First week in the field!

hello all,

this week was definitely exciting. my area is called Ixtla 2. its one of the nicest areas in the mission. lol that worries me. i will get to that in a bit. left the mission offices tuesday morning for the netzhaulcotoyl (dont think i spelled it right) stake center for the missionary exchanges. my new comp. is elder o. he is a great missionary. he is from hondorus. and his primary language is spanish of course but luckily for me he knows a bit of english which i am so grateful for because i dont understand 90% of whats being said around me. i figured i wouldnt know a lot of what was going on around me but dang its crazy.. i am learning more and more every day though. my learning curve is exponentially increasing with spanish. i have 12 weeks with elder o. i talked to other griengos (slang for white missionaries) and they said they felt pretty good after their first transfer. so i will give it 12 weeks and if i still dont have a clue whats going on, then i will be worried lol. so the life here in mexico city is ridiculous.. i dont understand how any of these people can live in these conditions.. its hard to describe without you all actually being here but i will do my best.. it feels like every building ive seen since i got here has been spray painted on. their are the nastiest dogs and cats i have ever seen here and they are on every street. the people are nice for the most part. you get the occasional ones who yell at ya and call ya names but thats normal.. most of these people have never seen a white person, let alone one with red hair so i get weird looks on the daily. its pretty funny actually. it is almost impossible for people to find jobs here so they all just buy tarps and tables and either set up right outside their front door or on the curb of the streets. it is really sad. they sell everything and i mean EVERYTHING. what ever they can get their hands on they will sell. they have these big deals called tiengas.apparently mexico city is famous for um. this is when all the people who usually set up the shops in front of their houses bring um all to one street and set everything up there. its basically a mall just mexico city style lol. i asked my comp where these people got all of this stuff they were selling and he said they either buy alot of it for mass price and resale it or just steal it. look up ^tiengas^ google images and they will probably come up. we walk through one on the way to church yesterday. it was at least a half mile long.. craziness.. my apartment it pretty big actually. i have pictures of it. we are on the top floor and we door our laundry on the roof the building. its by no means clean but i am very happy with it compared to some of the other missionaries apartments in our area.we havent had hot water this last week because they ran out of gas so we we fill up a 5 gallon bucket of brown water from the shower faucet (all the water is contaminated here) and we have this wire thing that you plug into the outlet and put the other end in the bucket of water and it heats it up. pretty janky. oh wow atm there are dogs fighting outside the house.. they are super loud. anyways yeh so we took a bowl and scoop out the warm water and pour it over ourselves for a shower. lol it was rough at first.. luckily we got gas today so i got to take my first real shower! so happy. it usually runs out before the next shipment of gas so im going to enjoy it while i can. im no longer nervous to contact random people on the street or teach lessons. i just accepted the fact that im going to be doing this for two years so no more comfort zone lol. so i got 800 pesos for the rest of this month and yeh im being super frugal with my money, every missionary ive talked to has spent all of it and had to either go hungry or get money out of their own bank account. I'm making a budget and i calculated it out to be about 20 pesos for each meal. thats like 1.50 us dollars. which can get you a lot of food here. i bought a bag full of like 20 tunas (prickly pear cactus fruit but different from az pricklys) for 7 pesos! 50 cents thats was the deal of the week for me haha. they taste so good! kinda like a pear and kiwi mixed. i went shopping and 107 pesos a couple nights ago. i have a picture of everything i bought with the 8 us dollars worth. 8 packs of ramen noodles. 6 liters of water, a kitchen towel, a coke, milk, 6 rolls and a package of bread. pretty good deal eh whitley? the food here is great for the most part. i havent had anything crazy yet but some other missionaries have. we went to a restuarant (more like a persons living room with tables and chairs) and we got soup with a chickens leg in it. somebody literally cut off a chickens leg, cooked it and threw it in the soup. About made me want to puke.. the tortillas are soo good here and we have had um for every single meal.everything you eat gets rolled up in a tortilla with some hot sauce. i cant think of much else thats going on other then us preaching the gospel lol. its so bizarre to be here for me. its a huge culture shock. oh and the tents in the street are actually spelled tianguis i think.. anyways yeh im happy to be here and finally my ON my mission after preaparing for my entire life.. i love you all and look forward to hearing from you guys more! keep asking questions and hopefully i will be able to answer um all. xoxoxo

corson

First day in the field!

hola familia!
just shooting ya an email that im finally outta the ccm. we got up at
5:45am this morning showered and got the last of our stuff packed up.
it was me, elder healey, call, muir, and garrett. everybody in our
house was gone when we woke up because they had to leave in the middle
of the night for their flights. we got in the vans and it felt like i
was a soldier in a war videogame in a cargo truck cus the van was very
open and had bench seats along every side panel. i got really motion
sick cus i was facing sideways towards the sidewalks as we were
driving. i thought i was gonna throw up but i didnt luckily.. im good
at keepin it down :) we got to the mission home and met the president
and his wife they are very very nice! i am actually talking to hermana
stutzneggar (mission pres. wife), as we speak. we are just talking about everything from
what its like on the streets to kylee serving as well. pretty sweet. i
think they will send you a pic with me and them later. we had amazing
donas for breakfast and we had a hermano from the stake here who owns
a burger stand so he brought it over for us right in front of the
office and he was like "my burgers or the 'in n out' burgers in mexico
city" and they did taste that good if not better! they have been the
best food ive had yet! there are 206 missionaries in my mission at the
moment. so many. i will probably get paired with a hispanic missionary
who knows no spanish but its ok. it will be hard at first, really hard
im sure, but i want to learn as quick as possible. we are all gonna
sleep in the mission office tonight, and we will get up and go to the
netzhualcoyotl stake center to get our comps. im sitting with elder
leawitt right now. hes the redhead kylee knew in the mtc (in Provo). pretty cool.
other people have to email now so i gtg. love you guys. i think my p
day will be mondays so talk to ya later.
elder anderson :)

Corson MTC Final P-Day

Hola everyone!

i leave the ccm this monday the 18th. our mission president will come to the ccm to pick us up. pretty lucky of us considering almost everyone else has to get up at 2am for their flights. i have gotten really close to elder healey, call, and muir. youve probably seen um in some of my pics. they all are goin to my mission as well so it will be sweet to catch up with um as well as elder garrett every month or so. i have gotten really close to elder muir tho. He is an awesome friend and it will be sad not having an hour before bed to chill, talk about life, and write in my journal with him. for his personality, picture gunnar, just younger. haha and he lives in heber, utah which is supposedly an awesome place to be. we already have plans to chill a ton after the mission. as for the week, not much happened i dont think. let me go thru my journal.. oh a big stomach virus went thru the ccm. like 100 kids had to go to the infirmary on our campus. healey was the first one to get it in our casa. tons of other kids ended up getting it in the days to follow including my comp., elder garrett and elder king. i was so lucky not to get it. i did not want to throw up, please believe! oh so garrett and i had to come home one day during class because he had low blood sugar, so we left the front door open thinkin we would be really quick which we were.. but a bird flew into our casa because there is a mirror right behind the front door so i had to shew it out while garret stood behind the doors screamin his head off lol. it was pretty funny. as far as devotionals and our district goes, its really the same exact thing as kylee is going through. it sounds like she can handle it alot better tho lol. i get frustrated when so many people our worried about a person. it feels like somebody sneezes and the rest of the district is like, are you ok? your homesick arent you? talk to me.. people get way to sensitive around here lol oh well a couple more days. we had french toast for one of the days and it was nothing compared to mommas but man it tasted so good.. other than that, i dont really have much else haha it has been a great time here. im excited for the mission! i love you all and you are in my prayers 

elder anderson 

ps dont send anything yet until i get u my address in the mission field. i might be able to email saturday as well. not positive tho. ;)

Corson MTC P-Day #4

hola everyone,

kylee, yes we have p-day eve and p-adam as well (the day before p-day eve). pretty sure i get more excited for p-day than i did for Christmas.. at least the last couple years haha. thats bad huh? lol i am also glad u get to go to the temple. ur so lucky.. i was just talkin to elder ..., another elder in my district about going to the temple and we were saying how we would give anything to go to the temple and do some sessions right now. even in spanish haha. oh and that blessing is so cool kylee! gift of tongues is sweet stuff. heres what you should do, at least this is what i do; i used the second journal i got from the newkirks and i am using it for all the blessings that have and will happen to me on the mission only. i already have like 8 or so blessings written in it. you should do that too. oh and one of your efy kids is here. hes that really nice dirty blonde haired kid. i think his last name starts with a b? i will get a pic with him this next week to show ya. 

my week has been pretty good. today we went to the visitors center of the mexico city temple and it was great. i got some pics i will tag along with this. kinda like kylees, week nothing new here. everyday is exactly the same haha. ready to get out as well. our devotionals are always interesting because they are really good speakers, from the quorum of the 70s, but they dont know english all to well, so its kinda funny to see um try to get their points across. ... its weird to think that the kids r starting school again. time is going really quick here. mom did u guys get that usb drive yet? i should be there if he sent it when he got home. oh and since elder ... went home, his comp, elder ... got put into a tri-companionship with elder ... and my two other roommates. so elder ... and i decided to switch elder ... rooms so now im in the same room as elder king and elder ..., the tall kid that was elder king's comp from the time you said goodbye to me at the airport. so u personally know 2 of my 3 roommates now haha. another blessing! its been interesting getting to know my comp. elder ... we virtually have nothing in common outside of church lol but we dont ever get into arguments or anything. its just weird being with somebody 24/7 that is completely opposite of you lol. aside from learning spanish thats the hardest thing so far, is having a companion. oh btw, can u give me gunnars email? and whits if you want. 2 weeks from now i will have been a couple days out in the field. i leave for the field on the 18th. i heard our mission president is a really chill guy and supposedly he's gonna come pick us up in a van from the ccm which is pretty nice considering everybody else who isnt going to mexico, has to wake up at 2:00am to get on airplanes. brutal.. nothing else is new that i can think of atm. im just happy to be here and happy to be writing you all.. miss you guys and love you all so much,

elder anderson 

Corson MTC P-Day #3

hey so this week went pretty quick like usual. its crazy how fast the time flies by. i just got done doing laundry, cleaning our room, cleaning out my closet, and sweeping and mopping (one thing i learned that actually benifits me in life other than making an amazing burger from the BK job) ;) i never thought i would want to clean or do anything when i actually got here and to the pdays when i was pondering about the mission at home. but all i want to do is make everyhting perfect for some reason. so unfortunately <a missionary in our district went home.> we thought he was doing better <and going to stay here, but he just didn't choose to.>. i talked with him for a couple hours a couple nights before he made the decision to go and told him about my wrestling story and the feelings i felt towards it when i was living it. he told me later that helped him alot and i am super happy for him to be home because of the ... <anxiousness> he was experiencing while here in the ccm. looking back at, it all makes sense why <my cousin met him prior to us leaving and asked me to look for him in the CCM.> ...he knew me when we were here together and opened up to me because of what <cuz> told him <about me.> God works in mysterious ways and my doubts about them are gone. im so blessed to be here. also, after <the elder> and i talked, we decided we would got to <see> the mission president of the 1000 missionaries here. while <the elder> was talking to his mom on the phone, i ... got to talk to the mission president and his wife for an hour straight! this is the same person who served in the quorum of the seventies and i found out later in a devotional that he served with elder jeffrey r. holland as his companion when they went on their two year missions! How amazing is that?! <He> was working as an attorney for the church and has lived in every place from mongolia to hong kong.. i told him about my family and our journey to az. ... it was sweet to meet them. i became dl <district leader> this week and its nice to be  a leader honestly. it gives me more to keep my mind on, which is cool. never thought i would actually like to lead until i came here. it hailed again yesterday. the weather is so weird but i love it. ive been playing some ping pong at gym time and i want to get good at it before i leave. i figure thats a good skill for byui eh? lol oh and my companion and i bought usb drives in the tienda and we put videos on um ... to mail to you guys so u should be gettin um this next week. they have videos of the bird pranks we pulled on one of our roomates and another video of me talking. a lil bit in spanish even but i forgot what to say so i just went back to english. i think you guys will like um. and you better cus it cost me 115 pesos for that usb! ;) other than all that, my spanish is still comin i think. it feels like im slowing down but i am still learning and im thankful for that. i am so ready to be out the field tho. its crazy to think i will be in a couple of weeks! oh and thanks you guys so much for all the letters and the package i got! anytime i get anything, it makes my entire day better and since <the other elder> left, im pretty sure im top of the district when it comes to getting letters. keep um coming please! im grateful to be here and i am having a blast so dont worry about me mom! its great!

love you all so much, corson