Hola hola, everyone!
We made it through the 4th week! Next week is my last full week at the MTC, then I leave for Phoenix the following Tuesday. I promise to have some more interesting content to include in these emails once I get out into the field. I follow the same routine every day here, so I feel like I’m running out of stuff to write about.
It has gotten to the point that I feel like I’m at too long of a summer camp. Eating at the same place, eating the same food, sleeping in the same dorm, and attending the same class three separate times a day. It is getting pretty tough to stay motivated, especially after everyone in my district got sick on Monday. I got the worst of it on Tuesday, and I’m still a bit sick right now, but it has gotten a lot better.
One of the hardest things that’s going on is still trying to learn Spanish. Spending 7 hours a day where I’m not allowed to speak English and I’m only spoken to in Spanish by my teachers is pretty tough, but it has helped me learn much faster than any other way I could be learning.
The hardest week will be next week, for sure. We start something called Speak Your Language, or Hablar Su Idioma, and at that point, I am not allowed to speak English at all during the whole week. We will wear little stickers on our tags that say HSI so anybody we talk to knows we aren’t supposed to be speaking English.
Although I do have the same routine every week, one thing that does change every week is the speaker who comes to talk for our Tuesday night devotionals. This week our speakers were Brother and Sister Spannaus. Here’s one of the most meaningful things that I took away from their talk:
“Repentance is only possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ. He suffered for our sins and took upon himself our temptations, infirmities, sadness, pain, and afflictions. And because of that, he knows how to help us.”
When Jesus Christ came to the earth to perform the atonement (dying on the cross so we could be redeemed from our sins), he took upon himself all of our pains, sins, afflictions, and any heartache or hurt that we will ever feel in this life. Because of that, he knows exactly how to help us during any situation. That means that no matter what you’re going through, Jesus Christ is a place that you can turn to talk to personally, tell him about what’s going on, and ask him how you could get the strength to keep moving forward. Reading the scriptures during these times is very important because the scriptures are literally the words of Christ. I personally like to think that prayer is how we can talk to God, and reading the scriptures is how He can talk to us and provide us with answers to our prayers.
Monday was a rough day with not only most everyone in my district getting sick, but I also had to say goodbye to my friend, Elder Kimball Lindahl. He left for Portugal early Tuesday morning. I already miss him but he is going to be an amazing missionary. I’ll add our last picture together at the end.
Last little story for the week. One of our buddies on our floor got some health problems while he was here at the MTC and ended up having to stay an extra week to try to get better. His district left on Wednesday morning and he stayed here, so Elder Gasaway and Elder Stobbe from my district moved into his room with him, except they didn’t tell us this was happening. They decided to prank us by saying they were being sent home. Elder Cox and I came back from taking a shower, and Elder Stobbe and Gasaway were in the room, packing up their closets, acting all sad, and told us they had gotten in trouble, and President Markus said if he can’t trust them at the MTC, then he can’t trust them in the field. They cracked after a few minutes. They were just packing up their things to move down the hallway with the Elder who is sick. I took Elder Gasaway’s closet too, which is very nice because I can be so much more organized. The closets we have are so small.
Next week is going to be pretty tough with HSI, so I’ll get back to you next Friday and let you know how it went. Then the next email will be from the big AZ!
I love you all, and thank you for tuning in to my emails. See you guys next week!
-Elder Collins
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