Today we had transfers.... That means that this last week was virtually totally devoted to getting all the flights and other travel arrangements made for everyone to get to their new areas and companions. We had a bit of an insane night Sunday running back and forth between cities and the airport to get all the missionaries who were leaving to the mission presidents house. We were supposed to have a dinner at 16:00 but one Elders flight kept getting delayed so finally at 01:00 he arrived.... We drove him to the mission home, took the "tchau photo" for all the leaving people, dropped some people at home then went to bed..... for 3 hours before waking up to take that same group to the airport to all go home. Thankfully all of those flights went well and we had no problems. With the messed up "night of sleep" I took nice 2 hour unconsciousness on the floor at the office then got back to stuff.
As far as our area:
Pedro will be getting baptized this weekend! He is doing super well and we are excited for him! His sister is helping a ton given his reading problems.
Antonio/Ezmarelda + family will be waiting just a bit longer. We had trouble getting enough time to visit them enough last week to get them prepared but hopefully next week our schedule and their work schedules will work out better.
All for now! Until next week,
---Elder Howell
Monday, September 25, 2017
Monday, September 18, 2017
Another Week Complete
Well.... kind of like last week it has been another week here. We had a rough start to our week with a missionary going home for family things but the rest of the week was very calm.
I had a mountain of paper work to get done this week... and about 8 months of backlogged print outs, contracts, payments, bank documents and so forth to file away..... As you can assume it was extremely fun and entertaining!
I get asked a lot:
1. Do you even do missionary work?
2. What is your normal day like?
3. What's going on with your investigators-if you have any
Here are the answers:
1. We try to split working in our area (finding, teaching, reactivating) after 17:00 or 18:00 each day. That gives us 4-5 hours in the office to handle the logistics of the mission and 3-4 hours to handle our area. So yes, we do "missionary work". But we also do the "behind the scenes" stuff so that the other 96 missionaries get to their areas, have a house, water, gas, energy, items and supplies to work without worrying about all of that.
2. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA normal day. That's funny. We never have 2 of the same day. I work mostly with finances: finding/vacating houses, repairs, dealing with house owners, doing anything with money for missionaries or the Mission President and I do all the medical, running a "missionary taxi service" of moving everyone around to where they need to be. My companion does the logistics (flights, schedules, record keeping of baptisms, numbers and so on)
3. Our main focus is on those who progress really well because we have about half (or less) time in the area than the normal Elders. Our main focus is Antonio and Ezmarelda (the couple who just got married) and a jovem (young man) named Pedro. We are working to get the couple, their three kids and Pedro ready for baptism on the 30th of September. We plan on using the mission offices pool. The only issue is making sure they are solid before we baptize them. They all have been coming to church for months but we want to really make sure they are ready. I will give updates on them each week.
Hopefully that answers the general questions. I enjoy your emails and such each week!
Love you all,
Elder Howell
I had a mountain of paper work to get done this week... and about 8 months of backlogged print outs, contracts, payments, bank documents and so forth to file away..... As you can assume it was extremely fun and entertaining!
I get asked a lot:
1. Do you even do missionary work?
2. What is your normal day like?
3. What's going on with your investigators-if you have any
Here are the answers:
1. We try to split working in our area (finding, teaching, reactivating) after 17:00 or 18:00 each day. That gives us 4-5 hours in the office to handle the logistics of the mission and 3-4 hours to handle our area. So yes, we do "missionary work". But we also do the "behind the scenes" stuff so that the other 96 missionaries get to their areas, have a house, water, gas, energy, items and supplies to work without worrying about all of that.
2. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA normal day. That's funny. We never have 2 of the same day. I work mostly with finances: finding/vacating houses, repairs, dealing with house owners, doing anything with money for missionaries or the Mission President and I do all the medical, running a "missionary taxi service" of moving everyone around to where they need to be. My companion does the logistics (flights, schedules, record keeping of baptisms, numbers and so on)
3. Our main focus is on those who progress really well because we have about half (or less) time in the area than the normal Elders. Our main focus is Antonio and Ezmarelda (the couple who just got married) and a jovem (young man) named Pedro. We are working to get the couple, their three kids and Pedro ready for baptism on the 30th of September. We plan on using the mission offices pool. The only issue is making sure they are solid before we baptize them. They all have been coming to church for months but we want to really make sure they are ready. I will give updates on them each week.
Hopefully that answers the general questions. I enjoy your emails and such each week!
Love you all,
Elder Howell
Monday, September 11, 2017
Weekly Email
Well, my P-Day is kinda over, so this email will have to be really quick today (an email was sent to my Mum, the most important weekly email sent).
This week the real highlight was the wedding of Antonio and Esmeralda. If you flip through the photos they both kind of looked like they hate their lives during the wedding.... It was super hot, crowded but the choir was super awesome. Thankfully they both really cheered up once we got to the house party. The music once again was super African, loud, and upbeat. The food was pretty typical but the atmosphere was awesome. The strangest part of the wedding was the cake though.... Once the newlyweds fed each other they then went around feeding every single person... Well over 100 people.... It was strange and the fork contamination was insane, but when you are there you just kinda have to eat the cake.
Now that they are married things will keep moving along well for them. They are marked for bapitism (and 3 of their kids of age) for here in 2 weeks. We are trying really hard to get out and work with our people these weeks. We are hoping that the work pays off for them and a few other people in the coming weeks!
Today for P-Day we got to do something awesome.... SAFARI!!!!!!!!!!!! I got to be one of the drivers which was super fun. We had a guide leading us all around this massive reserve to find giraffes, elephants (one kinda almost ran over my car, that would have ruined all the fun), hippos, monkeys and a bunch of other animals whose names I didn't know in English let alone Portuguese. It was a blast! Like 11 hours of driving to, around and back but super super worth it! All the photos are in the Drive!
Love all of you people,
Elder Howell
This week the real highlight was the wedding of Antonio and Esmeralda. If you flip through the photos they both kind of looked like they hate their lives during the wedding.... It was super hot, crowded but the choir was super awesome. Thankfully they both really cheered up once we got to the house party. The music once again was super African, loud, and upbeat. The food was pretty typical but the atmosphere was awesome. The strangest part of the wedding was the cake though.... Once the newlyweds fed each other they then went around feeding every single person... Well over 100 people.... It was strange and the fork contamination was insane, but when you are there you just kinda have to eat the cake.
Now that they are married things will keep moving along well for them. They are marked for bapitism (and 3 of their kids of age) for here in 2 weeks. We are trying really hard to get out and work with our people these weeks. We are hoping that the work pays off for them and a few other people in the coming weeks!
Today for P-Day we got to do something awesome.... SAFARI!!!!!!!!!!!! I got to be one of the drivers which was super fun. We had a guide leading us all around this massive reserve to find giraffes, elephants (one kinda almost ran over my car, that would have ruined all the fun), hippos, monkeys and a bunch of other animals whose names I didn't know in English let alone Portuguese. It was a blast! Like 11 hours of driving to, around and back but super super worth it! All the photos are in the Drive!
Love all of you people,
Elder Howell
Monday, September 4, 2017
Weekly Email
Well........... This week has been just another week here. It is super hard to write an interesting email about a week that feels exactly like the last week... I will just go over the highlights:
1. We did another South Africa journey.... It really does make logical/economical sense. Its not just for the McDonald's (I have decided to not eat there again. It just isn't worth the nasty feeling after eating it. Its all about the flavorless xima for me these days!). We got all the purchases we needed to done and even got a few references for the Elders in South Africa--Who we ran into at McDonald's which was super awkward for everyone.
2. We had Zone Conferences this week. I gave training on the missions finances and such which is always fun to just talk about money and use a super boring looking PowerPoint hoping that people just kinda fall asleep and let you move on.... Thankfully it went well overall and I had prepped well enough to have numbers to back me up on the changes we are making.
3. We are teaching people. I know everyone thinks that we are just sitting at computers all day (slightly true) but we do actually go out and teach people. We inherited several super cool people from the Sisters when they switched areas. We are working with a couple and their kids. They are getting married this weekend and if all goes well baptized the following weekend! That means I have something to take photos of! It was super nice to get back to teaching people. I enjoy the change of working in the mission office, but teaching people has its own special "vibe" to it here in Mozambique.
That's pretty much it! I hope all of you have a nice "hot and humid" week!
Tchau!
Elder Howell
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)