2013-11-04 Dead people don’t eat it though…

We had a meeting to plan for a fireside that we

are going to do, (us and the Hermanas) and Saul

(getting ready to go on his mission from the other ward)

picked us up the pizza to eat while we planned.

Hey Everybody,
This has been a pretty good week.  I am still getting along really well with my companion and I really like him. The one thing that bothers me is we stayed in twice this week because he had a headache. Oh well.  We got several new baptismal dates this week.  It has rained all week long which makes it a lot easier to work.

Elder Contreras is a strange little guy but nice.  He does kung fu every night and can do the splits.  He asks adults their age every time we meet them which I explained isn’t ok but he keeps doing it so we’re going to have to talk about that again.  He looks really young and everyone tells him he looks 15.

Beta is the daughter of a friend of Hermana Mercedes and we started teaching her last week.  This week we asked how it went with her prayer and she told us she’d had a dream.  She didn’t tell us what the dream was but she said it was positive and that she considers it an answer that the church is true.  She has a baptismal date for the end of the month.  A couple days ago we taught her mom too and it was a great lesson.  I think her mom will get baptized too.

On Saturday we did 6 hours of service throwing brick from the ground up to the 2nd story of house that members are constructing.  It seems like I have done a lot of service with moving bricks since I’ve been here. Luckily they fed us cow stomach with rice to thank us for helping them.  Cow stomach has a texture similar to gum but tastes terrible.



It has rained all week long which I love.  Right now it’s

raining this really light mist and it looks like snow falling.

We found of family of 4 and taught them the first lesson this week.  They seem interested and I hope it continues to go well. I like to teach families together. 

I think I told you about Gerardo before.  Yesterday, I got calls from several people in Villa Graciela to tell me that he had gone to their ward yesterday (his aunt lives there) and talked about me as he bore his testimony and talked about how blessed he’s been since becoming active in the church.  We had a lesson with him and his mom later that night and he thanked us for helping him decide to come back to church.  It feels really good to know that you’ve helped someone else out, especially with something as important as the church.

I can’t believe how many people don’t seem to understand the importance of God and church and the commandments.  Almost everyone believes in God and knows he exists but somehow that doesn’t affect most peoples’ decisions.  They don’t make the connection between a supreme, all powerful being and the importance of doing what He says.

Waiting with the hermanas for a family to finish cooking us lunch.  We aren’t actually flying even if it looks that way.

This week we are going to start working with the youth to find members of the church who are inactive in our ward.  There is something like 230 inactive families in our ward.  We only have about 30 percent attendance.

One of the best things about training is it makes me feel really responsible to set a good example by being obedient and using all of my time wisely.  It’s a good motivator to work hard.

I miss Villa Graciela a ton.  I miss the area and the people.  I really hope that I luck out and get to finish my mission there.

 

We did nothing for Halloween. They don’t really celebrate it here.  They do celebrate the Day of the Dead which was the 2nd of November.  Mostly they make tons of little breads and empanadas and put them on the table for the dead people to eat.  Dead people don’t eat it though so later the living people eat it and give it to the missionaries when they come to visit.

(In response to a question from his mother) I have sunscreen but sometimes I get burned anyway.  It’s better now that it’s always raining though.

Love,
Elder Howlett

P.S. Mark 2:27

 

view from Elder Howlett's apartment balcony

 

2013-10-28 I found out he really likes to thumb wrestle.

Hey everybody,

Sergio, Jose, me, and Jhonny

This has been a pretty crazy but great week.  Last p-day we went and ate giant pizzas from Ellie's. Tuesday is the day that I went to drop Elder Campo off in downtown with his new companion but I didn’t get my companion until Wednesday.   The zone leaders were supposed to meet me downtown when I dropped Elder Campo off but they were ridiculously late and I needed to get back to our baptism.  Elder Campo and his new companion took me back to the ward and dropped me of with one of the young men so I could get the baptism going.  It’s probably the only baptism I’ll have without a companion.  Later that night another missionary who was going to train met up with me and we slept in my apartment and went to the new missionary meeting together the next day.

The new missionary meeting was fun.  It was way smaller than when my group came into the mission there were about 50 new missionaries in my group. There were only 14 missionaries that came in this transfer.  They fed us good food and we played some games and had a good training with President.  My zone leaders told me the wrong time so I was already in the stake center for the meeting at 9 am, 2 hours before it started.  Sister Dyer showed up and needed some help so she took me and the missionary I was with to the mission home to pick up something for the meeting.  I finally got to see the mission home. It’s nice and peaceful.

My new companion is Elder Contreras from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  He’s 20 years old and nice and laid back and we get along really well.  He doesn’t really know much about how the mission works and it makes me think I was even more confused when I first got here than I realized.  He gets really nervous when we teach and he shakes when he’s nervous.  He doesn’t teach in a very organized way yet but I feel the Spirit more teaching with him than I did with Elder Campo.  He likes American music.  I’m excited to be with him.

We had a family home evening with Jeampierre and his siblings. It went well we got him laughing and talking a little.  I found out he really likes to thumb wrestle. 

It continues to rain every day here which is really nice.  I love the rain.

In the new missionary meeting I met Tyler Coffing who went to Lone Peak [High School] and just got here.  He told me he’d read my blog every week and it got him excited for the mission.  I thought that sounds like what I did with Elder Eyre but I didn’t tell him.

The baptism on Tuesday was great.  It was Maria Terrazas and she seems more and more converted and committed to the gospel every time we talk.  She has changed a ton and it’s great to see.

Arthur called me super excited last night to tell me that Miguel Luis, who I had always visited with him, finally says he got his answer and wants to be baptized.  That’s really good news and it’s pretty great to see Arthur so excited about it too.

Bad news of the week was Devvi´s baptism fell through.  Her parents say she get can get baptized in November if she gets good grades.  There was also good news though.  Jairo Vasquez (older brother of Fernado and Paola) finally decided he was ready to get baptized, so I still got to go back on Saturday to baptize him.  We ate dinner with the Flores family after that instead of at our pension. Sergio Villca and his brother Jose came to the baptism.  He’s one of the youth I went on splits with a lot.  

Jairo is to Elder Howlett's right

We are going to be working a lot more with inactive members from now on.  We met with the bishop and got a full ward list so we can go see how many we can find.  We are also going to put on a fireside in a couple of weeks to see if we can get the members to help us out more.

I ran into Sebastian and Brian when I went back for the baptism.  We chatted for a while and they both told me they’d start meeting with the missionaries again.  I don’t know what happened that they stopped.

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Howlett

P.S. 2 Corinthians 2:7-8

2013-10-21 Jeampierre is teaching me to play the Sanpoña.

Hey Everybody,
No letters arrived this week.
Sorry, no pictures again, the computer won’t connect with my camera.

We all went to the zone leader’s house last night to wait for cambios together.  At about 10 we finally got the call.  I’m staying here in Alamos, my companion is leaving to Jaihuaco (ghetto part of Cochabamba.)  I am going to train so I don’t know who my new companion is yet.  Tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll go to the meeting where the new missionaries arrive to pick up my companion.  I think that it will be fun to train and I was surprised because it was a small group of elders coming in this time.  It’s kind of weird that I’m getting my 5th companion though.  Most people from my group have only had 2 or maybe 3.

Last night as we were waiting for the call, Jhonny Diaz called me.  His friend Devvi (Debbie) who I taught for a long time is going to get baptized and wants me to baptize her.  I started teaching her my second week with Elder Mero and she already would have been baptized but her parents are super Catholic and wouldn’t give her permission.  They finally changed their minds though.  Last night was awesome between that and cambios.
 

Last week for p-day we went paintballing in the rain.   It was really fun.  Here they charge like 4 dollars for the equipment and 20 paintballs and then 7ish cents for every paintball more than the 20 that you use.  After that we went downtown and ate with the zone and then went to the Flores family’s for an hour and had Hawaiian pizza.
 

Jeampierre is starting to be a little more comfortable around us.  I picked up a pizza and we went and ate it with them this week.  Jeampierre is teaching me to play the Sanpoña, (small wood pipes), and most of the time talks to me when I talk to him.  He finally came to church yesterday too.

The Flores family says “hi” and Marco says he worried because you and Lizzie haven’t been on facebook to chat all week.
 

I went on exchanges on Wednesday this week with the zone leaders and I went to their area.  In one of our lessons I gave a blessing to a lady who got baptized on Saturday.  I’ve never felt so good about a blessing I’ve given.  I knew exactly what to say and how to say it and felt the presence of the Spirit the entire time.
 

During the exchange, I was in a more rural area than mine and it made me realize how many fewer dogs there are where I am now than there were in Villa Graciela.  There were crazy dogs all over during the intercambio just like there always were in my old area.

It was really cloudy and rainy at the beginning of the week but it’s been hot and sunny the last couple days.
 

It is incredible how the Lord leads us to people.  We found a family of 5 when we helped them push their car for 2 miles to a gas station.  The dad was so grateful that he told us to call him any day and he would get all of his family together and come pick us up in his car so we can teach them.  

Bolivian stuff-

There are so many little street vendors.  I love how in the morning there are little carts that sell scones and scones filled with cheese.  The scones are big and only half of a boliviano.

Nothing here ever starts even close to on time, no matter what it is.

In general people aren’t too educated about the outside world.  People guess that I’m Argentine a lot because I’m white.

Anytime you are in someone’s house they will offer you a drink and it is rude not to drink it.

Everyone is unbelievably short.  I hit my head on stuff all of the time and my legs don’t fit between the seats on trufis because things are not made for people of my size

Periodically there just isn’t water for a few days and that’s normal.

There is graffiti everywhere. 

They blame Chile for stealing their coast.  

They still use antennas with their TVs.

Spelling is not important.  I spell much better than they do in Spanish.
If anything is wrong with you they want you to drink mate. 

They burn garbage and weeds and stuff and aren’t careful about it so there are always fires on the mountain. Firemen beat fires out with bundles of reeds.

A lot of times they answer the door through a 3 inch by 3 inch little window in the door.  Then we sometimes teach them through that little hole.

The mission is always out of something we need--Books of Mormon, pamphlets, agendas.  Oh well, we make do.

In general, people are very honest.  They never let me pay too much for anything.

Trucks drive around selling fruit.  They have speakers attached to the top and the driver does a sing-song-y thing with the names of whatever fruit he has.

Anyway, hope you have a good week and I’ll have lots of photos next time.

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S.  Helaman 13:38

2013-10-14 Well really, mostly I talked.

Hey Everyone,

This has been one of the best weeks in the mission.  Nothing too spectacular has happened but I’ve felt the Spirit strongly all week and been very motivated about and enjoyed working.  It’s also been stormy all week. We’ve entered the rainy season.

It looks like I won’t be able to give you any pictures this week.  The computers in this internet don’t recognize anyone’s cameras.

One of the best parts of the week was that a lady surprised us by telling us that she wanted to get baptized now. Before, she had pretty much told us she believed it was all true and she figured she would get baptized but not for a long time.  She said she thought after she retired would be better since she works on Sundays.  When we went to visit this week she’d had a complete change of heart. She told us she was excited to get baptized now and she would just come to church and rely on the Lord to help her.  Her baptismal date is the 22nd of this month.

In a regular ward baptism the primary kids sang “I like to look for rainbows,” which reminded me of our family´s baptisms.  I also gave the talk for that baptism and it actually went really well--much more fluent than the last time I spoke in Spanish.

My companion has been doing visa stuff this week so I’ve been in downtown quite a bit with him this week.  I’ve already finished mine, I don’t remember if I told you but I got my Bolivian ID about 3 weeks ago.  

I bought some really good orange juice from a cart in the street.  Cholitas have juice carts where they slice the orange in half and then have a metal press that they use to make the juice.

Marco and Angie came to pick up my clothes yesterday.  I always enjoy being able to see them, I’m not sure if we’ll have time to visit them today or not.  They invited me over for hawiian pizza.  Kinda good news. Angie is going to church now but it’s because she kind of got demoted or something in her job.  She doesn’t work Sundays anymore but it also cut her pay in half.  I sure hope I can go when they get sealed, I’ll be sad if not.

We only visited Jeam Pierre once this week.  We talked for an hour.  Well really, mostly I talked.  I said about 10,000 words and he only said about 10 words.  His sister thinks if we can just pass more time with him, he’ll warm up to us.  He likes hamburgers so were going to pick some hamburgers up and go visit him this week and see if we can get him to open up a little. 

I started reading the Gospels this week and I’ve really enjoyed it.  I don’t think I’ve read the New Testament for about a year.

Cambios are this Sunday.  I figure I will stay and there is about a 50% chance that my companion stays and 50% that he goes.  I don’t really know if I want him to stay or go.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. Alma 46:10-16

P.P.S.  I got a dearelder letter from Lauren McMullin this week.  The mail is terrible here, it’s slow and only sometimes makes it.

2013-10-07 There is nowhere else that feels quite the same to me.

Hey Everyone,
This was a pretty great week, with a marriage, baptism, temple trip, lots of rain, and General Conference. 

 

I loved conference.  (There is a  DROP-DOWN MENU in the UPPER RIGHT CORNER for 70 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES)

 

I did miss the first half of the last session though, because we lost the signal.  I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t too hard to understand in Spanish.  Talks that I particularly liked would be President Eyring’s and President Monson’s from Sunday morning and Carole Stephens’ from Saturday Morning (I don’t usually like the women’s talks as well but that might have been my favorite).  Elder Holland’s talk from Saturday afternoon was interesting but was a little hard to understand in Spanish for me.  I also enjoyed all of Priesthood session. (scroll down)

Themes--Lots about missionary work and I really noticed it as a missionary.  Thoughts that came to me a lot in terms of missionary work were finding a way to get the members to participate.  I think we will put on a fireside for the ward in the coming weeks about missionary work and to ask for help from the members.  We’ll see if we can get everyone to make good on Elder Ballard’s request to share the gospel with 1 person before Christmas.

I also felt like there was a lot about becoming more Christ-like, especially in terms of loving others and a lot in repenting and utilizing the atonement.

The temple was absolutely amazing.  This was one of the times I’ve felt the Spirit most strongly in the temple.  We were in the waiting chapel for almost an hour and they have a huge painting of Jesus kneeling in Gethsemane.  That got me thinking about the Atonement and helped me feel the Spirit as we waited.  I found that one of my favorite things to study is the power of the Atonement and I’ve learned to appreciate it considerably more in the mission.  There was no new movie in Spanish.  Afterward I sat in the Celestial room for a long time.  It made me realize how much I miss being able to go to the temple frequently.  There is nowhere else that feels quite the same to me.

We’ve continued working with Salome.  We had a really good lesson about prayer after which she was able to say a very nice prayer.  We’ve decided to work on prayer until she can remember how to do it.  We figure after that she can ask for God’s help in learning the rest of what we want to teach her.

We visited with Jeam Pierre a couple of times this week.  It’s hard to teach someone who doesn’t talk much.  Some days are just better than others for him though.  We haven’t gotten him to say a prayer aloud yet but he did finally agree to say a prayer on his own.  His brother and sister are consistently going to church now though, so they should be able to help us out.

left:"good food at my pensionista’s house--beef and sausage and right after I took the picture she brought in Chicken Milanesa (chicken pounded flat and then fried in egg) too.  The drink was mango and way better than the mango I’ve had at home."

Oliver got married and baptized on Friday night.  His wife is already a member and only recently returned to activity.  They are a really nice family

I can’t remember if I’ve told you about George yet.  He’s a member and lived in New York until he was 13.  He speaks English and recently has started coming back to church.  His wife is pregnant and not a member.  They are both chefs and so he’s decided to invite us over every Thursday to eat and teach his wife.  This past week he made us wings with buffalo, barbecue and honey mustard.  This Thursday he’s going to make pizza and he told me that he can make Chinese food too.  That’s pretty fun.  I miss American food a lot. I’m tired of eating cooked vegetables.

My English class is really popular with kids here.  We had 15 people show up and almost all of them were 16 or younger.  We pretty much play games with English vocabulary word and I give the winners the tootsie pop suckers you sent me. 

We have a new family we are teaching that I’m excited about.  The mom’s name is Ruth and she is a member since birth.  She has been inactive though for 15 years.  She’s married to a Catholic and has a 14-year-old daughter, 12-year-old son, and 3-year-old daughter.  She really wants to come back to the church and wants us to teach the 2 older kids so they can decide if they want to join the church.  The husband is always working but we are going to see if we can teach him too.  All but the husband came to Conference and the kids are really nice and well behaved.  Lucas, the 12-year-old, seems particularly interested. 

Photo: our balcony looking to the North.  Almost every night, there are lightning storms over those mountains and behind the mountains by the Christus to our East that we can see.  Cochabamba nights are awesome.  It’s always a pleasant temperature.  Once we get home for the night, I spend almost all of my time on the balcony until I have to go to bed.  I always write in my journal out there and I enjoy just looking over the city and at the mountains and stars.  Every day is a holiday here, so I usually can see fireworks somewhere if I look out over the city in the night.

Hope you all have a great week! 

 

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. Ephesians 2:19

 

 

2013-09-30 ...he’d better be an amazing missionary if he’s gonna marry my sister.

Hey Everyone,

This was a pretty good week.  

pique macho with la familia Flores: french fries with sausage, beef, onions, tomatoes, eggs and covered in mayo and ketchup

A lack of obedience here in the mission is something that really surprised me.  I figured pretty much everyone would be almost completely obedient.  I’ve found that that’s not true at all.  The majority don’t even seem interested in trying to be obedient.

 

Right now I have 3 favorite investigators in Alamos.

 

One is Jeam Pierre.  He’s 13 and has 3 older siblings who were all baptized about 4 years ago.  The parents live in Spain and haven’t been back for like 8 years.  The oldest brother is currently serving a mission so he just lives with the other 2 siblings, Jessit and Selene who are pretty active in the church. Jeam Pierre is autistic and doesn’t really like to talk to people so he never listened to the missionaries or got baptized.  When we went to visit his siblings this past week I sat down beside him and after like 15 minutes of just me talking he finally started to talk a little.  We came and helped them clean up their house the next day and taught Jeam Pierre a lesson.  My companion took a picture of me trying to teach him.  He didn’t say much that day.  He’s kind of hard to teach but I can’t stop thinking about him so I figure we’ll have some kind of success with him.

 

2nd is Salome Delgadillo.  She’s a little old lady who has already had all of the lessons and has visited the church a lot.  She just can’t remember hardly anything though.  I think she’ll be baptized soon if we can just help her remember how to pray.

"my breakfast set up.  I fry an egg and the family we live with makes bread so I make a fried egg and mayo sandwich.  We use the iron board to cook on and pamphlets to level it out."

3rd is Maria Antesana.  She’s a mom who we taught for the first time last week.  This week we asked her if she had prayed and she said she had and had gotten an answer that all that we’d taught about Joseph Smith is true. She doesn’t want to join the church though because her husband doesn’t want to talk to us and she doesn’t want to upset him.  Hopefully we can find a way to talk to the husband.

 

On Wednesday, my old companion called me to tell me that Jose had asked that I baptize him.  He is one of the friends that Jhonny brought to church and introduced us to.  He’s a really great kid and his dad came to the baptism and said that he’d visit church on Sunday too.  Evelin also finally got baptized.  I’ve been visiting her and her mom since I arrived in Cochabamba. Her mom, Maria, also told me at the baptism that she’s planning on getting married in December so she can get baptized too.  It was great to see a lot of people from the ward at the baptism. Jhonny’s mom came and we got to talk about what she was thinking about for baptism.  She told me she has a date for this coming month but still hasn’t gotten an answer to her prayers about if the church is true. Jhonny bore his testimony in the baptism and just about made me cry.  If everyone worked half as hard as he did in spreading the gospel there is no way we could keep up with all of the appointments we would have.

Today Angela, sister of Paola and Fernando, told me she’s going to get baptized on  October 12th.

 

Arthur called me to tell me the bishop finally interviewed him to be a ward missionary.  Elder Mero and I felt more strongly about him than anyone else when we submitted names to the bishop almost 3 months ago.  It’s good that he finally got called.  He told me today that he talked to the bishop and is planning on leaving as soon as he’s 18 to serve a mission.  He also told me that he’s going to be a better missionary than me and that when he come back he’s going to marry Liz.  I told him he’d better be an amazing missionary if he’s gonna marry my sister. Somehow that’s not even a weird thing to say here.

Elder Howlett with his new brother

Love you all hope you have a great week.

 

Love,

Elder Howlett

 

P.S. 1Samuel 17:45-47

 

P.P.S.  I’ll start from now on to give names of who I get letters from.  I did get a handwritten one from Adri this past week and it was awesome.  Thanks a ton Adri!  The mail here is a joke.  It is slow and unreliable.  Generally, letters take about a month and a half to get here.  Also, DearElder does NOT put a date on automatically, so it would be nice for me if you date what you send through DearElder.com.
 

The Flores family stopped by to surprise me one morning this week.  It was pretty great.  They all came with Juan Pablo.  He's a trufi driver who I used to visit too.  They dropped off my clothes and it made my day that they all came by.

 

 

 

2013-09-23 We had a surprise baptism this week.

Hey everyone,

Happy Birthday Mom!!  Hope you have a great week.  

This was a pretty crazy week.  We spent one day in a training meeting with Elder Calderon of the Seventy. It was good and then the next day he met with all of the bishoprics in Cochabamba and told them that the wards should be more involved in helping the missionaries.  That should help us out a lot to get people to go do visits with us and give us references.  Then I spent a day in the hospital, not for me.  Another elder had his appendix out and we are taking turns spending the day there. It was actually a really fun day. They brought me Burger King for lunch and the elder who had his appendix out is American so it was easy to chat with him.  Marco, Anghi, and Arthur came by to visit too.  

 

Last Monday I went to visit the Flores family too.  They made us pizza and it made me miss my old area. Arthur put my name and his in the cement in front of the house.  The other missionaries who are there put their names too.  (the other two names).  Sebastian and Kimberly both called me this week. As long as their mom gives them permission they said that they are going to get baptized this Saturday.  Jhonny Diaz called me to tell me his mom has a baptismal date for next month too.  That’s pretty exciting.

We had a surprise baptism this week.  Edward who already had all of the lessons in the past called us on Wednesday to say he wanted to be baptized on Thursday.  This time I called to the church offices to get them to send us a water truck to fill the font so we would have clean water.  It actually made me feel pretty good that I was able to get that all worked out over the phone in Spanish.  It means my Spanish has improved significantly.

Today for p-day we played soccer against another zone.  I got to see Elder Chavez so that was a lot of fun.  We walked for forever to get to the field though.  We walked for like an hour and a half down this pretty dirt road. I’ll send a picture. 
 

I'm in los Alamos, now.  We will truck in water from now on for baptisms.  [The Flores family] lives like 20 minutes away from me by taxi or 30 to 35 by trufi.  Yes, they pick up and drop off my laundry.  I told them they didn't have to.  They don't have a car.  They came in a trufi.

Mom, could you do me a favor and look into how much it costs to fly between here and Salt Lake City (both ways, starting from both locations)?  Also look into what the Flores family would have to do to visit us in the US (only have passport or more?)  Also I heard we can send them an invitation of some type that makes it easier to do the paper work to visit.

My companion is a good guy but our personalities don’t really match very well. It’s working out though.  I figure I’ll only have him this one cambio because he has been here for 5 months already.

This week I got to thinking about how I’ve lived one of the most blessed lives of anyone.  I’ve really never had any major trials or problems and I’ve always been successful in what I want to do.  I figure I have the Church to thank for that.  There are some people here who are just incredibly lost without the church to guide them.  They live a low quality life and don’t know how to change it. I don’t think I ever realized before the extent of temporal blessing we receive for being obedient to God.



Elder Howlett's buddy, Raul--nephew of his pensionista

Also, I’ve been thinking that I’ve had two great successes so far in my mission.  One is the baptism of Jhonny. He is absolutely incredible and more committed to the gospel than the majority of the other members here.  He also introduced us to 14 or 15 of his friends and brought them all to church at least once.  Six of his friends and his mom currently have a baptismal date.  The other success would be with the Flores family.  They were almost completely inactive when I arrived here.  They are active again and doing everything they can to live the gospel.  Arthur, especially, has turned things around.  He had gotten his eyebrow pierced, was still a teacher even though he was 16, and said he had no interest in serving a mission.  Now he's been ordained a priest and goes early with Jhonny every week to set up the sacrament and bless it.  He is incredibly excited to serve a mission now and is always asking me about how missions are. He went with me to visits at least once a week.  That was really helpful because my last companion always refused to go up high so Arthur always went with me to teach those people.  Hermana Flores told me when she came to visit at the hospital, that he convinced them to go with him and visit the investigators up high in the mountains this past week.  His parents both tell me that he gets along way better with his family than he ever did in the past.  He’s absolutely awesome and a great member of the church.

Also time is FLYING.  This week I’ll have been here for 6 months!  I can´t believe it.  It freaks me out that time is going by so quickly and it motivates me to do more every day because I’m afraid that I’ll look back and think I could have done more.  I can’t imagine how I’ll feel going into my last 6 months.  

I love you all, have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S.  Alma 36:3