09/19/13
Hola,
Wow does time fly. I seems like just a week or so a go i
left now im a little less than two weeks from leaving. Its been a great week.
tired but great. Friday was pretty normal and then Saturday night we had a
Mexican night so they brought some dancers and they had a few videos on Mexican
culture that was fun but it wasnt the actual Mexican night. Sunday we had a
great church meetings we said our goodbyes to the other district and we
were all pretty sad becuase they were just awesome people. At 10:30 pm we all
went to the gym again and we watched the grito or the mexican chant that the
president says each year on this day. so we watched the broadcast and it was
like watching the Ball Drop in downtown New york it was so crazy the people
just went crazy by the time we got back to our apartment it was 11:30 and we
were tired and of course all you could here was fireworks guns and big big
booms. But i have learned that thier culture is awesome i love it, they
just love to party. We have had a couple of sets of Native speakers
live in our dorms with us and they are always just having fun and
laughing. its fun to talk to them cause they just laugh at our
Spanish. Its nice cause they know some english usually and it is just
cool to talk with them and become somewhat of friends. It was kindof
hard to sleep but i did get some sleep so i was pretty tired on Monday and i
think i caught up by today ill probably take a nap sometime today.
Well other than that it was a normal week. There are some
new people that got here from mesa. If any of you know them Braden Smartt,
Colby Neilson, Aly Beecher. she was really suprised when she saw me but it was
fun. the other District in our Branch left this week so no more Frisbee.
that's kindof sad but we did´play some sand volleyball this morning for an hour
that was fun. And now i know why people hate rain everyday. it just gets
miserable when every feild is wet or standing in water it just makes playing
sports no fun during gym time. Oh and if i didint know that mexican candy is
nasty i know now. One of our teachers brought some fruit type candy covered in
this nasty chilly powder it was so disgusting. i had to spit it out. i dont get
why they love that spice, its just horrible. so now i know not to try some
mexican candy. and to answer you question about the temple we will go 3 times
so every other week so i should be going next week, but not this week.
Well our class time just gets long some days. The last few
days our hour of TALL( technology assisted language learning) on the computer
was not working. the program didnt run. so it made the afternoons really long
and hard to stay alert. We keep grabbing the comfy seats from empty classrooms
and then well come back after dinner or something and they will be gone
so we usually have hard seats that are no fun to sit on for 8 or so
hours. In one of our clasese we watched a clip from a MTC devotional
by Elder Bednar. He had an awesome story about how when he was a stake
president elder packer came for a reigonal conferernce and they started
to talk and elder Bednar was telling him a story about when he was on a
mission. Elder Packers Flight was cancelled halfway to Berlin so they stoppped
on the western side where Elder Bednar was serving. Before Bednar took them to
the Train Station he gave some money, not knowing why he was giving it to them.
Becasue of border issues between east and west Germany when they got to the
border they had a problem with sister Packers passport and almost took here off
the train, but that money that was given to them he put in the passport
and they went somewhere else and came back and allowed them to continue their
journey but when they opened the passport back up the money was gone. For
whatever reason Elder Bednar gave the money he now knows that the spirit
directed him to do so to help them get through the border. Elder Bednar never
know about this until 20 years later and he know that without following that
prompting there could have been some serious problems. I just htought that was
an awesome story.
Im so grateful for the spirit and its presence here. I
love you all and am grateful for your prayers in behalf of me. Good luck for
all of those who are starting school this semester. You are all in my prayers
and im so thankful for you guys.
Love
Elder Hollingshead
P.S. I still want addresses so i can write a letter you some
of you. so Please send me it!
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| MTC Campus |
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| Rain Rain Rain, every day! |
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| Fog on Mountains around MTC |
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| MTC Study Group |
09/12/19
Hola Familia y Amigos
Hows it going? Hows everybody doing? For those of you starting school up again, hows That? well this week has been great. Spanish is coming along, slowly but surely. Im grasping grammer concepts more quickly but, its just hard to keep all the vocabulary memorized. but that will come, i got some flash cards to help me. So in most of your emails everyone asked what does CCM Stand for? Well its just the mexican way of saying MTC. Just how MTC is the abbrieiation. CCM is the abbreviation for the title. I had no idea that where im at the church owned half of the valley that we are nestled in. as the city grew it became part of the city but yeah the churche had elementary school all the way to college. It was all Benemerito de las Americas. At one of our devotionals a hispanic talked about when the school was opened in the dedicatory prayer the president( i dont remember who it was) he said during the prayer that this place would be a great place to learn the spanish language. most of the people didnt quite understand what that meant but now they understand. It is a place to teach spanish to all the missionaries that will be learning spanish.
So yeah all 3 of my teachers are people who live down here and know enough english to get by. One night though we had an american teach us, for some reason i dont know why but wow it is amaizing how much someone who knows english can teach so much clearer. I love my Spanish teachers but its hard sometimes cause they dont understand english grammer and you can tell they just dont know how to explain in a way we can understand. owell. but as i learn more spanish it does become alot eaiser to understand and learn. Other than that this week has been pretty normal. we got to go to the temple this morning. that was fun. No earthquakes today or in the last week. Umm i understood alittle more of the temple session but most of it sill went right over my head. Its still alot of fun.
Well as of yesterday i am officially half way done with MTC Training. Im getting super excited. I got a letter from Blake this week and it just cant wait to get in the field. I love the CCM and all but its not all that fun sometimes. especially when you are super tired and there jsut no time to catch up on sleep. I have done alot better with not sleeping in clases. Course its really hard when you Have Elder Holland speaking to you. NO he did not come down here, we just watched a previous MTC devotional. It was awesome. IF he wasnt my Favorite Speaker before, he is now. My favorite quote was something to the effect of, when you go to the field "GO ASTONISH SOMEBODY". I dont have my notes with me right now but it was an awesome devotional. It finally stoped raining. the last couple of days it hasnt rained so its been nice, things are starting to dry up. One of the days we played frisbee, i came back and my legs were muddy all the way up my back and i had brown spots all over my shirt, it was awesome :)
Thanks for all the emails. It was great to hear from all of you. I would love to respond to all of you but i just dont have time. And if you want to send a letter wait a couple weeks untill i get to LA cause i dont want it to get lost and end up not getting to me as of right now Email is fine. But I do want lots of peoples addresses so if you could email them to me that would be great i would like to write some letters to you.
Also a bunch of you asked who do i teach. well its not all that exciting, we teach our teachers. They come up with some back story and act like non members and we go teach them lessons in the morning and at night. It is really fun and really hard sometimes. the Spanish is hard to teach in. Sometimes i wish i could say in spanish what i want to say in english. we know enough words to say what we need to say and they a little bit of what we want to say but not enough to say everything we want to so it is definatly a challenge but we get it done and its really fun to watch them progress, even though its not real. i just cant wait to get to LA and teach real people. So i didnt realize but this monday is going to be Mexican independace day. So this saturday we have mexican night which i have no idea what it is but we will figure that out. so im looking forward for a really loud weekend with the fireworks and the guns and the crazy parties, its going to be a blast. should have brought some ear plugs.owell. all i know is that Mexicans like to party everynight all the hispanics in our dorm area are always hanging out and talking in another room. they are just awesome people. they are always laughing and plalying jokes on eachother. its just fun to get to know them a little.
Well I love YOU ALL! thanks for all your prayers in my behalf. Just know that Whatever comes your way the Lord is on your side. Good luck in school and have fun.
Love
Elder Hollingshead09/05/2013
Hey everybody!
Hows everyone doing? This week has been very interesting and
fun. Sometimes i dont know how im supposed to get all of this done. Its crazy,
sometimes i have 2 language classes a day and the study time they give you does
not seem enough to get all the pre work done. So yeah study time is great but
it can get a little long. some days its hard to stay awake and alert, but i do.
My district is getting along even better. we do everything together we hang out
and talk a little to eachother at night before we go to bed, and its nice cause
we get to know eachother alot better. Ive learned alot about some people. Elder
Larkin he is a couple years older than most of us just got back from going to
school at westpoint, the military school in New York so he has a lot of stories
about things that happened there. Elder Knight is from a small town in
northeastern Utah. His graduating class from his high school was 30 kids. the
whole school was 7-12 and had only 250 kids. He thought, along with all the
other utah people that my school was crazy with over 3300 students in one
school. lets just say i come from a big school in a big town. They all ask me
about Arizona and what its like. so it fun to talk about. My companion and i
are getting better at teaching as of this week we have 3 progressing
investigators( our teachers) and all of our lessons have to bee in spanish, so
that definatly gives us a challenge we make it though. some lessons are better
than others and i guess thats what its all about gettin used to of differnt
teaching styles and the many different backgrounds we do teach on our mission.
Other than that this week has been pretty normal. Food is
still pretty bad, we get a good meal once in a while but if its not theres
always frosted Flakes. yumm.... The weather has been cool but annoying also. It
has rained...let me rephrase that.it has poured
everyday except sunday this last week. It just never stops. I love and hate it
cause its the only time of day when we are walking around. the rain usually
starts between 4:30 and 5:30 and it rains for at least a half an hour and up to
4 hours last night i was awake around mindnight and it iwas still raining so
everything around here is soaked. Oh and i forgot, my umbrella is broken. it
got a little windy one time and snaped half of it. so yeah i usually get soaked
at least once aday. although the rain is bad timing it is also good. our gym
time is right before dinner from 4 -5 and its always cloudy and getting ready
to rain so it makes it nice and cool and you dont get as hot. Me and a few
others got tired of playing baksetball and we wanted to play frisbee but there
are no frisbees here. so we played volleyball a couple of times and found
another district that has a frisbee. so the last week its been a district
against district ultimate frisbee game. its loads of fun and it is a great
break from the stress of each day. it also kindof wakes me up and gets be
thought 9:30 when we head back to our dorms.
On sunday night we watched a devotional with D todd
chistofferson. that was great! Also on sunday nights we watch a video, last
week was the testiments and this week was about an italian guy who found a book
of mormon, without a title page or cover and he starts preaching from it in his
church and gets kicked out. it goes on to throughtout his life and the story it
took for him to get baptized and in the end he makes it to the temple a couple
of years before he passes away. It was an awesome story. It just was more of a
testimony builder to me to know that the book of mormon is true and it has a
lot of power behind its writings.
Tuesday night we had a member of the 70 come and speak, he
had very broken English, but the spirit was there and he talked about the
importance of the members and how the missionaries are to help members along
with others in the community. He went on to say that with the lords help we can
do all things. be strong and of a good courage for the lord thy god is with me.
At some point during the week i was just tired. i didnt feel i was learning the
language fast enough, it was hard to stay focused and alert and after that
devotinal it kindof rebooted my mind and helped me to know and remember that
heavenly father is with me always. through the tough challenges of learning a
languange.
I have found out that i have missed music....alot! we arnt
allowed to listen to music here in the ccm and the only music i do get is
branch chior and the hymns we sing in our class. that is pretty awfull. i am
coping with it. We showed up to chior practice a lilttle early one time so i
just sat athe piano and started playing, it was awesome! definatly a great
stress reliever. so yeah im playing the piano in our preisthood meeting sunday
so that will be nice. I also along with my district got to sing at the
devotional on tuesday. it was fun we sung I need thee every hour, in spanish.
Singing english hymns in spanish is really hard. doest always flow like i
remember it . the fun thing is that Called to serve has 4 verses in Spanish.
What? Not that i know what the other verses mean but it is just cool.
Yeah so that has been my week. oh and just to let you know
mail takes about 1 1\2 - 2+ weeks to get here. its really weird. One day there
was a little note in the mail box that someone in our district had a package.
he was super excited, he went in and singed for it and as he was bringing it
outside he realized it was for another ELder Larkin. I felt so bad he was so
excited and of course the other elder opened it up right in front of him.
Hopefully i wont have that problem seeing that there are not many Zerin
Hollingsheads in The CCM. But A alot of peeople ask me if im related to
hollingsheads in utah. I said i think so but they arnt close relatives. i have
no idea if that ture but i do know that we had some Hollingsheads in utah at
one point so i fell that its a pretty safe asumption.
Anyways i Love you all! thank you for all your prayers.
Enjoy the hot weather for me. Cause i miss it alot....well actually not really
at all cause its kindof perfect here.
If you want to anyone can probably email me since letters
take so long. I wont promise a personal email back immedietly but i will write
back, at some point.
Love you all,
Elder Hollingshead
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| MTC District at the Mexico City Temple |
8-29-2013
Hey everybody!
Sorry its been so long to send a e-mail. my pday is thursday
and we didnt have one last week so today was the first time to be able to
email. so yeah lets start out. tuesday probably about 75 or so
missionaries came on the first day. it just keeps getting more and more people
as this week has gone by. Yeah in case you didnt here there was earthquake
tuesday, this monday, and today. while we were in the temple, we were getting
clothes and it just started to vibrate more and more it took us a little while
to figure out what was going on but it was cool. its pretty common around here,
they have an alarm system thats really annoying but at least were prepared in
case it gets really bad. acutally the first one was during breakfast
and all of us newbys were really confused. anyways so i share a dorm with
4 others. its me, my compaion, two others that are going to honduras, and then
two hispanics who we havent talked to much. kindof a big language barrier.
in my district there are 8 elders and 4 hermanas. all of us elders are going to
los angeles. thats is pretty much unherad of around here but its really
awesome. the food is awful, except tuesday night which is costco pizza! other
than that its pretty blah and if i dont like what is for dinner or breakfast.
theres always cold ceral for us if we need. the second day scared me becasue
when i got some milk for my frosted flakes, the milk was warm. it was pretty
digsuting. so yeah this place is really full and they still say they can
fit more which i dont believe.
So about my companion, Elder Pickett. he is super chill
about everything. i think we get along really well. Hes from alot of places but
he says hes really from new jersy, but his family just moved to utah the year
before he left. the rest of my district is from utah except me, elder
ransbottom whos from preston, idaho, elder Maughan, from albany new York,
Hermana hawkins from california around where our mission is, and Hermana Jones
who is from Mesa! some of you might know her its Devry Jones. So thats
kindof cool our whole district gets along well. Its amazing how much utah
people dont know about arizona. utah people are weird, thats all im gonna say.
so yeah our schedual is packed from 6:30 to 10:30. the first
few days were torture. meeting after meeting and i got super tired cause we
werent doing anything. funny story so the first day, wednesday, we were in this
disussion and i kindof fell alseep, not fully out though. and i was just
sitting there with my head laying back and all the windows were open and some
really loud car honked its horn and i like jumped out of my seat. all the
elders in my row just laught. i do have to admit it was very funny. i
also slept during one of the devotionals on sunday. dont worry i wasnt they
only one, and the part i was sleeping, was what people said was kindof a boring
part. but i was out for at least 20 minunets and the hermanas behind me kept
laughing. So yes call me a horrible person but those were needed. this week has
gone by so quickly. thursday seemed so far away and now here it is. This
morining we got to go to the temple so we had to wake up a little earlier, and
that was an interesting experience. lets just say i didnt understand much at
all. it was a good thing to go a bunch of times before coming cause i knew what
to do and when to do it even if i dont understand. it was about a 5 hour trip.
left at 7 got back at a littie after 12. lets just say 45 mins in decent
traffic is really good time. People are crazy here. i dont know why you would
want to drive and of course were in a bus which makes it even worse. it took us
over and hour to get there this moringinand then under an hour to get back. so
thats been most of my day.
so The weather here is awesome. it hasnt gotten above 80 and
its always breezy. every couple days or it just pours for a good hour and then
makes the next couple of days even nicer. the morings are actually a little
chilly and its a common sight for all the mounains around the CCM to be covered
in fog. This place is right up in the mountains and probably has the best
views, not that you can see very far. on a warm day that doest rain the smog
sets in pretty hard so you cant see far. i didnt see the sun at all for the
first 3 days, and im still not for sure where it rises and sets. its just light.
oh and the whole place is fenced off with a 10 foot tall brick wall. with 10
feet of chainlink fence with lots of barbed wire on the top so were pretty safe
here. sleeping is interesting. the traffic never stops and most the cars around
here are really loud, and of course we are right next to the road. its just
lovely. but when your tired you sleep through anything. Its really nice.
So after 2 days of language study, we barley knew how to
bear a simple testimony, and a simple prayer, we had to create a lesson plan
and teach a lesson to a progressing investigator. Yeah so me and my
companion barely made it throught the 30 min lesson taking like 2 mins per
sentance, that was probably the worst grammer you could have. now after 5
lessons were pretty comfortable other than the fact that my companion likes to
ramble and repeat a lot of stuff. were still working on how to teach better.
Launguage study is not that hard we only have 3 hours in the morning with
a teacher, and 2 hours in the afternoon with no teacher. It is amazing how fast
some of the spanish i did learn comes back to me when you start learning
it again. The thing i really dont like is TALL, its the language
study on the the computer. its not exactly easy and the instructions
a little confusing sometimes. after that hour i am like brain dead for
about 20 mins. i still struggle quite a bit but it is a great place
to learn. most of the people who work here are very hispanic and know just
enough english to get them by around here. and what english they do know is
very broken and hard to understand. My Branch president is also the doctor
here, hes been here on a mission for about a year. he was just a
reigional health person for the church around here but as soon as the mtc
opened he was assinged here.
Oh bytheway, the address that was given to me was the old
MTC that was next to the temple. Dont worry if you have sent something there it
will be sent to this mtc, just might take a little longer the real address is
Zerin Hollingshead
Carr. Tenayuca-Chalmita No.828Col. Zona Escolar, Deleg. G.A.
Madero, C.P. 07230, Mexico, D.F.
Oh and the specifically asked us to remind people to not
sent mail after my 3rd week because the mail system is really bad around here.
Mom and Dad i did get your card, and letter thanks!
So Yeah lets just say the spirit is here so strong. I can
feel it everyday. It would be really hard to get though these few weeks without
it. I know that Im here to serve the lord. Elder Anderson spoke at the
devotional tuesday night, and this is what he said.
We Sacrifice for the things we Love, and we Love the things
we Sacrifice For. that is really powerful if you think about it so i have
realized that as im sacrificing my time and energies to the lord i will become
closer to him and to those i will serve. I love it. I am tring to forget
about everything else and devote my time to him. sometimes it hard to get up at
6:30 and work for 16 hours straigt but i know the blessings will be inumerable.
I love all of you! thanks for all your wonderful examples. I know that this is
the ture gosple and that i am doing the Lords work in these latter days. Talk
to you Next Week.
Love
Elder Hollingshead
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| Zerin with his companion Elder Pickett at the Mexico City Temple |
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| Mexico City Temple |
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| Do I really need all this stuff? |
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| Leaving for the MTC |
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| Opening his Mission Call |
