Facebook Missionary

Hello Family!

This week was perhaps the most distracted week I have ever had in missionary work.  About two weeks ago, we announced in Priesthood meeting that we would need a ride to transfers and several people said they likely could and would get back with us.  Time went by, but by early this last week, all had dropped, so we spent all day Tuesday scrambling to find a ride to transfer meeting the next day who could take all four of us, two bikes, and luggage.  We were finally able to arrange to have the ward mission leader's wife take us to Jacksonville which the mission president allowed since all four of us elders were together. So on Wednesday, we took the 3.5 hour drive to Jacksonville where we met our trainees and spent the rest of the day in training/leadership meetings before coming home just in time to sleep.

I was about to write about the rest of the week, but it essentially wound up being a lot of meetings with mission leaders, ward leaders, training conference calls, facebook conference calls, weekly planning, etc. 

You heard that right. On Friday I was one of 30 new elders assigned to be a Facebook missionary by President Barry.  I think he said he was sending you a letter just so that the family/ward at home don't think I'm being disobedient for being online.  Lol.  Anyway, it sounds like this is a test project that Salt Lake is piloting in 6-8 missions around the world and we just happen to be one of them.  There are now about 60 missionaries in my mission who are assigned to do online work each day.

My new companion is Elder Jordan Cancel from Provo, UT!  He's fresh from the MTC, but he served a 12 week mini-mission in St. George to see if he wanted to do this for 2 years, so he does have a little bit of experience behind him.  It sounds like Utah mission work is a lot different from South-Eastern mission work though.  Definitely a lot more tracting here!  =D  Oh yeah, his family is from Puerto Rico and he knows a little bit of Spanish, so this could be really handy for when we knock into latinos!

Judy is still on for baptism.  Other than that, we haven't been able to contact any of our other investigators this week, but we should have a good idea of what progress has been made by tonight's end!

I'm sorry to hear Richard died; I knew him a little bit too, but yes, I do know his grandson, Elder Chadwick a little bit.  I've never served around him, but I've seen him at meetings and such.

It's good to hear that the Howell legacy continues on with Daniel's supreme record setting running abilities!  Wahhooo!  USU will have his name on the boards for quite a while I think.  I've never even heard of making Italian tile or granite out of concrete before, but it sounds pretty cool.  Hopefully Dad will get a chance to use that soon.

Tell Corey good luck on his mission for me!  Africa, eh?  That's way neat!  Grandma says Logan hopes to be in the MTC by summer's end as well, so the family could have a whole crew of missionaries out at the same time!

Well, my email time is up and I have to go poke around on Facebook now and try to figure out this new layout and all the options they have implemented in the last year. (This FB elder thing still seems really weird, but hopefully it will turn out to be useful in teaching people here.)

I love ya'll!

Elder M. Howell