09-15-2014 we got to teach them and pray with them all together

Luis Miguel

Hey Everyone,

This was a great week.

Kevin and Luis Miguel's parents both gave permission for their baptisms.  

When we went to talk with Kevin's parents they were both a little on the fence but Kevin shared an awesome testimony with them again and then they were both supportive.  His mom even told us that she's excited that he's going to be baptized. She called the rest of her kids and for the first time we got to teach them and pray with them all together.  It was an awesome lesson and I hope that the family will follow Kevin's example a little further down the road.

Kevin is very ready to be baptized.  He's sure that the church is true and he already lives all the church standards well.

Luis Miguel had us a little worried on Sunday because when church started he wasn't there but he walked in a little late and sat down and my companion and I both felt very relieved.  He hasn't drunk coffee since we taught him the Word of Wisdom and he seems more and more sure about the church every time we visit him.

Liseth and Jessica are both still doing well even though they didn't come to church on Sunday.  

Today we went to Pairumani.  It's a park-type place outside of the city.  We went with the whole ward.  We had a pretty good turn out--about 125.  We played games and ate and hiked a little.  

 3 investigators.Gerardo 16, Ariel 14, David 12- in Pairumani

One member brought her younger siblings. She's a returned missionary living in Santa Cruz but she's back visiting her family for a while. She has a 19-year-old sister and 16,14, and 12-year-old brothers. Since the brothers were just sitting alone, I went and ate with them.  They are an awesome family. Very well mannered and the 3 brothers all like American music and basketball.  I hung out with them pretty much the entire day. They are gonna start coming to play sports with us in the mornings when we play.  I especially talked a lot with the 16-year-old during the day.  He seems really interested in the church.  We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon.  He recently switched schools and he said that there are a lot of Mormons in his new school.  He said he'd come on Sunday to church too.

We also had a training with Elder Waddell of the Seventy this week.  It  was only 4 zones of missionaries so well under 100 people were there.  He speaks Spanish well and is a great and engaging speaker.  I enjoyed all of it even though he spoke for about 5 hours.  I was amazed at his ability to invite the Spirit through what he shared with us.  We talked a lot about getting people a testimony before they get baptized.  He also talked a lot about obedience and using the Spirit as missionaries.  

A couple of interesting things he said that got me thinking:

1 The Spirit is the most important part of everything we do as missionaries and also everything we will ever do not as missionaries too.  Absolutely everything we ever do--he told us.

2 What we do here will determine how we live after this life.  Then it naturally follows that what we did in our pre-mortal life affects our life now.  He told us that being in this mission at this time is a result of decisions we made before we came to the Earth and that our decisions before this life have very little to do with our nationality.  He then told us he doesn't know exactly what parts of our life are a result of our pre-mortal use of agency and didn't tell us anything else specifically as to what is or isn't.

Another fun thing was that he asked the zone leaders to stay after.  There were only 8 of us so it was neat to get to talk to him in such a small group.  We mostly talked about how we can make sure what we learned gets implemented in our zones but then he gave 10 or 15 minutes to ask questions too. One of the interesting things we talked about at that point is that he believes that there are too many less-actives because we focus on baptism rather than the temple when we teach non-members.

 

me my comp and Gerardo.  He came to accompany us on visits but we wound up helping some investigators move.  That's why my tie's tucked in.

I love being a missionary.  Its pretty crazy that I've been here for so long.  I'll finish my mission in less than 6 months now.

Serving a mission has helped me realize that living the gospel really makes life a lot better.  People who are obedient to God are always more content with their lives. 

I hope everyone is going to the temple.  It's a great opportunity to think about the covenants you've made. Being faithful to those covenants is what will get you to God's kingdom.  It's the only way to get there.  Don't forget the promises you've made with God.  And just as important, don't break those promises.  Going to the temple also gives us the strength to keep our covenants.

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. Job 14:14

2014-09-08 I'm glad we acted on the prompting we had.

with Hermana Nely and family for Brittney's baptism

Hey Everyone,

This week flew by and was a lot a fun.

On Thursday we went to Kami again and we have one solid investigator there named Jaime.  He's probably almost 30 and single.  After that we walked to Collpapampa and started knocking doors. We had a lot of success there.  One family of 6 were all there and let us into their front lawn area and all sat and listened to us for almost an hour.  They were really nice and we are going back there on Wednesday.  We also met 4 or 5 other families in the 3ish hours we were there. The people there have less money and are more willing to let us visit them.  They are very loving and open.

On Friday I was in intercambios with Elder Johnson.  He's been in the mission for 3 weeks and is from Texas. That was a lot of fun and we had a successful day.  I think we taught 7 or 8 lessons which is more than normal. We went contacting way out in the middle of nowhere in the morning and we were kind of late and a long ways from our pension for lunch.  We were hurrying back when we walked by a house all on its own and felt like we should knock it.  We did even though we knew all we had time do is set up an appointment.  We met Liset and set up an appointment and when we went to the appointment on Sunday she was waiting with her sister for us. Her sister told us that she feels like she's fallen away from God a little but that she had a Mormon friend who's been talking to her a lot about the church recently.  Her friend had already explained a lot to them about the church.  They understood what we taught really well and accepted baptismal dates for the 18th of October.  They are very interested.  I'm glad we acted on the prompting we had.  God knows who's ready to talk to us.

This week we set baptismal dates with 8 new people.  That was really exciting.  

Bryan, who a 20-year-old member in the ward, went with us to do visits on Sunday.  I asked if he had done visits with the missionaries before and he said about 2 years ago.  It turns out he went out do visits with Elder Schwarz.

 

paintball with missionaries from Colcapirhua ward

This week was overcast and rainy which make proselyting really fun.

Luis Miguel is still doing well for his baptismal date on the 20th.  He went the week without coffee after we taught the Word of Wisdom.

Sorry that I didn't have too much to say this week.  Don't forget to pray every single day.  

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. Moroni 7:33

2014-08-01 now whenever we walk past cows I watch carefully

Hey Everyone,

This week was good.  I love Colcapirhua.

We started playing early morning sports with 6 of the other missionaries in the zone at a soccer/basketball court close by our house.  We wake up at 6 get there at about 6:15 and then play for half an hour.  We switch between soccer and basketball every day.  It's fun and it's nice in Cochabamba in the mornings.

 

Gilber likes to shine shoes

Last P-day we had a barbecue and played soccer with the whole zone at one of the churches. Today we went with 4 other missionaries to play tennis. We also visited the Floreses in the morning. Tomorrow is Anghy Lou's birthday.  Marco had a big breakfast waiting for us.

Jessica and Daniel went downhill this week.  They failed our appointment, and another day when we stopped by they said they didn't have time to talk. Hopefully we get to teach them this week.

I don't remember if I've talked about Kevin before.  He's a great 15 year old kid who comes to church every week.  He wants to be baptized but we were waiting for permission from his parents.  His dad told us he had to wait at least until his (Kevin's) mom gets back from Spain so they could talk about it.  His mom has been in Spain for a long time but got back about a week ago.  This week when we went to visit Kevin his mom was there and joined us for the lesson. We taught about the restoration and it went really well.  His mom seems like a great person and also told us that her son seems completely different from how he was when she left to go to Spain. She says she thinks that going to the church has gotten him oriented and making good choices. Kevin shared a powerful testimony with his mom about how he'd come to know that the church is true.  It was a great lesson and on Sunday they came to church together for the full 3 hours.  We have another appointment tomorrow.  

Things are still going ok with Luis Miguel.  We had a lesson with him yesterday in the afternoon.  The good thing is that this time his adoptive mom sat in on the lesson with us.  (His real mom rented at his adoptive mom's house.  She left Luis there when he was 1.  The owner of the house took him in and he doesn't know his real family)  She is really nice with us always but wants nothing to do with the Mormon church.  She says she is comfortable being a Catholic.  Even though she doesn't want to come to our church she is incredibly supportive of us teaching Miguel.  She chimed in during our lesson several times to say that she reminds Luis Miguel to pray every night.  She also wakes him up and sends him to church.  She even wants him to get baptized. Hopefully with a little time we can get her to give us a chance too.  I think her listening to the lesson yesterday was a huge step in the right direction.

 

Collapampa

These last couple weeks we received several references of people to teach in Kami.  Kami is a little pueblo that's part of our area but about 15 minutes in car from the main part of our area.  This week we decided to go spend Wednesday afternoon there.  About a year ago missionaries worked there for only about a month and besides that there haven't been missionaries there.  I think it's fun to go to places like that where the missionaries don't really have a presence.  We draw more attention from the people because they aren't used to seeing us there. Before we left, my companion and I knelt to say a prayer to ask God to help us to have success in Kami. We packed up lots of pamphlets and contact cards and went.  I felt the Spirit strongly and I felt really good about going to Kami as we headed there.  Once we got there, we went to contact the references we had and didn't really have much luck with that so we decided to just start talking to everyone. We walked around the central plaza talking to everyone we saw.  That did go well and we set up a lot of appointments for this week. Then we decided to go knock some doors.  That went well too.  We taught 2 families on the spot and set up a bunch more appointments.  We also somehow wound up in another smaller pueblo called Collapampa that is also our area. It's basically an extension of Kami but the there were sure to tell us that it's not Kami. Kami look mostly dry except for the part that is Collapampa.  It had a lot of water and was green.  It also had a lot of cows too. One took off running and just missed ramming me (not sure if it was trying to hit me or not). That freaked me out and now whenever we walk past cows I watch carefully to make sure they aren't going to try and run me down.

when the herd of cows was following us

The plan for now is to spend every Wednesday there and if things are working out to choose one more day and spend 2 days per week working there.  I'm really excited about how things will go there.  The people are generally pretty poor and seemed very receptive to us last week.

I love being a missionary.  It's great.  

I have found that doing good things makes it easier to do more good things.  Almost everyone has good intentions and from time to time feels very motivated to be better.  The hard part seems to be keeping the motivation they feel.  Motivation in the gospel commonly seems to come when people have gotten lazy and stop doing as much good or start doing bad things.  Something makes them feel bad about how they are living and they suddenly are excited to fix things.  That's not ideal though.  We can keep ourselves motivated always to live the gospel by being strong-willed and thinking about the eternal consequences of our decisions.  Those who do good receive spiritual support and protection that help keep them doing more good things.  Choosing to do good things is not always the easiest or funnest thing to do in the moment.  But God doesn't just ask us to do the funnest and easiest things.  He asks us do what's right.  As you choose the right it will become easier and easier to do. 

Helping others makes us feel good.  Pray for opportunities to perform meaningful service and then serve when those opportunities present themselves.  Have a great week everyone.

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. James 1:16,22   

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

2014-08-18 We got to go milk cows on Saturday

Hey Everyone,

Well, this week was pretty good.  I left Potosì early on Monday morning in a taxi to Sucre, I went with Elder Porter from St. George.  In Sucre, we grabbed a plane to Cochabamba and were in Cochabamba before noon. (way better than going in a bus all the way to Cochabamba.)

My new companion is Elder Delgadillo from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.  He seems like a really great guy and we are getting along well and working hard.  He is kind of a neat freak though.  Every day he asks if he can help me fold my blankets or if he can help me organize my desk.  That's all, I'm not very organized in case you don't remember.

It rained a ton yesterday.  It felt really nice because when it rained in Potosì it was really cold.

I spent last Monday mostly just saying goodbye to everyone.  In the evening Johanna and her husband Vladimir (the stake president) invited us over for some food and to say goodbye.  After that we had a FHE with the Barrios family which was awesome and a ton of fun.  That whole family is doing really well now except for the Uncle Edwin.  Savina and Carmen are planning on going in January to get their endowments.

In this zone we are part of the church's pilot kiosk program.  We put out a street display, and 2 missionaries stand by it to take down information of people who are interested.  There are 20 missionaries in the zone and we are in charge of making sure that we run the kiosk 6 hours per day, 6 days per week.  That's actually a pretty good amount of time that we spend doing the kiosk

Rodrigo called me this morning.  He went to church on Sunday and seems to be doing well.

We got to go milk cows on Saturday.  When we got there, there wasn't anyone home and we were just yelling from outside that we were there.  About 15 minutes later, they showed up and when we walked in we saw that the youngest son had been asleep right in front of us that whole time under a blanket.   I don't know how we didn't wake him up with our yelling from 20 feet away.  

I'm not very good at milking cows but I did enjoy getting to know the family  I sat down with the grandma and the 11 year-old son Oscar and they tried teaching me Quechua.  Oscar went into the house and brought out sugar cane and peeled and sliced it for us.  The dad gave us a ride back to the main road when we finished in a makeshift tractor thing.   It looked like a riding lawn mower motor that pulled a small cart.

the kid asleep outside on his mat

Our area is pretty big and pretty rural.  There are almost no asphalt streets.  It's all dirt and stone streets and dirt trails. I like Cochabamba's climate way better than Potosì.  It's prettier too.  I like my new area.  The people seem pretty friendly here.  We had 49 street contacts this week which is way more than I normally have.

We saw Evo Morales this week (Bolivia's President)  He was at a graduation in a small university in our area.

Well I'm almost out of time.  Everybody should go to the temple again for good luck starting the new school year.  I'm pretty sure going to the temple once a week helps you to get better grades.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. Hebrews 6:10-12

2014-08-11 It's not a good sign when he doesn't even remember the name of the church.

Hey Everyone,

Well, cambios came last night.  I'm going back to Cochabamba tomorrow.I'm going as zone leader to my last zone, Alamos.  I'm going to the Colcapirhua ward which is 2 wards over from where I was before.  I'm pretty excited about that.  My companion is Elder Delgadillo from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.  I'm very ready for a new companion.

It actually kind of freaked me out how I found out.  I guess the new mission president wanted to tell the new zone leaders personally their transfer.  He sent a text at 7 asking me to call him.  That kind of made me nervous since old president never did that.  He just gave me the new assignment is all though.

I'm sad to be leaving but really excited about where I'm going.

This week we knocked a door and a man answered, was very friendly, and invited us in to sit down before we even explained who we were. It turned out he'd visited the church several times over 10 years ago. We taught the first lesson and invited him to be baptized. He had 2 concerns about accepting a baptismal date which I think show that he'll be a good investigator. One was that he hadn't yet prayed to know if it's true and second if he's going to be baptized he wants to do it with his wife and children. After explaining a little more, we set a baptismal date for September when he'll get baptized if he receives an answer that it's the true church.

We knocked another door where we met 21 year old Richard.  I introduced us as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and asked if he'd ever heard of that church.  He said no.  I asked if he belonged to any church and he said yes.  I asked which and he said the Mormon one.  Turns out he was baptized about 8 years ago and stopped attending shortly after.  It's not a good sign when he doesn't even remember the name of the church but he did let us visit him twice this past week and he says he'll come to church on Sunday.

This week in a lesson with Claudia (who got baptized a month ago) I asked how she likes being Mormon and she said it has changed her life--that the kinds of things she does now are completely different from how she used to spend her time.  That made me very happy to hear. She´s almost finished Jacob in the Book of Mormon now.

We had another great first lesson this week with 3 siblings who are 20, 14, and 9.  Their parents weren't home but they let us come in and teach the first lesson and were very interested.  They were also very well mannered and attentive and I think they understood it well.

Well now that you guys are on the downhill side of summer, I'm headed back to a hot place that will be heading back into summer soon. Remember that whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.  I was reading an old talk from Elder Holland and liked what he said about what we should pray for--not for situations that we can handle with our abilities but for the abilities and support we need to make the best of our situations.  We surely can do whatever the Lord requires of us.

Love,
Elder Howlett

P.S. Doctrine & Covenants 46: 8-9

2014-08-04 ...chapi...

Hey Everyone,

ready to go into the mine

This week was nuts.  They took the other 2 elders out of our ward and put in sister missionaries so we had to find a house for just 2 missionaries (before we lived all 4 together) and move before the end of the week. We did find a new place, kind of chapi (Bolivian equivalent of saying ghetto or junky) though.  It's way colder in the new house, there is seriously almost no difference between outside and inside.  We taught way fewer lessons than normal since we spent a lot of time moving and looking for a house.  That was kind of a bummer.

To answer your questions,  Kevin is probably worse than before.  His very Catholic boss has been talking to him a lot and now he's very confused and not making much progress.  I don't doubt he'll get things figured out with a little bit of time though. 

Do I think I'll get transferred? Probably   Where do I think I would go?  I really don't know.  I'd like to be in Sucre before the end of my mission but I feel like I'm heading back to Cochabamba.

On Saturday we had an activity with all the missionaries in Potosì.   The idea was that lots of youth would come and we would go out in divisions to visit all of the less-active members in one of the wards.  The members failed us. Only one young man and maybe 4 women showed up.  We still did the activity with the branch presidency that was in charge.  I lucked out and the branch president sent me out with the only young man. Most of the missionaries just went with another missionary and a few went with the members of the presidency. It was pretty fun.  They gave us a list of 10 less-actives and we went out to look for them.  We found like 4 of the families.  I was with Gabriel who's 17 and is planning on leaving at the end of the year for his own mission. Chatting with him made me grateful for my own life again.  His parents are divorced and his mom has her own other family and he's had to move around a lot for his dad's job.  He's an awesome guy anyway though.

The activity was in Minero where Scott Schwarz served and I met the Orco family who he baptized.  They are doing awesome and Estevan Orco told me to tell Elder Schwarz "hi."

My lunch Pensionista and her daughter, Christina and Sole, say "hi" to you parents.

At church on Sunday 6 of the 7 recent converts were there.  Rodrigo, Valeria, Suzana, Erik, Pamela, and Claudia.  Just Jose Maria was missing.  Everyone's doing well.  Erik and Jose Maria are having the hardest time but really it's just that their job sometimes wants them to work on Sundays and they sometimes do.

 

almost half the missionaries in Potosi

Today we went to the mine.  It was really fun.  We'll have to go when you guys come.  The devil worshipping thing is kind of weird, we saw the tio statue where they sacrifice llamas and sometimes people. I really liked just walking around the tunnels.  Some parts are really tiny and we had to crawl.   Also they have a little train to move mineral and when you hear it coming you have to plaster yourself against the wall so you don't get smashed.  It's pretty crazy, they wouldn't let tourists in a place like that in the US.  Also the mine is massive.  If we didn't have the guide, I really don't think we ever could have found our way out.  There are so many tunnels that just twist in whatever direction.  We paid like 5 dollars apiece for a 3 hour tour. Our guide spoke English Spanish, Japanese, Quechua, and Portugueis and understands German.  Parts of the mine were super cold and other parts were super hot.

Enjoy the rest of your summer everyone.  You should read your Patriarchal Blessing after saying a prayer.  

Love,

Elder Howlett

P.S. 2 Corinthians 9:7