Week 9

From: Collin Boren
Date: Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 6:27 PM
Subject: Week 9

How is everyone! I hope you are all doing really well! I'm really excited to get out of here! It's crazy for me to look at how much I have learned here and it is a lot! Who knew when you spend all day everyday studying about this kinda stuff that you learn more!? LOL It's been a neat opportunity but I am excited to head out of here. I'm also nervous, really nervous. Completely different country and culture and all that kind of stuff, but it's been really nice to learn about it here, and now I get to go and live in it ha... I have learned so much in the language since being here but I also know very little about it... We are getting put into this pilot program the church just established. It has the 'greenies' be in charge of a lot of things instead of just being the trainer. The trainer teaches the newbie how to do it and then we have to take charge... It's kind of intimidating, and it's programmed to help us become better missionaries. So hopefully I will take advantage of it! Ha and if the Mission President needs us, we are suppose to be good enough after 3 months to be a trainer. Hopefully that doesn't happen because that would be crazy! Their is a lot of things you have to know about the culture and things like that! You have to give speeches to ask for permission to go inside the home. You have to give a speech to thank them for allowing you to come in. You have to give a speech to let people know who you are and get to know each other. You have to give a very long thank you speech if they prepare a meal for you and it goes on and on... I'm really excited to go experience it finally and go see what real missionaries actually do ha ha... Tomorrow we leave the MTC at noon and fly out of here and arrive in LA at 4:15. So I'll probably call around 6:00. Cause we have a 5 hour layover in LAX, and then we fly to New Zealand and only have a one hour layover there. Hopefully we don't have a lot of winds, because that will cause us to miss our flight to Samoa. Anyways I sent a package so hopefully it gets to you soon...

Alofa

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Elder Boren