Hola de Seattle

Familia y Amigos,

Well I take back what I said in my last letter.  My p-days are really on Monday.  Just as a heads up from now on.

Well the first week is now coming to an end.  This week is historically one of the longest for greeny missionaries just because they are trying to adjust to everything...but for me it flew by! :)  We were constantly doing something and staying busy (Jacob you are right, there is never a down time). 
The branch here has really been having some internal conflict and for the last couple months has really been digressing in almost every area.  So this week we have been trying to visit alot of RCLA's (recent convert, less active) and just seeing if we can get people out to church again.  This is hard because everyone seems to have a grudge against someone else in the Branch and so refuses to come to church.  We have seen success with some of our investigators though this week. We ended up putting on on date for August 20th!!!  This next week we are going to try and find more new investigator family's to teach.  There is only one problem with teaching Spanish family's in Washington, they are only here for one reason....work.  They dedicate all their time to work and providing for their family that is is hard to even get in contact with them.  We have a couple of potential areas though to tract so we will see what happens.  My area is actually alot bigger then I first realized.  We cover a 15 mile wide strip of land starting from way up in north Seattle down into the Des Moines area.  Ya, no way we can cover all of this because the Spanish population is so spread out and with our limited car miles we really cant reach our whole area.

I haven't met and member or investigator yet that can say my name!  They always ask me how to say it.  Since in Spanish there is no "H" sound they really have a hard time with it and it usually just sounds like "owl".  So I am Elder Owl and have just started to introduce myself like that :) 

I had the opportunity to introduce my self during sacrament meeting yesterday and share my testimony.  I thought it went ok.  I think every  one could at least understand what I has trying to say even if my Spanish was not perfect.

There is no cure for maintaining your same weight here. Its great!!! Everyone is constantly asking if you want food, and even if you say "no, thank you" you will still be eating.  I have already tried some pretty good dishes in my first week.  My companion says that there is always time after the mission to loss the weight you gain :)  haha love the optimism on it.  One Elder here that is going home in 5 weeks gained 85 pounds on his mission!!!  Ya, you wont be recognizing me soon.

Yesterday Elder Wilkins and I were tracting when we tracted into an apartment that was having a beer party.  About 6 people totally drunk.  They recognized us as "The Mormons" though and they started arguing amongst one another on if they should let us in or not (it was a pretty heated argument for a minute and I thought a fist fight might occur).  Elder Wilkins and I quickly excused ourselves and said we would drop by another day.  One of them followed us and said he wanted to talk to us.  He ended up saying that he was in a bad situation with his life (obviously) and that he did not have a very good relationship with his family.  He said he wanted to change and respected us for what we did.  We said we would return latter and talk to him about how he can change.  I guess we will see how this next week goes for him.  Of course I only understood part of this conversation, Elder Wilkins translated it for me after.  I can kind of understand Spanish, but drunk Spanish is alot more slurred so I definitely needed a translator.

 

  The work continues

   Con amor,

    Elder Owl 

 

Ok so my mail should all be sent to the mission office in Bellevue and then they will just forward it on to me from there.  So my address is now:

Elder Benjamin Howell

Washington Seattle Mission

10675 NE 20th Street

Bellevue WA 98004