Seattle Update

Mom,

I was excited to hear that Daniel did so well at his race.  It is kind of hard to think that he was so close and I couldn't see him. Haha, he was literally about 8 miles away from me...

It is nice to hear that Corey is having his farewell on Sunday.  It is going to be 100% different in Africa, and I am excited to hear of his experiences.

Hey, could you send me Mike's home address? It would be nice to write him one of these days. I can't believe that they got into a wreck on the highway and everyone walked away with only minor injuries.

It seems like the church is coming out with a lot of new approaches to contact people.  The mormon.org experience was pretty good for us in this mission. Although we didn't see the full impact of it because it wasn't in Spanish, the mission in total had a good use of it.  We were able to see the results of it and compare it to other places in the states, and Seattle, Washington has seen the most success!  A lot of good members referring their friends and people being interested about the billboards.  It is cool to hear about the Facebook approach.  We heard that it was being piloted in several missions and it was cool to hear that McKay is getting a chance to use it.

 As far as Renton is concerned, the branch is doing well.  The Hermanas had 2 baptisms this past week, and Marco is looking forward to his own baptism this next Friday!  He was able to attend both of the baptisms this past week and one up in Bellevue the weekend before that.  He is progressing well, and we are excited for him.  I can't help but think that we almost lost him this past week though.  We made a mess up of not seeing him about 5 days in a row because he lives out of our area and other things came up. Totally not supposed to happen, and it was our fault. One day we were eating lunch, and both Elder Mitchell and I got the same feeling that we needed to go and see him.  We left right after to go to his house, and we found him in a very down and depressed attitude.  He isn't in very good situations right now, and he was really questioning what God was doing.  Using scriptures and the gospel, we were able to give him excitement for the future, but more then anything, he just needed us to be there at that moment for someone to talk to.  It was a huge testimony builder for me on why you have daily contact with investigators...yes, Satan is real and will seriously get in the way of any spiritual progression anyone tries to make.

I think Marco is the only investigator right now that is really putting the effort forth to learn the gospel.  Others have interest in learning but don't really make it anything of a priority.  Other things seem to always come up to distract them in their lives and make it very difficult to get them on any progression.  We seem to get a lot of referrals from other missionaries that are tracting though and run into Spanish speaking people, so I know that there is the potential in this area to be great.

Well got to run.  Love ya Family,

Elder Ben Howell