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August 1, 2025 - Week 5

 Hola! 

We made it through the final full week at the MTC! I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by here. I am definitely ready to leave this place, but I am not ready to leave my district. We have all grown so close, and we now feel like a family. It’s going to be like leaving my family again when I have to say goodbye to them on Tuesday morning. 

This week, I finally met someone who is also going to Phoenix! Although he speaks English, so I probably won’t get to see him, I might get to fly there with him from the MTC.
 
This week has been a great one. My whole district had to wear stickers on our tags that said “HSI” which stands for Hablar Su Idioma, or speak your language. We were not allowed to speak English during the week, and I think it definitely helped me so much with my Spanish.
 
On Monday, to end our last class for the day, my teacher wanted to end with a little testimony meeting. So, we went around the group and we all shared a personal experience and testimony in Spanish. When it came to my turn, I decided to share an experience I had at home the week before I left for the MTC. I was on a call with my district, and we started singing a church hymn about Jesus Christ. Now, to give y’all background, if you didn’t know, my dishwasher had a leak for a while that we didn’t know about, and we had just recently found out about it. So at the time, the kitchen was taken apart, and there were constantly workers coming in and out. So basically, the house was in absolute chaos, and it was causing my mom a great deal of stress. When she was in the other room, dealing with everything going on, she heard me singing a song in Spanish about Jesus Christ. It immediately brought peace to her in such a stressful moment. 

That being said, the message I want to share with y’all back home this week is about the peace we can feel through Jesus Christ during stressful and difficult times. “There is peace in Christ.” I bet many of y’all know that song, and I want to say that the message is so true. No matter what you are experiencing in your life, Jesus Christ is always there to turn to. Jesus Christ suffered for ALL of our afflictions, temptations, sufferings, and any emotion we could ever feel. That means he experienced everything that we ever will, so He knows exactly how to help us in any given situation. Jesus Christ has been a source of comfort and peace in the hardest times in my life, and I promise He can be that for any of you as well, as long as you just make the decision to turn to him. He is our Savior, Comforter, and He is the Prince of Peace.
 
I have one more message that I’d like to share from a general authority devotional that I went to on Tuesday. One of the notes I wrote down from the speaker was his explanation that the scriptures are just like my suitcase that I packed for my mission; filled to the brim and overflowing. Though the difference between the two is that the scriptures are packed to the brim and overflowing with the true words of Christ. Messages, answers, stories, all about the example that Jesus Christ has set for us. I promise that as you strive to feast upon the words of Christ daily, you will start to see the hand of Christ in your life more apparently. Following Christ is a choice that we have to make because God respects our agency and the will to choose what to do in this life. So make that choice. If you put in effort to build a relationship with Christ, I promise he will be right by your side when you seek his love and guidance. 

The last things I wanna share are some funny stories. The Elders and I figured out how to fold bath towels into a lethal whip. So we had a lot of wars. We were all marked up everywhere You can see one of the marks on Elder Stobbe in the pictures. 

The second thing is about one of the people from Elder Stobbe and Gasaway’s room. His name is Elder Lasatani and he is from Tonga. He bites. He is learning to speak English right now at the MTC, so he understands some little stuff from us. But he does a lot of random stuff, and he can't explain any of it to us. One of those is biting your arm  The guy in the picture attached at the bottom with the translation open was talking about hiding from Lasatani. 

My next email will be from the field! Thank you to everyone who is following my journey. I love and miss all of y’all!

-Élder Collins  













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