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