they are talking about. I haven’t experienced the hard yet i guess. I am never tired. I go to bed at 930 ish every night (except last night me and sis Bromley stayed up till 1 talking)... and i wake up at 5:30 every morning. And its the weirdest thing I am NEVER tired when i wake up. Instead I am SO full of energy! I love it here. I love it with all my heart. I thought i would hate the feeling of being in church 24/7 but i actually have come to LOVE it.

Ok my blow dryer. Catches spits out fire every time i turn it on. I think it has something to do with the outlets here...

The presidents wife told me I have to take off all my rings. GAHHHHHHHH. Someone get here and shoot me.

I love it here and i have met some of the most incredible and most amazing people out here. This is awesome and I hope all of you (brooke and jack...and hopefully alec) decide to go on a mission one day. This is the best thing ever.

MEH there is so much more i want to say but I have no time. I will write again next weekJ

FIRST LETTER AFTER ARRIVING IN AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND - MTC

MAWMA. its your favorite daughter. WAZUP. Sorry i didnt call you this morning. we couldnt find pay phones... lame excuse but... the plane rideS were really really really good. They each only felt like an hour long. It was so weird cuz I was on the plane for a total of 20 hours... but it went by so fast. So on the plane ride to LAX i sat next to this creepy kid who was like 50-60 years old. And he was telling me how he was a movie producer and he said hes written a bunch of scripts and then other producers steal his stuff and make really big popular movies out of it. When i asked him what movies he wouldnt tell me. little freakazoid was probably just trying to impress me. So I slept the whole time and then once I woke up I told him I was going to NZ and he offered to walk me to my gate and i turned him down cuz i didnt wanna be hanging out with some old guy i didnt even know. Anyway I got off the plane and i was standing in line at the information desk and he comes up to me again and said to me... "here let me walk you to your gate and then i can sit and hangout with you till you have to board the plane"... and the way he said it was so weird. But i turned him down and then he said bye to me and winked at me. I barfed in my moouth a lil.

So then i had to leave the airport and take a bus to another terminal. So i left the airport and then i tried to go back in the way i came out cuz i didnt think what i was doing was right and some security gaurd came and yelled at me. So i found the bus stop and some girl came over and turns out she was heading to NZ too. So that was lucky and i stuck with her and I was able to find my way.

I was standing in line to get my ticket for the NZ airplane and this philipino couple infront of me was talking to me about my mission and they asked me how many other people i was traveling with. I told them around 5. K IM A LIAR PANTS. I show up at the gate and there are around 30 other missionaries hangin out waiting to board the same flight as me!

But lemme back up. before i got to the gate i was standing in the security line and these three guys who didnt even know eachother were all talking and they were saying how much they hated america and how much they loved NZ. idk just thought id throw that in there to make yalz jealous.

Anyway right when i got to the gate i went up and sat next to sisterwoodburry (one of the girls i had been talking to on fb) and we totally hit it off. we are like best frandz now. We got along so well and had so much in common. But there was one elder we traveled with who gave out a book of mormon and 4 pass along cards just in the 40 minuites we were waiting to board the plane. HE WAS LITERALLY ON FIRE.

We got on the airplane and it was really nice. they all had these wonderful blankets and pillows on our seats and a pair of beats for each of us to use to listen to music/watch tv with. jk about the beats.. but they were nice head phones. Surprisingly I didnt listen to my ipod once. I brought it with me (with all of my old music on it) but then i thought about it and decided to not listen to it. I like to discipline myself every now and then:) I was so proud of myself though... maybe thats why the plane rides were so quick. The Lord was blessing me... or something.

But the plane ride started out a lil rough. some baby was screaming her balls off the for the first 30 minuites... but then they started serving supper (they have 4 meals in NZ- breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper?) and it decided to be quiet.For supper I got the steak with zuchini covered in maranara sauce, some weird potato thing (jk i have no idea what it was), salad, a roll, some gormet cheese, and a weird purple jello layer dessert thing. I made it a goal to try everything. So i decided to try the salad first. I dipped my fork into the salad and got some white thing on the end of it and popped it in my mouth. Then i started gagging/ coughing so bad cuz i realized it was chopped up hard boiled egg. After that i decided not to try the dessert. Weird idk. But i fell asleep on the plane. i tsucked because the guy infron tof me put his chair all the way back and the only way for me to sleep is by putting my head on the tray table but that was impossible to i had to lean my head back. I had a dream that I couldnt close my jaw (if that makes sense) it was like i had a really bad over bit/under bite. it was so frustrating and i kept grinding my teeth. I woke up and my teeth were really sore and my back gums were bleeding. I think i was doing something crazy with my mouth when i slept. But i woke up and they were serving breakfast (orange cranberry muffin, yellow cantelope?, grapes, yogurt and orange juice in a bowl?friggin weird).

But anyway that was the plane experience. Im in NZ now. Its freezing cold/rainy/cloudy as heckna here. And supposedly its snowing in wellington? meh. but i dont go there for another two weeks. I love all the missionaries i traveled with. Especially the girls. Im rooming with this one sista now named sister bromley and we hit it off and we are best friends now.

You know how water picky I am and NZ has the best water i have yet tasted in my life.

Everyone here in the MTC is polynesian...

They are making me play the piano here.growl.

OH and they have different outlets here! I cant plug anything into the walls! haha 

They all say Im going to pick up an accent. They say to give it a month.

OK well i have no time left so see you little baby. I will write you more later... and by later i mean... next next tuesday... i think.

 

dont forget to post that and tell everyone on fb i updated it or somethin. LOVE YOU BABY FACE AND DAD BOY (send this to dad i dont have his email)