"Far over the misty mountains cold"

 After many hours, and only one night as opposed to you having two, I am here in New Zealand!! I love the humidity and the sights are already what I expected: very beautiful and very green! And apparently, right now it is "cold". But I gotta say, if this is cold, then I am gonna like it here! It does get colder apparently, but this is wonderful weather. 

As for the flight, all went well except for one of the elders losing a bag, but I guess something had to happen to someone. :) Speaking of other elders, there were no other missionaries going from Denver to San Fransisco, but once I arrived in SanFran, I found another elder headed here and almost immediately we found a large group of elders headed to New Zealand. We had gotten up to 11, and wanted one more (cause 12 is awesome, what with the 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles, etc.), and wouldn't you know it, we had one more guy show up right before we left. He was promptly given several nicknames, which are(in order of most used to least) new guy, the chosen one, and the child of the prophecy. Haha we are pretty clever... It also worked out great because 6 of us are going to the Auckland mission(mine) and the other 6 are going to the Wellington Mission. So we have already started a sort of friendly rivalry. Out of the 12 of us, I am from Denver, 1 is from Washington, 1 is from Florida(New Guy), 1 is from Idaho(lovingly nicknamed "Elder Spud"), 1 is from Houston, and the rest are ALL from Utah. 

Only one of the guys in the group is in my room though, and my first companion(who I haven't met yet) is from Tonga. So we will see how that works, gonna be awesome. :) Also, I am definitely going to pick up this accent, at least a little bit. I am going to have to understand more than half of what is being said. The same goes for all the other white guys here(there's more than I expected).

(http://englishbusiness-blog.de/2014/06/)

 Anywho, I am pretty much all settled in, and this MTC is a pretty awesome place, though extremely small. And one of the first things I saw in the airport was a large statue of a Dwarf with a sign that said "On loan from Middle Earth, please do not touch. Yeah that was enough to tell me I am gonna love it here. ;) After a while, I think I will be able to fit right in!!  Thanks and love all of you! :D

-Elder Clayton-