Wedding Week

Hello Peoples,

It's almost 21:00 here for me, so I have to keep this short but this week was a good week.

Two main things happened:

First:
Someone got their car stuck in a mud pit thingy... We got a call to help them out and showed up with some nice towing cables and boots... We got there to about 200+ people all standing around talking, laughing and taking photos... It was great. After about 20 minutes (And me taking lots of photos too) we were able to tug and push the car out. It was a good learning experience for everyone... But an adventure is always fun!

Second:
Ujembe (a member from Mahotas and the missions best handyman) got married! To who? A woman I used to teach in Mahotas. The first Sunday she showed up to church he asked if I knew who she was and asked me for her number after I said she was our investigator and said he would ask her out. I told him to do it himself, get the number and ask her out... He did. The following week he said "Elder Howell, I am going to marry her". I wished him luck.... 8 Months later they are married and planning on going to the the temple to get sealed at her 1 year mark of being baptized. Well that escalated quickly! It was a super fun, super classic Mozambican wedding with lots of singing in dialect and 0 smiles from the bride or groom (its bad luck, 'those who smile at the wedding will have an unhappy marriage) but it was clear everyone was having fun!

The big thing is this coming week the couple gets here... My 'trainees' in the office. The challenge is now forcing all the information to them as fast as possible, wish me luck!

Até já!

Elder Howell

P.S.: My Google Drive has lots of photos and videos this week!


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3QUnxNL3tyAZDIzX3ZPMmJtQUk

Last Week In Triple Digits

Today marks my 222 days in the mission office. Wow. That is a long time, but I have had a lot of good experiences too. My life as an office elder is strange, the hours are weird (example: look at when this email was sent my time....23:00) but I also get to see a side of the mission that few get to see. My day to day life revolves around numbers whether it be rents, missionaries, payments, receipts or baptisms. I have 105 days left in Mozambique which is insane to think I just have to do less than half of what I have already done, just in the time in the office (which is all one giant blur).

This week we had a visit from Elder Miranda (one of the Area 70's) and he got talking about goals and areas and baptisms. It was a good time to look on goals and plans for the mission. Currently I am working on finishing reading the Livro de Mormon then I want to read the New Testament in Portuguese. Hopefully my weird schedule will make it work.

Anyone who I didn't email today (....everyone) I will email tomorrow night. Its been a crazy day. I went to bed at 2 am... Woke up at 6:30, drove people around until 10ish, then got in a car accident (not my fault at all. Still mad about it. I am totally fine. The guy will be paying for it.), then I was  getting lunch for everyone. 12:00-12:30 I passed out for a power nap, then it was running errands (bank, store etc), picked and dropped people from the airport until 18. Then I was picking everyone back up for a family night. I helped make dinner a bit, then had to run others around picking up their stuff. Then we took everyone to one house to pick up mattresses, drop everyone at our house, then I came to the office to email for a few minutes to say I'm not dead, just a bit sick, but I still have an hour of stuff to do here before I go home and sleep. Then get up at 6:30 to start the whole thing all over again.

Thanks for all the love.

Elder Howell

Fast Update

Well, once again it was a boring week, arguably more boring than last week. Not much to comment on...

....It rained a lot?

We did have a few nice visits this week with our recent convert Pedro and his sister, Latia... They gave us mafura and sweet potato puree thingy to eat.... That was, well, unique. Imagine baby food but with seeds you had to spit out.... It was  a fun time though.

That's pretty much the biggest thing of my week. Hopefully this coming week has more to comment on!

Love you all,

Elder Howell

I think I can I think I can

One more week completed here in the office, one more week of transfers over with everyone correctly documented and in their areas. Pretty much transfers week is me just driving a ton to the airport and to peoples areas to drop off and pick up people without sleeping enough *yawn

Thankfully that mess is over and there aren't many of them left for me!

In terms of what I did other than driving this week, Elder De Paula and I are figuring things out, things are going well there. There's always a weird phase as you get a new companion like 'Hi, someone emailed me and said I will now spend 24/7 with you for the next 6 weeks, is that my bed?".... Cool. Thankfully its going well though.

Elder De Paula had to do interviews for a few young woman getting baptized so we went to get those done, I got to sit around and just talk with people, learn some dialect. It was fun. Those same girls picked me to baptize them, not sure why, I dont know them, but that happened on Saturday as well, hence the baptismal photos in the Drive.

We also had a family night on Saturday night with a recent convert of the Sisters which was fun to go to, the totally standard mozambican food and weird games. Good times.

That's all for this week!

Elder Howell