My heart leads and my body follows

Colby's first letter from the field. He is finally out serving! He was assigned to the area of Makindye in Kampala. This was the LONGEST letter I've ever gotten from a missionary! I decided to share it in it's entirety in hopes that everyone (friends included) who reads it would see what it is really like to be out serving a mission. It is pretty raw and straight forward. Not every mission is like this nor is every missionary's experience. But some are and you just work through it. Like President Hinckley once said, "Forget yourself and go to work." As hard as it is to hear, his last paragraph makes it all worth it. 

Hello!!

Man it has been a crazy few weeks and I haven't emailed in so long! I am doing okay though. First things, most of the keys on this keyboard are jammed and I am emailing out of a tiny shack so I'm sorry for typos. The last week in the MTC was good! It got old in there though and I was eager to get out to Uganda! I am sorry if my email is scattered thoughts but so much has happened and I am just going to spit it all out.

Dad! Your emails are the best!! I love updates from home. It makes me feel normal and close to you guys. Tell your friend who wrote me about the mission thank you! I dont have time to write him but I read his email and it will definitely help!

Mom! Boy I miss you so much! I miss all of you so much I cant believe it. Homesickness is a really serious thing! I love all of your tiny letters to me. It almost feels like texting so keep doing it! Remember I write this time every Monday so be ready for me! I know its early for you but if you can be on you should! Thanks for keeping me updated and getting those few things. Love you!

Caitlin, Nate and Ruby! I miss you guys a ton!!! You'd be surprised how much I think about you guys! Chicago was the funnest trip and I am so glad I went before I left! Tell Ruby hi for me!! And Nate too! I'm repping the Cubs hat here is Uganda haha <3

Reeg! How was your trip to Chicago?? Seemed fun! Mom showed me some pics. I loved it so much and hope you did too! I miss you and hope you are having a good time working and making fattt stacks $$ Keep me updated on your life and tell me if you get married haha!

Tab! Dude I miss you! More than everyone else (No offense everyone) Man whenever the mission gets tough I just think about yours and how you did it and it helps me! I'll be honest, State side seems so sick! Uganda is hard because I eat rice every day and it gets old and its hot and I walk on dirt trails all day. And cant understand anyone cause my first area is all Congolese people that speak Swahili or French or Luganda. Man I miss our cars! Tell me about yours! and keep me updated if anything new comes on mine. Love you man!

Rorie! I heard you rocked the world this term in school!!!!! That is so good! Keep it up because trust me now I am realizing that school was easy! Just keep on top of the work and its easy! Keep me updated on my friends and stuff! <3

Well, tell G-Pa and G-Ma congrats on the move and I hope they love it! And thanks for taking care of my child while I'm gone! (Car) You can throw my wheels in the backseat too to get them out of the way. And tell G-Sharon I miss her too.

Well well well I am sure youve been itching to hear about Uganda! It is a CRAZY place! When I first got here we hopped off the plane and had to walk across the tarmac to get to the airport. It was funny. Right as we got in we got chewed out by a cop but couldnt understand him. He eventually said we could go. President and Sister Collings got us from the airport. President is the BEST! I love him very much and am so glad I get him for 2 years. He took us to the mission home and it was stinkin nice!! Nice home. After a meal and talking we stayed the night in Ntinda (area and apartment by the mission home) and it was transfer night so everyone was there and it was a mad house.

We got up the next day and went to... PIZZAHUT for lunch hahahah! it was so good. They serve it with chips (fries) too which is funny. I loved it. They were playing goood music there too so I jammed while I ate. Then I went to my new area, Makindye and met my complanion. His name is Elder Ndamane. He is such a humble and good trainer from South Africa. I love him. He is hilarious but knows when to be serious and work. It is a good balance. He loves me too and we get along perfectly. We are in an apartment with two other elders. Elder Nambale from Uganda village and Elder Boakye from Ghana. They are all 23 so Im jsut this young white guy who cant understand any of them even when they speak english so its funny. Ugandans are terrible at speaking english but I am already getting better at listening.

Makindye is about 20 minutes from downtown Kampala. It is said to be a nicer area but man the people are so poor. It is really sad to see. The children are skinny and sleep on cement and every home is a small cement home with one or maybe two rooms. Dad, its sad to say but addresses really dont exist here. the best I could tell you is that we walk Salama (i think) road a lot and our house is on the opposite side of the city from the road. We live near the LDS church which is next to Calenda Hotel. Try that. I'll send a picture of our road and drive way next week for you to google maps it. Our house is fully cement, even floors and has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, small living room and a kitchen. We use the kitchen for our laundry room too. It is weird living in something like it. The shower is awful but when everyone found out my area they said it had the best showers in the mission hahaha. So we will see how that goes. Also, there are always monkeys around our apartment just walking around and climbing on our roof.

Most everyone in Makindye is a Congolese or Sudanese refugee. They tend to colonize together too so each area has different races. there are some Eritreans too. Most everyone speaks french or swahili and not many speak english. My companion knows some Swahili and Luganda so he can mainly talk to people. Its hard though for me because I cant teach much and when I can it would be the equivalent of teaching Ruby about the restoration lol. I have picked up a little Luganda and Swahili and my companion teaches me new things every day.

My first few days were really hard. Homesickness smacked me like a brick. It was so tough. I miss everyone so much! And I just miss the ease of living in Provo. Here, you have to think before even breathing to make sure its safe. It's hard!

One of the first days we did service for the bishops wife by filling these yellow jugs full of water from the spout in a village and took it to her. Just like the jugs and job from Queen of Katwe! Exactly like it. That was cool. I'll send a picture of it.

There are so many dogs here but they treat them like crap and always hit them and stuff. They are all starving and have tons of disease. Some dont have hair and others are swollen in the face and stuff. It makes me miss Indie a ton!!

The food here is super weird. Chicken is expensive ($1.50 for a meal) but they eat rolex and chipati and Kikomando a ton. I have had them but I am not used to them and they usually make me sick. Not to be gross but Ive thrown up twice and had diarrhea since I got here. :( I drink lots of water and soda is like 30 cents for a 500ml bottle so I drink that a lot. I eat plain cornflakes for breakfast every day and sometimes dinner too. Lunch I usually eat rice and beans. My companions say I eat the amount a child eats haha.

We have had some good lessons since I got here. My companion said numbers boosted when I got here so thats good! I think its because people just want to talk to a white guy haah. We have taught like 5 first lessons and invited 2 to baptism so far. I have one cool story:

So the first thing my companion told me when we got here was that this area is hard. He said that most everyone is a Congolese refugee and dont speak english and most dont like white people either. Except the kids. They love me but I'll talk about that in a minute. So the first day we went to visit a recent convert named Albert. Albert is a good man but my companion said he is struggling and can really get mad at the missionaries at times. Sadly too, Ndamanes old companion was the only one he got along with. Albert mentioned his dislike of white people and so we were worried that I wouldnt be welcome there. We have his daughter translate from either swahili or french to english when we teach too. Her english isnt good so its hard to teach him. Anyways, we prayed a lot that things would work out when we got there and when we got there, Albert came out with a HUGE smile on his face and hugged me and said "You are welcome here elder allen" (by the way no one can pronounce McLain... No one) and we were so grateful and happy that he liked me! Like I said, he is tired of missionaries and doesnt like white people so this really was a miracle. We have taught him 2 powerful lessons and got him to church on sunday. He paid tithing even though his wife and 5 children live in a cement block. I am already tight with him and love him so much!

On the way home from our last lesson with Albert we saw a possessed women freak out and fall over stiff and a ton of people gathered around to help her. They said she practices that stuff a lot but we just kept watching. Crazy.

Our area is big. We teach one guy who lives 2 hours walking from us. So some people take about 4.5 hours to see because 2 hours to walk there, 30 minutes to teach and 2 hours to walk home. It is tough in this heat too!! If people knew what we sacrificed to teach them one lesson I think they would be more willing. Luckily, almost anyone will let you introduce yourself and who you are and even let you teach a quick first lesson. Its cool.

Mom! If you send packages, no matter the price of the contents, declare the value at no more than $45 if its worth more. Also, dont worry about sending a flashdrive anymore. I can get one here. They said that anything over is a huge charge for me to pick up or something. They also said its a good chance I could skype on christmas! For Christmas, send whatever you want but I wanna send stuff home to you! I can get some cool stuff here. Everything here is really cheap. We get 90,000 UGX per week which is like almost $30 to live off of.

I think a lot about Tabs mission for some reason and how different yet similar it would be to be state side. Some convenience living would be nice. It gets old eating plain rice and beans every day.

Things I miss:

Normal food and fast food.

Family of course and friends.

downtime

A bed that fits

White people. I saw my first white person today actually. First in a week!

Golfing and Skating

Elder Carlson from the MTC is the man!! I will for sure be his friend when he comes home and goes to UVU.

Church was super interesting yesterday. Sacrament was in Luganda and some English. Sunday School was in Swahili and Priesthood was in a language I had no idea. So I just did a lot of reading honestly.

Mom, we are teaching a really powerful man named Joshep Ntensib who is a painter. He paints while we teach him and right now he is working on a massive piece for some Colorado art exhibit. His art is SO COOL!!! He donates most of his earnings to underprivileged children too and lives out of a cement/mud hut. He is an amazing man. Look his work up. I told him I'd tell you. He lives about a 5 minute walk from my home.

To answer a few questions:

What have you enjoyed most? Probably having a good trainer. I am so glad I got a good companion to start. I have also enjoyed the way I feel when teaching someone and you can tell they enjoy it. And soda. Most challenging thing? Homesickness most definitely. It has hit me hard this first week. I didnt ever think I could miss home so much. If I could do my last year over again I wouldve spent every minute with the family. Food has also been a challenge. Everything is weird and Im on a tight budget. The good food is expensive. How is the food? Bland. Most food is bland and makes me feel sick. I think I talked about it earlier too. And everything is cooked out of a gross grease stand.

Dad, I really liked your thought in your last email. It is very very true. My body is exhausted every day but my heart keeps me going. Missionary work is so satisfying and thats what keeps me going. My heart leads and my body follows. No question. Thank you for that!

Spiritual Thought: Elder Bednar once said in a talk, "There is no such thing as coincidence when you are on the Lords errand." That is so true. Every person I meet and talk to is meeting us for a reason. We are impacting everyone whether big or small. No part of a missionaries day is by coincidence.

Well I hope this email makes up for missing the last two weeks! I am so grateful to be here. I can feel a huge change in my life and I love it. I love all of you. I miss you family and friends and Utah.

Trust me, time will fly.

Love,

Elder McLain

The MTC is turning me into a man!

We are two weeks in and he is still happy! Sounds like the food is not so great. Wonder if they serve it on ice cream?

HELLO EVERYONE!

How is everyone doing!  I am doing so amazing thanks for asking! I love it here! The MTC and the routine is a little tough but I have made some super duper good friends! I am the happiest I've ever been, no question. The food is the worst! It is getting worse and worse every day because it's the same stuff! We have this stuff we call the all-purpose sauce and they just put it on everything and call it good. It replaces tomato sauce on the pizza, gravy on mashed potatoes, sauce on Hawaiian haystacks. You name it, the all purpose sauce goes on it. It is like a nasty tangy gravy that makes everyone sick haha. Oh well it must be better than what we are going to eat in Uganda! So I still eat. I have gained 12 pounds@!!!!! hahahahahaha no lie I eat so much here and am getting pretty normal weight. Gotta bulk up before Uganda.

Cool thing. Our MTC teacher, Brother Ramiaramanana (From Madagascar) served in my mission and said he had his first baptism 5 days in! and had 7 after 2 weeks hahaha. He said you can baptize so many, but it's important to baptize those you know will stay active. Crazy! 

The african elders wear whatever they want and it's pretty funny. Sweats instead of dress pants, colorful belts with huge buckles, crazy shoes. Its funny and I love it.

I got a new companion this week. His name is Elder Carlson (Dallen) and he's from St. George. He is going to Kenya. We get along so well! He skates and dresses like me and it's awesome. We teach really well together too. Today we taught a fake investigator and they literally had no feedback for us. He said he wishes everyone in the MTC could have watched us because we did perfect. The spirit was so strong even though it wasn't a real investigator. I was so excited!  I cant wait to experience the joy with real investigators!

The MTC is turning me into a man haha. I've started to grow real facial hair and have to shave every other day now. Haha its weird.

Tab, my MTC teacher drives a Dihatsu Racer 16v Turbo. It looks like a van but shrunken down and its hilarious!

Dad and Tab, I need a google doc set up for me to send you guys pictures easier instead of by email. Could you do that? That would be awesome.. Oh PS i cant send pics in the MTC for 2 reasons. 1. the internet blows and 2. I barely have enough time to write.

Spiritual thought: You might think we got unlucky and didn't get to experience great prophets like Moses but we do!! Our modern prophets have the same power and authority. And even cooler, our modern prophets are modern scripture!! They literally speak words from God's mouth! So study their talks like we study the scriptures, its important!!

I've got to go now. Love you all and feel the support! You're in my prayers!

The gospel is true and I'm so happy!

Love you!

Elder McLain

You can't do ANYTHING without Him!

Colby made it to South Africa! He said it was the longest flight Delta has - about 16 hours. Now let the adventure begin!

Hello all!

I am alive and super duper well. I'm so happy here! I have made such good friends and love everyone and everything so much. I'm sorry if I don't answer all the questions, I've only got 30 minutes! And if I make grammatical errors or anything, that's why.

Well it has really set in now! I am a full time missionary! It feels really weird but really good! I have learned more in one week than I have in my whole life! And if there is one thing I've learned it is that the scriptures are so true and so fun to read! I love them so much. Since it is the first week and I had a lot of emails to catch up on, I don't have much time. One thing I ask is that while i'm in the MTC, emails stay short to me because 30 minutes goes by way too fast and I don't have much time to read. So plan on me just telling you all I can and that's gonna be it. Sorry!

First things first. Schedules.... We are on a really strict schedule without much time to even breathe. It can be pretty stressful but it is becoming a norm already so it's not that bad. We are split into companionships, districts and zones just like the real mission field. There is one zone over all of us because there are only 26 of us and I was called as the zone leader. My companion is Elder Mortezazadeh. He is super awesome! He's originally from Iran but moved to AF when he was younger and was converted. He has a super strong testimony. Our district mostly consists of kids from Utah that are just all great. I love them all. Some of my favorites are Elder Cooper. He was born and raised in Ethiopia (I found out its pronounced Etopia with no th sounds. Just a T and they get offended if you don't say it right.) But he moved to the US and was adopted when he was 12 because both his parents got sick and passed away. AND HE IS GOING BACK TO ETHIOPIA ON HIS MISSION!!! He said he knew it would happen. Isn't that amazing?!?! I am so excited he is in my mission. We will be really good friends through our time here and at home. Kinda like an Evan and Tab. We are already best buds. He is hilarious. English is his second language so he speaks really slow and monotone and its so funny cause he cracks tons of jokes. He brought 1 full suitcase just for food. lol. 

I am so glad I'm speaking english cause I can't even imagine learning a language here. I am already so overwhelmed with the study and work!

Some of my favorite elders are:

Elder Call- He is from somewhere around salt lake. He is such a strong spirited kid and we get along really well!

Elder Cooper

Elder Monoalibe- Don't bother trying to pronounce any of the african elders names because they are nothing like they are spelled. He is a recent convert from Joburg and is really cool and amazing at soccer! I love playing with him.

Elder Mbuli- Also from Joburg SA. Really cool guy! I'll be honest I just love the African elders. They are so nice and cool and really fun to talk to! He is going to my mission.

Elder Harrot- He's from Manchester and knows our cousins!! He said to tell them hey for him. He is pretty good at soccer.

We play soccer during sports time. The african elders kick our butts and none of them wear shoes. It's pretty awesome. They also have hilarious humor. Like super dry and serious humor. and they say "Man" and "Flip" after everything. Haha. It's hard to explain. Everyone gets along super well when we play soccer and we all get excited when either team scores.

Hey Regan!! Your pen gift has saved me! I use it all day every day and it helps me a ton!

Dad, you'll be happy to know that I am the best finger skateboarder here and everyone is mesmerized by my skill. Don't worry I keep it under control! 

The food is gross here. Like it's american food but poor quality. So I just eat Peanut butter sandwiches for every meal haha! It's okay though I'm trying to get used to it.

Spiritual things:

One cool thing I read about is the importance of the Lord in your life. You can't do ANYTHING without him. Especially me. I need him every hour of every day. This is hard but I know he is helping me.

Elder Holland said in an MTC Devotional, "Everything in the conversion process MUST happen to you before it can happen to them. You must read and study before asking them to read and study......." I really loved that! It is so true.

Alright it is time for me to run. Off to sports time to get my butt kicked in soccer. 

I know this gospel is so true and I have learned so much because of the scriptures. I challenge all of you to read them again and again because every single book has so much in it we need to know! I am doing the best i've ever done and I am so, so happy. I love you all! Miss you too! see you in 1 year and 51 weeks. <3

Love,

Elder McLain