LETTER HOME!:}

Hello family!!

Another week has yet again come and gone... Wow, I am really tired today. We had a training meeting that lasted for most of the day today. So, sadly, as a result, our Pday kind of got shot down. We spent a good deal of time setting up for it last night and had to be at the chapel really early to get things set up. On top of it all, I didn´t sleep really well at all last night. I just have to try and make it through the evening today and I should be set, then I´ll get to sleep well tonight and be 100% tomorrow. :) I´m not sick or anything, just really tired. Anyway, the training we had was a pretty good one, we went over a lot of the same material that we have been going over since the first 4 day meeting last August. But, you have to learn something new all the time. The meeting lasted about 7 hours. Me and Elder Palmer were also in charge of making sure that we had lunch to eat during the meeting. That was really fun, we ate these amazing taco type things called Lomitos Arabes. :) Not really the most healthy thing in the world, but it tasted really good.

Normally I tell you about what goes on in Pday... but we didn´t have anything special. Tomorrow morning President told us that we could have some time so we are thinking about maybe going and playing some soccer, but we´ll see. The other news I generally give you all is about the weather, and there is good news! It´s actually been really cool the last couple of days. Saturday night it started to cool off and yesterday and today it´s been pretty cool. A couple of Elders have actually been wandering around in sweaters and stuff like that. It´s crazy. The sad part about it all is that we will probably enjoy it all for a few days and then poof! It will all go away and we will die of heat. Summer doesn´t officially end here until like the 22 of March. Speaking of the end of March, on the 23 is the day that I will most likely be leaving here. Makes me sad. Though, talking to President a little today he said a couple of things that made me doubt a little bit about me leaving... But I still think that I will probably be leaving.

We had another fun adventure with mini missionaries this week! I went on divisions for a couple of days with one of our district leaders - Elder Rodriguez. We were able to have a lot of success in his area; we put a whole bunch of baptismal dates up and stuff like that. We had some amazing lunch appointments - tons of food, that they gave us to take home, so we got a free dinner out of it as well. :) It was a good experience, haha the only thing is that his apartment was REALLY dirty. Mom, now I know it might amaze you that someone has a dirtier apartment that I do... but they managed it. (just kidding we manage to keep our apartment pretty clean) That and a bunch of their light bulbs broke so they only have one in the whole apartment that they go around changing it from room to room as they need it. I pointed out that they could easily just go and buy a new light bulb... they told me that they just hadn´t gotten around to it. Anyway, when I went back to be with Elder Palmer, they called us about a half hour after we changed back and the mini told us that he wanted to go home, immediately. So we called President del Castillo and he told us to just send him home, that he´s tired of problems. So... we had yet another emergency transfer this week. I think that is a transfer record or something like that. I´ve never had to send so many missionaries back and forth as with now. But, the good news is that the Elder got another Elder - not a mini - so we should be done with the problems for now...

We didn´t have any baptisms this past week. We are really working hard to get another family in before I leave this area. They have all stopped smoking and stuff like that, the only problem is going to be getting the date for them to get married. We´re praying that we will be able to get it for this week. The work is going really well though. One of our investigators I guess gave a really powerful testimony in Relief Society about how she was able to stop smoking and all kinds of other stuff and how she wants to keep progressing in the Church and in life. Her soon to be husband - Aldo loves going to Priesthood. We had a couple awesome things happen in church on Sunday. One was that, our investigators are really adapting to the ward. The second is that two of the boys from the Salto family, were able to receive the Priesthood on Sunday. It was awesome!!! This past week as well we had a big ward dinner. We were able to go, a lot of the people that were recently baptized went and investigators and everything! There was a funny moment at the end; we had to go running out cause it was late, so as we were running out waving the whole ward turned and clapped and waved as we ran out. Felt kind of cool. Haha.

I gotta go!
Love you all!! Til next week!!
- Matthew