First letter from Dominican Republic!

Hi everyone! We got Colton's first letter from the MTC in the Dominican Republic today. His P-day or preparation day (basically when he has time to write emails) is now on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Mail to and from the Dominican Republic is kind of slow so email for right now is probably best. Either send it to his email which is cgbaines@myldsmail.net or you can sign in to dear elder and write him through that ( I included instructions in a previous post, email me at victoriaharrisphotography@gmail.com if you need help!) Just make sure you check that your sending it to his email as well as in the mail, there will be a checkbox on there that asks if you want to send your letter to the missionary's email account. Anyways great to hear from him like always! He is doing great!


Hola!

Well somehow i wrote the entire email i was going to send and it deleted, so i am trying this again...

Well this week has been extremely hard. I was sick the past two days, wednesday and tuesday. Im better now but those were extremely exhausting days and i am just happy that today is preparation day. I got a new companion which i was pretty bummed about because elder Crawford and i are now really good friends and we taught very well together. My new companion i am not too fond of. He acts like he is the "coolest kid in school" and says some really dumb things that should just not be said. ON a mission or as a human being in general. He is really hard to teach with because he has no confidence in his speaking ability. I have been praying alot to say the least.. I am hopefull that tafter today everything will get moving again because i will be back in the swing of things.
It is amazing that i am finishing week 5 of the MTC and i have been out on my mission for a month!! I cant believe how fast it all goes. Matt you only have two more weeks!! I cant give you much more advice other than work on being patient. There are a lot of elders that are going to drive you crazy. Count on it.
AS far as writing me, go ahead and email me whenever and make it as long as you want. The MTC president lets us print them out in the morning and then write later in the day. Or you can use Dear Elder. Go onto my blog (elderbaines.blogspot.com) for instructions. (Victoria please put instructions on how to use it on my blog, thanks) When i get to Puerto Rico mail will be just like in the US so that will be a lot nicer.
It is good to hear from you and what has been going on. I hope that those that havent yet writtne me will do so i want to hear from you please!!
Stu and Matt Frank thats aweomse that you made it to state, congratulations and good luck!! Lance i hope that your face gets better. Dont worry the girls only stay bigger than you until 8th grade. Unfortunately i havent climbed a coconut tree yet, but i do remebemer how to make fish out of the leaves still! Rachel, it sounds like you are doing really well, the whole cadaver thing is just plain gross though. Keep working hard and dont let anything get you down! Give Lauren my best, i have been keeping her in my prayers. Victoria i will send pictures when i get to Puerto Rico, it is way to expensive here and i still have a lot to take. But all of you can send me pictures that would be great!! I especially want to see what dad has been working on :) Good luck in all your shows!! Give the Dogs some love for me.
The MTC here is tiny its all on one floor of an apartment buliding kind of thing . The other floors are used for people traveling to go to the temple, which is like 50 feet away. The temple here is gorgeous i went today and it is my favorite one, it is absolutely amazing. The food is really really good. We dont get much at dinner and at breakfast but lunch is ridiculous how much we get. It is always rice and beans with some kind of meat, usually chicken, and we get fresh fruit, pineapple and papaya. IT rocks i love it. It has rained a couple times and i can legitamately say that you have not seen rain untill you have been somewhere down here. Its nuts. I gotta go but i hope you all have a great week i know i will! Keep in touch i really enjoy reading from all of you and i apologize i cant write more personally to each of you at this point. I also apologize for how short this one is, like i said before i tried sending a REALLY long one before and it deleted it so i had to write this one quick, sorry. When i get to Puerto Rico in a few weeks, write me and i will be sure to send you a handwritten letter back! Ill give you my address dont worry..

Adios!

Love Elder Baines

Week Three! I love getting letters!

Letter from Colton! He sounds like he is doing so well! I am so proud of him and all that he is doing and I am very excited for him to head out to the next part of his mission.


Hola!

First off i would like to say, WOW i cannot believe that in like 14 hours i will be off to the Dominican Republic!!! The next email or news you get from me will be from there! Which brings me to an important aspect of this email... My new mailing address! As i understand it there are actually two addresses..

To send letters send them to...

Elder Colton Gogarty Baines
Dominican Republic MTC
POB 30150
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150

Apparently letters have to be sent to Salt Lake and then forwarded onto me down in the DR. I know its goig to take FOREVER to get letters but that shouldnt discourage any of you for writing me.

The other address is for packages or anything other than just plain letters...

Elder Colton Gogarty Baines
Dominican Republic MTC
Av, Bolivar #825
Los Robles
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Dont worry about sending packages though, i have already said in a few previous letters that as much as i do enjoy the packages, it takes a really long time to eat everything and i have to share a ton because i cant eat it all. All i do is sit around and study and eat all day, food is not really an issue. If that changes i wil let you all know, so really just send me lots of letters.

Mom i am sending a package home with some things that i dont want to carry on to the next stage. It has all of my letters that i have received thus far in it. Its not that i dont love all the letters that you have all sent me, but i have gotten quite a few and they are taking up a lot of space. It will be a pain to carry them everywhere so if you would please just file them or whatever that would be great. I will probably do this a couple times depending on how much love everyone feels they need to send me. Thanks for the cookies and fifth avenue bars they were awesome!! I still have a whole box of cookies though... Like i said, food is not an issue in the MTC.

Which reminds me that the Gogarty family sent me some as well!! Thanks Kelly, Mike, Kaitlyn, Kiara, Meagan and Deven for the treats and the letters!! I really enjoyed reading about what is transpiring in the current chapter of all of your lives! Deven i took your advice about companionships to heart. It really helped haha

Victoria and Jordan i am glad you feel so loved that you hear from me so often. You can post anything i write to you on the blog, i really dont mind. If anyone is interested enough to actually go to my blog and find out what i am doing, then they are going to find out WHAT IT IS I AM DOING. There is no secret in the experiences that i will have and i hope everyone can read and feel of the joy and love i experience as i fulfill my service to the Lord and bring others unto Him. You can be my fellow missionary in spreading the gospel by sharing my news and experience. Then you dont have to feel like you are waiting forever to go on a mission with Jordan :) By the Way, Jordan i wouldnt mind seein a little of your writing in my letters from you guys either! OH and crazy story!! I cant share the whole thing but ling story short, i met a sister here who is from LITTLETON and was best friends with KAli!!!!! Her name was Camille Ocurin (O'kurin?) I believe...

Mrs. Frank i hope you received the thing i sent back to you, thanks for making it so easy to get done and i apologize for not getting it done before i left, i was having trouble getting anything done before i left.

Matt, there is no question that the advesary is trying his hardest to discourage you. You are in a prime position, alone, nervous, and unaware of what lies ahead. I experienced the exact same feelings before i left and i cant tell you how many times i questioned whether or not i should really be leaving on a mission. I promise that once you get set aprat, all that will falt out disappear and you will feel a peace like you never thought possible. being a servant of the Lord is one of the most spectacular things to experience. Keep in mind that once you are in the MTC, it doesnt mean that you are no longer subject to temptation. You will still feel feelings of nervousness and inadequacy at times, but when this happens just follow in the ways of the Lord and say "get thee behind me Satan. I know who you are and you know who i am" You are a servant of the Lord, and he will give you the strentgh necessary to accomplish any task that is set before you, if you put your whole trust and faith in Him. As far as what you should bring to the MTC.. Sweat pants to sleep in, the rooms are freezing and the blankets are awful haha Also when you get here go to the bookstore and buy the highlighters that kind of look like candy canes with verticle stripes. They are on the top left in the plastic bins where all the pens are. They ROCK!!! haha also dont bring temple clothes, you get them for free as a missionary.

Brother and Sister Hodson, thank you so much for your note and the extra "mission funds" i truly appreciate it and it is already going to use for supplies i have needed and such. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

I am out of time and i wish i could go on. Quickly i talked to a guy at the RC last week for 40 mins!! I got him to commit to go to church and watch conference this week.

Lov eelder baines

Photography Project.....

So I have this project in one of my classes that we are working on. It is a photo montage and had to include at least four images in it and have a "Theme" or reason why we were putting the images into it that we were. I was having a really hard time trying to figure out what I was going to do for it, and then I felt like I have been thinking a lot about Colton and what he is doing so I decided to do something related to him. Here is what I came up with, there will most likely be some adjustments done after my first critique, let me know what you think! We look forward to his next letter, he sounds like he's doing great and leaves on Thursday for the Dominican Republic.

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 :)

And another letter from Colton.....

We received an email as well as a handwritten letter yesterday, here is the handwritten letter!

September 10, 2008

Dear Family,

Please write a brief e-mail on my behalf regarding this letter, for I cannot email until next week. Today was a pretty long day, but I am glad that I am finally starting to get into the thick of things. Victoria & Jordan dropped me off. They sat through the video and introduction thing with me, then when the movie was over I went through the "Missionary" door and they went through "Family". Throughout the whole presentation and everything you would expect that all their sons were dying. It was a little over the top. I am glad that you guys didn’t come with me. It was not that big of deal at all. I had to get my Flu shot, which was $21 (I think). I used my Debit card so Mom you can see that. We got a Blue card, which is kind of like an MTC credit card. Every Wednesday we get $6 put on it to use in the bookstore or for vending machines. Otherwise all other things that cost money don’t. I get free Laundry and Free Haircuts and all of my meals are free. (but not really considering the monthly payment I guess). After the welcome meeting and I got my shot and all of my MTC materials, I went to my room and unpacked and met my companion. His name is Elder Crawford. He is the Senior companion for the time being, apparently it switches. Also, regarding all of the stuff I got here, I got another set of Spanish Scriptures so you will probably be receiving a package from me at some point. After a couple hours of writing and getting situated in our room, we had an orientation meeting in which the MTC Presidency spoke to us for a while. They went over basic things and basically welcomed us to the MTC. 390 Missionaries entered the MTC today. We went to dinner after that and had roast beef and mashed potatoes. It was pretty good and was much needed; all I had for breakfast was yogurt. I saw an old Lacrosse friend of mine at dinner. He and I played at the BYU camp my senior year and he was Kenny Mize’s roommate out at SVU. After dinner we went to our orientation class and met the other Elders of our District and the Presidency. There are 10 Elders in our District. Four of us, myself included, are off to Puerto Rico and the others are going to New Jersey. The other two Puerto Rico Elders are going to the Puerto Rico West Mission. Those two, myself, and my companion Elder Crawford, are leaving in 3 weeks from today to go to the MTC in the Dominican Republic. We will be there for the remaining 6 weeks of our training. I was pretty happy to see that we are only in Provo for three weeks. In the orientation, I learned all about the MTC, including the fact that pink ties are not allowed here or in the mission field!! So there is another something coming back to you. Oh and I just realized I will also be sending you my temple clothes. I discovered that missionaries can rent clothes for free at the temple. As the meeting was continuing we all met for an interview with one of the Branch Presidency. I met with the 2^nd Counselor (I think…?) Brother Larson. He is awesome. I loved talking with him. After meeting with him, the Presidency met to determine a District Leader, which turned out to be me. So I will be the District Leader for the next 3 weeks until I leave for the Dominican Republic. There are some great Elders in our District from what I can tell so far. I am excited to get to know them better. Being called as a District Leader was an amazing feeling as well. I could feel the spirit so strongly and I felt very confident in my calling. I wasn’t expecting that part of my blessing to be fulfilled so quickly, but I knew when we were meeting to call a District Leader that it would be me. It was kind of weird, but it was totally awesome. As boring, as today was, it was still an incredible feeling to finally be here and be engaged in Gods work and I can’t wait until I start learning the language and the lessons. I will email next week. My P-day is Wednesday so expect on then. Everyone keeps telling the new missionaries that we just have to make it to Sunday and then it gets easier from there. I am so excited to start learning that I don’t care how hard it is these next couple days. I just want to get started. My mailing address is…

Elder Colton Gogarty Baines

MTC Mailbox #335

PUR-SJUE 1002

2005 N. 900 E.

Provo, UT 84604-1793

The estimated departure date to the Dominican Republic is October 2. I will keep you informed on my address. Again, please type this and forward it on to my contacts I gave you. (Especially so VB can put it on the Blog)

Love,

Elder Baines

Colton's First Letter!!!!!!!!!!

Here is his first letter! He is wanting for people to not email him anymore because he does not have enough time to read them all, so instead write him letters and put them in the mail... like what the did back in the olden days before technology..... we dont really know what it was like, I guess try and recreate it for yourselves.....



Hey Everyone!!
Sorry it took so long to contact you, i only got a letter to write last week when i got here (whch im not sure you got)... And i can only email on Wednesdays and i only have 30 minutes on the computer. So PLEASE write me LETTERS and mail them to me!!! I do not have enough time to read all the eamils and respond to each but if you write me a letter i will answer your question in the followin weeks email.
My Address is...
..unfortunatley i cant think of it right now. But mom i am mialing you a letter today as well (it will be a long one so brace yourself) so i am going to ask you to please forward my mailing address onto everyone so they can write me.
To start, i cant believe that i have already been here for a week!! I arrived last wednesday at 11:30 after having spent two days with my sister Victoria and her husband Jordan. That was awesome, but kind of dull as i couldn't do ANYTHING. I resorted to coloroing a wooden drawing figure that Jordan and i bought for Victoria. I bet there are pics on my blog (elderbaines.blogspot.com) It was a pretty easy goodbye because we were all on the same page with how fast it would go so no tears was good. Everyone else was acting, as Jordan would say, that "their sons were leaving to go die". I had to get a flu shot (mom check my account i think it was $16) and i got my name tag and everything. I actually got two name tags, i was pretty stoked about that. I met my companion and roomates who are all awesome. My companion is Elder Crawford. He is from Provo and we have way too many things in common. He best described it as us both being really cool movie/video gamer nerds that love Seinfeld (yes mom my first companion loves Seinfeld as much as i do) hahaha! That first night we met all of our district and the Branch presidency who are awesome. I was called to serve as the District leader for the duration i am here in Provo. Which reminds me!!! I leave Provo on October 2nd!! two weeks from tomorrow!!! I will be heading down to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to finish out my training at the MTC there. I am way stoked for that. I cant believe how far my learning has come since last Sunday it is incredible how accelerated everything is here. Spending an average of 12 hours a day will so that though. The MTC is an amazing place and i am loving it so far. I joined the MTC choir as well. It didnt take much all i had to do was show up with the other 200 missionaries that wanted to sing. I am loving that as well though. From last wednesday to this last sunday, the MTC was brutal and the days were long and it was a VERY hard adjusment. up at 6:30 (i usually get up at about 6 though so i can get a good shower, they fill up fast and get cold even faster.) and i am in bed at 10:30 if not earlier if i have everything done. My teachers are great, i have Brother Chandler who served in the Tampico Mexico mission and Hermana Bott, who served in i think Bolivia. The MTC presidency is amazing!! Matt you are in for a real treat when you get to have that welcome devotional on the first sunday you are here where he speaks. He is getting released in january so i am glad that you will get to be here with him. Unfortunately i wont see you here though, but i have seen PAt mattheson a few times and he is doing great. Also i saw one of my friends i played lacrosse with my senior year at the BYU camp. The day you come in isnt too big of deal you just check in and get your name tag and have a little meeting with the fam (which i hope you are just flying out here it is not worth driving for) and then you go through medical records, meet roomates and companion and you have a couple meeting things where you meet your district. I will tell you that you HAVE to have as optimistic attitude as you possibly can, especuially since you will only ahve three weeks here you have a ton to learn. Teaching is really hard we just started the first lesson on monday and today was the frist day that i felt a little comfortable with what i was doing. Remember just make it to the first sunday and then everything gets SOOO So so much better. The first days are falt out hard, so be ready for some rough times. The food is actually still pretty good, i am still gettting different meals each day so there havent been any repeats so far. Its my preparation day on wednesday so look for my emails then. If you want to here more in depth stuff write me a letter and i will give you some pretty deep stuff. Once agian it is amzing here and i am doing great. I hope all of you are well and i will keep you in my prayers. I hope you will do the same for me i need all the help i can get this is HARD, HARD work. i cant stress how hard it is. I gotta go im out of time, ill write next week and again mom please send my address to all of my contacts and forward this onto them as well.

LoveElder Baines

Colton enters the MTC!

So today Jordan and I took Colton over to the missionary training center here in Provo, and dropped him off to begin his mission. It was a pretty neat experience seeing him off on his "journey" for the next two years. I think it was really good for him to go with us and not my parents because it was really relaxed, not emotional, no one even cried! We took him in, he got his name tag and then we sat through an introduction to the MTC and he was gone! They have families leave through one door and then all of the missionaries leave through another door, and I am pretty certain Colton was the first elder to walk out of the room. He was so ready to go, and we are so excited for him. He will do great! Also update on when he actually is leaving for Puerto Rico... usually it takes about 9 weeks in the MTC for missionaries to learn a language (if they are speaking another language on their mission) and then they leave for where ever they are going. Well Colton is leaving on October 2nd, which is only 3 weeks away! I think its because he had some experience speaking Spanish in high school, hopefully he was paying attention! He will learn so much while he is away, and even just in the first week he should be able to pick up a lot of the language. It was really neat to see so many people there who are willing to go out and serve for the church. Here are some pictures from the day, he would not let me take very many because he hates having his picture taken, but we got a few with him! Also his address while he is in the MTC is in one of the photos below! Feel free to write him! He would love the mail!