New Letter from Colton!!!!

Here is a new email that we got from Colton today! He sounds like hes doing very well! If anyone is writing him letters there is a way for you to do it for free while hes in the MTC (both in Provo and the Dominican Republic). Go to www.dearelder.com and make a new account and then you write your letter on there and then they go and print it out and send it to him. While he is in the MTC its free and once he gets to the mission in Puerto Rico it is like $0.42 or something. Just a thought for those of you (students especially) that don't have stamps laying around all of the time.


Hey Everyone!

Thanks for the letters that i have received thus far it is great to hear what is going on back home. First off i will apolagize for the terrible punctuation in my last email and in all the emails to come. 30 mins is not enough time and i want to make sure i get everything down that i want to...

To start i would like to say that i cannot believe how fast my mission is going! I am already midway through my third week in the mtc and a week from today i will be leaving to go to the Dominican Republic to complete my MTC training!!! I cant wait! Last friday was the first time me and my companion taught the first lesson in the TRC (Training Resource Center) and it was to a person acting like an investigator. It went incredibly well!! My companion and i have great unity in our teaching and are always on the same page when we are going through all the principles. The first part was difficult, we had to "meet people in the park" and start teaching them. This part was all in spanish and we had to get to knoe them a little bit and then talk to them about our message and that we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and then set an appointment with them to teach them the lesson. We did this three times for about 5 minutes each. The last person we "met" was the one we taught. We had 30 minutes to teach the lesson. At first i thought that it would be really hard to fill that much time with how general the first lesson is, but once we were closing in on the final aspects of it we were pressed to finish within that time. The most amazing part was teaching about the first vision. We have both memorized the account and even though it was a "fake investigator" when i recited that account i could feel the spirit so strongly it was ridiculous. I cant imagine what it is goig to be like when i teach that lesson to a real investigator. This week we teach the frist lesson again in the TRC but it is a different scenario and we have to adapt the lesson to what the investigator is needing.
The language is coming along incredibly well. I have kind of hit a lull this week but i still cant believe how well i have learned to speak it. With how well i can speak it, i am still worried about how the MTC in the Dominican Republic is going to go. Apparently they do not speak much english at all and if they can it is very poor. Although i am worried, i consider it a great blessing to have the opporunity to be immersed in that kind of an environment, i feel that i will be able to learn much better when i am not constantly switching back and forth between english and spanish. Also i hear that in that MTC we are going to get to go to a near by university and market place and actually teach people for real!!!
Grandpa thank you for the extra inserts for my shoes, they have been helping a TON. I also really enjoyed hearing about Deven's baptism and how mature of spirit he is. It seems like he has a sound understanding of he gospel and it will be great to watch him learn more and grow.
Matt thank you for the heroes update, unfortunately and amazingly im not very excited about it lol right now my mind doesnt function very well when trying to think about anything but the gospel. Also i just sent you a letter i dont know is you have it yet, but one thing i forgot to put on there is just try to prepare yourself mentally as good as you possibly can. All i do is study for twelve hours a day and eat and i have never been so exhausted in my entire life. Even in all the tournaments we have played or skiing or anything. This is the hardest thing you will EVER experience. But it is also the most amazing, i have never been so happy and excited to be doing something until i arrived here. Lose yourself in the work and you can be nothing but happy.
I am not sure what is going to happen as far as my mailing address for when i leave Provo next week, but i assume i will find out before i leave and i will drop an email letting all of you know. Again please write and mail me letters, or use dearelder.com I only get to check my email once a week and it takes too much time to read through any of them. I would love to hear from you all and i will keep everyone updated the best i can.

Love
Elder Baines

p.s. any sort of package is appreciated :)