HELLO! :o)

Hey to everyone!!

Well, it´s been another long and crazy week here in the mission. :) As has become my custom in this area, I´m doing my email near they end of the day. We are writing, and then maybe going to get some ice cream, then just ending the day. Before hand we played.... soccer. My toe still bothers me a little bit, but, ít´s getting better. Otherwise it has been a pretty normal PDay. We ate a lunch of hamburgers and such. So, that´s pretty much it for Pday. :) A good one.

The week.... Well, this week was the national Census. Also, the same day that the ex-president died. The census caused us more problems than the death of the ex-president. Not many people here really seemed affected by his death. I´m not sure if that means that nobody here was from his party, or if that means just that most of Formosa is just isolated enough that no one cared. I heard a couple of people say that he never came all the way up here... so it doesn´t matter much. The census was interesting. Different than I thought it was going to be. We had heard a number of things about the rules for the Census. The mission said that we had to go out anyway, that we just couldn´t clap houses until the evening. We could only go to set appointments. It was kind of an interesting day. But otherwise, there weren´t really any problems for the census or death.

What else happened this week...Another fun story. So, Thursday morning we went to take care of some stuff for the zone. One of them was going to get another birth certificate for some other Elders. Yet, again, it meant a trip to go get it at the government building. Fun! So we were there, with only the man´s ID number. The two ladies working there really didn´t want to give us the birth certificate. Leaving kind of defeated, a guy comes walking out to talk with us. He asks us what we need and he goes and gets it, tells us that he is a member, less-active, but that anything we need like birth certificates and stuff, we can just call him. Oh, and so you can´t get married here without a birth certificate, and to get one out, you generally need to have a ID card or something similar of that person. It was kind of a cool experience. The Lord has people everywhere to accomplish his purposes.

This Friday we had splits. I went and worked with Elder Bahamondes, from Chile. We had a really successful day. We found lots of new investigators and a couple full families. It was really cool. The only hitch in the day was when it started to rain, and we had left without umbrellas cause it didn´t look at all like it was going to rain... and then it did. We didn´t get too wet before we made it back to the apartment to get the umbrellas.

Otherwise we did spend a bunch of time this week clapping houses, excepting Wednesday of course. It seems that in our area you really just have to get rejected alot before you get let in. Leading to my companion saying ´I hope dating isn´t like this when I get home...´ Halloween was yesterday... And just like last year, no one here really did anything. A few people had Halloween parties and stuff like that, but it went by as almost a completely normal day. We also did think it was funny when we realized that in Utah most people probably would have done their trick or treating on Saturday night instead of Sunday night. Haha.

To answer Brother Hartley´s question. We actually have had some people ask if we were the ones on the radio and told us that we could go by and teach them. No baptisms have come of it yet, but at least the seeds have been planted. The Colony... not really like a reservation in the states. They just congregate in places outside some of the smaller cities, or in cities of their own and that´s about it. I think there are some laws that protect the land they have been living on for years, like it can´t be bought and sold, but that´s about it... As far as I know. A lot of them speak Español, but they also all have their distinct dialects/languages. The ones that I went to, I´m not sure what it is, but some of the other ones in Formosa speak Tobo for example. We were going to go back this week, but it rained this weekend. I always wonder why it rains on the weekends that we are planning on going out there. Oh well, there must be some reason behind it all.

As far as my area. Things are actually really going well. I mean there is always room for improvement, and more people could get baptized. I was pleased to learn this week that someone I taught in my last area got baptized last week. And for here, we have a really promising family that is going to get baptized on the 13th of November if everything goes well. I´m really hopeful for it. They are really humble and already know that the church is true. Then our philosophy professor prayed and got an answer, and he accepted a baptismal date for later in the month. He still has some doubts, but having an answer that the Book of Mormon is true, is a really good first step. The members are doing OK. They are actually supporting us alot which is nice. They are also starting to give us more references. This week we get to teach a family that the missionaries had been teaching by phone from the MTC. We were going to go last week, but they weren´t available. We´ll see where that goes. I´m confident that there are many people here who are ready to be baptized, and a good number of them should be coming from the investigators that we are already working with... :)

Well, that´s all I´ve got for this one...

I love you all!! Til next week!
- Matthew