1st Communication from Collin - 04Feb2010

I received our first communication from Collin this afternoon. He now has an email address -- collindurham@myldsmail.net --

He also recommends using www.DearElder.com to communicate with him while in the MTC. Correspondance via DearElder.com arrives the same day. I explained how to use DearElder.com on a previous post.

The text of his email today follows......

Hey everybody...

So i only have 27 minutesto write this email, as i had to register first, and i am only given 30 minutes. so sorry if my thoughts are scattered all over the place, or if i mispell things, this keyboard is terrrible andosme of the strokes dont register. ok so hereit goes.. and you can send this to everybody in the family. every week on wednesday i get 6 dollars to buy thngs like paper stamps envelopes food and anything else i need from the bookstore. apparently laundry is free to do, but i dont know yet. i just put my laundry in and am sitting here typing while i wait for itto finish. food at cafeteria is free too. haircuts are free. i have 2 spanish teachers, hermano soelberg and hermano latimer. hermano soelberg went to buenos aires north, so he has been tellin us alot about the culture and things like that. i really like my district. there WERE 12 of us. 5 of us going to BAW, 5 going to san antonio, and 2 going to the dominican republic. however, one elder got sick, or he has been sick for a longtime, and went home yesterday. he was going to san antonio. the 2 elders going to dominican republic are leaving to themtc there in 2 miore weeks. my zone is pretty cool too. the zone leaders are awesome and really fun. sacrament was typical, we are expected to write a talk every week that lasts no longer than 5 minutes, inspanish, and we are told 20 seconds before wegive the talk who is actuazlly talkin. Dear Elder... tell people about this, as it prints off the message instantly andi am given it the same day. its really nice. thanks to everybody who has sent me letters so far, i really enjoy knowing that thereisstill live outside of the mtc. On the first day, i saw 10-12 japanese elders. they didnt know enlish, so they had to have translator headsets, thought it wasinteresting. on sundays after church we are allowed to go on a temple walk so we can get outside of themtc grounds. there are TONS of elderswho go on this, and the provo temple gorounds are just covered with elders. we have a lotof "pretend" investigators who are actually members, and they seem to help a lot, although it can be funny when we ask them questions about mormons, as tyhey actually now the anser already. we get to go to the gym once a day except for sundays and p-day, but i didnt get to go on thursday, my first day, because we were in the immunization line, and that took almost 2 hours. i didnt need to have my immunization in my hand... we didn't useit until thenext day. they didn't give me a spanish hymn book, i had togo buy one myself, but missionaries getdiscounts, so itonly cost me like 3 dollars orsoething, and theysaid i could get it engraved with my name for free. we had a song fireside on sunday, that was really nice. we sang a ton of songs, and my voice was kind of hoarse afterwards. on tuesday we had a devotional, and elder hinckley and his wife spoke. i saw 2 elders from our stake so far. Elder Wheeler from katy 3 is actually in my zone. and i have seen elder wilkes also. the laundry room has dry cleaning, so ifi ever spilled anything onmy suits i could get them cleaned, but it costs somethinlike 5 dollars per suit, andionly get 6 ddollars a week... so you can see where thatis going. one of the first things i didon my first day was get a big blue bag of stuff i would need. the first thing i pulled out was a water filter... that made me feel good. san antonio and dominican republic didn;'t get one of those. the rest of the stuff in the bag wasmostly things for my language, likea dictionary, spanish bible and book of mormon, a red book that has spanish translation of anything we would ever want to say in spanish, and a spanish preach my gospel. they also gave nme an english PMG as well. i got a binder that had my schedule for the next 9 weeks, and my tentative departure date is march 29th. in my district, i am already considered the "smart" one, because i am so good at spanish.. but thatis all relative. the showers in the dorm rooms are terrrible. 3 of the 5 showrwers we have hardly have any water pressure at all, andmost of the time all the showers are cold. i once tried taking a showerin the handicapped shower, but there was no curtain for the actual shower, only a curtain for the whole room. soif i used the shower it would spray over all my clothes, so i was forced to use the faucet, and had to benddown inorder to get any water onme. not very comfortable. i walked intomy room and the first thing i saw was a hgue tower of purpple fanta cans, stackedin a tower. the administrator actally made them take it down today as it was a health risk. he said it can cause people to start getting colds and sore throats and stuff. i started feeling like that yesterday, before he told us that, and began taking zycam, so hopefully removing the cans will fix the problem. on my first day, we had an introductory meeting with all the newmissionaries. to my surprise ( and everybody elses) president uchtdorf walked in and talked to us for about 5minutes. appaerently that was the only time that a member of the presidency hastalkedto the missionaries in over 3-4years. pretty neat. i like my district, but soetimes they are not very mature. they talk about thing that people in junioor high would talk about, and its kind of frustrating. but i can get over that. our spanisht eacher told us that we would actually "learn" the language in 6 weeks, and the other 3 would just be review and practice. In my spanish class, i tend to ask questions about things i dont understand, and people dont even know what i am talking about, and this has caused the teachers to know that i am the "most advanced" in the class. yesterday we had a sub teacher, and he only spoke spanish to us, that was neat. i actually understood a lot of what he was saying. we use a program every once in a while called TALL, its basically a church knock off of rosetta stone, but its helpful i suppose. i got my driving record in the mail yesterday or the day before. did my fbi letter arrive yet? i was told that we dont need a visa to get into argentina, and that we can travel only on our passport if we need to. i will need it within 90 days of arriving though. on pdays and service days we can get bagged breakfast and lunch, so we dont have to dress up in order to go to the cafeteria. its nice. although the foodisnt asgood, i likenot dressing up. i polished my shoes for the fist time today, it went well. iguess i didit right. the elders giong to san antiono all received ltters from their mission presidnet saying they needed bikes, but none of usgoingto BAW got a ltter. oh well.

i guess today is the big day for brianna huh? tell her goodluck, and sorry i couldn't be there. hope she has a really good time. tellmom not to worry too much about the weddding either.

it would be cool if peoplewould send me food, as the food ehre is bad... itgives everybody gas and when wer are all in the same room it isreally furstrarting. sorry for my bad typing, but this keyboard is really bad. i only have 50 seconds left, so i love you all and hope that yo udont feel too sad that i cant be at the wedding. ia m really enjoying all my time here and will keep writing yo uall

Collin