2013-05-20 Hiking in the mountains above Cochabamba

Hey Everyone,
First of all, my companion says “hi” and he’s watching to make sure I write it.

We are using ridiculously slow computers again so I don’t know if I’ll be able to attach any pictures.  If not, I’ll have a lot for next week.  Actually, I think I will be allowed to send them later today.

This was a really good week.

We went way up in the mountains to find the house of the father of an investigator who is being baptized on Saturday.  My companion has a worse sense of direction than I do (I’m pretty sure that that’s not possible), so we got lost for an hour and a half.  It was actually really fun though because we were just hiking way up in the mountains and there were really cool views.  At one point we were at the very top and could see down onto the other side.  Eventually we found it and taught him a lesson.

The next day we went back to do service with the 4 other elders in the district.  We are building a brick house for him because his old house is adobe and water gets in when it rains.  Afterward, his daughter made us all lunch and we sat in a little adobe hut with a tin roof to eat because it started to rain.  It was awesome.  We could see down onto all of Cochabamba valley from there too (pictures to follow).  I love it when it rains here!  It’s rained quite a bit this week.

I’m super excited that we got our first baptism commitment from someone I’ve known since the first contact. It’s actually 4 kids who we found door knocking one day. We met the 2 girls that day at the door and scheduled a follow up.  At the follow up visit, we met the 2 boys and their grandma who they live with.  She is an inactive member.  We invited them to church and the grandma said she couldn’t go this week but would next week.  She said the kids could go though.  On Sunday, we stopped by and picked up the 4 kids (13, 13, 11, and 7 turning eight this month) and all went to church via trufi.  I don’t think that would have been ok at home but kids just do stuff on their own here in general.  We had 10 investigators at church so I sat with the 4 kids and my companion with the rest.  They were pretty well behaved but the 7 year old was a little restless at times.  One of them was worried during the sacrament that the water was alcohol. (It’s not.)  They stayed all 3 hours.  I’m especially excited for the oldest one who really seemed to enjoy church a lot and seems very committed.

I washed clothes by hand for the first time this week.  It took forever and I really hope I can find someone who wants to do it for money (who could have seen that coming?!).  Elder Chavez taught me and like I mentioned, he is awesome.  He is polite and has a good sense of humor and he is an amazing missionary.

I’ll write more tonight.  (We didn’t hear any more from Elder Howlett today.)

Love,

Elder Howlett