Happy Birthday!!!...To ME!!!

Welcome everyone to my birthday email,

Firstly, I have got to say, and I think all of the ex-missionaries in the world will understand, a birthday in the mission just really isn´t the same as one at home, or I guess you would say in the real world. But, we shall get to more of my birthday stuff later. First I have to do what I always do and talk about how my week went.

We shall start with Monday after we left the cyber, we went and played soccer against the other two zones--Posadas II and Oberá. I am pleased to announce that our team, made of three gringos, an Argentine, and a Mexican was triumphant and that our zone, Posadas I is the better of the three zones at playing soccer. :) Those who knew my lack of soccer ability before the mission I think would be surprised at my level at this moment. I guess playing nearly every morning and every Monday makes one play a little bit better. Monday night, we started the moving process. It began with cleaning the rooms where we were moving to. They were really, really dirty. And then came my second experience with a spider. In the process of cleaning I managed to find myself with a big black one crawling around on my stomach. Needless to say I didn´t take a picture of this one. I was more concerned with just killing it.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were spent by most of the day being stuck inside the houses moving all of our stuff and then cleaning the house we were moving out of and giving the keys back to the owner. It can be an annoyingly long process to be carrying furniture two blocks to our new house. Phew, it was pretty tiring. :) haha. So, in short, we are now living in an apartment with four elders, and its really fun. It´s nice to have someone who is not your companion to talk to. We also play lots of chess and uno at night after we finish planning. I had to shake off some of the rust on my chess playing, but I´m doing alright now. We´re all pretty much even in ability though.

Wednesday was also interviews with President, they went well. We talked about all of the questions that I had had, and everything worked out well. The only problem is that to send someone to Rio Gallegos is hard. I didn´t quite understand exactly how far away it was. But, we found a solution, so hopefully Tito´s baptism can come a little bit more quickly now. He comes to Church every Sunday with out fail. President just told us to keep working, and keep baptizing. To not let the fact that we had a little bit of success let us get lazy. He said we need to work fast though, and build up the members that are there already, to prevent them from closing the branch.

Other highlights from the week: we work alot with our Branch President, and we got to go make a bunch of visits with him this week. One of his references will be getting baptized here on the 24th of April. :) (Which is also our next baptism) Other than that, the major highlight was trying to find a whole bunch of new investigators Saturday and Sunday. It was hard, and proved to be a lesson in persevering. We had contacted like a lot of people without success and then four houses in a row let us in and... well I´m pretty sure that three of them are gonna get baptized. We also had a missionary´s dream. We may have gotten through to a Pentecostal Pastor. He even let us make a return appointment!!! Haha, we´ll see where that goes. :)

On to questions: I got to watch conference in English, it´s better that way. The move with the zone leaders is permanent, saves money. My zone leaders are from Argentina, and Chile. Haha, never will escape the Chileans. I still haven´t gotten my package though. :( I just hope it gets here quickly. Oh, and here in the afternoon I will get going to visit my convert family, and we´ll have party!!! :) :) I think that was all the questions. And I´ve gotta run... sorry!! Thanks for everyone for the birthday wishes!! It means alot to get them, especially as a missionary. Til next time!!
con mucho amor,
Matthew