Letter Home:)

Hello family!!

How is everyone doing at home? I hope that everyone is doing alright. I am doing just great here in Formosa. It`s a really nice day outside, which always makes PDay a better day. PDays these days are a little bit different, the area presidency changed up some of the rules and stuff for them so things are a little bit more restrictive, but everything happens for a reason, and they are the bosses, so I don`t have any problems with it. As long as I can still buy food and write the family, I can make things work. :) Today we are just going to be writing and then eating and then taking care of some other stuff we have to do, and probably just relaxing in the apartment for a while. Speaking of the apartment, we cleaned it this morning; it looks pretty good now. I was impressed. It rained alot this past week. On Wednesday, I didn`t have my umbrella so we wandered around for a couple of hours in the rain - the power cut, so no one would let us in. Due to my being all wet for a bunch of hours I picked up a cold that lasted for a couple of days, but I am fine by now. My companion is still struggling to get over it, he`s all congested and all that. But, I`m sure that he will be better soon. That`s the hope anyway. Because of the rain, I have a lot of muddy clothes. Good thing they don`t have to last me for too much longer. :)

Well, I was going to be sending photos home this week. But, the computer won`t read my memory card. I´m not really sure why, the camera reads it just fine. Who knows, next Monday I will try another Internet place and see if that one will let me send stuff home. I had even taken a picture of myself in my new BYU shirt. That was going to be the proof that the package had gotten to me. All of the other Elders that are going to BYU were jealous of my shirt. :)

This week was a pretty good week. One full of lots of work. We were blessed with being able to find a lot of investigators and a lot of families that are willing to learn about the gospel. What happened to us a few times was the following. We would go to contact a reference that we had received and as we clapped the house, the person would leave, and just wave us into their house. Then they would sit us down and proceed to tell us all of the problems that they were having in their lives. It was just weird, people we had never met before, just opening up with everything to us. With one man, he didn´t stop talking for nearly two hours. The cool part was that after they finished talking we were able to help them realize that maybe God had sent us, or rather the message, in just the right moment to help them out. We hope to see a lot of progress from these people. The hardest part was with a guy Daniel. He was really sad and started smoking while we were in the lesson with him; he smoked a pack in about an hour. It was hard having all the smoke in the room with us, but we handled it pretty well.

My companion is doing really well. Did I tell you all last week that he has only been a member for a year and a half? And only him, his mom, and his sister are members? I admire him for coming out after such a short time. We are still getting along and are still happy. We are going to be hopefully seeing a bunch of baptisms on the 28th. We were going to do a few of them this Saturday, but most of the branch is going to the temple, so we will wait. The cool part is that a bunch of the recent converts from here will be going to the temple as well. I`m loving it. The mission is great, I`m great and happy, til next week!

I gotta run, I love everyone,

- Matthew