2014-08-25 I love being a missionary.

Hey Everyone,

This week went by really really fast.  

I think part of the reason is that on Thursday we had the leaders' council.  That took up almost the whole day. All of the zone leaders and the sister training leaders meet up at a church in Cochabamba and we talk about how to make things better here in the mission.  It was really fun because 10 of us were from my MTC group and I hadn't seen some of them in a long time.  It was also interesting and well done.  President spoke a little.  One of the new things they announced is that in the coming weeks they are going to launch a mission Facebook page that Hermana Hansen will be in charge of.  You can look for that in few weeks.  It was a good spiritual meeting and I left excited to try some new things in our companionship and in the zone.

My companion and I are still getting along well.  He's a good guy.  I don't remember if I mentioned that he's kind of a clean freak though.  This morning I swept the study room and then he went in right after and redid it.  The house is always really clean though.  It is a lot of fun to be a missionary especially when you have an awesome companion.

my area

I ran into two converts from Alamos this week. One was the Parra family.  They are all doing very well and are planning on getting sealed the same day they were baptized--Sept 14th.  I'm super excited for that. Especially since you can always get permission to go to the sealing of your own converts.  I also ran into Oliver Torrico and his wife Consuelo.  He is the ward secretary now and they are also doing very well with church stuff. They were the ones who got married and then he got baptized that same day. They are also planning to be sealed during the coming months.

We found a great brother and sister this week. They are Daniel (14) and Jessica (17).  We taught them the restoration this week and they were very interested and understand well the idea of praying to know if it is true. We stopped by last night to see how it had gone with their prayers and Jessica told us that she believes she received an answer that it is true.  Daniel said he didn't get an answer yet but told us that as long as he gets an answer he wants to be baptized.  We have an appointment with them and their mom this week. We talked to the mom for just a second on Sunday and she also seems very nice.  Their baptismal date is the 27th of September. I really think that they will get baptized. 

walkin' in my area

Everything is still going well with Luis Miguel.  We had 2 lessons with him this week and he came to church. The only thing that's not going that well is that his mom has no interest at all in listening to us. She really likes us a lot and makes sure her son is ready to go to church by 7:30 and likes that we teach him.  However, she says that her life is calm and she doesn't do bad things but she doesn't like going to church.  Hopefully we can get through to her one of these days, she is a really nice lady.

This Sunday the bishop gave me about 15 minutes heads up that he needed me to give a 15 minute talk.  I spoke about ordinances and filled the 15 minutes.  I think it went pretty well.  It was easier than the last time I did something similar so I think that means that my Spanish is still improving.

The kiosk we have to do once a week in this zone--I enjoyed it more this week than last week.  Its surprising to me that almost everyone I contact knows someone who's a member of the church.  I don't really feel like having the kiosk up makes too much of a difference because even though most people can read, probably about half of everyone doesn't read very well.  If we ask them about the question on the display they would struggle to sound it out.  That doesn't work very well for 2 reasons.  One is that a lot of people are self conscious about their difficulties reading and two they can't really think about how to answer the question because they are so focused on figuring out what the words are.  It's basically just a few hours of street contacting when we do the kiosk.

you can see a lady and her son reading a pamphlet we gave them in the background

I love being a missionary.  I really do.  It is so fun to go around and just teach people about the gospel.  The gospel is truly the best and most important thing anyone can have.  The gospel has been a huge blessing in my life.  It is incredible how much God does for us.  He's done a lot for me.  I'm grateful for that. I know God is aware of us and loves us.  I know the Jesus Christ lives.  He is our Savior.

Make sure that you are living the gospel.  Life is better when you are.  Help your family and friends live the gospel.  When you do, you are participating in our Heavenly Father's work.  

Happy new school year to everyone too!  I hope it's a good one and I'll be back before this one ends.

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S.  Joshua 3:5