Saturday, January 17, 2015

2015-01-12 No one ever knows who he is.

Hey Everyone,
This was another solid week.  Also, I'm 21 now.  

My birthday was fun.  My pensionista and her husband were travelling on my birthday so they made a special birthday lunch on Saturday.  It was pique macho and charque (fried shredded beef ) which was really good.  And it was a ton of food.  I'll put a picture on.


Sunday, my birthday, we were actually really busy.  We were in charge of putting together a fireside and had a lot of appointments.  Gerardo, Junior, and Fernanda came to my chapel to tell me happy birthday.  Gerardo's mom also brought me a cake.  The Valencia family brought me a present too, socks and chocolate.

Junior, Gerardo, and Fernanda
The fireside went well.  We got  Carlos Pedraja to come speak.  He was an area 70  and the first Bolivian to serve as a missionary.  The Valencia family came too so I got to spend a little more time with them for my birthday.

Kevin Laura gave an awesome testimony in church on Sunday.

with Elder Pedraja
Also we found a different Kevin this week.  He's Kevin Rodriguez.  He's 13 but seems really smart.  We started teaching about the Restoration and before we taught about Joseph Smith we asked if he'd ever heard of him.  He said "Yes, he's the prophet who got the church back on Earth."  No one ever knows who he is.  People normally have a hard time answering that question even right after we've explained who it is.  We asked how he knew and he said that the year before there had been a Mormon in his school who'd told him about Joseph Smith.  That was pretty impressive.  Kevin went on to explain that he has gone to a lot of churches but hasn't found one that seems right yet.  That sounds pretty promising.  The only problem is that his dad doesn't want to listen to us.  He only lives with his  dad and his dad doesn't mind that we teach his son but says that he himself doesn't have time.  We'll see how that goes.

Daniel Fernandez's baptism is set for tomorrow.

Selma and Oli
The Valencia family is still doing great.  Hermano Rinaldo missed church though because of his job.  Then he gave us awesome news in the night time at the fireside.  An old boss had called him up and offered him a Monday to Friday only job.  He accepted immediately and starts this week.  I'm super excited for that.  

Alan passed the sacrament for the first time on Sunday.

Samuel (friend of the Valencia family) came to the FHE we had with them this week.  He loves the church and his mom still seems nice even though she is very Catholic.  She is still listening to us.

I hope everyone has an awesome week.  Do good things.  Help someone or somethin'.

my area

Love,
Elder Howlett