Week 5

Hola Familia,

     So to start off thank you so much to dad for sending me that package with all the ties socks and reese's, that definitely made my week haha. I love getting stuff in the mail :) and also i know that mom said she sent me a letter before awhile ago but i havent gotten anything in the mail, if she hasnt sent it yet then all well haha. I also paid for my typhoid pills it cost $48, and there's a thing in the mail that i'm supposed to send home for insurance stuff so i'll be sending that today most likely. also i got a letter from the DMV about my driver's licence extention sticker, it said something like "we regret to inform you that the extention was unable to be processed..." it needed a $3.00 fee with it. i can resend it in with a check for $3.00. it'll my last check i have... i'll be back on email in a couple hours while i'm doing laundry so hopefully you get this and can tell me what i should do about that.

I've seen taylor a couple times now around, he seems like he is doing awesome. we saw each other on our sunday walk at the temple and took a picture. i'll have to either mail home my SD card so you can get pictures off or i can burn some CD's i think of the pictures and send them home. It seems like the photo kiosks are always out of order though, its kind of frustrating. I also saw scott this morning, he got in yesterday. we ate breakfast together and he seems like he is so happy to be here. he is going to be an aweesome missionary. Mitch Winter gets her next wednesday on the 10th, i want to try and host and possible get to welcome him into the MTC. i'll let ya know how that goes if i'm able to do it. i think that would be so much fun. usually they dont let you til you are in your 7th week or something, but i still think i might be able to.

Gym is fun as always haha, i'm getting better at soccer. i play with all the missionaries from central and south america...its so much fun. its also fun to hear all of the different accents from different countries. i've been trying to practice my spanish a lot with them, most are from Chile or other places around there. but there's this Elder from puerto rico, and he has the coolest accent haha. I also play a lot of sand volley ball outside, i've made some good friends, Elder Deyoung (he's going to the Lubbock Texas mission like Scott) and Elder Bowman.

Every tuesday morning my zone has service. it starts at 6:00 am so we have to wake up and 5:30 which is kind of a bummer, but its alright. we clean another residence hall...just do vaccuuming, sweeping, trash...etc. we were at another place before, but we got switched and i like it so much more. the other people that we worked for that worked at the MTC were these really sarcastic rude ladies, but now we work under these really nice older men...it makes such a difference and makes me happy to do service when the people who tell me what to do are actually nice and say thank you.

There are a TON of new missionaries in my zone/branch now. we get about 2 new districts every week. we have about 4 districts of native spanish speakers too which is AWESOME. i love being able to practice spanish more. i think there is like a total of 95 missionaries in my branch. its a lot. I can't believe that pretty soon my district is going to have the most seniority; only 4 weeks left. its been flying by. my last p-day feels like it was yesterday.

Last tuesday for the Devotions Elder Geruld N. Lund from the first Quorum of the Seventy came to talk to us (he wrote The Work and The Glory) anyways, he talked about faith. He gave 2 preconditions for recieveing faith: 1. Must have a soft heart and 2. must be tought truthful things. then he went on to  tell the three steps to recieving faith: 1.must have a desire to recieve knowledge and faith. 2. action. When we have hope we need to act on it...that is our trial of faith. 3. and after we act on our hope then we recieve a witness from the holy ghost and our faith will be built. I cant wait for mom and dad to get to come to the Firesides and Devotionals. there hasnt been one boring one yet since i've been here.

Whats goin on in the outside world? Sports? any big events? Whats going on in the family? How are david and whitney liking florida? the boys? Heather liking work? any hot dates haha? Glad to hear john and dad got back from Vegas and that they had a good time doing gagglesoft stuff. How are brett and ashley and luella liking St. George...hopefully it starts cooling off there soon. only another month of summer haha! How was ali's trip to NY to see matt? i sent her a letter to the house, i'm not sure if she got it. I also got Kelli's dear elder. good to hear athlete is continuing to progress. and i wish i could see aiden around mackenzie, i know he's going to be such a good big brother to his little sister. He's such a good kid. I miss him so much! any ideas for names yet for the baby?

Well i love you all so much. hope to hear from you soon. Write back :)

The gospel is true. Joseph Smith was a prophet. The Book of Mormon is true.

con mucho amor,

Elder Archibald