Companions & the Work

It has taken quite a while for me to adapt to calling everyone "elder" or "brother/sister" so-and-so instead of using their first names.  Lol, that was probably the toughest thing to adjust to the first week in the MTC.  I do apologize for spacing to provide the update on my new companions. Here's the brief run-down:

• Elder Scott Mcfarland - from Santa Clara, California.  His story is pretty similar to mine. Got into the church when he was 21, put in his papers, and came out here just before his 23rd birthday.  He's now 24 and only has a couple transfers left, but he always sidesteps the topic whenever one of the members ask him how long he has left.  I think he is just super focused on the work and doesn't want to be distracted by thoughts of home.  Either that, or he is just in denial that the mission eventually ends.  =P  This man is a people person though!!!  He can read people inside and out and always has just the right question that will open them up and get them talking.  It's very awesome because once people start getting real and talking about God, the Spirit is that much more present and seems readily available.  He has been in leadership ever since his second transfer when they put him as a trainer and he says I can probably expect the same. Not quite sure how I feel about that, but we are pretty tight.
• Elder Nathan Summers - from Rexburg, Idaho.  He's been out in the field for about 9 months, but has spent more time in leadership than not.  He's a very serious man, but he also has a very funny streak of sarcasm that he uses all the time. The best part is, that he has an awesome poker face - it took me quite a while to figure out when he was being serious or sarcastic, but he also bursts out with wild humor sometimes - mostly when training greenies.  :)  Elder Summers is definitely more quite than Elder Mcfarland or I, but he usually has some pretty good thoughts/input.

Basically, these two are the best!  Perhaps that's why they are the zone leaders, but I'm glad I'm training with them.  Both are very intent on the work and are very dedicated and they definitely keep me focused.....except during prep time when Elder Mac is practicing his golf strokes inside and Elder Summers is distracting us with snarky comments during nightly planning.  The trio experience is fun, but I don't have any experience as a normal duo, so I'm not sure how it compares.  We get to do triple splits though twice a week with the members, so we get a LOT accomplished on those nights when we can visit three times as many people in an evening.

So this week was a bit slow compared to our first week together.  My companions had a bunch of zone responsibilities to take care of, and I actually ended up being traded off to other companionships in the area. I won't lie - "run tracting" with the other elders in the middle of the day was some of the hottest, sweatiest work I have ever done.  Basically, we run from house to house to ensure  that most of our time is spent actually talking with people instead of walking the road.  Super fun though!  We can tract a neighborhood in about half the time and we brought in a couple new good contacts out of it.  In the words of Jacob's sales terminology, we bageled this week though.  We only ended up with about half as many lessons as my first week here and a lot of slammed doors.  The ones we did have were pretty sweet though. In particular, we encountered a woman in our living community who moved to Florida from Guatemala a few years ago to help her deaf daughter get an education.  She was previously Catholic, but dis-associated herself from that once she got to the States.  She is eating up the Book of Mormon (in Spanish) and we have had a couple of very good meetings with her. We have high hopes that she will be accepting baptism this week and re-igniting her relationship with God.  Another one that stood out this past week was meeting with a young woman who's boyfriend joined the church a few months ago.  She saw how it changed his life around and stood him back on his feet and she wanted to know what was what and if it could do the same for her. She has met with the missionaries a couple of times before and is really in the midst of a lot of life changes right now to shape her life to the gospel.  We reviewed Word of Wisdom and chastity this week with her - she really struggled with those, but the Spirit was there and she knew it, so she committed to living the gospel standard and has been solid so far.  She had also brought another friend with her to that lesson and this friend is totally living the carnal side of life, but super curious about what we do. She has absolutely no concept or knowledge of God and soaked up everything like a sponge whenever we directed a bit of our discussion to her, so we have high hopes that we'll be able to make progress with her as well in the near future.

I'm also very excited for Benj - two weeks!!!  That's crazy.  It means I've already been out for a month....which is even more crazy!  Gah, lol, time flies, but it is so much fun.
So, I'm not sure what it is about me, but the bugs sure love me here.  My companions really get a hoot out of the fact that I am constantly swarmed with little biting creatures while they are standing right next to me and are hardly bothered.  ....I'm thinking that the secret sauce is my sweet vegetarian blood.  ....or maybe it's my variety of soap.  Whatever it is, I need to figure it out soon!

On Saturday, we had a dinner appointment with the Amatangelos.  They are a Greek/Italian family, so for our meal we were doing the Passover in Italian style.  Lol, I'm not quite sure how those two mix, but it was fun.  Instead of things like bitter herbs, they used a type of olive that is bitter/sour.  They also had these large crackers/flatbread made of "matza".  It was definitely a memorable experience.  Their son wants us to come back on some P-day and go fishing with them in their private lake that is stocked with huge bass and other swimming critters, so we may take them up on that sometime.

Oh, right, this first transfer, I am in one of the wealthiest areas.  A lot of the places we tract are living communities, but we also have some very wealthy families and homes that we encounter.  So yes, this family did have a private lake.  Then again, there are standing bodies all over in this area, so maybe it's not quite such a big deal down here as it would be in Utah!  =D

Sunsets are gorgeous here!!!  I rarely have my camera with me, so I've missed some very picture perfect evenings, but the green lush jungles/forest combined with the awesome sunset colors are fantastic.

Well, time to run again. Weekly shopping and laundry calls my name.
Love,
Elder Howell (aka, McKay)

Spanish Moss - grows everywhere, but evil stuff.

A fortress in St. Augustine - the historical district is the oldest European settlement in America.

Sunset from the car window

A Flower

My Companions and I

My favorite new statue in St. Augustine.  :)

McKay's Report Home

First off....Mom, I DO NOT give you permission to use Alma 39:3 as my mission scripture.  After much ponderation and soul searching (maybe 3 minutes) I chose Alma 31:34-35.  Not quite as fun, but hopefully will make me seem a bit less apostate than your choice.  ;)

As for P-day, yes, I made it!  It's hard to believe a whole week has gone by....actually, four weeks. Craziness.  Anyway, yeah, time flies. I had no idea that President and Sister Barry were going to be emailing you photos and my address, so I was super shocked when I got two actual letters in the mail (both this morning) before I had even sent my address home.  I guess I have no need to do that now.

Ok, so rewind a little bit; my last few days in the MTC were a blur. I got both care packages - one from Mom and one from the Monastery - both on the same day.  Every one else in my zone was super jealous, but I spread the goodies among my district, so the jealousy was somewhat reduced.  The night before I left, my zone was also having a Jedi/Sith night!  (Bwahahahaha!  Star Wars is everywhere -- even in God's work!)  The MTC bookstore sells this type of pencil lead that glows when you take a photo of it with the flash on so it looks like a lightsaber.  We had lots of fun simulating things and I, of course, could not pass up the opportunity to show my dark side (see attached photo).  The last Sunday night fireside there before flying out was provided by the BYU Men's Chorus and they did a stellar job.  President gave us permission to clap and cheer, so we really raised the roof after a few numbers.  They shipped us out at 4am Monday morning and we were on a plane to Atlanta by 7.  We then caught the connecting flight to Jacksonville later in the afternoon.  Just as a quick story -- Florida is no where near as bad with the "Southern" accent as Georgia.  I tried to buy a pizza slice in the Atlanta airport and had to ask 3 times what the cashier was saying when she wanted to know if I wanted a drink with my slice!

Florida....is going to be fun!  I stepped off the plane and it was 93 degrees and very humid here.  IN MID APRIL!!!  I was very glad when I could shed my suit coat after the first day.  We work in short sleeves almost the entire time.   when I was picturing Florida, I was thinking of a very tropical place with palm trees...nice beaches...sun....etc.  Well, that may be true in some parts of Florida, but not Jacksonville. My first area is in St. Johns/St. Augustine in the JAX South zone (also known as "Zion" - the most productive zone in the mission).  This city is quite literally built on a swamp.  I have never seen so much water in my life and have suspicions that if a high tide comes in the whole state will be under water.  Oh, and the hardest part to get used to is  that the tap water TASTES LIKE SWAMP!  No kidding. It also smells like swamp, so finishing a shower is very interesting if you don't use deodorant afterwards.  :P   But, yes, as a result, we do have a few palm trees here, but it is mostly dense jungle forest, algae, and a fun thing known as Spanish Moss. Spanish Moss grows on just about every green tree here and looks pretty cool, but beware!  The stuff is filled with chiggers!  As a result, I will not be doing much tree climbing while I am out here.  :)

People are fun!  ...and we encounter all sorts in this missionary business.  We tracted into a guy the other day who is convinced that the world is going to end on May 21, 2011 (yep, that's like 4 weeks away!).  He called us to repentance and shoved a bunch of fliers in our hands before slamming the door on us.  I have also never seen so many churches in one area in my life!!!  There are literally churches on every turn of the road and hidden in the jungles.  There is one Catholic church that we drive by every day that has a life-size golden Jesus hanging on a wooden cross by the road and my companions yell "APOSTASY!!" inside the car every time we go by.  But, as always, there are some people really prepared to hear the message.  My companions and I have had some amazing experiences together where the Spirit just shows up in the middle of a lesson and really delivers the truth home - both to us and to them.  We've personally been able to extend baptismal invitations to two people this week and had them accepted both times.  One of them is "soft" though and doesn't seem quite as committed as the other; almost everyone down here has already been baptized at some point or other into one of the various churches.

I've also been able to be in several different types of lessons with a few different elders this week.  Since my companions are Zone Leaders, they have a bunch of other responsibilities and I get to work with other elders frequently. I've already come to see the difference between Bold, but overbearing, and Loving/Understanding, but not firm enough.  Hopefully, I can find the middle ground in my own teaching style while allowing the Spirit to work through me.  I really like the Bold approach, but I watched one elder who used it too much and completely blew past the Spirit.

One of the most fun experiences was last Wednesday evening.  I'd been in the field for a day and a half and my ZL companions had to arrange a split.  So they sent me with a member guy to go hit up some appointments.  Lol, I'm a totally new missionary, don't know anyone, and suddenly I'm the senior comp.  Thank goodness for "greenie fire" -- we'd just come off a sweet lesson and I was totally pumped and didn't mind it at all.

A few more fun things:

1) There is no such thing as a straight road in Jacksonville. I suspect that it is because of all the standing water and the roads just kind of weave in between each new lake, but I get very turned around in these suburbs and usually can't tell north from south unless it's late evening or we have the GPS with us.

2) This mission has its own unique slang. The most common ones are:

"gators" - referring to investigators
"zebra" - a companionship that has one English elder and one Spanish elder
"lame" - a person that is not very spiritually minded or proactive in keeping commitments
"sweet" - the opposite of lame.
"throwdown" - being bold and being very upfront in telling an investigator what's what.
And then the most common mission expletive is "junk" followed closely by "stuff". 

3) People down here can be rather scandalous. I suppose it's a lot more understandable with the heat, but even a lot of the members dress down.  We were at a restaurant called The Firehouse getting sandwiches this morning and a woman walked in without any pants on. We elders all looked at each other and walked out as soon as we had our food.

Gargh, my computer time is up and I didn't get to respond to any of your questions.  Gotta go.  I am in a pretty wealthy area right now, so I'm not hand washing my clothes, but I know I'll probably be doing that at some point if I get into Interlachen or some of the slum areas.  Don't worry about me -- this mission life is the best!  Thanks for staying in touch!  Tell Amber congrats from me and don't die in the car with Gabe!!  If I know him, he'll have a hod rot car by the time I see him again!  :P

Love you all!
Elder Howell

PLEASE NOTE MCKAY HAS A NEW ADDRESS!!!!!

McKay's in the mission field and his new address is:

Elder McKay Howell
739 Scrub Jay Drive
St. Augustine, FL 32092

From the Jacksonville Mission Home

Dear family of Elder Howell,

We are happy to send the good news that your missionary has arrived safely to the Florida Jacksonville Mission.  What a great joy and privilege it is to greet each missionary as they come off the plane in Jacksonville.  The smiles on their faces showed their excitement and readiness to be here.  We promise to take good care of your missionary.

Your son arrived with 2 other missionaries and they have enjoyed a dinner together at the mission home, have been interviewed by President Barry and were trained by the assistants. We have taken pictures and I have attached a picture of him with President Barry and I.  As you can see he is well and happy although a little tired. We also took a group picture which you can view later this week on our blog at:

                          www.floridajacksonvillemissionnews.blogspot.com

You are welcome to check this blog often to catch a glimpse of your missionary and find out what is going on in this mission.

Elder Howell will be able to e-mail home on Preparation Day which is each Monday.  He will let you know where he has been assigned to serve.  (Just a reminder ... when Monday happens to fall on a national holiday, those who use the public libraries will not have access to a computer, therefore, they usually email on Tuesday instead.) 

Your missionary is about to make an eternal difference in the lives of others.  We hope you will be encouraged and comforted by this quote by President Lorenzo Snow: “There is no mortal man that is so much interested in the success of an elder [sister] when he is preaching the gospel as the Lord that sent him to preach to the people who are the Lord’s children.”

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for all you have done to prepare Elder Howell to faithfully serve a mission.   We look forward to getting to know him as we serve our Heavenly Father here in the Florida Jacksonville Mission.

Please accept our love and gratitude for trusting him to us and more importantly to the Lord.

May God Bless You,

President James W. Barry and Sister Marilyn T. Barry

Elder McKay -- MTC Week #2

Hello Familia!

Yet another crazy week at the MTC. And yet...it all blends together. The first few days here seemed to drag on extraordinarily long, but now they are flying by - we only have 3 more days here!  Yep, that's right, we got our travel plans a couple days ago; Elder Kiracofe and I fly out to Atlanta, Georgia then to Jacksonville at 4am on Monday. So I guess this is my last P-day here at the MTC. It seems kind of odd that we will only be here two and a half weeks total when a lot of people have to be here 9-12 weeks. Some elders going to Japan got delayed due to the earthquakes/nuclear plant meltdown etc going on, so they are being reassigned, but will end up being here for a total of 14 weeks.  Which makes me very happy indeed that I won't be here much longer!  This place is great, but I'm ready to begin! I can't wait to bunny hop an alligator on my bicycle! I can't wait to bunny hop an alligator on my bicycle!

Hmmmm, well, this week was uneventful for the most part. We watched conference all together this last weekend - let me just say that with 3000 elders and sisters packed into the gym, it gets beastly hot and stuffy!  We were very glad that they relaxed the rules of wearing suit coats a few minutes into each session.

We got a few inches of snow on Monday (I think) and Elder Arnold (from Mississippi) and Elder Harris (from New Zealand) were very surprised. They had never seen/played in snow before and were having a blast making missionary snowmen and throwing snowballs everywhere.  Hahaha, poor Elder Arnold will be in Anchorage, Alaska for the next two years - Hopefully he doesn't freeze!

Aha! I have an awesome experience from this week. So last Friday, one of the sisters in my district was feeling queasy and vomiting most of the day and finally asked for a blessing later on in the evening. So one of our instructors and I gave her a blessing of healing. Five minutes later, she sprinted out the door, threw up one more time and then felt perfectly fine for the rest of the day. God is great!  The situation repeated itself Sunday night - another sister began having serious pain with a kidney stone so she was given a blessing and then taken to the hospital. She started feeling better a short while later and the doctors were unable to find anything wrong with her and sent her back.

Well, I think those were the highlights. Benj, be sure that you bring a bleach pen!  It is unreal how often white shirts attract....everything!  Lol, it is a necessity that unfortunately I forgot to bring. Thankfully, others were prepared to help out. Mom, I got your letter, but I forgot to bring it with me to the computer lab, so I'll have to write a real letter to respond to anything you wrote me.  You know how my memory is.  =P

My time is up; gotta go. Love ya!

Elder Howell

Elder McKay Howell -- MTC Week #1

Hi Mom and family!

Life here at the MTC is great!  I'm probably only saying that because it has been one week and I have not yet come to think of this as "spirit prison" like some of the language elders. Then again, I'm already a third of the way through my stay here while some of these guys are here for 12 weeks!  Lol, then again, a lot of the elders who have been here for ages also call this the "Missionary Temptation Center" as it gets old looking at swarms of suits and ties day after day and any sister walking by is a welcome reprieve. I'm glad I only have a short stay.  :)

I think Daniel would love this place based only on the food. The cafeteria is all you can eat and they usually have three or four different options on each meal as well as a salad/wrap bar (which has been a life-saver for me) and desserts with everything. I always feel full here. Ugh.  Thank goodness for gym!

So, interesting stories:

1.  Mom may have already told you this, but they made me district leader on my first day here. Which basically means I check the mail and attend a bazillion additional meetings as well as write weekly district reports.  Ah well, good thing I'm used to sitting at a desk because I sure get a lot of it here.

2.  The Teaching Resource Center (TRC) is the bomb!  Basically, it is volunteers from the community coming in to be "investigators" for us to practice with.  We had a really awesome old guy the other day and spent about 40 minutes with him and have a return appointment for later this week and I'm really looking forward to that.  The practices and actual simulations are my favorite part about being here. Actually being in Florida is going to be sweet!

3.  Boys will be boys, no matter where they are  other day, some of the elders from our zone decided to pull out the rubber stretch bands that we were given for personal work-out time.  They then started firing a hacky sack down the hall of our residence building using the band kind of like our water balloon launchers. This thing was fast!!  The hacky sack was whistling down the halls smashing into things (they dented a heater), and then they decided to switch over to launching candies. Lol, I must admit, it was kind of funny when jolly ranchers and tootsie pops were exploding on the wall across from my door.  One of the guys decided to tease the others and would jump out daring them to hit him. He ended up with three welts the size of grapefruit on his back, shoulder, and behind from a hacky sack.  Crazy kid.  The church must be true or it would have a hard time growing on the efforts of 19 year old boys, I think.  =P

4.  When we got here, our room had been totally disregarded!  They had provided us with keys, but no pillows, sheets, bedding...anything!  And our room is the coldest one on the floor!  So we had to scround and scrape to come up with stuff.  Made for an interesting few nights until we could come up with stuff.

5.  We watched the Joseph Smith, prophet of the restoration video on Sunday night after ice cream. It was really quite funny to hear thousands of love-starved young men whistling and cat-calling during the scene where Joseph and Emma have their first kiss.  Lol, maybe they shouldn't show that video here....

I hope Gabe has fun in Moab; don't get hurt!  I always had lots of fun with it though. Jake, you crazy, dating fiend!  Way to be with three dates in three days!  Mom says I was cramping your style and that it's now much easier that I'm out of the way.  :P  I want to hear about the Festival of Colors though - it sounds awesome! Benj, if you forget things, the bookstore here is great - missionaries get a 40% discount - I've gotten a backpack, oil vial, highlighters, pencil lead (including red lead for mechanical pencils!!!) etc here. They also give you $6 a week to spend on whatever, so no worries.  And like your ties!!!  Grandpa, thanks for emailing me - it was good to hear from you.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to return your call before I left. Sounds like things are going well with the family.

Well, my time is up and blinking red. Gotta run!

Love ya,

McKay (aka Elder Howell)

P.S. DearElder.com is great!  ...for the next three weeks at least.  We get those letters the same day you send them instead of having to wait until P-day. We only have 30 minutes on P-day with the computer, so I'm typing fast trying to remember what happened.

Mission Area

Florida Jacksonville Mission Zones

Florida Jacksonville Mission (yellow)