Hey there Y'all!

Sorry... My companion is from Texas. He says y'all all the time. It's starting to rub off.

How were your weeks this week? Great I hope! Mine was crazy... In a good way...

I'm certain that I have complained about how strange time is on the mission. About how things seem to go so slowly but yet are over so suddenly? This week was like that. It started off with P-Day. We played Pickle Ball with the Zone leaders at our chapel. Pickle ball is like a mixture of tennis and ping-pong. It's great. But my companion isn't the most athletic person ever (not a whole lot of us are after being on a mission for almost 2 years) so we stopped that and the Zone Leaders played by them selves. And then P-Day seemed to go FOREVER. Elder Mcmurrin, my zone leader said "You know you have been a missionary for a long time when you hate P-Day. You just feel like you are wasting your time and would much rather be out knocking doors than doing what ever you are doing at the moment." I agree whole-heartedly. P-Days can be so obnoxious. =) But we love 'em anyways. And then, our days are just so... full of stuff, that it seems to drag on forever. Every single day we have tons of stuff to do. And every single day I don't know how I make it through the day. And then I blink and It's Sunday evening and we are in the apartment doing weekly calls and I go "how on earth is it Sunday??"

We met a guy from Madascar this week! It made me think of Elder Bates over in Madagascar! And we had a missionary in the ward I'm serving in come home last week, so he has been heling us out. That is cool, and makes me a little bit more at ease about being done my mission. (I know, I haven't even hit my 1 year mark, but I'm dreading coming home already...)

Speaking of other things that I'm dreading... It's my birthday in less than 1 week. I'm not looking forward to that. Birthdays have always been so much fun, but I feel like this birthday is just going to feel like any other day. Which is sad. But, as long as I don't dwell on it, the day will come and go and I will be old and wrinkly and just as happy as I am every other day! And Plus, I have a super awesome tie that I'm going to wear on my Birthday. So that will make everything all better.

President Cannon is almost done with his mission. He is finished in June. We will be getting President Patrick. He sounds awesome. We are excited to be getting someone new, and a new outlook and a new way of doing things along with him. 

But I love y'all!  Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Austen Oviatt