Elder Ben

Hey Family,

  Well this week has been an interesting one.  The work picked up slightly so that is always good.  We climbed to 13 lessons...so from 6 that sounds pretty good, but it is still just over half of what we were getting in the past.  We did end up putting someone on date though!  Her name is Rosalinda and she has been an investigator for about two and a half years now.  She has been taught everything and most of the stuff multiple times. We hadn't seen her for about a month, because in the past she wouldn't keep commitments and wasn't progressing at all,  and then last week she showed up to church on her own.  Turns out that she finally wants to know if this is what she needs to do in her life.  She has started to read the Book of Mormon again and said that she would start praying also.  She said if she got an answer to her prayer that she would prepare to be baptized on November 5th.  So that is great news!  I think since I have been here we have had 6 people on date, but they have all fell off for some reason or another.  One of our investigators moved back to Mexico pretty suddenly.  Got his address the day before he left though so maybe some other missionaries will be able to find him and his family down there.

This week Elder Wilkins has been pretty sick.  And one day it was so bad that he just had to stay in bed. Kind of hard to keep yourself busy all day when you are in the apartment.  Ended up reading most of the day though and relaxing.  By the end of last week he was feeling pretty good and we went over to a members house to have dinner. I think I mentioned in one of my previous letters that Elder Wilkins is allergic to peanuts.  Anyways the member assured us that there were no peanuts in the dinner and that he changed the recipe to have pumpkin seeds instead.  Elder Wilkins had about two bites when he put down his fork and said that we needed to go the the emergency room.  He started to have a hard time breathing and his throat was closing off.  So I spent my Saturday night in a hospital well my companion was stuck with shots, IV's and the whole bit. Quite adventures, but not something that I want to repeat.  We still aren't why he had the allergic reaction.  The member said that he made the whole meal by hand and there were no peanuts in it.  There was a special kind of chocolate in it though an it could be closely related to a peanut or something.

Also had an interesting dinner appointment on Sunday night.  So this member works in a Japanese restaurant and comes from Mexico, so you never know what he might cook that is weird to us with an American background.  We started to eat a beef curry and I had one bite of the beef before I knew something was different, so I spent the rest of the time dodging around the meet.  Turns out later I find out that it was beef tongue!  Ya, I knew something was different. Also fried up some eel. That wasn't as bad but I still had to get past the texture part of things.

Transfer calls come to us this Saturday. The likelihood of me getting transferred is pretty high right now, but I guess we will just wait and see.

McKay, your right we all have agency.  Sometimes I just want to see people use it for the good of them and their family's.  As you said no effort is wasted though. and I think I will see that more and more on my mission.  If nothing else I will be planting alot of seeds for the later missionaries.

 Well got to run.

  Elder Howell