My week in review....

Hey hey hey,

Here I am again, writing my weekly email. Week two of being a trainer has come and passed. Exciting isn´t it? Today is a rather rainy day. It started to rain as we were waking up this morning and it is still going. I don´t seem to be able to escape from the rain. But, it´s alright, at least it did not rain yesterday. So that made going to church a little bit easier for everyone involved. But anyway, today we are going to be eating together as a zone and then going to play soccer again in the mud and rain. It should be really fun. I´m just not sure how my clothes will hold up for round 2... I guess we shall see. I´m excited. :)

So, I decided this week to start with the questions again. The new zone leader is named Elder Cunningham, he´s from Georgia, so, a gringo. So in our apartment there are two Latinos and two gringos. All four of us in the apartment get along really well. So that also makes the work go by a whole lot smoother. And, I got to teach Sunday school this week. I think we are going to do something like switching off every week. Or... maybe I will just have him do it all of the time. I´m not exactly sure yet. Things with the branch are going well. Stressful as ever. Us, along with President Lopez, had to work this past week, and will still be working this week on some damage control. A sister who got offended started telling everyone that another sister was committing adultery. It doesn´t necessarily help things at all. The brightest news that we have in terms of the branch is that a family has decided that they want to come back into the church. The father was a missionary and is really respected by the entire community. So it will be an incredible boost to the less actives and also to the investigators. They blessed their baby yesterday. The better part of the story is how they came to the decision to come back into the church. One of our investigators is currently living with them. He is only an investigator but is more faithful than most of the members. He just has to wait for some of his papers to come through and he will be able to get baptized. I just hope I will be here to be able to see that day. But, he started bugging them about it all, and that's why they came back. Baptisms are still up for the end of May. That´s the hope anyway. The goal of every trainer is to have a baptism in the first transfer of their new missionary. So, we are doing our best.

Training is something different, and strange. A lot more tiring than being a normal missionary. Just for the simple act that one has to show the example in absolutely everything. The good thing is that my companion has the drive to learn about how to do everything. The other nice thing is that he already knows alot of the doctrine and lessons. So there aren´t any worries when we are teaching a lesson. All in all my companion is a good guy. I´m content, not much more that I can say. :)

Otherwise in my week, hmm what else happened. Ah, teaching Sunday School was interesting. Especially in this lesson when the class starts to focus in the talking donkey part of the story. Or the fighting part of the story. Someone read ahead in the Bible and had issues with when Moses commanded that they kill all the male children. As always... trouble focusing on the pertinent doctrine. Hmmm, what else happened in my week... Not much to be honest. We have spent a fair amount of time looking for a new place to live. Because the owner of our apartment now, wants to give it to his son. So... when we finally move it will be the third house... in the same area that we are living in. I´m not that excited to have to move again. I don´t think I mentioned that last week... if I did, oops, sorry. :) Otherwise my week was full of finding new investigators and just working as normal. With one funny story....

Tuesday we had divisions, I went to pick my companion in Jardin America... we took the bus and came home, 2 hrs. Got home a little past 10, but... somehow or another the keys to our house were still in Jardin America... and the Zone Leaders were in Resistencia.... so we had to travel to another Elder´s house to sleep the night out, on the floor. It wasn´t fun at all. But, an experience that now I can safely laugh about. ;) Hmm... that´s all I have time to write,
gotta go!!

I love and miss you all! I look forward to talking to you all in a week! And yes... I´ll expect letters for Monday!!
- Matthew