Well everyone this is it! First off let me say Happy St Patrick's day! totally didn't know that was last week until one of my teacher's said something about my green tie.. That just goes to show you how little we know about the world here on missions :) it's all good though it's all good at least i'm remember now to say it! Also Happy Easter everyone!!!! i will not be in the United States for it... but i'm super excited to be in the Philippines celebrating my first holiday!!! so i have 22 hours left here in the United States and it's just blowing my mind that i'm gonna be flying to the Philippines and not to mention but flying for my very first time!!!! so wish me luck haha :) but it's so crazy that my time here in the MTC is up and that i'm already getting ready to go teach the people in the Philippines!!!! I'm so excited to go out and serve the Lord and to share the Gospel with the people there! the last like 2 days our teacher's have been showing us pictures of their mission's and it's just made me so much more excited to get out there and to meet the people! and its crazy to thing that a week into the actual mission field and it will have been 2 month's down! and 22 month's left out in the field! So this week has been a bit harder because you know we've been saying goodbye to everyone like our Branch President, Teacher's, Zone but also being sick makes your week go by a lot slower here and so i've been sick for the past week with a cold and it sucks cause i ran out of cold medicine during the middle of the week so like i haven't been able to really get much better so hopefully just by tomorrow i will start to feel better! ;) also very beginning of my last week my finger got jammed and it's still in the healing process but i found out the hard way that volleyball can be dangerous ha :) but it's all good it's made me learn how to use my left hand more for basketball and volleyball but so if this email is shorter it's because i only have 3 fingers on my right hand at the moment and cant really type as fast! but i just wan't to thank you all for everything you have done for me and i will miss you all so much over the next 22 months but I know that it's my time to go out and serve the Lord! I have never felt so close to my Father in Heaven and it's so important that we do all that we can to stay close with our Heavenly Father and to do everything we can to exercise our faith because faith is such an important thing even if we don't know when thing's will happen we still need to have faith and keep building our faith and to become more converted unto Christ. The best way to do that is to always pray and read the Book of Mormon and to ask Heavenly Father with a sincere heart and open mind to help us but the Book of Mormon is one of the biggest things in our lives and we need to be making sure that we are reading it everyday because when we start doing that we will see so many blessings in our lives and will feel so much closer to our Heavenly Father and Prayer is such an important thing for us to do as well because that is how we are able to communicate with our Heavenly Father and are able to receive answer's and the best way for our faith to grow even more and i know if strive to do all that we can to do these things that God will bless us in so many ways and It's so important that we make sure to read the Book of Mormon and Pray as a family because it's going to be one of the best things you can do as a family and will strengthen our families so much! But i just wanna say that as we build our faith in Christ and strengthen our families by strengthening our Testimonies that we will see so many blessing's in our life and it will be an anchor for us and will help us become more converted and come closer to Christ. Palangga Ko Kamo ( i love you all) Halong Kamo ( take care everyone) you're all the best and i can't wait to share my experience of the Philippines with you guys next week! 

Palangga,

Elder Merrill