My next weekly letter

Hello everyone!!

Well, one of the longer weeks of my mission has come and gone. We just had a whole lot of stuff going on in the week. With an even busier week on the plate coming up this week. It should be exciting!!! This week we finished off the days of our training. Nothing incredibly exciting about the training itself. Like I said, we have already been through it before. Four more times of that training left in the year cycle. This new cycle of zone conferences and trainings end right as I leave the mission. Kind of interesting how that works out. The only real interesting note on the leadership training was that Wednesday evening we had two different things happen. First we had a meeting between the Stake President and President del Castillo, and the two sets of zone leaders for Formosa. It was an interesting meeting. It was pretty much a big evaluation of how the stake leaders work with the missionaries and how the missionaries are doing and if there is anything that we need to be doing better to help the stake out. It was kind of a fun meeting; but after already being in meetings all day because of the training, it got kind of boring there at the end. Which led to President del Castillo telling us that the definition of a Mormon was, a man who goes from meetings to meetings. And also telling us of something he heard from a General Authority once. ´If there is any meeting worthy, lovely, or of good report we seek after such meetings´. At least... I think that´s what the English equivalent to what he said would be.

Then after the meeting President del Castillo came out to work with us, to some of our appointments. It was a really cool experience; he is an amazing teacher. He teaches really simply and direct to all of the people. We also learned that he is amazing at taking away the doubts from the investigators. I learned alot from him, it was a pretty humbling experience. (So, don´t worry Dad, between that and General Conference, I´m pretty humbled these days. :)) The other thing that we did at night during these divisions was getting some members to come out and work with us so we could recover some of our lost time. It worked. One of the other days I was able to go out with President Camejo, the mission counselor; also a fun experience. The only problem is that all we really did was contact due to the fact that most of our appointments weren´t there, but either way a good experience.

So, that takes me through pretty much all of last week, up til General Conference. General Conference was awesome! We were able to get to all of the sessions. It took some work to get investigators to the sessions, but we managed to pull it off. The zone did really well getting people to conference to be able to hear the prophet, help them to see a little bit more that the church is true. I really liked President Uctdorf´s talk about pride. Which other one did I like... all of the focus on how we have to chose to do good or bad things, and how important it is to follow the prophet. Oh, and we watched priesthood at the chapel as it happened. We had permission to be out later during that night so we could stay and watch all of the session.

That was pretty much it for this last week. Nothing too exciting.

This next week is going to be pretty crazy. Tomorrow we have a colony trip planned, and in the night we get the transfer notifications. Wednesday is transfers itself, which means we could very well spend all of the day in the bus terminal getting and sending off the missionaries that will be coming through. Then Thursday will be a kind of normal day followed by Friday which is another Zone Leader´s Council, all day. Then Saturday we are going to have a baptism if everything goes well, which I am really hoping it does. Then, all Sunday afternoon we will be driving around with President del Castillo as he does interviews in the zone and we make sure the apartments are clean. That´s probably something that Mom never imagined me doing, me making sure things are clean. :)

Ah, and today we had a zone BBQ - asado - combined with the other zone here in Formosa Capital. We had a brother from the stake who came and helped us to do it. We played soccer and ultimate Frisbee in the sand on that beach place we went two weeks ago. It was really good. The only down side is that yours truly forgot to take sunscreen. I look kind of like a tomato. I´m not looking forward to when I start to peel. Hopefully it won´t hurt too much. haha. I´m sure I will be fine. :) The other kind of sad thing that happened, we had an emergency transfer today. One of the Elders in the zone got sent to my old area, with two hours notice. It was kind of sad to see him go. And finally, some strange lady came and yelled at us in the chapel today about how the balls always cross the fence into her yard form the church and how it is a big lack of respect and stuff like that... seemed like she just woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. :) Well that´s all that I can think of for today!!! LOVE YOU ALL! The church is true!!!

I love and miss you all!!!!
Matthew