2014-03-31 I'm officially over halfway done with my mission.

Hey Everyone,

This was an awesome week.  I'm having a blast.  I have a great companion, a wonderful ward, and everything is going very well.  

This week we had several less active members come to church.  One is a young man, Jhamil.  He also went with me twice in divisions this week to do visits.  He had his interview and received the Priesthood on Sunday.  That was really exciting.  He's also getting excited to go on a mission so that's good.

Now I'm officially over halfway done with my mission. At lunch, they smashed eggs on my head and threw flour on me.  Then for dinner I went with my companion to a restaurant in our area with really good juice.  I ate suprema de pollo.  It was a battered chicken with french fries and fried bananas.  The fried bananas were awesome.  I don't know what they'd  been seasoned with but it was really good.

Last Monday, we went to try a traditional Potosì soup, called K'alaphurka.  It's served with a hot lava rock in it so that it's boiling.  It was pretty cool.  It reminded me of the enchilada or taco soup from Zupas but super spicy. It was pretty good though.  After that, we went to a park and had a llama barbecue with the other missionaries from Potosì.  It was good.  And after that, we played soccer and I actually played pretty well.  It was the first time I've scored in a game here in months. I miss basketball.

Hermana Mercedes called me this week.  She told me that her family all went to the temple together and that they are all going to church regularly too.  That made me happy.

We've been working with the Millares family quite a bit the last few weeks.  Most of the family is pretty active except for the Dad who is completely inactive.  He did finally come to church on Sunday.  They are moving dirt out of their yard so they can build another room on their lot so we went to do service this week. We wheelbarrowed it out of their yard and into a truck which was a little hard since Potosì is so hilly. Wheelbarrows are much easier to control on flat ground.  Their recently turned 8 year old son, Sergio, got baptized on Saturday.

For the last couple weeks my companion and I have been getting up at 6:00 and going running to pick up youth for seminary.  It's been going pretty well.  So far we have 3 who weren't going before who are going regularly now. We just got a list yesterday of everyone who should be going so we will be able to try some new people tomorrow.  We are going to make breakfast for seminary on Fridays.  Last week my companion made Peruvian scones, called torrejas, so this week it's my turn to make french toast or omelets.  Not sure which yet.

I don't remember if I've talked to you about Savino Zunagua.  He's a 15 year old investigator and it's going really well with him. His dad does not want to talk to us but likes that we are teaching his son.  He is going to go with us to downtown Potosì next week to watch general conference.  This week he told us he finally believe he's received an answer that it's the true church.  He's a great investigator because he's always open an honest about what he thinks and he actually reads what we leave with him and he is really interested in making big changes to his life.

At the beginning of my mission I hated contacting people but I realized that I don't feel at all uncomfortable going up to strangers and talking to them now. 

On Sunday there was an activity for the young men and women.  They had to go looking for families to get clues and then I was the last person they had find.  When they found me I gave them a pamphlet and they had to go contact someone on the street to finish the competition.  The team that won did a really good job. I gave them the pamphlet and ran over to a 25ish year old woman and started to talk.   They came back with her name, phone number, and address and they'd invited her to General Conference and Natali is going to pick her up to go to the Sunday morning session.  I was really impressed.  The 3 person team is in the photo. Natali in the middle and Pablo to the right.  The person on the left has a really hard name and I don't remember what it is.  Pablo goes with us to do visits every once in a while and Natali is from the family that was our pensionista for the first week I was here.

Potosì is getting really cold.  It's weird but it's freezing cold in the shade and then the sun is so strong that it stays pretty warm in the sun.  I wear a coat and try to stay in the shade though so I don't get as sunburned. Its also very noticeable that we are at a ridiculously high altitude.  Every time we walk up a hill we are out of breath.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the spring.  You should all watch General Conference this weekend.  The prophet is going to talk so that's pretty important.

Love, 

Elder Howlett

P.S. Doctrine & Covenants121:36-37