Hi guys,
I thought I might tell you about some more of my adventures during my Christmas holiday. So this last week, we had Christmas. That was a fantastic day, we were woken up at like 8:30 because they wanted to open all the present before their family showed up for breakfast. The Mays family was so kind to me, that they bought me Christmas presents and filed up a stocking for me. Then we had breakfast with their family and Megan's cousin, who is a for year old boy this year discovered how to open Christmas presents for the first time and he had the bug. Under the tree after we had finished were still a couple presents for Megan's brothers and nefew. Her cousin Trenton, was into them, it was the cutest thing ever although not all that helpful. Then I got to make trifle for them all and we went to Megan's Great Grandmother's house for Christmas dinner. That was a lot of fun, I like her great grandmother, she is a real character. In fact, I call her Ninja grandma because when our class went to Paducah, we stayed with her and I was getting ready one morning and I came out of one of the rooms early in the morning and all of a sudden, I looked to the side of the hall way and she was there. No sound of her waking up or even walking down the hall, and it scared me like you would not believe. She's a real character.

The next day we hopped on a bus, or more to the point, four buses and made our way to a town called Baltimore in the state of Maryland. There was a couple of kids from our class, Andrew and Jared Shipley, and Melanie from Austria. We drove four hours to get to the bus station. We got on the bus at three in the afternoon and got off the final bus at 6:50 the next morning, where we met Andrew and his dad. We drove straight to the train station afte where we met up with Melanie from Austria, Jared and his mother to go to Washington D.C. There we spent the day looking at the sights. We went to the Library of Congress, in the history building of the Smithsonian, the big Einstein on the stairs and touched its nose, because Andrew said it was good luck and wouldn't let me leave until I did. Let me tell you, it was not good luck, I almost fell off the back of the stairs getting off the arm. Then we went to the giant Abraham Lincoln memorial and saw the reflecting pool. That was really really cool. I honestly didn't think that I would be as exited as I was when we got to the memorial as I was. It was something I had seen in a movie, but never thought I would ever see in person. To make it better, I didn't know what it was called until we got there, so when they asked me what I wanted to see,I told them I wanted to see the big guy in the chair and now the Shipley family calls it that. Look at me effecting people's lives. We went home for about an hour and a half and then we went out to dinner for traditional Maryland food, which being by the ocean meant crab cakes and lasagna for me, because I don't eat seafood. The next day we went into Baltimore city. We went and looked at the tourist bit, which consisted of a submarine (which I missed), a Hard Rock Cafe, the oldest war ship in America which later shot out something without warning and scared the crud out of me., and a mall. Once we had finished looking around there, we went to the not touristy, but totally more fun bit of town. It looked really dodgy but was really cool. We are hotdogs, and looked in hats stores and this one secondhand clothing store, where I swear, only the ugly clothes go. After that, we went back to the Shipley's residence and they had a Christmas party. There were times of people there, especially for the size of the house.  The following day was Sunday so we went to there church. There, I met a lady from New Zealand. When I got to talk to her, I asked her if she knew my parents, it turned out that she dated my dad and was my mum's flatmate. It's a small world after all. After church, we got out first down time of the trip. We went with the boys' friends for lunch and then went back to one of their houses to watch a movie. They watched Sharknado and I sat in the back around the corner and drew pictures with Melanie from Austria. After that we went to another church which the Shipleys used to go to. It was all elderly people, but they were some of the nicest people. This one lady gave us each a dollar and three lollies in an envelope. So sweet!
We then went to the bus station.

In all , our trip to Baltimore was eight hours driving in between the bus station and Megan's house, eight buses, totaling in almost 34 hours. Getting to and from Kentucky and Lubbock, I will have driven 5 hours and been on five planes.

The week before school finished, we had exam week, we cleaned and packed up our apartments and learned our terms and fields.
The night we learned our teams, I was very nervous even though I already knew where I was going and who was going to be on my team. It was interesting, I expected that it would be a big secret and no one would know where they were going or who with, but I think only like tree two or three people didn't know where they were going. Apparently the one year that no one knew what was going on tones of people openly and bitterly cried when they found out. I cried a little, but it was Tanya Buddy, every time I hug her it makes us both homesick.
m am going to Miami, with three other girls, Melanie from Mexico, Lacy, who has been living in Scotland for the past couple of years and Taylor, from Kentucky. I am super duper excited about my field and my team. I will be working with children mostly.

I hope you had a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful new tea year.
God bless

Hey guys,
I know it has been ages since I last wrote and for that I am sorry.
So today it was Christmas in New Zealand, and I am just going to be honest, it was a little bit rough for me. Because of this, I thought maybe this was the time that I should tell you all the reasons I am blessed.
1) To start with, God loves us so much that He sent His only son to die in a cross, so that every time I mess up, it's covered. (That alone is enough for me to feel blessed forever, I could just stop there).
2) I got to come to Kentucky with my roommate, which is awesome for quite a few reasons
- It means that I get along with my roommate well enough for her to invite me to her home for the holidays. That has been wonderful and made my life much easier all around.
- I get to spend time with her family and I love them, he parents are a lot like mine, so that's really cool. And they have been so kind to me.
- Members of my roommate, Megan's church, showed such kindness to me and paid for my entire ticket.
- I am experiencing new things for example, I'm cold,I have never had a winter before.
3) I got to go to Nashville on my way to Kentucky and that was o for awesome in itself. We went to this one hotel which was AMAZING!!! It was like this little jungle village thing. There was a bunch of different building and in between they had plants and a small riverand shops all over and over the in between was a cover so you can see the sky but don't get the weather. And there was beautiful Christmas lighting hanging from the ceiling. And beautiful big ball rooms. We snuck into one and sat on the floor and sang Christmas carols. And we went to the mall and it never ended.
4) I have a bunch of very supportive people both here and at home.
5) I am going to Miami for my field. My first choice, with three great girls.
I'm not finished but it's 2:20 in the morning so I had better be off to bed.good night and merry Christmas.
God bless

Hey guys,
Today has been a harder day and normally I might not make a mention of this but I thought you might like to know sometimes it's hard. Today was Tanya's birthday so it was rough for her, a good day but a hard day, for her and for me because I was sad that she was sad and then I thought why she might be sad and then except for the whole birthday thing, her problem applied to me too. But I want to tell you that I am trying really hard to look at the positive, so let me tell you all the fantastic things about my life now;

1. God has taken me so far and done wonderful things for me.
2. I have two fantastic roommates, who love me and laugh and love life.
3. I have a roommate going through a similar thing, so we can lean on each other and work through this together. 
4. I have AWESOME teachers who care a lot about the Lord and us. And also have such conviction in what they teach.
5. I am surrounded by a bunch of classmate who are lovely.
6. We are a singing class, and the singing sounds great here.
7. We have here AIM assistants who guide us and care about us. Example Amy Jo (who some of you might know) who spent her field time in Auckland and is just the nicest tiniest person, or Diana who told me to come up with 5 positive things. (I'm just going to take that idea and see how far I can go).
8. I have made so many new friends here, people I will be friends with forever I think.
9. God has bless me to be here on this wonderful adventure.
10. God has blessed me with wonderful supporters who believe in me and that encourage me just by being there.
11. I am learning all sorts of new exciting things.
12. I am growing through the difficult patches.
13. Therefore I'm going to awesome one day when I'm all grown and stuff.
14. We have this thing where we have encouragement letters to each other and I like doing that and yesterday and today I got like five and it made me happy.
15. I am getting to see others around me grow.
16. I am getting to try new things, like tipping for the first time on Wednesday. EXCITING STUFF!!
17. Tanya Buddy.
18. This last weekend we went to Candian and I made a new close friend in a class who told me her name was window in Japanese.
19. I get to talk to my parents through the wonderful internet.
20. The weather is getting better.
21. I am keeping up with the homework.
22. They air condition everything here.
23. I have started working the sound booth recently and I made less mistakes today. I'm getting better.
24. Even better I am getting to know the people back there and they're nice.
25. Even better, I am doing that with my awesome friend Amanda who makes my heart happy every time I see her, because she is such a gentle spirit.
26. My New Testament teacher reminds me of my dad.
27. My Old Testament teacher has this magical power to make his class about my attitude problem of that day.
28. My Life of Christ teacher bring the gospel of Luke alive to us like no one else has done before.
29. My roommates understand me 95% of the time, that a good percentage.
30. My New Evidence teacher tells us really interesting things.
31. The director and his lovely wife had us over to join them for dinner and the food was fantastic.
32. My Evangelism teacher tells the coolest stories and maybe one day I will have equally cool stories.
33. On Wednesday nights we get to go to the college class and, the singing is fantastic, the lessons are fantastic and there are so many kids there and one kid out of the youth class was baptized this last Wednesday.
34.  We have this thing called Catacombs where we sing in the Memorial Circle at Texas Tech (a local uni) and the singing is fantastic, they have a power point which is awesome because I don't know some of the song.
35. Jesus died for my sins and your's too.
36. The sky is blue the majority of the time.

These are in no particular order, by the way, just as I thought of them. That's all I have time to do. I hope this was as uplifting for you as it was for me. I feel much better. Now I am going to go to bed. 

Good night and God Bless.

Hey Guys,

It has been so hectic the last.... since I got here.

So at the start of this month we went to the Mountain View Class retreat in New Mexico. It was fantastic, we had this one speaker whose name was Geoff Dunn. He did such a good job and then they had some ex-AIMers and they did amazingly too. Katie (my roommate)'s brother Matt had all of us in tear just telling about leaving his field, Mike (another AIM Assistant/ex-AIMer), talked about Revelations, Robbie talked about how God uses unlikely people, Caleb did his on only God knowing our name. Then there was Geoff Dunn who talked about the sermon on the mount, and I just learned a lot through that. We also had a talent show, Tanya and I sang Pokarekare Ana with Amy-Jo, some of you may know her. We went to a small town and I saw a lollipop with a real scorpion in it. There was a lot of sports, mainly I played volleyball. The AIM assistance were playing too so that made it super duper intense. Over all it was a good week and I would do it again in a heart beat.

Since I last talked to you I have started Area Church. Which is where every Sunday we go to a church somewhere in the general area around Lubbock. My church is actually Clovis which is the church where we did a flag presentation with in the first couple weeks. Excitingly enough I got represent my wonderful home country in that by carrying in the New Zealand flag.

We had a presentation for Honduras last week that was really interesting, they are doing a lot of good things in that country. They're planting churches and getting into the schools and getting local people involved. I think that was actually the coolest thing, that this wasn't about those two men and their families but if they were one day to leave they whole system would continue, they're planting churches that will one day plant churches that will one day plant churches and I just think that's really cool.
This weekend we went to a place called Canadian, which is actually in Texas and we had to pass Happy Texas to get there. That was a really fun trip. On the Saturday we had like a mini seminar on attitude and the church as an organism or an organisation. Then we had a 'cook out' I think they called it. We had hamburgers, it was good. Then we all broke up and stayed with families from that church. First of all we had two of the nicest people to stay with and I know they have names but the gentleman just looked like Geoff from Rotorua, so every time he tried to tell me his name my mind instantly said 'why are you lying, you're Geoff from Rotorua'. Secondly theirt house was HUGE, it had a indoor swimming pool, with lights, a diving board, a volleyball net and to ice the cake, a slide. Thirdly I was staying with this girl in my class named Autumn and I didn't really know her. Let me just say, she is totally awesome. We stayed up till 1.30 in the morning talking. She is so cool, I want to go the mission field with her.

Today we had the San Antonio field presentation, it looks like such a good work. The are based in the middle of a university and they are just sharing the gospel with the students there. I don't know why but that just appealed to me more than Honduras, In saying that, it has only been the second presentation and there's still time.

Also today we had another one of our evangelism classes. Our teacher is such a good story teller and he just cares about people and it is just fantastic. Today he talked about a voodoo colony in Hati, it's like who does these things? He was talking abut this one boy who was shy in class, but he would go into a voodoo pit and preach to a group of people sort of bathing themselves in a pit of merky brown water with dead animals in the bottom that smelt worse than anything else. And he said the boy wasn't shy when he was preaching because that was his family and his friends doing that ritual in that gross pool. I don't give the story justice. And then he talked about some of the AIMers from previous years. He was talking to us about the kid with dislexia, the girl who never wanted to get dirty and how amazing the transformation was in their lives. I left the class today with a knot in my stomach thinking what God might do with me one day. Because you know through God anything is possible.

Hey guys,
So this is the closest thing to free time that I can foresee so I'll just talk about the important things and then I will fill in the gap at some stage when I can.

Okay so we have started classes, in fact we just finished our second week. So the people are so fantastic, I have made so many new friends (never forgetting my old ones of course).To start with, the two girls I have in my apartment, Katey and Megan. I laughed so hard this week I chocked twice within the time span of about twenty minutes. Katey is in a room by herself, she is so sarcastic and it is hilarious because only like four people get her, I think she fantastic. And then there is Megan, what to say about her?? She's my roommate, she's so sweet and funny and the more you get to know her the crazier she gets. She allows me to play music right before we sleep and will set her alarm even she's not the one who has to get up. Then everybody else, we have 45 students this year, one from South Africa, one from Austria, one from Scotland, two from Mexico and two fantastic girls from NZ ;P  We've only know each other two weeks but it already feels like years. The environment is wonderful, so many like minded kids all together. We're a singing class, so I'm stoked.

Then there is the classes, which I am loving. This term I have New Testament with Gibby, he's really funny in a quiet sort of way, then Historical Christian Evidences with a teacher who talks a mile a minute, it's all really good stuff.  That's Monday and Wednesday. On Tuesday and Thursday I have Katey's dad in the mornings teaching Old Testament. He has his daughter's sense of humour. In the afternoons we have Pat, whose mission in life is to get us all (mostly but not always girls) to cry in every class and he teaches The Life of Christ. About that, I cried his first class because he was all "home is really far away isn't it?" staring straight into my eyes, it's okay though, he told Megan it wasn't about her. His classes have so many emotions in them, one second he's telling a joke and then he's making us sad, we're exhausted by the end of the day. Friday's we have Kris Smith, who is teaching us stuff, I'm not a hundred percent sure, we've only had him twice. The first week he talked about Philippians and this last week there wasn't enough time for his class because at the moment he is sharing that half day with Chris Jo, the counselor. Kris does all like the speeches and stuff. He talks about keeping our attitudes in check and giving second chances ( we haven't had any problems but some of the houses have), he's really funny too. He'll be talking and add in something really crazy into what he's saying but he'll do it in a very discrete way, he uses "poof" a lot and something dramatic will happen. It's funny. I am really loving all these classes, because you can tell the teachers really care and have a passion for what they are teaching. It's so refreshing and they all care about us too. I am however struggling with the thought of having them in more than one concept, because when I was five, I decided all teachers were robots so it just doesn't fit my mold.

So today there was a youth rally for the church of Christ kids all around Texas and a few from New Mexico. I have never seen so many church of Christ teenagers in one room in my life. It was fantastic. The room was so big that there were like two different timings for the song and exciting, Duran the Acapella group preformed tonight. However today on the way to the conference a kid who got into a car crash and died, his name was Caleb, so can you please pray for comfort for his family at this time.

So on that rather sad note, I had better hop off to bed because electronic curfew is almost upon us and I have to wake up at six in the morning to go to my area church, we'll talk about that later. And while you have that on your mind, I thought I should tell you I have been renamed Suzanna, those two things fit in together.

Good Night

Hey guys,
Don't know how long I have so if it stops suddenly that's me going to school. So to start with the night of the day that I wrote you last, that night we went to a martial arts class and met some more of the people of Liz's church and then they took us to a firestation! To meet one of the class mates who couldn't come. He le us stand on the top of his truck, wear his fireman outfit and I feel like I never used Zenia's volunteer fire fighting to good use after that.
Told you it would be short I will finish this soon
bye :P

Hi guys,
I have been so full on, I think this is my first down time to write. I am now in Lubbock staying with Liz, one of the interns from DC. Her family has been so lovely and wonderful, nicer and more generous than I thought was possible.In fact I have only met nice people out here. Oh, something exciting, I met Melinda from Tauranga's brother on Sunday and he had like a handle bar mustache like Roger, if you know him. So that was exciting. It's a small world. Liz has been so excited and determined to have every American experience with me, so I've already been camping, eaten at Chick-fil-a, The Cast Iron Pot, I've eaten lunch in a food court in supermarket, I've had soft pretzels. I got a meal for $1.70 which was insane. Mostly eating things, suffice to say I think I good for at least a week.

So on Tuesday we left at 9.30 in the evening, it was very emotional. By 2.30 on Tuesday we made it to L.A and then by 10.30 the same evening we landed in Dallas. LONGEST TUESDAY OF MY LIFE! When we go to Dallas it was ridiculously hot and we stayed up until like 2.30 in the morning maybe later, the next day we slept in until like 2.30 in the afternoon because in New Zealand that would have been 7.30 Thursday morning. I'm confused already. Donna and I found out that between maybe 4 and 6 it is the hottest it will get by taking a short walk down to a park.It was 31 degrees Celsius at 3.30 in the morning so I had to find a fan and sadly woke up Donna. on Thursday we drove to Lubbock, John did a fantastic job and did not drive on the road once on that trip and that evening we had dinner with Louis Neill (Allan from Morningside's mother). On Friday I went camping with the Greenlawn Church of Christ youth, well a few of them. We went to a canyon and saw bison, prairie dogs, fire ants, even a scorpion. It was a fantastic experience and the lessons given by a boy called Matthew were very good. It was however SO HOT, that the nail polish ON MY FINGERS, MELTED! I will get a picture next time I go outside and I will put it up.On Sunday I went to Greenlawn in the morning and the evening, they were all such nice people, as I said, I haven't met a mean person yet. The lessons over there were really good too. On Monday I got almost everything sorted, so I thing I am all goods now pretty much. Tomorrow I will David and Debbie Horn's house in a small town, which I am super excited about. And then of course the orientation for AIM is on Saturday which I am really excited about so that I can finally get down to work and also, the added bonus of not having to live out of a suitcase also appeals.

Today I had another epiphany like I did right before I left, I don't know if  talked about it so I'll recap just in case. Before I left, I was packing away my room and I was really worried about my fragile things being broken and having to leave behind the majority of my stuff, I got upset about these things. So I went off for the day and saw a fire across the harbour on my way to West Auckland. Then later that night I was worrying again about my stuff and a verse popped into my head,
                  Matthew 6:19-21 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
I went to sleep that night with that thought and I had a dream that my bedroom was on fire and there were little kids in the room (because in my dreams, I'm a super hero) and all my stuff was burning and melting, And I got all the children out and left myself and in my dream all my stuff was being destroyed before me and it was okay because everyone was out of the house and was fine. I woke up with a lesson learned and the realization that when we all got very serious it didn't matter at all what happens to my things. So that was the other week. Today I was having a bit of an emotional moment because I was tired and I was worried and I started in my head thinking of the song, of which I don't know what the name is or who wrote it. It goes
                "It's all about you, Jesus. And all of this is for you, for your glory and your fame. It's not about me as if you should do things my way. You alone are God and I surrender."
And you know what, it's right, it's not about me, it's about God and doing His work and glorifying Him. So you all know that I am already growing as a person while I am here and I haven't even started AIM yet.

On that note I have not left this room for two hours so I will go now.
God Bless,
Jenna