My letter, The beginning of the heat...‏

Well hello family!

This week was kind of a crazy one! We had lots of stuff to do, and well, now here I am, and it´s all done, and I´m tired as always. Today was one of those days that I had to have a mental fight with my body to get out of bed on time. Luckily I won, though my body gave it a good effort. Where to begin...the major events...

We had a leadership training on Thursday and Friday. We were trained again on all of the same principles from the last two times that I have gone through the training. I learned some new stuff, and it re-emphasized the need to fix some of the other things about our teaching. It only lasted for two days this time as most of the mission has already been through the training at least once. We had Elders from other places who came for the training stay in our apartment, that was kind of fun. Two extra Elders came out with us on Thursday night so we were able to accomplish a bunch and found a whole bunch of new investigators. We´ll see how well they progress. We also spent a lot of time this last week organizing a marriage, for two of our investigators. With a lot of work and a lot of prayers they were able to get married on Friday morning and that was a huge stress relief for us. We were also the Elders in charge of preparing the training and making sure that everything was set up well and all that; it was alot of stuff for just a two day period!

Then Saturday comes around. The craziest baptism I think that I have ever had. The baptism itself went really well and smooth; it was setting up for it and making sure that everything was organized well. Why was it so hard this time? Because there was a young single adult activity for all of the YSA in our mission, and it was going on at our chapel at the same time as we were trying to get things set up for the baptism. The stake was nice enough to take the YSA out of the chapel for the actual baptismal service so that there would be some semblance of reverence. That helped alot. But trying to get chairs set up, stuff cleaned, and the font filled up with like 160 YSA around can get kind of difficult. But the baptism itself was amazing! I got to baptize two of them. It was a really cool experience, especially seeing as that I personally hadn´t baptized someone since last December. I´ve always found someone else to baptize the investigators. (I generally think it´s best that a member baptizes them; the member sticks around while the missionary leaves). The hermano is an amazing guy. He´s from one of the Indian tribes here in Formosa. He has tons of desire to learn more about the gospel and also to work in the church. He also wants us to teach and visit all of the family he has. He´s made a complete change from the person he was when he first was taught. A huge example of how much the gospel can change someone´s life, and why everyone needs to hear it.

Now comes Sunday. A good day, we had the investigators confirmed. The power was out for the first half of Church, so we were all really hot. But luckily it came back on so we could end the meetings with the air going. Then Sunday night we went and contacted a reference from the Stake President, a lady and her daughter. She wanted to meet with us for two reasons: 1 - she´s taking a trip to the states and wanted to know how to say certain things (among them:beer, wine) and 2 - the week before she had gone to the stake president´s house and said she just felt a strong feeling of peace and calm and saw them as a happy family and wants to know why the Mormons have that, and others don´t. She said she´s thinking about making herself a Mormon. Haha, I suppose we can help with that. We just may need to focus on teaching the Word of Wisdom. Then Sunday night... the beginning of no sleeping... We had to prepare some graphs and stuff for the zone leader council, and stuff didn´t work out. Then we had to wait up for some Elders coming to stay with us from other places, and in short got to bed after midnight. Then left at 4 in the morning to go to Resistencia for the council. We got there, had an amazing time. President gave us a doctrine on the Cycle of the Destruction of a missionary and the Chain of Success of a missionary. Then on the trip home we all talked about other doctrines and stuff, it was cool. We got home at 11 or so last night. A long day. On the bright side, we found a doughnut shop in Resistencia, that was awesome.

Well, I think that´s all my adventures for this week...
I gotta run, til next week!
I love and miss everyone!! Say hi to everyone for me!!
- Matthew