Still No Pictures

Hey how are yall doin? My week has been pretty good. My rash seems to be coming back which stinks. I have a huge farmers tan lol. I do a lot of outdoor work. Yesterday Elder Langi and I rode bikes so that we could save miles on our car. Trevor can't ride a bike so he went with Elder Akina. I rode probably a good 10-15 miles yesterday. It was good exercise and I took video of it. I just found out that Trevor left our phone in the other Elders car so it's gonna be hard to get because they live in Buhl lol. So I can't give you Sister Kerr's address or # at the moment but I will give it to u next week if you remind me. I'm glad Pop Pop is interested in talking about religion. I'm in kinda a hurrry right now so I won't have too much time to talk. I met a weird relgious freak yesterday. He was just really weird. He was sayin how he was selfish for taking a extra 90 sec shower and how that was a sin. He also refused to touch a Book of Mormon that we offered him. He was pretty crazy. Things are still pretty slow around here but hopefully they will pick up soon. Its pretty mild temperatures here. Thankfully it hasn't gotten very hot. Today we slept in and I mowed Brother Hills lawn and played basketball and emailed. That was pretty cool that Lindsay and them were able to see Austin.  Lindsay, while visiting a friend in California a couple of weeks ago just happened to run into another missionary from our area - Elder Tuttle is Greg's age and graduated from HS with him.   I saw the picture on his thing. Tell Granny and Pop Pop and Stephanie I said hi. Tell Grandma and Grandpa as well. Hopefully they are all doing ok. Anyways sorry this one is pretty short but I got to get going. Yall take care.

Another Transfer in Twin

Things have been going pretty well this week. The teaching seems to be going good. We had a ward party in 16th ward where Bishop Kerr had to kiss a pig lol. Hows Todd's hair looking lol.  Much better!  The rash seems to be getting better. The rash Im pretty sure came from hiking and stuff. So spring fling is basically playing a bunch of sports and stuff with a bunch of different zones. It should be a lot of fun though. I'm hoping that me and Trevor stay together next transfer. Transfers are next week and I would like to stay because I really like this area. Some of the families we have just started teaching have been progressing pretty well. Yeah we get a lot of member referrals. Member referrals are really where most of the baptisms come from. I'm kinda distracted right now so its taking me forever to write this letter.  Apparently it was taking him so long to write, he had to continue the email 3 nights later.  


How are all of yall doin? So I'm having to do the rest of this from Brother Hill's computer because I ran out of time at the library the other day. Today I mowed Brother Hills lawn and stuff and went to some appointments and helped at the Bishops' store house. So dad to answer some of your questions,  I have been getting along with Trevor pretty good. I don't think we will argue or anything. I have to clip his toe nails and stuff lol. Elder Gonthier, (Trevor) has a physical disability which limits some of his range of motion.  So he needs help with things like putting on socks, clipping nails etc.   I butchered his feet the other night and caused one of them to bleed . I felt bad but it's all good. Trevor had his six month yesterday so we invited some Elders over and they burned ties and stuff.  A missionary ritual at certain anniversary marks.  


 I found out today that this girl that likes me is pretty much crazy. She is 13 yrs old and she has been in and out of juvie since she was 8. Apparently if you make her mad she will freak on you and beat the crap out of people. She has been charged with battery probably over a dozen times. The lady we had dinner with works at the detention center and knows her very well. She told me to be careful around her and stuff.   She grew up with bad parents and stuff and unfortunately will probably spend most of her life behind bars. So yeah she is pretty much psycho.


 But anyways mom can you send me your gumbo and red beans and rice recipe. So I'll tell yall about the spring fling. It was pretty fun but I guess I was expecting more. It was fun playing baseball and stuff with the Yardleys. Mission president and his wife  It wasn't much different than a regular p day except for the fact that 4 zones were combined for it. I had fun though and I found out I'm probably staying with Trevor another transfer. I get transfer calls tonight so I guess I'll find out for sure if i am or not. 


 Let me know how Melissa likes our church.  Mark is trying to get his girlfriend to attend church with him once in a while.   I'm sorry to hear that Granny and Pop Pop are getting sick. It kinda worries me cause I'm not really there to see them or anything like that. Tell them I said hi. I'm gonna try and write them this week. I'll be sending your memory card tomorrow.  Every week he says he's going to write his grandparents and send the memory card.  I've about lost hope of ever seeing a recent picture of him.  LOL   So I just found out for sure that I'm staying here. So I will be here for a total of 6 months. I really like it down here a lot. Its a good area. I'm excited that Elder Langi is going to be down here still. I've become really good friends with him. He is Tongan but he lives in Salt Lake. He and I both came in our areas at the same time. So right now Brother Hill is lecturing me about turning the lights off lol. He had to tell me something about leaving my stuff around. I need to work on cleaning up. I'm getting better but I still need to work on it a lot. Apparently he has been in Twin Falls so long he's starting to really make himself at home.   Tell Julian thank you for the comment. You need to get him and Courtney to email me directly. It would be nice to hear from them. I need to write them more. I'm really bad at writing people. O yeah I think i may have overdrawn my account. I apologize if I did. I used a lot of that money for clothes and stuff that I needed so thank you for that. Well its getting late and I probably need to go to bed. Hopefully everything is going well. Yall take care and I'll talk to yall on Tuesday. 

Love 
Elder Mattei

Another Baptism!

I'll send the memory card tomorrow. I haven't really remembered to. Things here are going pretty well. We had a baptism for Adam on Saturday at 5. Y'all are going to have to email me b4 Monday of next week because I won't be able to on Tuesday because we are doing some spring fling thing on our P-day. Anyway we have been contacting people and stuff for the past week. We taught the 1st lesson last night  to this family whose last name is Gaunterman. Things seem to be picking up a little bit which is good.

                                                                     with Dennis and Bro. Jenkins

 I thought the thing Garrett did was pretty cute (Garrett wanting to be like his older brother asked to dress up as a missionary.  So we taped a name tag on him that said Elder Mattei so he could play around the house and go out in our court to ride his bike like most missionaries.  What we didn't know was that he grabbed a Book of Mormon and took it with him and proceeded over to our friends (and next door neighbor's house), knocked on their door, and asked them if he could tell them about the Book of Mormon) and the thing about Todd was funny (not so funny in our eyes, since Todd for the end of school had a kid in his class put a purple coloring in his hair matching the HS colors.  What he didn't know was that the dye was permanent.  After several attempts to remove, we only managed to color his hair pink rather than purple.  So we had to give him a crew cut which still shows a slight pink tint) . Hopefully Lindsay will enjoy Cali. It's cool that Mark is working for Brother Donaghue. How is their family doing? I haven't seen or talked to them in probably years. I'm really tired right now. We had a late night last night watching a Joseph Smith movie with some other Elders and we had a camp fire. Things with Trevor have been going pretty good. We seem to be getting along well. So how are granny and them doing? I need to write them. I've been so bad with writing people lately. I would write Mark and them more but when I wrote Mark I didn't get  anything back.  So are y'all gonna do anything fun over the summer or just planning on staying at home? 

We had zone conference last week which was really good. I enjoyed the topic they talked about. They talked about the Restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith. This Sunday was fast Sunday so I went up and bore my testimony. I try and make it a goal to do it every fast Sunday. I went to the temple this morning and got up around 8 to go. I was up till about 2 so I'm very tired. It's been a long day. President Yardley I think will be gone by July 1st. It will be sad to see him go. He has been a good mission president. My companions don't write home that much, at least that I know of. O yeah I don't know if I told you this but I cut my hair pretty short about 3 weeks ago. I thought it looked pretty bad so I probably won't do it again but my hair will look short in some of the newer pics that I have taken. I'm sure you will do fine mom training (actually getting out of training) So what all is going on in the political world? I keep hearing about that oil spill and how bad it is. I feel bad for all those people in Louisiana because they went through Katrina and now they're having to go through this. I heard Obama keeps going to parties and stuff like that as well and not really caring so much about it. John Warren, this guy that is a member that takes us out to eat all the time, he was like Elder Mattei you aren't suppose to talk about politics lol. He is pretty liberal lol. But John is a very nice guy. He takes us out (seriously like all the time) and he is always willing to feed us. He gives me a hard time about talking about girls and stuff all the time lol. You know how I am lol.  Anyways I g2g. I hope all of yall are doing well.

Love

Elder Mattei

Memorial Day

So for memorial day yesterday we went and had a fire and cooked hotdogs and stuff on it. Then we went exploring in the canyon and along the river. Me and Elder Martinez went in a totally different place than anyone else. We went to go see this small waterfall and we walked through bushes and thorns and stuff. I took pictures and video of all of it. It was pretty intense and I'm all cut up from it. Also slid down a hill for about 10 ft until I could find something to grab on to or stop myself. I dragged my arm to try and stop myself so I got cut up a little bit. It was pretty scary but I was ok. I also have tons of cuts from thorns and stuff and was covered in mud. Last night I wasn't able to sleep till about 3 am cause I was itching so bad and cut up. It was really frustrating and was a very long night. But yesterday was a lot of fun. Today me and Trevor slept in pretty late. We also had a bon fire the other night. It was pretty fun. Adam is going to be baptized this Saturday at 5 pm. We have also found other people to teach so we have been pretty blessed lately. I'll try and remember to send my memory card this week. Sounds like yall had a pretty busy week though. Hopefully pop-pop will start to feel better. Whats causing all these medical issues with him? Trevor does keep a journal. He writes in it once in awhile. Hopefully everything goes well with your job. The pictures from Mark's graduation looked good. Its cool that you saw Julian there. He needs to email me sometime. I have been keeping in touch with Damon some over email. He seems to be doing pretty good. We would teach the Burmese families if the translator showed up when we were there. Elder Crook is in Kuna. It doesn't sound like Elder # has changed any cause he was lazy when he was with me. Elder Ware is in Le Grande Oregon. I wanna serve there cause there is actually green to see and not desert. He wants me to come up there and serve with him. I still keep in touch with him on a regular basis. Elder * has seemed to settle down a little bit. Hopefully things are going better for him. Anyways I hope yall continue to do well and everything.

Love

Elder Mattei

A Really Random Letter

Tell Garrett thank u for writing me. This week has been pretty good with Trevor but its been slow. We are low on miles so we really can't do much which stinks. I lost my address book so you are going to have to send me Granny and Grandma and everyone's address. We figured out that Adam was kinda afraid to be baptized cause its a big commitment and everything. He will be baptized soon though. Our area is kinda slow right now as well. So we are going to basically go contact part member and less active families. I really hate miles on our car because it limits how much missionary work we can do. Just so you know we call each other by our first names at home and stuff.I had asked him if he calls Elder Gonthier Trevor since that's how he knows him best.  Usually  the missionaries call each other by their last names, like in the military.  We just thought it would be totally weird for them to never use their first names.    We have found 2 new families to teach which is good. We went to the temple this morning and played football which was fun. This letter is really random so sorry about that. Things with Trevor are going good. He made me clean up my room cause I'm a slob and he's a neat freak lol. Thomas should get Super Mario Galaxy 2. I heard its really good. I just got a email from him saying he likes call of duty more than sonic. I never thought that day would come lol. Tell Mark congrats on him graduating. I actually have the memory card in a envelope, I just have forgotten to send it. I'm trying to think if anything big has happened at all this week. Things just seem to be going really slow right now. I'm just wondering, is Mark still good friends with RJ? I haven't heard about him in a long time. How are the Russo's doing? I really wish I could watch LOST. That show was so good. If Mark buys them tell him he needs to buy them on Blu Ray and not DVD. Because at some point yall are gonna get a good HD Tv and it will look a lot better on Blu Ray. How did Mark's grades turn out?  I actually got to talk to Russ the other day. He is the 1st baptism I had on my mission. He is still his crazy self but he is still active in church and is doing good. He was telling me he was going to take me in a sweat lodge after my mission and show me how to talk to ghost and spirits and stuff. It was too funny. So apparently Trevor has gained 20 pounds and I've lost probably 15 my whole mission. I remember Dad and everyone at church calling me chubby. Tell Granny and them I said hi. I need to write them. I appreciate the letters I do get from them. Dad I didn't know the money was for emergencies cause I spent a good chunk of it on pants and stuff lol. I bought a pair of Dickies pants. They are basically work pants but they look like slacks but feel like a pair of jeans. So they are nice to wear. So apparently there are like 4 other Burmese families that are coming to church. I dont remember if i told yall this or not. Hopefully I will have more to write about next week. Well I don't know what else to write right now so I'll ttyl.


Love Elder Mattei