4th area Colotenango

Dear Mom,

Life is good up here near the Mexican Border. I'm in a mini city called Colotenango. It is one of the farthest areas in the mission. It is about an hour from the mexican border. I think we are going up next week for photos. It's a way sick area. It is 3 hours away from Xela. 

My comp is from Mexico. Elder Kauil. I am actually training him. Missionary training is a 12 week process and his other trainer/dad just went home because he ended his mission. So i am finishing his training. He is a cool guy. We share the area with 2 other elders. They are both from California. Elder Wright and Elder Norblad. Norblad is actually the guy who we ran into at Mr. Mac. Its was sick because we basically are all comps because a few times a week we will go on divisions just to get to more lessons. 

This area of Colotenango (Colo) has a ton of littles villages that we go to. But we also cover this area called Ical.... It is literally the most difficult area in the whole mission because it is on the side of the steepest hill you have ever seen. We went yesterday (Elder Wright and I) and it was quite an experience. haha so many funny stories. Oh an i forgot to mention is, nobody here speaks Spanish... they speak a language called Mam. 

So what happened is we were at the chapel in Ical for church, and we were sitting out in the foyer waiting for class to get over (remember nobody speaks a lick of sSpanish... only Mam) and  everybody came out and formed a line to shake our hands,  They treated us like rockstars. 

One guy sat next to us and tried in his best Spanish... bad Spanish... but best Spanish he could, if we could give his daughter a blessing. We of course said yes, but he said he lives an hour away from the chapel and its quite a journey. So we laughed a little and got pumped to go explore the villages. So after about an hour and a half, we got to the guys house. And waited 20 or so minutes. waiting for his daughter. they gave us some of the dirtiest worst tasting water in my life. Then i asked where is daughter is... he didn't understand crap so we just waited. then i asked who we are blessing. and they all pointed to their horse... haha they wanted us to anoint and bless their horse. so we had just walked out to the middle of nowhere an hour and a half with the same time walking back to bless a horse... so we explained we can't bless horses and they said the missionaries before did. so i ended up just praying for the horse... haha crazy funny. i couldn't stop laughing when they kept talking about the horse and they wanted us to bless it.

The people in Colo are known for being a little different... haha we were talking to this like 80 year old women who looked 100 years old and we were talking about the church.  I asked if she goes to church. She said that she couldn't . I asked why, she said that she rolls joints of marijuana and cocaine to sell.... hahahaha

Here in Colo we have 6 investigators with baptismal dates. Kauil and I put 4 dates last week so its exciting. With the other elders and us the energy here in Colo is just crazy awesome. I was thinking of what i could compare it to to give you guys a visual. I decided we were like police dogs who look for drugs and hidden bombs. They always have tons of energy and search under everything  and every bend to find the drugs. Sometimes the police can hardly hold them back on their lesh. Thats how we are here. haha

Here we dont eat anything with the members. So i had to take some money off my gringo card today to pay for food. i am way hungry here because its sooo hot. this is one of the hottest areas in the mission. and it is way humid so i am sweating like crazy. also, my shirts are getting stained fast too for the massive sweat.

The house here in Colotenango is trash. It is metal roof like in slums haha. So when it rains it is like someone is constantly smashing pans against each other... and the water enters the house and soaked my bed last week. oh and there is a gap between the roof and the walls so all sorts of animals get in the house. There was a huge toad in the house one night. Lets just say its interesting.

all is good down here. love you guys. miss you!!

Elder Corbett