2013-07-22 miracles happen for me too

Hey everyone,

This was a pretty awesome week.  We got 8 ward missionaries called on Sunday and I’m excited to work with them.  Most of them are priests.

I woke up on Tuesday feeling the sickest I have in the entire mission and was really worried about it because we had some important appointments that I didn’t want to miss.  I said a prayer that morning and when it was time to go to the district meeting, I suddenly felt almost completely better and we were able to visit all of our appointments that day.  It is incredible the help we have from God.   My understanding of God´s power has grown substantially since I’ve been here.  I’ve always believed that God has the power to do anything but I never really expected to see miracles.  The people here expect miracles and they happen.  I’m learning that when I have the same faith that the Bolivians have, miracles happen for me too.

We also had a great experience with one of the families we are teaching.  We’ve been teaching them for almost 2 months and one of the biggest obstacles has always been that the 16 year old son never wanted to listen to us and didn’t want his family to listen to us either.  However, this week he came to sacrament meeting alone and asked us to visit just him.  When we visited him he told us that since his family began to pray, his life and his relationship with his family has just been happier and more peaceful.  He is excited to learn more.  The next time we visited him he had read everything we had left him and was prepared to discuss it.  This was probably one of my favorite experiences so far in the mission.

The Flores Family is great. I think I’ve written about them before but they told us all about their conversion this week.  They were baptized less than a year ago.  Before that their life was really a mess.  The dad was a heavy drinker and drove a trufi for his job.  Since he was too drunk to work a lot of the time they never had enough money.  The wife worked all day and when she came home she took the trufi and drove it at night with Arthur her son who was at 11 at the time.  Arthur is kind of a rebel now but did a lot for his family during that time. He cleaned the trufi up and got it ready to go every day for when his mom got home.  Since he was always in the trufi he learned how to drive and as an 11 year old, when his dad was drunk in the city and his mom was stuck at work, he would go pick up his dad in the trufi and bring him home.  The two daughters in the family were just never at home.  One of the daughters had a friend who is a member and she started to go to mutual with her though.  She really enjoyed it and started going to church.  She brought the missionaries to teach the family and in about 3 months they had completely turned their lives around.  Now they are my favorite family in the ward. The wife takes vacation days to come to church on Sundays and the husband is careful not to travel on Sunday so he can go to church too.  They are planning on getting sealed in September and I hope I’ll still be here to go to the sealing.  Also when you and dad come to pick me up they said we can go to their house for an anticucho barbecue. (Those who know me are laughing uproariously at this.)  They are also the family that does our laundry every p-day.  We go in the morning and then eat breakfast with them while the clothes wash.  It’s awesome to see how happy they are now as members of the church.

Is Liz going to the temple? Because she should.  Also, tell Liz to email me from her own email.

This past p-day we played hearts and drank mate.  It really made me miss playing pinochle.

Why haven’t I heard from any of my siblings for ages?

Cambios are this Sunday and I’m afraid I might leave.  My companion is friends with one of the secretaries who hears about plans for cambios and I guess I’m being considered to go train in a different area.  I really hope that’s not what happens and I get to stay here with Elder Mero. Everything is just going really well and I love the ward here.  Also I heard they will be opening an area in the Chaparre rainforest this cambio but at least to start, no gringos will be able to go because it is more dangerous.  I hope that changes before the end of my mission and I get to go.

I have to go but have an awesome week everyone!

Love,
Elder Howlett

P.S.  Romans 1:16

P.P.S.  (from last week)  Joshua 1:9

P.P.P.S.

I have not found a laser that will pop a balloon but I haven’t stopped looking.

The taser hurt worse than the shower.  It was so low power that you couldn’t even see the electricity arc anymore, but it turns out that it can still be powerful without seeing the electricity.

We did get the 10 baptismal dates.  We have 14 right now.  Our entire zone did really well with that goal.  In 1 week we more than tripled investigators with baptismal dates.  As a zone we have over 250 now.

I wrote back to Maddie when I got the letter in the CCM.  If she’s written me since then I haven’t gotten it.