Hey!!..a day late.. :\

Hello family!

As you have already noticed I am not writing you all as usual on Monday. Why? Because there is a new rule in the mission. I´m not sure if I told you about it. The rule is that when PDay falls on a holiday, we have to work the holiday, and Pday gets moved to Tuesday. That is exactly what happened this week. So it´s the holiday celebrating the death of San Martin, a hero in the history of Argentina. Nobody really celebrated it, most people just took advantage of the day off. With the exception of the missionaries...

Muy bien.... My week was a really long, busy, and amazing one. The leadership training was absolutely incredible. Lots of practice and lots of better methods to help the investigators to feel the spirit and to really be converted. We have already started to put it in practice in our companionship, and we are seeing results. We should be able to have some baptisms (3) this weekend. We are just hoping that the Dad of the family will be able to stop smoking. He wants to stop it, and with a lot of prayer and fasting, he should be able to accomplish it. We are certainly hoping so. Having lots of Elders in the apartment was definitely an interesting feat. Especially... when one morning... there wasn´t any water for us to shower with. That´s where deodorant comes in handy....... :) During the training my companion did really well with the other new elder. Which made me really proud. :) To answer Dad´s question about the training, it was in the stake center. Missionaries came from up to four hours away and had to leave their areas kind of abandoned for four days. At least I was able to be attending to mine in the form of my companion and me working there every night. But, it was still kind of a challenge. From all of Misiones there was total of 19 missionaries that participated in the training.

Mom asked me about transfers. They are in 8 days. Lots of people think that I am going to be leaving. I go with the response that I don´t know if I´m going or not. Mostly because I really don´t want to leave this area. Even though I have already been here for almost six months, I don´t want to leave. I just want to keep working here. I want to see the branch grow more than it has. I´ve gotten to be real close with some of the members, especially the branch president - President Lopez. And I want to see some of our other investigators get to their baptisms. But, it´s not my decision if I stay or go, it´s the Lord´s, so, I´ll have to be OK with whatever happens. Haha my zone leader always jokes that I´ll be going to Formosa, the hottest part of the mission to pass the next summer there.

I´m feeling fine this week. I´m healthy, I just haven´t been able to shake a cough that I have had for just over a week. But, it should be going away soon. The weather is mellowing out more. We still have random days where it gets really cold. Last week it was almost down to freezing for the night.

Pday this week. We are just doing Internet, then going to eat, then shopping a little bit, and then we are probably just going to go back to the apartment to relax and maybe play Monopoly. We are all pretty tired, so playing soccer or something like that might just be counter productive.

My companion is doing great, he has come a long way as a missionary. He impresses me more every day. He´s got an amazing testimony about the gospel.

I was trying to think about what else happened this week... Hmmm. Ah, yesterday I had splits with the Zone Leaders. I went in my area with Elder Hilario, he´s from Peru. I think I may have told you that already. Last night, on the walk home we had to take a couple of detours to get away from people who didn´t look all that friendly; it was kind of funny. Oh! And at the end of this month, one of my converts, Arturo, should be getting the Melchizedek Priesthood. Which, makes me really, really happy. I think that´s pretty much it for the week. And... I´m out of time...

Gotta run!! I love and miss you all!!!!
love,
Matthew