Dear Family and Friends,

Well it sounds like and looks like you guys had a fun time in Jackson! It always is a blast being up there and i know you guys had a fun time. How was the water this year, cold as always? haha Well I hope it was a fun time. Mom told me that this week they had a big birthday party in the conference center for me... I called church headquarters this last week and told them that they didnt need to have the party but it looks like they went ahead and did it anyways. Oh and I heard that president Monson´s birthday is coming up soon, so I hope they celebrated his birthday at the party too and not just mine. Haha Mom also told me that you guys went to the open house of the Brigham city temple i bet that was really cool, I will have to check it out when i come home. Well for me it has been a good week! We have been working a lot and it is paying off, yesterday in church we had 8 adult priesthood holders which is a lot better than the 2 that were there my first sunday here in barahona. We also have a investigador that has a baptismal date for this saturday, she has went to church for months and has a testimony but is still a little nervous about baptism because she doesnt want to make the commitment and then a couple months down the road decide that it isnt for her. So we are going to visit her a lot this week and see if she feels ready to be baptized but really she has a lot of faith and a really strong testimony. I am really glad that she has this as her doubt about baptism because it really shows that she takes serious the covenant that she is going to make with Christ. But if all goes well and if its God´s will she should be getting baptized on saturday so we are pretty excited about that! We also have 2 other investigadors that have been reading a lot in the Book of Mormon and are really progressing so things are going good here in Barahona. Well for my birthday we had a conference in Azua, it is like an hour or 2 from Barahona, and it was really cool because we got to see all the other missonaries and here a message from president. And then afterwards we had an activity in the church and we had quite a bit of people show up and we had a good spiritual message and then we played games. Afterwards we came back to house and all the guys sang me happy birthday, so it was a good birthday this year! Also today we woke up early and went to a different beach to take photos so i sent some more photos of the beach and also some pictures of when we burnt our shirts. 

 I think i explained it but here in this mission there are traditions and when you have 6 months in the mission you burn a tie, a year you burn a shirt, 18 months pants, and 2 years a suit. In my house there are 3 of us from the same group so we all burnt our 1 year mark shirts together and these are the pictures. Anyways familia, everything here is going really good and life is just a blast. I hope everything is going good for you all back there, that you enjoyed Jackson and that the kids are getting excited for school this next year. Anyways have a good week and I love you all.

Elder Wadman