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