Saturday, February 25, 2012

Crazzzyyy!!!

Hello everyone, I just read your emials, Im sorry but I do not have time to respond to them. We didnt get a chance to email beacuse the library was closed. Today we helped out at a food kitchen and served food for about an hour and a half to a lot of the homeless people in the area and that was pretty cool. This past week we did not have too much succes. Our 5 most promising appointments all fell through. So that was fun. We have been doing a lot of finding work and we have found 3 potential investigators so we are hoping that we will begin teaching soon. I went on exchanges with the zone leaders this past friday and that was a lot of fun. I went into parts of the suburbs of kansas city. And I finally did knocking on doors, no door slams but a lot of rejection but thats ok.
So I dont have any good spiritual stories to tell but I do have two crazy stories of our interaction with good ole people of St Joe and St Joe's FInest. So first story, My companion and I were walking down a street and came to an intersection where 3 polices cars were at with their lights on and the three policemen were surrounding a house. They had their taser guns drawn but at first we thought they were guns. So we kind of just stood still. There were people in the house that kept looking outside and one of the cops ran around the back. We thought a shoot out was going to happen. We started to walk down a street and saw a crowd of people who had been there before we got there so we asked them what happened and apparently the people whos house was surrounded by the cops had a pitbull that they had let outside. Within in an hour the dog jumped over a fence and literally ate a six week old dog that was next door. Apparently it was really gruesome...and when the owners tried to get the dog he turned on them and bit them. There are more details but I wont get into them. Needless to say it was CRAZY.
Second story, my companion and I went to knock on a house but saw some dogs in the yard and we decided not to so we proceded to walk down the street and talked to a man who was sitting outside of the house, at the time he was the only person outside on that strreet. He told us he was interested so we walk off and turned onto another streee, and literally 30 seconds later a sheriff police truck drove past turned on the street we were just one and we heard a screech from the truck stopping and my companion heard "Put your hands up" but we werent sure so we kept walking and got to our car which was only 2 minutes away. We then drove back to thr street we were just on and saw 5 cop cars on the street with their lights on and hand someone in custody. We are pretty sure the guy we had just talked to got arrested...so that was pretty crazy! I
Other than thsoe two stories we are working hard trying to find people to teach. Our schedule is pretty tight today so I have to get off SO I hope everyone is doing well!!!! Talk to you all next week!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

No Car This Week

Hello Everybody!! Im am doing great here in Missouri. We didnt have the car this week so we did tons of walking. Our area is pretty big and its been cold so we havent had as many street contacts as much lately. The other day it was pretty cool, we had people that we wanted to go visit and really didnt see anybody on the street or anything and we were walking down an area of town where most buildings were abandoned and the businesses were pretty dead but we walked past a bar and some guy ran out pretty enthustiastcly to talk to us so that was pretty cool. We dont know what motivated him to come out but we talked to him about what we believe and gave him a Book of mormon. A few minutes after that we ran into a kid my age who started getting interested in religion because he really wanted to change his life so we talked to him for awhile and hope that he calls us.

sorry about that the email accidentaly sent. Anyways, other than that we havent had tons of success. We have been meeting with this woman Holly at a members house three times now. and we gave her the first three lessons and so we are hoping that she progresses, we are also teaching a little girl in a less active family who will be getting baptized hopefully at the beginnning of march. So thats pretty exciting. Its been pretty cold lately. Its currently snowing so that is always fun. Its only a couple of inches right now so thats not bad at all :D. So here is the mission address, if you want to send me stuff its actually supposed to go to this address and then they will forward it to me. They didnt tell me that till recently. Its also good to send it there in case I leave, since because its getting close to where I should get my visa according to what the travel office said but who knows, Here it is
517 W. Walnut. Independence, MO 64050
I hope everyone is doing great! Im doing pretty good. I have had to learn or atleast attempt to learn sewing to fix some things so thats good and now Im starting to cook more so thats goood.
ARRIVERCI! Ci Vediamo!
con molto Amore,
Anziano Collins.
Anche Ho sentito che fa fredissimo in Italia adesso! Fa caldo qui piu di la! :D

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Car Week!!

CIAO TUTTI! This past week we had the car so I am not tired physically right now so that is exciting. As of right now we are teaching 2 people right now. They are fuin to teach and its nice to be doing something. A lot of the times(especially when we dont have a car) we walk for 2 hours talk to 2-3 people and then walk for another 2 hours home and that's it. SO the car is lovely ot have because we can get more done. SO last night we stayed in because of the super bowl there was litearlly no one out so we decided that it would be best to not go out and proselyte. this town really loves hte super bowl apparently ahah. I found a challenge of studying the language....I only get an hour a day to completely focus on the language so that is tough...I have been doing everything in Italian, writing notes, reading, and what else I can in Italian. I got a calendar the other..it was like $3 and its an Italian calendar. It has pictures of cities and areas in Italian so its fun ot look at. My old companion is in a town called Ravenna and another Anziano that I knew is in Genova and Im really jealous about that! It is a beautiful coastal city! My companion is good, he is the district leader and at times he reminds me alot of Jim Carry because of his crazy humor and sometimes weird screaming. So thats always an adventure. Today is our zone p-day and we will be playing basketballl!!! SO Im VERY excited aobut that. So today I bought 11 stamps in nickels and dimes...that was pretty fun. This town is nice, very old and lots of poverty but the people are really nice. There are a lot of people here who have never seen the ocean and lived their whole lives here in St Joseph so that was pretty crazy to hear about. Other than alll of that, everything is really good here. I have not heard anything from salt lake about my visa. But when I do I will have a 15 hours notice or so before I head out. THe ward I am in is very nice and they love to help out with missionary work. BOth of our investigators right now were referenced through members so thats really exciting. As of now I have yet to go tracting in the sense of knocking on doors and im pretty ecstatic about that! So I know this emails has tons of spelling errors but I dont have time to fix them but boy let me tell you. There are tons of grammar issues that I hear every day haah...after studying a language, you pay more attention to grammar, and man has it been hard. For example, the grammar issues are very basic such as there was some things going on down there. The "was" gets me but I dont say anything. SO I may not be Italia but it feels like it at times....members love to cook us spaghetti and lasagna or a mixture of both. In the past week I have have 5 meals consisting of of spaghetti or lasgna...is it a bad thing? No. We get fed tons!!!!! Well,
I hope everyone is doing great! Keep me updated on how you are doing!!
Sinceramente,
Anziano Collins

Sunday, February 5, 2012

FIRST WEEK...in the field

I just recently finished my first week in the mission field!! We get the car this week and man am I excited for that!!!!!!! It seems that everyone we visit is on opposite ends of our area. Just yesterday and the day before that we spent 2 hours walking down to an area then going to the people we wanted to see and then there was no one home and then right after that we had to walk back because we were out of time. SO it was frustrating to spend 4 hours of our day walking and not doing much. We did run into a guy named mark. He was really cool, he seemed very religious and hopefully he will give us a call! We got a referral from a member and visited with her and taught the first lesson and now we have a return appointment for this Wednesday with her so that's awesome! So karma has hit me...so my companion has a thing called an ocarina...which is like a recorder/flute.....and there was a reason that was I not in band....and I have come close to anger because of that thing...but I keep it to myself. Our area is slightly poor....well not slightly...they are poor. THe people we meet are crazy!!!...well most of them...its fun to talk to people. Luckily we have had so many people to see that we have not had to track...which is awesome! So far not many people have been mean to us....we did get flipped off the other day but that wasn't really anything...we get honked at ALOT.....Its kind of weird....most of the time its non members...so I always kind of question why they do that. So we have been working with this guy Marvin, he is a member but is less active. We had been visiting him and he said he would come to church this past Sunday, we even had an appointment with him on Saturday but he cancelled on us and we didn't see him at church so that was disappointing. I did get a call this week from one of the workers in the mission for my passport stuff...but other than that no news on my visa...so that's slightly frustrating. From what I know I will have about the same amount of times notice as I did when I was in the MTC to leave to here. So that will be fun. The members here really like missionary work...and feed us TOO MUCH. I take as much as I can but sometimes its too much. Within 4 days we got 3 things of brownies, a cake, a fully cooked ham that needs to be baked and has glaze, 2 sauteed tenderloins and salsa.....soo much food! Its great though! I still haven't gotten the packages that I was supposed to get when I was in the MTC but I think I will get those when we have interviews with the mission president this Thursday. Other than all of that everything is going well...on p-days we go to this grocery store called "Sack N Save" its own by a member and has a diner like place in the back where you can order food and missionaries eat free! Its pretty sweet...so we will be going to that right after this. I hope everyone is doing well!!! Hope to talk to you soon! When I get the call saying my visa is good ill email or something to let you know that I'm leaving and going to Italy!
Sinceramente,
Anziano Collins