My awesome letter!

Hey family!!

I hope that everyone is doing well at home! We are doing amazing here in Formosa. It was a really good week this past week. We were able to get a ton of stuff done and work a whole bunch with the members around here, and in general get tons of good mission work done. It made me really excited; I´ve been going around with this excitement the last couple of days. Thanks for the birthday wishes from everyone. I appreciated them. It´s strange having birthdays in the mission, it´s going to pretty much be just a normal workday. I may buy myself some ice cream tomorrow night to celebrate it. I don´t quite realize that I am 21. Haha, after I got out of high school, the last few years have gone by really quickly. Time seems to be flying by.

Pday... lets see in the morning, we came down here to Centro with the zone leaders and we read the emails that we had gotten from the family and everyone and then we watched the new Joseph Smith prophet of the restoration video online. It´s a really good one, I liked it a whole lot better than the original one. Some of the Elders went and played soccer, but I didn´t; I wasn´t feeling like going out and using all of the energy that I have. The weather... It didn´t rain at all this last week!! That helped the working during the week, it meant that we didn´t have to spend time trying to fight through mud. The temperatures are starting to calm down. The sun still hits pretty hard, but it´s nothing like it was a couple of months back.

Something that I am having to get used to again is the Siesta. The time after lunch every day where everyone just goes to sleep. Most stores close for it, not very many people are out in the street. During the summer we study during the hours of the siesta, but when the schedule changes, we go out and work right after lunch. We have had to do some careful planning so that we have appointments during those hours and we aren´t going around waking people up. Someone who has just had their nap interrupted isn´t all that receptive to the gospel I have found...

What else... We still don´t have a cell phone. So for a good chunk of the week we really don´t talk to that many other people, just the ones we see in the work. If all goes well it will come this week. I hope so. Having a phone is really nice because you can use it to set up appointments and get members to come help the work move along. We also had some problems with the gas in our apartment. On Wednesday we didn´t have a lunch appointment, so we planned on just cooking, but we had no gas, and nowhere in our area had any gas available to buy. It took us a while to figure all of that out, so by the time we did, it was already pretty late, so we just gave up and went to a sort of restaurant and there met up with a bunch of Elders who had similar problems with their lunches. It made us all laugh.

This past week was interviews; they went really well. President and I just kind of laughed our way through my interview. It was really cool. He told me that I need to make sure that I leave my companion with a legacy of hard work and diligence. He also shared his testimony with us all. It was probably one of the best interviews that I have ever had with President. Other than that this week, we just worked hard. Our mission leader is helping us out alot. All of the members are actually, they have given us a ton of references. They really want a lot of their family members to get baptized. This past week we found a ton of new people to teach. Now we just have to focus on them getting to Church. We have bunch of baptisms planned for the coming weeks. I´m excited. :)
I have to be off...
I love you! Thanks for everything!
- Matthew