This letter was written by Mandy on August 21st.  We received it on August 27th.

Only three more days and I’ll be out in the field!!! Crazy right?!?!  This last Wednesday, I had the chance to go proselyting with the REAL missionaries (I forget sometimes that I’m a missionary too, until I look down and see my name tag, haha).

Oh and sorry about not writing a weekly email this last week. I spent the whole time responding to emails instead!

Anyway, the day before, I was actually kind of nervous.  I thought I wasn’t ready to proselyte and was worried about it for two days straight.  It wasn’t until an hour into proselyting that I realized “Hey, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”  My companion for proselyting was Sister Parkinson. She’s from North Salt Lake, Utah, is the oldest of four girls, went to school at BYU, and is 10 months into her mission. She was way nice and really cute.  We actually got to proselyte in the Hamilton Mission, so there’s a chance we could be companions for real!  For lunch, we had Domino’s pizza (I know I come all the way to New Zealand just to have American pizza), Tim Tam’s, and New Zealand ice cream. “K,” America may do pizzas right, but New Zealand does ice cream and chocolate right!! Just saying, I had Tim Tam’s at the airport once I got here, but I hadn’t tried a Tim Tam Slam until that day.  What you do is get this mix called Milo. It looks and kind of tastes like hot chocolate.  Then you take the Tim Tam (looks like a chocolate dipped biscuit, but tastes kind of like a Kit Kat) and bite off a small corner on opposite sides of the Tim Tam.  The idea is that you use the Tim Tam as a straw and you dip it in the Milo (hot chocolate) and suck until the Milo mixes with the Tim Tam insides and into your mouth.  Looks and sound really weird, but it tastes SUPER GOOD!  It doesn’t take long for the Tim Tam to then start melting and at that point, you just shove the whole thing in your mouth.  It’s GR8!!  That’s one of the treats I’m planning on sending to you guys, so I’ll be sure to give detailed instructions on the best way to do a Tim Tam SLAM!~!

I don’t have tons of time left, but I want to finish this letter with two quotes that my MTC teacher told me.
Quote #1: “Live is such as way that people who know you, but don’t know Christ, will want to know Christ, because they know you.”
Quote #2: “No matter what others think or like about you, you will only see yourself as who you think you are.  So if you don’t like yourself, change the way you think.”

I’ve enjoyed my time here in the MTC, but I’m excited to get out in the field.  I hope you all enjoy your last few weeks of summer before school starts again.  I miss you all SO MUCH! I pray for you individually every night.  Brandon, I hope you have a good birthday, and eat lots of sweets.  Don’t forget to have fun and I love you all.  I’ll write to you again soon.

Sister Welker