¡¡¡Hola!!!

Hola everyone!

How is everyone doing this week? I hope really well. I´m doing great down here in Formosa. We are working really hard and are seeing alot of good results. First and most importantly, we had a baptism this last week! It was a great one, almost every companionship in the zone baptized, so there were lots of people there in white. But, first with the usual information about the week:

We are playing basketball this Pday, and maybe some volleyball, and then we will find something cheap to eat, because it´s the end of the month and no one has any money, then just going to be relaxing for the rest of the time. We don´t have very much else to be doing today. It´s actually starting to be kind of cold here in the mornings. Well, I don´t know if cold is actually the right word; to me it feels cold. It also rained heavily Saturday morning. Luckily it stopped in time for enough of the water to go away before the baptism so that we could do it.

So, this week was Holy Week down here. For a lot of people it makes lots of differences, but for us it didn´t really change our week. On Friday (Viernes Santo) the branch combined with a couple of other ones and we did a big activity. It was an all-day event. It managed to get some strange looks from the people passing by, for most of whom the day was one to not be celebrating... But we enjoyed it. They did the airplane thing; where you are all on an airplane that crashes and what you did in your life determines what happens to you in the afterlife. We managed to have a lot of investigators in the activity and they all really enjoyed it.

Our baptism on Saturday was kind of chaotic, there were lots of people there, and then there weren´t refreshments, and then it started late... but, in the end it turned out to be an amazing baptism. We baptized this kid Brian, he´s 13 and his mom is finally progressing towards baptism. She is finally starting to love the church and the teachings.

Church on Sunday was an adventure for me. Our meeting schedule is backwards, so Priesthood is first. But we got there late because we were out looking for investigators, and when we got there the leaders informed me that I was going to be giving the Sunday School lesson. Then as we were getting people into the sacrament room, they told me that I was going to be giving a 15 minute talk on the resurrection. I had to prepare it really quickly, I thought I did pretty good, but I would have liked to have had more time to prepare it. On top of it all we had a confirmation - of Brian the kid who had gotten baptized. And... I had sent Elder Walker off with another Elder to go grab some of our other investigators and bring them. They brought this guy Ramon, who said that the meeting really touched his heart. That was cool. :)

A couple of random notes to end. First, there are thousands, THOUSANDS of mosquitoes in our area, and our apartment. On Thursday night my companion and I spent about an hour or so killing them. It was fun! And lastly, we had divisions this week. I went with my district leader Elder Tagge, and our newbies went off together, and they did really well, so that made me proud! Anyway, that´s all for this week, and I have to be off!!!
I love you!!!
- Matthew