New Companion for Ben

Family!!!

A new week has dawned yet again in the mission.  Last week nothing too exciting happened to report.  We keep on sifting through a bunch of people every week as we continue to find potentials and receive referrals.  We honestly don't even have a big enough mileage allowance on our car to drive as much as we would like to contact all of the referrals.  Our zone (stake of Renton) is huge and we have a hard time being everywhere we would like to be.  Seriously, you might be able to fit around 25 Utah-sized stakes in just this one.  We had a stake conference this last weekend and in it our stake president was released after 10 years of service!  The Hermanas did leave last week and that automatically gave us several new investigators, though we weren't able to get their area book until just two days ago and so had no idea where any of them lived or how to contact them. They have been teaching a couple for several months now and they both love the church.  They come every week that they can, and the only thing holding them back from baptism is a smoking habit. Although they are coming along really well on quitting as well. They are working towards being baptized in November, and we have high hopes that that goal will be achieved.  We still have yet to contact the rest of them and tell them that the Hermanas have left and that we will be teaching them.

We have been trying to work with a couple of less active families in the branch. It is slow going for some of them, but we did have a family night at the church this past Friday night and several of them showed up to play volleyball.

I am really glad that my companion is Elder Haro right now.  His dad is from Mexico and his mom is American, but he still has the Spanish appearance and so people automatically trust him more and let us talk to them even though he didn't know Spanish before his mission and grew up in Utah his whole life. It actually makes a difference to the work, I feel.

The work continues. Hasta la proxima semana mi familia

Elder Howell

 

100 New Missionaries Going to FL

Thanks for the photos, Mom!  It was fun to see Gabe and Joe as unhappy about pictures as I ever was.  Hahaha, I think that's a Howell family trait to evade the camera.  Garret and Courtney were looking fabulous!

This week was somewhat eventful.  I spent half of it in Jacksonville at a Leadership Training Meeting and had an absolute blast!  The Spirit was strong as we discussed the Doctrine of Christ (always do), obedience, and revelation through church attendance.  On Wednesday night while we were up there, I was assigned to work in the St. Johns area.  It was rather interesting returning to my old area, visiting with some of the people I taught a year and a half ago and looking through the area book at all the formers I had with Elder Summers and Mcfarland.  It was a productive evening though!  In 3 hours, we had 4 church tours lined up and committed two people to baptism!

We also had a stake conference this weekend here in Gainesville and were able to get several of our investigators to come. President and Sister Barry had been invited to be there, so they came down and spoke on the need for teaching the youth to live the Doctrine of Christ (faith, repentance, etc) in order to prepare them for missionary service. Just before them, we had a recently returned missionary speak and share his experiences of a mission in Peru.  One of our investigators who has been reading for a long time but holding out on any other commitments was overwhelmed by the Spirit during these talks and gained a witness that it's true!  YES!!!!

Well, that's about it for this week. Elder Chadwick and I are still plugging away.  President Barry was told by the church mission department to expect an additional 100 missionaries in the next few months; from 150 that we're at right now to 250-280.  I have no idea where we'll put that many missionaries, but I suppose most wards will be doubling up.  It's an exciting time to be in the work for sure!  Anyway, everyone that's already out here is gearing up to train this monster tidal wave of incoming elders and sisters.  Hopefully we'll be ready for it.

Much Love,

Elder M. Howell

Ben's Permanent Comp Goes Home

Family,

Well another week has come and gone.  I drove Elder Wilkins and another elder from the zone who were leaving yesterday to the mission home.  It is weird to see him go home after knowing him since day one in the field.  We had transfers today and I will be staying in Renton.  My new companion is Elder Haro.  We actually served together for a brief amount of time in Renton at the end of last year.  This is his last 6 weeks of the mission, and so yet again I am with a companion who will be going home soon. There is a new Spanish elder that came in today though. Pretty cool.  Elder Henderson (my old comp) will be training him.  Only problem is he also goes home in 6 weeks and the new training program is 12 weeks.  Not sure how that will work out.  A little bit of a surprise to us today was that the Renton Hermana area was closed down.  It really puts us in a pickle, because now we have a bunch of women that we will have to start to teach. This will require us to work really close with the ward so that we can have fellowship and be able to teach them.  They had juggled the thought around of closing the Renton Spanish Elders area down because the Hermanas have actually been seeing a tad bit more success then us.

Not too much to report about last week. The last several days was Elder Wilkins packing and deciding what he was going to take home and what he had to leave and saying goodbye to a lot of the members.  We did have a great lesson with a new investigator though.  He has been reading the Book of Mormon slowly by slowly.  He seems to be interested in the history of the church, how the church was started, pioneers moving west, etc.  We have still to see if this will lead to him actually investigating the church or if he is just a history type of guy.

Well that wraps up my week in a nutshell.  Thanks for keeping me in your prayers.

   

Elder Ben

      

Adrian Baptism in FL

Hi family,

This weekend was very nice. We had the baptismal service for Adrian, our investigator from Puerto Rico, and it turned out very well with lots of support from the ward.

We had transfers this past Wednesday.  Said goodbye to several of my former companions and a lot of good friends - 17 went home! Elder Fuller, Elder Marquez, and myself had a blast singing "Faith in Every Footstep" as a trio at the transfer meeting.  I'm not sure why, but my voice has gotten significantly higher in the last couple years.  As a senior in high school, I sang bass/baritone, now I'm most definitely a tenor and can't even approach those notes I used to hit with ease.

Benj, I loved your story about reaching that mission goal of 100/month!  Very inspiring.  Our mission could probably use something similar - we've plateaued for the last couple years and our goal is currently 60/month.  How many missionaries do you have in the Seattle Mission?

Since I didn't get an email from Mom this week, I'll assume that the family is in process of moving again.  Good luck; God bless!

--
Elder M. Howell

Washington Update

Family,

This week was another crazy week.  We had a lot of non-fun and fun experiences and I think that is just missionary work.  We haven't been able to teach the daughter of the member yet.  We went by several times and they were either gone or the dad was out of the house so we couldn't enter and teach.  We are going to continue and try and work on getting a good time to teach her along with the whole family present.  We were unfortunately dropped by the mother and her three kids this weekend.  She loves what we teach her and was looking forward to coming to church and having Sunday school for the kids.  Her husband though heard something bad about "the mormons" from his friend and told his family that they couldn't learn anymore.  The wife has been talking with him about what good things she has learned and we invited him to learn with his family so that he would know what the church was all about.  The wife said she was going to try and read the Book of Mormon with him, and we are going to go back in several weeks to see if his heart has been softened any.  That was our only investigator that was really interested in learning though, and now we are in a 100% searching and find mode.  I think the finding new investigators could also become a little harder as the presidential election draws closer.  With Romney's immigration laws that he wants to pass many Spanish people don't like him...and then don't want to listen to us, even though the church is a completely different thing.

 On the great note we had a wonderful zone conference on Thursday.  Because we reached the 100 goal in September President Larkin hiked Mt. Si (a tall mountain in our mission) to put an ensign to the mission at the top.  He wanted all of us to get the opportunity to hike part of it, so on zone conference we spent half the day hiking up this mountain, having a testimony meeting for all the departing missionaries (my companion included), and hiking back down.  We didn't go all of the way to the top, but it was great to get out into the mountains again.  It was the first time I have been hiking for a very long time and I loved it! 

Also we had general conference this weekend which was a huge spiritual boost as well. There was a pretty big shock wave that swept through the missionaries when President Monson announced the age changes on on when both the Elders and Sisters could start their missions.  I can see pros and cons of both of them.  I don't think it will be as big of a change for the elders as the sisters. Many elders already leave shortly after graduating high school because they are close to 19 anyways.  Some of my friends left 3 months after graduation, so the new rule may only cut off several months of those with birthdays later in the year.  We will see how much of an effect 19 year old sisters make though.  I am sure that we will see a huge increase of sister missionaries in the future, but I don't think I will even see an effect of this new rule in my missionary service.  This general conference was really powerful and I especially liked the first 2 sessions along with priesthood.  I loved President Uchtdorf's talk on enjoying what you are doing and not looking forward to the end and living so that you won't have regrets.  Part of that maybe because Elder Wilkins is really looking forward to getting home in a week.  We didn't have any investigators out to it (conference) which was a bummer.  We did try and round up some of the less active members to come and watch, but most of them were busy working and couldn't make it either.

Well it was a great week.  Sorry I don't have time to write more.  Thank you for everything.

Love ya,

Elder Ben

Baptism and Gators

Hi family!

I'm a wee bit chilly today.  The thermometer has dipped to 72 for the first time in many months and I'm thinking I might have to pull out a jacket soon.   BAHAHAHAHAHA!  I  love the fact that it is October and we're still in short sleeves!  There are some definite benefits to living in Florida.... Don't freeze too badly in Utah!  ;-)

This past week has been rather busy teaching Adrian and preparing him for his baptism.  4 days and counting!  Elder Chadwick is absolutely thrilled to be having the first baptism of his mission.  Trouble is, Adrian is a large man and the ward doesn't have any baptismal clothing large enough for him.  We're scrambling around trying to find something that will work. He also has a bum leg from a knife fight years ago, so we may have to get several of us in the water to baptize him as I might not be able to lift him up on my own!  =D

Conference this past weekend went very well!  We had spent most of this last week inviting people to come and passing out fliers that we'd made.  Saturday morning, we arrived at the stake center to find an inactive man waiting for us in his van....and he had brought a friend!!  Unfortunately, the local people had apparently forgotten that people still watch conference at the church and no one showed up to set up the projector.  With 5 minutes to spare, we were somewhat frantically calling around, and wouldn't you know....EVERYONE was out of town or said it was someone else's responsibility to work the projector.  Finally, I just grabbed one of the TVs from the church library, turned on the satellite system on my own, and rigged up a solution in the chapel in time to catch the first speakers.  (Whew!)  It was pretty exciting to hear the changes announced for missionary ages.  Like you, Mom, I think there will soon be a LOT more sisters in the field -  just about all of my female friends were married between the ages of 19 and 21, so this will probably open the way for many more women to serve missions than they would have in the past. Anyway, after the session, the friend that this inactive member brought approached us and said, "The next time you visit John, let me know.  I would like to learn more."  WOOT!   New investigator!  God is good!

Transfers are this week; I'll be staying here 6 more weeks to finish training Elder Chadwick, but then I'll certainly be gone.  Elder Fuller (one of my companions from last year) is going home and asked if we could sing together one last time before he goes.  We'll be pulling an accapella quartet version of "Faith in Every Footstep".  Trouble is, none of us are in the same zone, so we will only have a couple of minutes to practice all together before the transfer meeting begins tomorrow! May the force/grace be with us!

So you got to see the LSU vs Florida game, eh?  Yes, this is my hometown - it very literally shuts down on gameday. There were quite a few people tuning back and forth between conference and the game to stay up with both.  =P

Photos of the Week:

Front entrance to my apartment complex.  We live in luxury in this area!

A fun card that I randomly found on the ground. It made my day.

We went alligator hunting last P-day and found a bunch of wild gators and some weird species of turtle.

I love you all!

Elder M. Howell

 

100 Baptisms in WA

Family,

Gaby, Happy (late) Birthday!!!  I honestly can't believe that you are 17.  I hope you had a ton of fun.  USU football is always fun in the student section so I am sure it was a blast.  Joe and Gabe, way to both set PR in your cross country run. You both are doing great.  You still have two chances to set another PR.

 

This week was pretty crazy for the work in two ways. First off, we have had the goal in the mission to baptize 100 people in a single month for over 2 years now. It all started when a general authority said that it could be done if the missionaries in the mission purify their lives and are exactly obedient. The missionaries who first heard that promise have all gone home, which is kind of depressing to never see the goal fulfilled.  But we have seen huge changes in the mission.  The very first of the week last week we were at 67 baptisms, and we had a mission wide conference call with President Larkin telling us the goal could be reached and that he has seen the missionaries purify their lives and become obedient.  He then asked all the missionaries to go beyond the calling and sacrifice something extra this week and the Lord would bless us to reach our goal.  The closest we have ever come in the past two years is 88 baptisms. The whole mission just seemed to go crazy after that with working and finding people who were prepared and could be baptized and sacrificing small things to improve the work.  It was a crazy week, and we started to receive updates when ever someone was baptized.  Last night we finally reached and then passed our goal by baptizing 101 people in a single month!!!

On the down note, Elder Wilkins and I had an awfully hard week.  The investigator that we have been working with a lot over the past couple of weeks just suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. He is the one that wanted to get Sundays off of work so he could come to church.  We used to talk with him daily and have lessons with him several times a week. Then one day we just couldn't contact him and he doesn't answer his phone.  A little strange, but we are going to continue trying to get ahold of him this week.  We started the day Saturday with only having taught one investigator and the man that we taught wasn't even Spanish. Hahah, it was horrible.  We went out with determination on Saturday and ended up actually having several really good lessons.  One of them was with the lady and her three kids that we found last week.  She is interested in learning more and reading in The Book of Mormon. She is interested in attending the church as well, but unfortunately she wasn't able to make it this last week.

One thing that was a huge faith builder this week happened on the weekend though.  After having a hard week and even sacrificing to move the work forth in the mission, Elder Wilkins prayed that the Lord would bless us and that someone would show up at the church that day (Sunday) that would be ready to receive the gospel.  Church started and we didn't have anyone in our gospel principles class besides members and a couple people that the Hermanas are teaching (Elder Wilkins and I taught the class this past week).  We set down for the second hour in a combined priesthood and relief society meeting and I look over and there is a young women and her kid sitting with several members.  I scribble a note to Elder Wilkins and say that we NEED to talk to her asap after the class because I have never seen her in the church before and that she may be the answer to a prayer.  It turns out that she is actually the daughter of the members....but get this, she has never been baptized!!!  She just moved from Utah to here and will be attending our branch. Just crazy!  God will answer prayers when you have done all that you can.

Well not too much to report for this past week.

Con Amor,

Elder Ben