Well, not much except that the Lord of the Rings movies were made there and besides loving the elves I think those Hobbit houses are as cute as can be! 
Okay, I did look up a few things……first, it can get cold there! No matter what you think, we are not going to a Hawaiian climate! Because New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s seasons are opposite to those in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, it’s summer is the North’s winter and vice versa. It is basically cool sub-tropical in the North with winter temperatures getting down in the 40’s; and cool temperate in the far South where there are mountains and snow during the winter! When we leave we will be going into their Spring and figure we are going to miss the next two winters here in Utah! That’s not all bad! We hope to be able to visit all climates while we are there!
I also found out there are no hurricanes there but they do have about 1.8 cyclones a year and those are mainly around March. (Didn’t Dorothy go to Oz in a cyclone??) Cyclone’s or not, their winters involve LOTS OF RAIN! One sister missionary told me she had to go buy a slicker from a farmer as her designer raincoat was like wearing nothing in the winter rainstorms!
Why is New Zealand called New Zealand? It was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who traveled the unexplored world and when he found these islands he made crude maps of the North and South lands before going home to Holland. This foreign land reminded him of his homeland region, Holland of the Netherlands, called Zeeland. Dutch map makers then called the islands Nova Zeelandia which literally translated means New Zealand! The name stuck! The Maori didn’t have a collective name before the colonists came but the name Aotearoa was developed and used to refer to the whole country. This name means: Long White Cloud. I like that!
By the way, Captain James Cook sailed around the islands and claimed New Zealand for Great Britain and this was long after Tasman discovered the islands in 1642! Even after Cook claimed them, settlers did not start colonizing until 1840 when a treaty was signed by the Maori Chiefs. By the way, when Abel Tasman sighted the islands in 1642 he assumed they were connected to land off the southern tip of South America.
Well, enough of the history lesson! Of course this was all very interesting to us since we will be living and serving there for the next 18 months! All I know is that they speak English (along with several Polynesian languages), but that it will take a while to understand what they are saying in their most unique and pronounced New Zealand accent!
As for the church in New Zealand, there are many stakes, wards and a temple in Hamilton. There are also three missions covering the North and South Islands. The Cook Islands are also a part of one of the missions. Again, we are very excited to serve there and are grateful to be missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! It will be a new experience for us and very different than it was when we served in Romania. However, all people every where have the same hopes, dreams and desires to find joy in their lives, be happy and have their questions answered about who we really are, where we came from (before our earth life), why we are here, and where we are going (after this life)! We look forward to answering these questions and serving where we are needed.
Mission to New Zealand 