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

PS: In the picture it was a bad hair day for me, a tired day for the parents, and a "do we really have to quietly sit around again while those white guys talk" thing for the kids. Awesome family though.

Weekly Email (Just 1 Day Late)

 Hello everyone. Sorry for the late email. Someone thought that it was a good idea to put a Zone Conference on a P-Day (I hear that everyone's moms were freaking out, mine just angrily sent me memes :) Love you Mum!) Thats why this email is being sent on a Tuesday and not the usual Monday email.

 This last week was a bit interesting. On Monday I went to a "zoo".... Pretty much they just had 2 massively obese crocodiles and monkeys. The monkeys would do tricks to get cookies though which was super fun. We were going to feed a live chicken to said obese crocodiles but they ran out :( Overall it was fun to just run around and see stuff.

On Tuesday I woke up early and over packed a car with people and supplies to then drive 6-7 hours up to a city called Maxixe. It was a pretty nice drive, good roads, "no speed limits" (or so I told myself!) and I only got pulled over a half a dozen times! The 3 Elders in the back pretty much slept through the drive and my mission president slept for a good chunk of it too so it was some nice thinking time while driving in the middle of no where.

I slept on a little "mattress" on the ground in the house in Maxixe that night, woke up early again (Which I despise) to drive again, this time with just 1 other Elder and the mission president..... It was nice for the first 2 hours... Then the "road" turned into more holes than pavement and it was a nightmare. I went from 120's (or like 145...) to going 25 kph..... On the shoulder of the road.... On the wrong side..... It was a painfully long next 8 or 9 hours. We hit occasional patches of nice road but overall it was awful. I don't plan to make that drive again!

 We finally made it to Beira that following day and we ate dinner then dropped off the Elder. I crashed and just slept until doing house inspections that day in Beira. I went on a "division" with a member up there to run between all the houses looking for all the broken/missing stuff. It was cool to see Beira finally and nice to get an idea for all the houses. I had some time to get some more capulanas.... I might have a problem with collecting them but they had so many new cool ones (plus I plan to get stuff made, so its worth it). That night we flew back. I am so glad, I would have died driving another 17 hours. We also somehow ended up in 1st Class which was super nice.

As far as "classic weekly missionary stuff" you probably came here to find in this:

 1. We had 11 people at church.... We need to get working with them, its been crazy in the office recently. But we have been getting lots of help from other missionaries.
2. We found out 2 of the awesome people in the English Group aren't members but one has been going for almost 2 years! Everyone thought he was a member, so we will  be teaching him soon!
 3. We had dinner with the Fox Family and Brother Root which was super fun.
4. We will hopefully be getting to our area a lot this week now that stuff is "calming down", which means time to go really teach people!

 Thanks for the love as always!


 Elder Howell


                                                   

Weekly Email.... First week alone

Well,

This has been the first week without Elder Sharpe really here to help me...... It has been interesting but the mission hasn't burnt down, gone broke and I haven't been excommunicated! Elder Skraba and I are counting that as a total win! We finally got everyone moved around to their areas and got all the new guys through immigration and the US embassy. It has all pretty much worked out.

We still have 3 Elders out of place here (2 new Elders and 1 Old one) that we will be driving up to Maxixe and to Beira tomorrow. It will be like 16 hours of driving.... I plan to try and do most of it given the..... well, lack of practice by the others..... Hopefully all will go well and we will get some good work done while up in Beira!

This week was Stake Conference which was interesting. I started off in the overflow tent outside the actual chapel but we were pulled into the meeting house to translate for the English Group members. It was a serious mental strain for each of us because the speakers talked so fast but it was actually a really cool experience to do. Thankfully that went well and I got to see several members from my old areas and chat with them about how things have been going. Its nice to see that several recent converts are still doing well.

Love all of you, I hear that my letters that I tried sending in January finally started arriving..... That is kinda Africa's fault, kinda some lazy Elders who used to be here. But in the end it all worked out.

Thanks for your support!


Elder Howell

Super Fast Weekly Email

Okay, it was transfers here in Mozambique. Elder Sharpe's parents came to pick him up on Saturday morning.... That was interesting. Its strange to see an Elder with his parents. Kinda hard to see for everyone who has to wait a year to see theirs. With the pick up,  now my comp is Elder Skraba (19 from Curitiba Brazil) who was in a tripla with Elder Sharpe and I last transfer... We didn't get anyone else in the office so now we are just trying to run the show here.... It will be interesting. He is from my group so we go home at the same time. He speaks pretty much perfect English thanks to watching movies before his mission. Hopefully a native speaking companion helps with my accent and vocabulary in Portuguese. I will pretty much just stay doing finances and he will do the other side of things.

With the insane preparations for transfers and moving everyone around we didn't get much teaching done during the week. We did however have lots of people at church thanks to us inheriting the Sisters old area (they were transferred to Beira). We have a few people who are progressing and hopefully keep doing so. We have plans to get lots done this transfer in our area and in the office.

I have lots of places to visit to inspect houses in the next few weeks so things will be pretty hectic, but it should be exciting!

Love all of you!

Elder Howell

Well......................... This week was kinda a giant blur just like the last few weeks. The days really blur together and its hard to remember what stuff happened which week. But being busy is a good thing really.

Highlights from this week:

1. We had a really awesome member direct us through and into his neighborhood to his cute little house. He and his wife have 2 little kids that are SO cute. Honestly just an awesome new little family. Anyway, they had two of their nephews (or something like that, the family situation was crazy) there for us to teach. We got to know them and taught them the first lesson. The younger one did really well and understood things that we taught surprisingly well for a 14 year old. Hopefully we will be able to go back and teach them again this week.

2. We did a Brazilian style BBQ this week with the Elders out in T-3 (my first area). They have a patio like thingy on the top of their garage with a super pretty view of the area. The food was pretty dang good given it was a bunch of us messing around trying to cook like 5kg of beef on sticks over coals. It was a blast.

3. We had 3 sacrament meets on Sunday which was interesting. Normally we go to the Sommerschield Ward (the area we work/live in). This week there was a new white family in the ward though! The father is working on the new US Embassy getting built here so the family will be here for like 2 years. They have 5 kids from 5-16. Then we helped with the Polana Wards sacrament meeting. Lastly we had our awesome little English Group meeting but another new white person showed up. He too just got here a few weeks back. He does security and such. He is super cool. He invited us over for a random lunch the same day and it was super fun to hear all of his crazy adventures.

Well, theres the highlights from the week. I hope everyone is healthy and happy back at home!

---Elder Howell

Well, this week was pretty average...... Most of the days we kinda just did our normal work trying to keep the hundred or so people with money, houses and phones.... When those hundred or so people are 19-25 year olds it tends to kinda be hectic. I can't even imagine parenting---

Some interesting things from the week:

We had a kinda surprise audit from the South Africa Area.... Suffice it to say everything they wanted from the time since Elder Sharpe has been here was organized neatly and we got it to them fast... 'Pre-Elder Sharpe' (almost a year ago) stuff doesn't exist apparently so that was SUPER awkward. Thankfully we weren't excommunicated for the lack of stuff and after a little while it all worked out just fine... Thankfully it was a pretty quick audit and it was over with only a few things for us to really need to change (pretty much nothing on our side of things).

Other than that we had a leadership meeting this week which was interesting, but nothing super exciting worth explaining. Mainly work hard, baptize people and please dont break mission houses or rules! We did have Taka Famba for lunch.... mmmmm its the closest thing to an American burger I have had in like a year (well.... besides McDonalds..... anyway!)

We also helped set up for the temple caravan this week. By that I mean we stacked like 25 mattresses in, on and around the truck and drove them back and forth between a chapel and an apartment for the people going to South Africa to use on the way to the temple. We got.... creative.... moving all those mattresses between floors and buildings.

Sadly lessons didnt workout this week but we have some cool stuff marked with members this week to meet with some awesome people. Hopefully some of them really get progressing along so that we have some fun teaching stories to share. I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Howell

PS: I loved getting all the fun photos and emails this week! Love you all

This week was pretty boring..... Nothing really exciting happened this week... but we got lots of stuff done at the office. The new mission president---President Senna--- and the AP's have been traveling a ton these last few weeks to lots of different provinces to visit Independent Branches out there. That leaves us with lots of time to just do our jobs here without lots of phone calls asking for us to run around and do stuff. Right now I am just working on figuring out how to do all of this financial stuff so that here in 3 weeks when Elder Sharpe goes home I don't lose a ton of money and get excommunicated *nervous laughter*

Aside from all the boring spreadsheets, stacks of cash, number crunching and email sifting we got into our area this week. It was super nice to get out and try finding/teaching new people. President Senna is.... well..... very 'focused' on baptisms, so to make sure things stay nice and smoothly going here we are really trying to find people to teach. We found two cool little families in one night and will hopefully get back to them again this coming week to teach them a little more.

I think a week or two ago I mentioned that we went to the hospital to give a blessing. That same woman brought her son and two friends to church this week! That was cool to see, I think they had a good time, we will just wait and see what comes of it now.

That's pretty much it for the week.


Elder Howell