Lots of awesome family and friends came out to welcome Alexa home from her 18 month mission.

The moment Sister Collett stepped off the escalator people started cheering, and she burst into happy tears seeing so many who love and support her.  Thanks everyone!

Well, the moment has come. This is the last email I will send home as a full-time missionary.

I have so much in my head and all of these great things I want to say but I don't have the time or patience to put it all into words.

There are some things I've learned on my mission:

#1. The Church is true.

#2. God is our LOVING Heavenly Father.

#3. ALL things are possible through Christ.

I knew these things before I left, but now I have seen them in a new light. I will forever know these three things and be grateful for the mission that helped me see them in action. I am so grateful that I can now apply the principles and things I have learned out here in my own personal life and use them to help those around me. I love this gospel. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I am so grateful for the time I have spent working alongside him in the vineyard. This work is true and more important than anything we can be involved in. I'm so grateful for the experiences I have had on my mission and will cherish them forever. I have made life-long friends that have changed me for the better and I hope to continue those relationships on into the eternities.

My family is my support and strength and I will forever be grateful for them and the prayers that have been offered in my behalf. I am so excited to hug my mom in seven days. Thank you mom for helping me become who I am. I love you all!!

God be with you till we meet again,

Sister Alexa Lynn Collett

That was the fastest week ever! I seriously feel like I was on the computer yesterday. This is nuts. Now I only have two weeks left! What?!

So last Monday we went down to St. Charles for Zone P-day where we played ultimate Frisbee with the whole zone. It was really humid and after a while a lot of people were dropping out. At the end it came down to five elders against me and two other elders. It was an intense finish but we beat them. Our perseverance prevailed! Then we went down to the little old time shops on main street and went to the ice cream shop and looked at all the other cute little stores down there. It's a Louis and Clark themed place. Way cute. Definitely a good place to come back and visit.

Tuesday we had a great lesson with Jean! She is doing awesome and is our most progressing investigator right now. We read a chapter in the Book of Mormon with her and it was so powerful. We talked about her concerns and things she had questions on and the Spirit was just so strong and totally guiding the lesson. She's an amazingly sweet lady. She's about 75 years old and lives alone. She has such a strong faith in Christ and is just trying to do what is right. She said that she has felt so much closer to God as she has been reading from the Book of Mormon and she loves how it supports the Bible.

Wednesday and Thursday we had back to back exchanges with sisters. We first exchanged with Frontenac and I took Sister Mortensen back to our area to do work there. We had a great day filled with appointments. It was so fun to get to know Sister Mortensen and learn from her. She is a great missionary and I hope to stay friends with her. We met with the Smiths and talked about the Holy Ghost. They are really stressed about moving and haven't been able to really read that much but they are still praying! We will be seeing them again tonight.

The next day we met up at our halfway point for the exchange and instead of exchanging back to having Sister Masino, we met up with the Parkway sisters and she went with Sister Bailey while Sister Nordstrom came with me! It was raining sooooo hard and we were way wet, trying to move luggage from car to car and everything but it was fun. Sister Nordstrom is younger in the mission and is unique because she was serving in England before she came here. She had to go home for medical reasons and was reassigned here. It was so cool to hear about England and it made me appreciate my mission even more. She said they all have to be on bikes and it rains constantly and it's cold. I love my mission!

She also was recently in a car accident. They were rear-ended and she got severe whiplash. :( So she has to rest a lot and it usually in pain. So after district meeting we just went home and let her take it easy while I packed my books into boxes to send home. It was weird. But she said resting helped a lot. Then she made me German pancakes for dinner! It was awesome! And yummy! :)

We went to go see a less active family that night and it was good to see her teach. We were able to learn a lot from each other and she said some really nice things she learned from me at the end of our exchange. It's so cool to be able to help the sisters in the mission. I didn't think being an STL would be so great! It's so rewarding!

The next day I finally got Sister Masino back and it was so good to be back together :) We missed each other. We spent most of the day planning for various things. We have to go through and talk about all of the sisters and pray to know who we think should be paired up with who for next transfer. Then the next day we drove down to St. Louis to meet with the AP's to give them our report and everything. We brought cookies and the elders were happy about that.

We also saw Sister Cantillo and she is doing awesome.

Saturday was wonderful! After our pow wow with the AP's we went to the TEMPLE! Sam Jones was going through the temple and invited us to come. Both Sister Masino and I helped teach Sam when we served in Columbia. Oh it was such a beautiful experience. It was also my last time in the temple as a full-time missionary. Real bitter-sweet moment. The temple was so beautiful. It was wonderful.

Sunday none of our investigators came to church. But it was a great service. We have an awesome ward! It's hard to help people progress when everyone is out of town or moving. But it's okay. All is well! :) Oh and Donita has quit smoking! She's doing great and we are so proud of her! Next step is returning to church. She's gonna make it! We're so excited for her!

Hope you all have a great week!

LOVE YOU!

Wait, didn't I just email you all yesterday? Seriously though, this is the fastest transfer of my mission! It's already half over and I feel like I just got here. That's what happens when great things are happening all the time. Sister Masino and I have so much fun together- we are such good friends and I'm so happy she comes home the transfer after me. Last Monday we decided to go to St. Louis to the Botanical Gardens. It was beautiful and lots of fun.

Then Tuesday I went on my first exchange as a Sister Training Leader! Oh my gosh, I love being an STL! It's really fun and the best is being able to help the sisters we are over. I loved seeing how Heavenly Father guided me to know exactly what to do and how to help the sister I was on the exchange with. Her name is Sister Martinez and I went to her area in St. Peters while her companion Sister Reed came to work our area with Sister Masino. These sisters white-washed into St. Peters and are doing a great job contacting part-member and less active families. We were really busy and Sister Martinez laughed at just about everything I would do. It was great. We got a lot of return appointments and I was so inspired by her conversion story and her dedication to this work.

We were walking down the street to contact a family when I heard music and stopped. "Do you hear that?" I asked Sister Martinez. It was the ice cream man. We totally got ice cream and gave the ice cream guy a little lesson and our card. He seemed pretty open to it! :)

Whitewashing an area can be stressful and it was really good to be able to help Sister Martinez see that you can work hard and have fun at the same time. She is an amazing missionary and is such a hard worker. I feel so blessed to have been able to spend a day with her.

The next day we had an appointment with an investigator named Adam. He had been reading the Book of Mormon and said that he wanted to be baptized. Awesome. I love seeing how the Book of Mormon changes people. We had a great lesson with him. Then it was time to exchange companions again. It was good to be back with Sister Masino again. :) We talked about how the exchange went and how we can strengthen them. It's just awesome being an STL! Most of the afternoon that day we had to plan our training for zone conference the next day. We also made these cute little handouts with a quote on it that went along perfectly with our training.

Thursday was out combined zone conference that turned out awesome. We made the programs and they looked so cute! Our theme for the conference was Blazing the Trail- like the pioneers. We based our training off of a talk by Elder Holland called "The Miracle of a Mission". It was really good. I was nervous to stand up and train in front of two whole zones, but the Spirit was with us and touched the missionaries hearts. We trained about the importance of a mission and how we need to give our all. The goal was to motivate the missionaries to blaze their own trails and leave a legacy. Everything turned out great. We were so happy. :)

The conference was all the way in Columbia where I served at Mizzou! Sister Masino was the sister that I replaced when I went to serve there. So it was fun to be there together and reminisce in all the great things that happened when we served there. We even went to my favorite Indian restaurant there for dinner. Goood times. :)

Sandy is gone now :( She is living at her dad's house in Arnold, Missouri now. We are so sad she is gone but happy she has a place to live. We are working on getting her dad's address so that the sisters in her area can come visit her and continue to help her come unto Christ.

We met with Sarah and Andrew again and it was long and intense. Again. These people are so smart and have so many questions we always feel like we ran a marathon afterwards! It's great. But they said they couldn't come to church this week and they might come next week. It's a steady climb but they are definitely making progress. Their hearts are still needing to be softened. They have a hard time accepting new doctrine. But it will come as they pray for guidance.

The Smith family was doing great up until yesterday. They said they would come to church and fast to know if they should be baptized. We waited by the front doors as long as we could before the service started and we had to be seated. They never came or responded to our texts. Later that day we tried calling and she silenced our call. Sigh. We'll stop by tonight and see what's going on.

Jean came to church!! :D She's such a sweet little lady! She said she just wanted to sit in the back and slip out after sacrament meeting and we said that was perfectly fine. We haven't been able to ask her how she liked testimony meeting but we hope the spirit touched her. We will be meeting with her tomorrow. :)

Donita is a less-active lady we are working with and she is amazing. She has such a good heart and she wants to change. The sisters here have been working with her for a long time and she's come so far. She's been sober for a long time now and is working on quitting smoking. We had a really powerful lesson with her and she is determined to stop smoking so she can be sealed to her husband. She loves him so much and knows he is waiting to have his work done. Her prayer at the end of the lesson was so beautiful. The best feeling in the world is to feel the spirit as someone you love thanks God for the missionaries. I wish I could express how much I love being a missionary.