Junio 20, 2011

Hola family and friends!

This week as been pretty great not too successful though. What made it great is well first and foremost Emily got married! Congratulations Emily! Also I had zone conference this week and was able to attend a Fireside that Pres. Laycock was speaking at.

On Thursday was zone conference. The Zone Conference was with my zone and 4 other zones. President and Hermana Laycock spoke as well as Elder and Sister Zeballos. Elder Zeballos is a member of the first quorum of the seventy and he and is family live here in my mission. Pres. and Hna. Laycock talked about charity and love. They talked about how that charity and love really is the key in missionary work. Pres. Laycock did a demonstration with a cantaloupe. God plants a seed of love in each of us like the cantaloupe started out as a seed. He then cracked it open and inside of course were hundreds of other seeds. Those seeds were those whom we show our love for and bring into the Gospel. Oh it was so great! Honestly I didn´t understand a whole lot of Elder and Sister Zeballos´ they have very thick Chilean accents and it was hard for me to understand. Elder Zaballos did talk about the importance of knowing both English and Spanish and how we should always try to strengthen our knowledge of both languages because it will be so useful in our life.

Saturday we did another Sector Slam (Zone activity) this time it was in Los Platanos. We slit off and went to members houses to invite them to the Fireside with President Laycock. That was pretty fun Hna. Wojciechowski and I went with a member to visit a family and then we knocked a little bit and returned to the fireside. I love hearing President Laycock give talks he is such a powerful speaker. Aside from the missionaries in my Zone there were probably only like 25-30 people there. He talked about D&C 88:119 and the characteristics we should have in our house. He did a demonstrations with faith that I loved. He invited a boy up and and had him close his eyes he then hit the kid (gently). He asked the kid what happened. Of course the kid responded you hit me. He asked but how do you know you couldn´t see anything? The kid responded because I felt it. Sadly I don´t think I´ve thought about it that way before. I always think of faith as the believe but I´ve never associated the feeling with it. We have faith in principles of the Gospel because we can feel the Spirit. We can feel it.

One great experience I had this week was when we were teaching Catalina. She´s 12 years old and we were teaching her about the plan of Salvation. Before the lesson Hna. Widous asked if she was still reading the Book of Mormon and praying to know that it is true. She responded no. We then asked her why and she said because she had prayed a lot and the answer "Sí" came to her. She said that she was still praying but not about that because she knows it´s true. That´s the first experience I´ve had here where someone has followed through with that commitment and received their answer. I know that God will answer that question if we truly want to know and put in the effort to find out. We extend that invitation to everyone. We can tell people what we know and believe all we want but they won´t gain a testimony for themselves until the try it out and receive their answers.

Unfortunately this week we didn´t have much else that really happened a lot of our appointments fell through and we ended up walking and knocking a lot. It´s getting colder each day and has rained a few times. This fells like the longest winter of my life. Good thing the cold doesn´t bug me too much. I love looking up at the mountains after it rains. The sky is actually clear and while it doesn´t snow in the valley I can see the snow on the mountains and it reminds me of home. The mountains really are huge. It was funny the other day we were in a members home and they have a spectacular view. One of my companions turned to me and said these are the Wasatch mountains right? I just laughed a little and said nope these are the Andes. It was pretty funny. I love that I still have a little feeling of home.

This is the last week of the transfer so next week when I write I may have new companions I really think I´m going to stay in the same area though.

Well until next week... I LOVE YOU ALL!!

Con amor,

PS I have to give a 15 minute talk in church this upcoming Sunday on repentance. I don´t think I could even do that in english let alone spanish. haha maybe i´ll just read preach my gospel. ;)

Junio 13, 2011

¡Hola!

This week has been good, interesting but good. Each day has been completely different. We had two opportunities to serve this week which was great! One day we went to a members house and helped her clean. She´s older and her health makes it difficult for her to clean. There was a lot to clean but we jumped right on the opportunity to help. The second time is a longer story but pretty great. It starts off with a blanket that the Elders before us borrowed from an investigator and hadn´t returned. We had an appointment with that investigator before lunch and she cancelled. We thought we´d stop by her house anyways and I wanted to take the blanket to return to her. We didn´t have time before lunch and then afterwards we had another appt. so I took the blanket with me. We then had time to stop by. As we were walking to her house we saw an old lady trying to rake her leaves, we offered to help and she actually let us. We raked and taught her a little bit. She was very receptive to our teachings and really wants us to return. Well we ended up not having time to return the blanket so I carried it around with me all day but it was totally worth it to have that experience and the opportunity to serve.

I am learning more how to feel the spirit and be guided by it. We went to meet an old investigator of the Elders he let us is and we were going to talk about the Book of Mormon. We all opened ours up to the introduction and just started getting to know each other a little bit. He asked our first names, it´s not a rule to not give it out but it´s really not important for people to know. Right know I´m a representative of Christ and my family that´s why I go by Hermana Howe. We explained this to him and I knew he understood but he wouldn´t let it go. I felt it starting to get a little contentious and I felt the spirit leave. I shut my Book of Mormon because I knew that we weren´t going to be able to teach anything without the spirit and it also seemed like he wasn´t willing to receive anything we had to teach him.

We had 3 investigators come with us to church which was great. They all are really interested in the gospel. One of them is an old investigator we found in our area book. She´s kind of in a sad situation she really wants to be baptised, she understands the gospel and its taken a place in her heart but unfortunately her husband won´t allow her to be baptised he has a lot of control in their house and we really don´t want to do anything to make him mad. I think we´re going to keep visiting her and hope that her husband softens his heart. The other two are great too. It´s a grandmother and her grand-daughter they are both really receptive to the gospel and I can see already that the grand-daughter loves it. She´s 12 and has now been to church with us twice. We gave her a Book of Mormon for kids that has a lot of pictures and tells stories briefly. The second we gave it to her I could tell that she really loved it and cherished it.

Yesterday we were knocking (which here really means ringing the bell at the gate every building and house has a gate) Hna. Wojciechowski stopped me and had me do it in English. I said what I normally say in Spanish but she pointed out that I have more feeling behind my words in English. In Spanish I think I focus to much on what to say and not how to say it. In English I really can and do put feelings behind my words but I need to work on that in Spanish. For only being here a month my Spanish is pretty good or at least that´s what I hear. I don´t feel like it is because I can never say what I want to and more than half of the time I don´t understand people. The Chilean accent is a very different kind of Spanish, but I love and I can´t wait until I can actually understand it.

Until next week.

I love you all and miss you so much!!

Hna. Howe14

Junio 6, 2011

¡Hola!

May was the longest month EVER!! I´m so happy that it´s June and I have a feeling this month is going to fly by.

So much has happened this week, especially yesterday. I´ll try and write it all :)

Mom you asked about my companions, yeah sorry for not writing more about them already. Hna. Wojciechowski is from Texas, she´s been here for 14 months and leaves on Halloween. She´s the best trainer ever!! She´s an awesome missionary and I learn so much from her each day. Hna. Widous is from Nevada, she´s been here almost 1 months now. She´s such a great companion and is always a great strength to me. Together the three of us have so much fun!! (While still getting A LOT of work done). So yesterday... I woke up at 6:30 because I heard a tapping noise I realized that it was my bed hitting gently against the window and the reason it was moving was because of a tremor. Really nothing at all but it was the first one I ever felt. Later in the day after church we returned to our apt. to drop off books I thought it might rain so I grabbed my umbrella. We left and went to lunch. After lunch I was a little cold and wanted to grab my rain coat we returned to the apt. to realize that one of my companions (hna. windous) left the keys in the apt. We called the AP´s but they wouldn´t be able to bring the extra set by until 9:30. So we left and went to work. From 6-8 we had a zone activity planned in my sector where my whole zone was going to knock houses in my sector. Well guess what it started to rain. At least I had my umbrella. We returned to our apt. around 10:00 but the AP´s still hadn´t got the keys yet so we had to wait outside in the rain for about a half hour. It was really cold but somehow really fun at the same time. Hopefully that never happens again! The weather hasn´t been too bad... for winter anyways. Yesterday was probably the worst. Usually it´s decent during the day and then it gets really cold at night. I have an awesome scarf that keeps me warm though :). My companions and I bought matching scarfs together. I´ve been eating way too much gluten, not that I´ve been eating a lot but even a little is bad for me. I did have my first cheese empanadas the other night. MUY RICO!!! they are SO GOOD. I thought as I was eating it ¨how can I not have things like this for the rest of my life¨ I haven´t been in any pain which is a blessing but I really do need to rededicate to my gluten-free diet, the MTC taught me bad habits as far as that goes. haha. I´ve had a few opportunities to contact in English. They were so much different than my Spanish contacts. I still don´t know much Spanish so those are more like recited lines. But in English I actually know how to say things and express my feelings and the importance of the things I´m teaching. It´s helped me realize the importance of learning Spanish. I need to work on it more, for my first month my Spanish really isn´t bad at all but it would be nice to have actual conversations with people and understand what people are saying.

I attached some pictures of me and my companions as well as one of the chaple for my sector. Oh and the picture of the balloon. It was Hna. Windous´ birthday on the 1st so I bought balloons I drew a face on this one and Hna. Windous named it Timmy. :) just one of our fun little companionship things.

Hna Howe

A little wet from standing in the rain.

Studiying

Matching Scarfs


Timmy ( Championship fun)

Our Chapel