Our bags are ready to go if we need them.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Julio 18, 2011
¡Hola todo de ustedes!
Ok este semana, oh yeah English... So this week has been great. Still a lot of work but there have been some great experiences. Hna. Windous and I have still been out knocking almost everyday with very little success and with A LOT of rejection. But we still continue to have hope and faith and work hard everyday! My Spanish has been improving a lot. I am understanding and speaking a lot in Spanish. This Wednesday in correlation, which is our meeting with the ward mission leader where we discuss what we´ve done during the week and our investigators. Hermano Moreno, the ward mission leader, ask me to say the prayer. We always start off with hymn, prayer, and a spiritual experience. After I said the prayer Hno. Moreno was going to share the spiritual experience and his experience was my Spanish. He said that he was so impressed with how well I could speak and with how fast I was learning. He just mentioned how it´s really a testimony that the gift of tongues is real. And oh can I testify of that. I am so amazed with how much I can understand. Of course there is still SOOO much I don´t know but I love it when I can communicate.
Friday night Hna. Windous and I were out knocking one person came out and we got talking with him for a little bit, probably close to 15 minutes. While we were talking to him out district leader called us 4 times. Afterwards we called him back and he asked us if we had felt the earthquake? Since we were outside we didn´t but he had I´m pretty sure and Pres. Laycock did. The earthquake was actually in Valparaiso which is much further north than our mission. I pretty sure all they felt was a tremor from it and definitely nothing big. Anyways he was just calling to check up on us. He then called again about 20 minutes later saying that Pres. Laycock wanted us all to go through our emergency bags that night and see if we were had everything in them. Later in the night as we were going through them Hna. Wojciechowski called her district leader and asked when we should buy the things that we are missing. He said that we could wait til Monday. Saturday morning we got a call from our district leader and he said that Pres. Laycock said that if we were missing ANYTHING that we needed to go to the store and buy it that day. He wanted all the missionaries to go to the stores and get whatever they needed. Me and the other Hermanas ever since have been joking about how there is going to be an earthquake. Just to let you know I don´t write this to scare you and I write this to give you comfort. I really don´t think there is going to be an earthquake but you can take care in knowing that if there is me and all the other missionaries in my mission will be ok and definitely prepared. It was just a really fun part of the week. :)
Right now as a mission we are doing a fast for 40 days and 40 nights. Each companionship has a day to fast and the fast will end with Pres. and Hna. Laycock. It´s such an incredible and uniting experience. Our purpose is to find new investigators, to find those who are looking for the gospel. The assistants started the fast I think two weeks ago. Anyways a while back missionaries had been teaching a teenage girl but her father wouldn´t give her permission to be baptized. Well after the assistants had started their fast. during that day they received a call from her father saying that he wanted her to be baptized that Sunday. Elder Zeballos of the quorum of the seventy did the baptism. Oh being on a mission is such an incredible experience and I can feel the lord so close to me in all that I do.
I love you ALL
-Hna. Howe
Monday, July 11, 2011
Julio 11, 2011
HOLA
Well this last week has been good. It´s definitely been a lot of walking and knocking again. Oh and studying. I LOVE the new program. The Lord really invests SO much in his missionaries. There are days when my companion and I only go out for like 3 hours because we have meetings in the morning and then have to do our studies after. It´s sad that it takes time away from working but I have been growing so much. Even in just this past week I have seen so much growth. I´m now starting lessons, actually teaching, and speaking a lot more Spanish. I can now actually understand a lot of the scriptures when I read them in spanish. I´m still really bad with subjunctive and past tenses but it will come.
We´ve been teaching a couple that are inactive. There names are José and Luz. They´re probably in their 70´s and haven´t been to church for 25 years. The first time we met with them we invited them to church Luz strongly objected. We have taught them once a week and each time invite them to church. They started to read the Book of Mormon together. She can see the words very well so he reads to her each day. Super cute I know. :) This last Thursday after we taught them we invited them to church. Each time the ¨No¨gets a little bit softer and this time it seemed like Luz was really thinking about it. I know José really wants to go but he doesn´t want to leave Luz at home alone. Luz told us that she´s getting a lot closer and really wants to go before the transfer is over so that we can be there. She also mentioned that this is the first time she´s read the book of Mormon and that she can feel the spirit more as they read and as we visit them. It is so amazing, and I am so excited for them. I love them so much and I really hope they do make it back to church before the change is over. The Book of Mormon has so much power and I KNOW that it DOES bless the lives of those who take the time to read it and poder on it´s words.
We didn´t have any investigators at church for the last two weeks so according to Preach my Gospel we don´t have and investigators that are progressing. We are working really hard though. It´s a big sector but I know that it has a lot of potential. Yesterday in church I met a new family that moved into our ward. They are actually from Salt Lake and are here for 6 months for the husbands job. The wife and the 4 year old don´t speak Spanish but they´re really excited to be here and to learn. I can´t imagine trying to learn Spanish without the help of the Lord. I feel like I´m learning it so fast but I know it´s only because of the gifts of the Spirit and because I am doing the Lords work. I am excited to be able to speak spanish when I come home and I definitely plan on developing it more after my mission.
I love you ALL
-Hna. Howe
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
My nutritional diet :) haha
When you have celiac you can't have flour so my cabinet is loaded with corn.
Me and my new Coat
In case you didn't hear. Katie lost her jacket on the plane on her way to Chile. Unfortunately the people in Chile are a lot smaller that she is so Mom had to find a coat and send it to her. Lucky she got just as Winter is arriving in Chile.
Happy 4th of July
Hola Everybody,
Happy 4th of July!! I even got to see fireworks yesterday! Just kidding it was a power line that kind of exploded but it really did look like fireworks. At first I thought they were and then I realized what was happening.
Last week I went on a temple tour with a recent convert Javiera and her cousin Miriam. First off they´re so awesome! When ever we go over or see them at church Miriam always has some sort of dulce (candy) for us. Oh I loved the spirit there so much. Of course the tour wasn´t actually of the temple rather of the gardens, the buildings around, and then they talked about the temple. There is still such a powerful spirit in the gardens. It was also really relaxing to walk around for a little bit and actually have everybody smile at me and be happy to see me. As we were walking around Hna. Wojciechowski asked me if I wanted to go into the temple, we just went into the entrance but oh how wonderful that was. I immediately felt an amazing comfort come over me and I felt the love of my Heavenly father for me. It was so nice and relaxing. The temple is so powerful and really just the best place ever. I hope I have the opportunity during my mission to be a temple Hermana and conduct those tours.
Alright this week... Well we now have 4 Hermanas in our sector. It´s a lot of fun in the apartment and we all get along really well. The work has gotten harder though. We didn´t really have that many investigators before and now we´ve kind of split the investigators. Hna. Wojciechowski and Hna. Rios have one investigator that is really progressing and he has a baptismal date for the 31st, but other than that we don´t really have anyone. So we´ve been spending a lot of our time and efforts trying to find people that means a lot of walking and knocking. I don´t think I have ever been more tired in my life. Almost everyday this week Hna. Windous and I have been outside for 6+ hours a day walking and knocking. It´s been long and the fruits are few. We´ve realized that if we really want to find new people we need to work through the members. The 4 of us hermanas are planning an activity for the youth to get them involved. There was one house that we knocked the lady came out and I said that we were missionaries and that we were there to offer a prayer, usually at that point people shut doors, windows, yell at us, or just walk away. This lady said come in. I looked at Hna. Windous very confused and was thinking ok did she say what I think she said? what do we do next? haha. Those experiences are very rare but their so amazing when they do happen.
Until Next week. 
I love you all!!!
-Hna. Howe
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