October 7, 2014...Enters mission field:)

Dear Collins Family,

Your son arrived safely today to the Chile Santiago East Mission. We are happy to have him here and all is well! Attached is a small letter from him to you!

Atte.

Elder Shaw

Secretario

Misión Chile Santiago Este

2013444@ldachurch.org

October 1, 2014

AHHHH you guys went on the harley ride again!!! that was honestly one of the funnest things i have ever done! so jeaulous!!!!! 

anyways for this week we got all new teachers and one of them is Hermana Gatica, and she was comps with Meghan smith!!!!! we talked a lot about her and her family and it was just super chill!!:) also Hermano Rossi knows Mason Smith, i am not sure how he knows him but he said he did and we talked about him a little bit too:) 

Another cool thing that happened was i was sitting here in the CCM and all of the sudden an Hermana walked by and i swear i recognized her so i went up and said, "hey are you from Alpine??" and she was like yeah how did you know that and it turns out she is Hermana Castleton in our stake! we talked for a bit and i had known her little sister but it was nice to talk to someone from the wonderful place of alpine:)

Oh so now that we are in our last week we do things differently, so on sunday when we have family night instead of doing an activity we go and teach english to the latinos! i didnt realize how hard english was until i was teaching it!! but it was super fun! i taught Hermana Morenho from brazil and she had already a little bit of english but not really, she is super chill and we just talked in spanglish for the whole time about everything:) There is this hermana from Argentina that speaks absolutely perfect english!! she said that when she was 4 her mom sent her to this private sschool and she was there for 11 years and theyl learned english there. so she is completely fluent! not fair!!;) 

We lost our soccor ball this week so we have played volleyball tons, and i forgot how fun it was! i absolutley loved playing volley ball with the homies back home and its not the same playing with people here:( still fun tho:) 

umm i realized that when i got down here that i wasnt really familiar with the scriptures and didnt know when to use them or anything, it was rough and now i am getting better on knowing when to use certain scriptures to answer questions. i wish i would have studied them more before!! dang! 

thats pretty much it for this week, but this is the last time i am going to write for 11 days.....because we leave this tuesday and then dont get a pday until the following monday. so this is it for two weeks!!! i love you all and hope all is well in the land of the Free;)

Love you

Elder Collins

p.s. so one of my teachers is flying up to salt lake for conference and she said she will take you guys these letters i want to send! so i have given her moms and dads and the home phone number, so you guys can meet up with her and get the mail:) this way it wont take over a month to send!! hopefully it all works out!! there are two packages, one for you gys and one for alyssa, the one for you guys also has a letter for brian and kinsie so if you guys can figurel out a way to send those to them:) thanks!! oh her name is Hermana Alfaro! PEACE!

September 23, 2014

killer week as usual for you guys!!! thats crazy that there was a hurricane?! i never would have imagined that happening!!!! the jeep looks so sweet!!!!!!!!!! im sitting here showing everyone it and they all love it:) yeah i knew that his birthday was this week but i didnt have his email and i dont have enough time to send one so i will write him a letter this week and if you can just send me his adress that would be perfect:) so the letter that i sent to you guys for alyssa should be getting there sometime this week....hopefully it works!!! i also sent one for rachael this last week so itll be a week or two till that one gets there:) anyways.

LAst pday we got to have the pday in the morning and then the temple the rest of the day! it was so unbelievably awesome!!!! the temple was extra cool because this time i got to do the last part with the temple president and he wanted me to do it in spanish....(that was super rough) but afterwards he pulled me aside in the changing room and was telling me how i did super good and had great pronunciation. he then gave me advice on how ways that i can practice my spanish in my free time that helped him tons. Super cool:) oh and the names at the temple that we did were all found by a lady from alpine!! her name is Jasmine Bennet who, it was a pleasant surprise to be chilling in the chapel and looking at the card and seeing Alpíne utah! you guys should try to see if anyone knows her:) Representing Utah down here in the southern hemisphere;)

So this week is crazy becaue it is independance day. and its a 6 day celebration that everyone is just going crazy and parties all of the time! so on thursday they let us go to this park where there was a carnival to see the people and get the culture down and to just practice our spanish wiht people! it was an awesome experience, we handed out pass along cards and stuff. awesome:) oh and on that day alot of our teachers took it off so we had a sub and his name was hermano Leiva and he served in the Houston Texas East mission with levi gifford and parker olsen!! he said he knew both of them and had gone on a couple exchanges with him!!!! it is such a small world in the church:)

On friday our schedules had a 6 hour break of just nothing and we all were confused on what it was and stuff...so this is what it was, a full on party. non stop dancing and eating soooooo much good food!!! they had ribs and brisket and chicken and i dont even remember but it was soooo amazing!!! we were able to wear our normal clothes too and that felt super weird....but nice to change things up for a bit:) we played all these games that were ones we played as little kids and they are all these adult going all out and stuff. super funny to watchh and do:) we played musical chairs and out of the 60 of us missionaries i finished number 4! so close!! this little brazilian girl just was so quick and i think she cheated;) jk it was fun though:)

a sad event also happened... an hermana from our district went home... Hermana Zobrist. she had problems with her knee and needed surgery. She didnt tell anyone that she was leaving untill she just disapeared... I wish i could have said good bye! she was sooo chill and super hipster and idk a super cool girl. she also felt that she couldnt speak spanish(she was the 2nd best in our class behind a brizilian) and it stressed her out and you could just tell that she was going through a really rrough time. I hope that she will be able to go back out on maybe a english mission because she would be an amazing missionary!! she is in our prayers.

On sunday we watched a devotional that president scott gave last tuesday the provo ccm. it waas so powerfull and i felt as if he was talking directly to me. i have had tons of questions on my mind and he answered all of them. so amazing how the lord works. my testimony is growing so much everysingle day. one of the questions that he had answered was "why did it seem like the last few weeks before i left that everyone told me to be exactly obedient no matter what?" and i had found a reason why. so my district is called the "party" district because there are tons of kids that just are here like its a party or something. i am always several times a day telling people that they shouldnt be doing something because its against the rules or that we are representitives of jesus christ and stuff. i have become this stubborn kid to them bevause they just dont understand the importance of following rules. even though they rarely listen to me, i know that they are still learning because if i do my best to help them, then the lord is going to do the rest. 

i cant wait to be actually out in the feild and am super stoked to be on my mission:) love you all!!! keep it real;)

Elder Collins

September 16, 2014

HALO familia!!!

Sounds like eveything is going so great at home!!!! I love hearing about all the cool things that are happeneing!! so exciting!!!!:)

so my week is a little like this

so to start out, this last week was september 11 and here in chile it is a super sketchy and scary day....because in like 1973 a dictator orverturned the government and even still today people go crazy and try to kill cops and cause havoc! here in the CCM it is safe, we are in the safe part of town but aparenntly there were bombs going off and crazy stuff down in corbins mission! 

A new district came to the ccm this week and its a completely latino group and only sisters. It is super good practice for my spanish but it makes me realize that i know a lot less than i thought i knew!! but since it is just sisters a lot of us had to move rooms so i had to leave my poolside estate and move into the "crackerbox" the smallest room and had to share it with these two kids that i dont necesaritly like.... but its okay! i have realized that all things happen for a reason so i better make the best of the experience!!!!!

So since we are now in our third and fourth week here we get all new teachers, these teachers teach almost no english....so the learning jsut got a lot harder. but baptism by fire is the way to go! one of them we were teaching them as their fake investigator and the lesson was incredible. my spanish just flowed from my mouth and was able to commit her to do tons because i was able to talk with the spirit:) But on the contrary, we had our worst lesson right after that....we were about to go in and teach but then Presidente Doll came over and said that he wanted to join us! (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! The president of the CCM!!) so we go in and i just got so nervous and so did my comp and we just taught the worst one we have done...but it was good because afterwards we were able to be coached on how to make it better, so we learned a lot on how to handle those situations that we are going to be thrown in often on the mish. super great learning experience!!

I have a whole new testimony on patriarchal blessing lately, i have been reading mine every day and oh my word, it is like every time i read it a new thing sticks out and answers a question i had!! i love the power that they hold and i cherish mine so much:)

OH! so i was sitting in class the other day and all of the sudden someone came in and told me that an elder from alpine utah was here, so i went out there and it was this kid that i used to play baseball wiht back in the day, Casey Lundquiste! he has been out for about a year and knows corbin!!! it was super cool to talk to him about sterling and braeden bevcause he was tight with them but it was cool:) Also i was looking at the pictures of all the groups that have came out of the CCM in the last 2 years and corbin was in there!!! i found the picture of him:) super cool!

On sunday we had the honor to have Hermano Zeballos of the first quorem of the seventy come talk to us, and wow, that was such an amazing meeting. with what i understood it was spectacualr. and the spirtit that he brought was beyond explanation!! the lord has called some great men to lead his church!!:)

i love all of you guys and am super excited to be here serving the lord even though it is really hard but comepletly worth it!! keep it reall, Peace out!!

Elder Collins

ps. i havent gained any weigvht! i have actually stayed the same weight but gotten stronger!! Doing 150 pushups a day and that ab roller is really helpin out:) i will be just completely jacked when i come home;)