Tuesday, December 9 2014

This week was pretty boring, not much going on. We got new people in our zone last week and these guys are like 100 times better than the other district. We have had a lot of fun hanging out with them this week. So right outside of the walls there is this big mountain and this week there was a landslide on the mountain! Like half the mountain was brown, it was pretty cool. We weren’t able to hear it though because it happened at night and Elder Conkel is sick so his snoring drowned out all sound from the outside world. And then last night we were eating dinner and all these people were gathering right outside the comedor and we went and looked and the same mountain was on fire! It wasn’t like the whole mountain but it was like halfish. I tried to get some pictures but the photos don’t do it any justice. It was pretty sweet and now today the whole campus smells like Lays potato chips for some reason. The houses on the mountain are pretty cool, some of them are decorated for Christmas and there is this crazy house that has like flashing lights and it plays super loud music also. It’s not as cool as the original crazy house but it’s pretty cool to see it in Mexico. I finally got around to taking pictures of this place so I have quite a few pictures to send. Other than that this week was lame. Nothing else to talk about. Love you guys. Talk to you next week. Pictures: My bedroom, the house where I live, a weird flexing statue near us, the place where we eat, fire on the mountain, the crazy house with lights, a sweet tie that one of the Hermanas made for me.

Tuesday, December 2 2014

What a crazy week! We had the coolest devotional on Thanksgiving! It was live from BYU and Elder Bednar gave it, but it was a question and answer devo. At the start President Bednar said he was going to pass out 500 cell phones to the crowd in BYU and an email for us, so we got to write a question on a note card and pass it up and someone would email the question to him and the questions would show up on his ipad. The last question that was asked was by my morning teacher Hermano Silva, he is the funniest guy ever! Anyways he asked how we can be a preach my gospel missionary after our mission and as soon as President Bednar read it and said that was a great question he just burst into tears, then Bednar spent like 30 mins talking about it, it was a really neat experience. We then went to lunch and when we got to the comidor there was tablecloths on the tables and they were playing CHIRSTMAS MUSIC! haha it was the best! We had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner including pumpkin pie! We all ate a bunch of turkey and then after that we went and played handball, handball is a mix of football and ultimate frisbee. It was pretty fun but no here near as fun as frisbee. Anyways, the only other thing that really happened this week was one of my lessons. We do this thing called trc every week and it’s a blast. This week was pretty busy so we didn’t have time to plan our lesson so when my comp and I said a prayer before and as soon as we walked into the room the spirit hit us like a bag of bricks! We then taught a 40 minute lesson in 100 percent Spanish about how we can receive personal revelation through prayer and it was 100 percent by the spirit, after about 1 million prayers for the gift of tongues I had the chance to witness its power. Like 75% of the lesson I never even heard of the words I was saying! It really made me excited to get out into the field so I can teach more people! Last night we said goodbye to the district that came before us and it was pretty sad. We got to be pretty good friends in our zone and now we got a new district and they are so boring. No one there likes pokemon or to even talk! But we only have two weeks left here! It’s crazy to think I’ve already been out for like a month. I felt like it was last week Judd and I were hanging out in the players basement playing computer and watching the walking dead. But now that I’m here I could teach people all day! I got a pretty cool umbrella at the store here because mine already broke! But I’ll send a picture, it looks like it can be the ceiling of some old roman catholic church! I’ll talk to you next week, love you.

Tuesday, November 25 2014

This week was pretty boring, nothing much happened. I’m finally starting to get a hang of the language; we did this thing called trc which means teaching recent converts and I taught the whole lesson without any notecards at all, I’m not sure about my comp though. Tuesdays are definitely my favorite day here in the MTC, not just because its p day but because for dinner they go to Costco and buy hundreds of pizzas and we get to eat as much Costco pizza as we want! Last week I ate around 8 pieces! We just got back from the Mexico City temple and it was a pretty cool experience. We didn’t get to go into the temple but we got to tour the visitor center and we even had a chance to talk to some non members that were there taking a tour. The bookstore was what everyone was excited for and when we got there everyone was surprised. It’s seriously about the size of my bedroom at home and it was packed with like 40 missionaries. I got some pretty cool scripture covers for my Spanish scriptures and a few ties. Elder Howell got to see his brother yesterday because his brother is in the Mexico City South mission so he got to talk to him yesterday; his brother convinced him to stay and now he feels like he is making the right decision to stay. For the past two weeks my comp and I have been having a foosball tournament with these other two elders who have the same gym time as us and we play 40 minute games of intense foosball haha. We usually win because the other two aren’t really good but sometimes we just really stink haha. That’s basically it. Not a very interesting week for the most part. Love you guys.

Tuesday, November 18 2014

That car ride seems intense! This week went by pretty fast except for Saturday and yesterday. Saturday was horrible, for some reason I just couldn’t remember any Spanish and it made the day just drag on! And yesterday was long because we had a zone wide fast for one of our elders in our zone. My roommate Elder Howell feels like he wants to go home so we all fasted for him yesterday to help him receive an answer and last night he said he wants to go home. But from the looks of it, it looks like it will take like 2 weeks for all the interviews and stuff to get through so maybe he will change his mind by then. If he leaves my companion and I will have to be in a tripanionship with our district leader, so we will have to go to a bunch of meetings and stuff. That sucks Danny is going to the Colombian MTC, that would have been really cool if he would have come to the Mexico City MTC. We have a district leaving the week before he leaves so if he came here he might have even been in my zone! Tomorrow our district is doing this thing called solo español which means that you can only talk in Spanish that whole day. It’s going to be hard but I’m excited to see how much Spanish I actually know and what I’m not using. We have this program called TALL which is supposed to help us with Spanish, but it is all in Spanish so I can’t figure out how to use it. On Sunday we watched a talk by Elder Bednar at an MTC Christmas devotional a few years ago and it was a really nice talk. Then later that night we watched The Mountain of the Lord and it reminded me of that day when we all went down to City Creek and then went and watched it. It was a pretty good movie but it’s pretty hot in the auditorium and everyone is so sleepy so it’s really hard to stay awake. Funny story, on Thursday we were sitting in our room and it was 2 minutes past quiet time, so we were getting ready to say the prayer when Elder Howell was waiting for Elder Brown to get down he was showing us how cats throw up, we were all busting up laughing when the door starts to open slowly. So my companion yells "quick everyone act like your asleep!" so he lays on the floor and starts to snore. And then all of the sudden President Pratt’s head pokes through the door and we all go silent but Elder Conkel who is just laying there "snoring." We were all too scared to say anything so president asks my companion why he is laying on the floor and he was like it is hot so I’m laying on the cool tile. We then explain how we were just about to say the prayer and he asks my comp if that is his praying position and then he leaves. Like three minutes later we hear the house door shut and we all just bust up laughing! Then when we were going to bed I needed to go to the bathroom, but I thought president was just sitting outside the window so I went to go open the window to check and Elder Howell says "go to sleep" like he was president and for the next like five minutes we are in our beds with our faces in our pillows trying to not make a lot of noise but we were laughing so hard! That night was probably the most I’ve ever laughed in forever. For the most part this was a good week though. Love you guys. Talk to you later.

Tuesday, November 11 2014

All is well here at the MTC now - just the first initial shock of actually being here in Mexico was pretty crazy. My companion’s name is Elder Conkel. He’s a nice guy. He comes from Florida. I asked him if he played any sports and he said he played football and soccer. My district is pretty cool. Last night one of my roommates, Elder Howell, and I were talking about making a zipper watch - like it’s a watch that hooks together with a zipper instead of like velcro or a original watch and we had like half the people in my district with us and the other half against us. There are 8 people in my district. 6 elders, and 2 sisters. It’s crazy because I can find a connection with every one of them that makes us closer together. Most of us all know at least one or two of the same people that I was friends with and they come from all across the world. We have an elder who’s name is Courtney Taito and he comes from Samoa, and like half of the Polynesian people I was friends with he is cousins with so we became friends pretty quick. The food here is surprisingly good, ha. Every time we get food no one in my district knows what it is. It’s usually just some red meat or some weird enchilada but it’s been pretty nice so far. I sleep in a house with four bedrooms and each bedroom has 4 elders in it. My roommates are my companion, Elder Howell who is from Arizona and our district leader Elder Brown from Idaho Falls. It’s a pretty disgusting place, the bathroom is always wet and there is a big hole in the wall that you can see into the other side of the bathroom and see the other elders. So far my Spanish is horrible which sucks because the second day we were here we had to teach an investigator the first lesson and he didn’t speak any English so we spent about an hour reading the Preach My Mospel lesson and mispronounced basically every word. But so far I have been liking the MTCV. I just wish I would have brought a lot more ties. There is a huge tie trade that goes on every other night in a different house and there are some elders who have like 90 ties and they show up with a huge rack and people trade them like 3 ties for one of his. Most people go for like far out ties like all floral or a hidden paisley. We are going to the Mexico City temple visitor center next week because the Mexico City temple is being remodeled and I’ve heard they have some really cool ties that are really cheap so I am think I’m going to buy some so I can trade more than the ones I have right now. I haven’t taken many pictures yet because there is really nothing to take pictures of. The drive from the airport to the MTC was crazy. We would get so close to the busses next to us you could smell the people inside it and there were guys on motorcycles just flying by in between like a foot of space! My teacher for our language and Preach My Gospel classes name is Carlos Silva and he is probably the coolest teacher in our zone. He makes us memorize a ton of stuff in Spanish and if we don’t do it by a certain day we have to do like 60 push ups, so I don’t even need my hour of gym time. But I have definitely started to get better at Spanish. Although I can’t speak much of it I can start to understand it. At first I thought they were talking so fast but now that I’m starting to understand it I feel like it’s slowed down a lot. Sunday was a really nice break from the start of the week. But sacrament had to be in all Spanish and each week we have to write like a 5 minute talk in Spanish and you don’t know if you are talking until after the sacrament. But it’s by zone and we have the smallest zone in the MTC, there are only like 20 people so we have gotten to know them pretty well. Two people from my district had to give talks and after that the president said that was the first time he asked a new missionary to talk and that he will do it every time we get someone new in our zone. The trees here are full of parrots and butterflies and it’s fun to throw like a rock into the trees because it looks like the leaves just explode off because the parrots are green and they fly out every which way. If you could look up a zipper watch and see if they already have one tell me so I know not to try and make one. That’s basically all I can remember so I’ll talk to you guys next week. Love you, Collin

Wednesday, November 5 2014

Collin safely arrived at the Mexico City MTC on Wednesday, November 5. Saying goodbye was just as difficult as we expected it to be, but we couldn't be more proud of how Collin handled himself. We love him more than words can say. His flight had a brief layover in Atlanta, Georgia. Uncle Dave, who will be on our hero list forever, left a meeting and ran through the Atlanta airport to meet up with Collin. The pictures and report Dave sent warmed our hearts and helped us through a very difficult day. Thanks Dave! Collin was able to send the following brief email upon his arrival at the MTC: i have arived at the MTC safely, a few hours ago and they are letting us write you for a couple minutes to tell you our shipping address and our P day. P day for me is on tuesdays. i was doing good up until we actually got to the mtc, now its hit me and im super nervous. im just praying that i wont be as homesick as i think i would feel. Your Missionary's mailing addres is: [Elder Horrocks] [16/12/2014] [Branch 14 - District A] Carretera Tenayuca-Chalmita #828 Colonia Zona Escolar, Gustavo A. Madero 07230 Mexico, Distrito Federal Mexico The estimated departure date for your missionary is [16/12/2014]. The use of the above address on all correspondence will greatly faciliate delivery to your missionary at the MTC. Please don't send packages. all is well here i just hope i forget about myself. love you guys.