Zerin Hollingshead Mission Letters & Pictures: Last Week

September 26, 2013

Hola!

Well this week has been great. lets see where to start. the rest of last week was pretty normal, just regular days of language and study. umm sunday was great. We had our normal 4 church meetings and yeah, even though i dreded the thought of having to have to give a talk in espanol, by the time this week came around i prepared a good talk and actually wanted to speak but nope i didnt get chosen so it was a relief and sadness at the same time. Owell. at our MTC presidency class we learned about the priesthood and the different offices and keys but, nothing was super exciting about that. infact that is only meeting anymore i have a hard time staying awake in the whole time. its not that im super tired it just that it gets hot in the room and its just Presidente Pratt just talking about stuff. NOT that hes a bad speaker but he definatly doesnt keep it interactive very much. Hes super cool though. Then we had our Devotional an hour later and we watched a MTC Devotional by Richard G Scott and he gave an excellent talk on prayer and reciving answers. Great talk. That night for our video we watched one about John Tanner and all of his sacrifices for the church. Hes One of the really rich people who donated approximatly 50,000 dollars to the church and by the time he left Kirtland, he was completly bankrupt and had no food for his family, Im pretty sure you are all familiar with that story and then we watched To This End Was I Born. Not that it was bad, But the new bible videos do a lot better job of the life of christ. If you havnt watched them i Highly suggest you do.

Then Monday, was a normal day other than a language lesson that is super confuzing. Its called subjunctive and it doesnt exist in English. Im still kindof stuck on it. ill begin to understand a little and then they add something else and it makes no sence again. But Good news is that we got a new book. I dont know if they just didnt have the book when we got here or its new. Its a language review and before that we only had missionary language books. so we didnt know about anything other than religious terms. Its great and all but you kondof need to know some non religious stuff too. So we got that yesterday and its more of a textbook type, and it has a lot of review stuff and examples and things to do, so hopefully that will help me a little more. So since we dont have a frisbee anymore we started playing a new game, its called handball you play it in a basketball court that has the soccer net under it and you throw the ball into the net but its like frisbee in the sence you cant just run with the ball, and its soccer cause your throwing it into a net and garding it. SUper fun and really gets your heart going. Tuesday was fun when we were playing this because it just started Pouring while we were playing and the court we were playing had like an inch of water everywhere so people were slipping and you couldnt see anything cause it was raining so hard. But who cares if it was raining we kept plaing for a good 30 min inthe rain. we were completly soaked. I think that that was the hardes rain we have had the whole 6 weeks here. cause the main road going down the CCM was a river. It was fun to watch other elders try and cross and try and not get wet. My clothes took about a day to try and my shoes are still soaked.

Also the natives are awesome. its amazing how many of them know a little bit of english, enough we can communicate. so they speak english to us and we help them, and we speak spanish to them and they help us. Win win situation. Its fun. funny story with them, I think it was monday night when we returned to our dorm we started chatting with them and the our other roomates. then they were like LEts Take A Picture so we grabbed our cameras and put them on a desk and took a few pictures. then more Natives came and soon enought we had a dozen cameras on the table all taking pictures. they were just so excited to take pictures. Then Tuesday night we had a Devotional and It was a re run of a MTC Devotional from the week after last octbers general Conference. His whole talk was on learning how to get things out of conference. He gave us a few ideas of how to take notes, and what to look for. IT was an Awsome talk. so yeah. Just for me the first weekend in the feild is general conference. I think its going to be awesome. Today is really busy, we were supposed to go to the temple at 7 which is my preference but because of schedualing issues we left at 8 and didnt get back till 1:30. so that ate up most of our day and i still need to go get a hair cut. and finish laundry befor 5:15. Oh and im super excited becasue tonight we are going to have real Mexican tacos. We planned a little fiesta with our teachers and they told us they would bring tacos and such for us to night so im excited.... Super Excited. Lets just say im glad to get out of here and eat some better food hopefully. As much as I love the MTC im ready to leave. Im a little nervous for the launguage but taht comes with time. It just a little weird to think that in a week or so we probably be actually teaching real investigators and putting to work all the things we learned here.

You can definatly tell that The CCM is having a few learning curves. you can tell because everyweek there is either a new rule, new variation on a rule, or a completle lesson on obedience or following rules. WHICH IS GOOD. Ive tried my hardest to go to bed on time, and be to classes on time. but its frustrating when otheres around you dont think that they are important. Im not saying i was perfect with all the rules, somtimes i didnt always get in to be by 10:30, or the one I stuggled with was Speaking your Langauge. Looking back over these six weeks i think if would of spoke more spanish. I always pulled excuses or just didnt constantly think about speaking the language. especially when everyone around you doesnt speak the language either. and ill tell you what it definatly put a dent in my language ability. So yeah that last week and a half i definatly spoke more spanish and it has helped so much. so yeah. we all make mistakes and thats where we pick up and work harder and ill say this since ive started speaking spanish as much as possible im not as tired. Is easier to wake up in the morning and easier to remember words and phrases.

Well I love you all, its good to hear from you and hear about the things that are going on. I miss you, but Im always comforted Cause i know that im here doing the lords work. It always brings me comfort and joy. You are all in my prayers everyday. I wish the best for all of you. Read the scriptures and pray. without those things no one would ever be converted to this gosple and the blessings it can bring into our lives. I love you all. As far as i know i will be leaving wednesday moring. my flight leaves around 7 in the morning so i will be leaving probably 2 or 3 in the morning. I will be emailing on tuesday for a little bit, but other than that whenever my P day is i will email. so it could be more that a week so yeah.

So Pictures. First One is of part of our district and a couple of others that left this week. 2, is of us after playing in the rain, 3, cool clouds after that rain. 4, is my entire district, my entire district had a little gift exchange for something to remember each of us for. 5, is me at the temple today.

Love you All

Elder Hollingshead

(or Zerin, Z, Uncle Z, Zman, or what ever your Preference.)