2013-11-25 sometimes when you ask…they tell you that they should have time next year.

peach juice and milk

Hey Everyone,

I got letters this week from Grandma Lori, Neka, Emily Atwood, Lauren Mcmullin and a package from Grandma Marie and a photo book with all old pictures.  Thank you everyone!

My companion has really bad headaches at least every other day.  We still don’t know what the problem is but we got an MRI this week.  I’m figuring out how Bolivian insurance works pretty well and I’m getting to know the [mission] president’s wife since she’s in charge of medical stuff.

Junior and Gerardo--they are the youth who always go
with us on visits.  They are both deacons and both do a
really good job in our lessons and they are good about
inviting and bringing inactive youth to church and mutual.

There is a family who we started teaching over a month ago but then lost contact with for a while. This week we ran into them on the street and they asked us why we hadn’t been by to visit them for so long.  When I asked when we could teach them they said, “tomorrow” (always a good sign, sometimes when you ask when you can visit them again they tell you that they should have time next year.)  When we went for the appointment, the mom was there with her 2 kids, her mother, and she’d invited 2 friends to come listen too. Her mom, without us even asking anything, just started telling us that she felt that everything we had taught about Joseph Smith and the Restoration was true.  The people of Bolivia are incredibly open and ready to believe but they have a really hard time acting. None of them came to church on Sunday even though they all said they were going to come. I’m really excited to be teaching them though and I feel like they will probably be baptized all together as a family.

 

In our zone meeting we played a game where we put a lot of cheeto-like things in that guy's mouth.
The lesson was there can be too much of a good thing.

Victor (not sure if I’ve talked about him before) came to church yesterday for the 2nd time in a row after not going for 2 years.  During the week he took us to visit his inactive aunt and she also came on Sunday with him. He had his interview yesterday and is going to be ordained a teacher next Sunday. He’s also inviting all of his inactive family over to his house on Wednesday so we can have a family home evening with them.  I’ve met several members of his family now and they are some of the nicest and friendliest people I’ve ever met.  I love visiting them.

 For dinner one night Hermana Mercedes just made a
bunch of pastries.  It was really good.

Yesterday there was a broadcast for the northwest South America area about how ward council should work effectively in the work of salvation.  The entire ward council was supposed to go but only the Relief Society president and the young single adult leader showed up from our ward.  Our ward leaders aren’t very interested in being involved in the work of salvation. The mission president always tells us we can’t work effectively without the help of the members so it’s frustrating.  We, us and the sister missionaries in our ward, spent almost the whole last transfer trying to get the ward involved through the leaders.  Since that hasn’t been successful, we came up with a new idea that’s working a lot better. With the sister missionaries, we put together a fun lesson that we are going to try teach

Sonso--fried yucca with cheese.  It's like a potato cake.

ing to all of the families in our ward.  We talk about the importance of the work of salvation and show some of the short videos the church has done recently about how members and missionaries should work together.  Then we play a game where the missionaries sing a hymn while the all of the family members write down names of people they know who aren’t members.  Then we see who got the most and give them a candy bar.  Then we talk about the importance of prayer and the Spirit in sharing the gospel and ask the head of the household to pray for guidance about who in their list they can share the gospel with.  So far we’ve taught the lesson 3 times and it has worked really well.  We ask everyone to choose one name from their list and set a goal to talk with that person during the week.  From there it has always turned into the family just listing of everyone we can go visit with them.  Yesterday we got 8 references from the lesson.  I hope it keeps going that well.

(I’ve heard some rumors about the cambios on Sunday and if it’s true Elder Mero is coming to be the zone leader for my area.  I sure hope it is true.)

One night it rained harder than I've ever seen in my life.  The rain here reminds me of when we went to Disney
World during the summer and it would rain really hard in the afternoon but just for a little while.  When it rains
here is starts suddenly and rains heavy but doesn't last very long usually.  The lightning here is awesome too.
 It sometimes looks like a big net of lightning that just covers the whole sky.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!  They don’t celebrate it here so it will be a normal day for us.

Love,
Elder Howlett

P.S. 2 Ne 9:38-41

 

SMILE