Skype Week

I am taking a week off for writing a weekly email for the most part because I got to Skype home this week.... Its the perfect excuse to be lazy about emailing!

Christmas here was.... Well.... Unique like last year, but something I will never forget. We did a lunch with members (all of them treat us amazing) and then we did a District Christmas lunch that was nice. A mini family dinner of sorts. It was a mix of happy and kind of trunky... Overall good though.

Next week I will give an update on everything better.

Thanks for all of you who support me though your emails (and those old fashioned letters too!)

---Elder Howell

Member Christmas lunch.

Christmas dinner with the district.

Santa?

Christmas Skype!!

Christmas Day Skype was the best!  Elder Howell is doing awesome!

House Hunters International: Nampula

The big thing from this week was going to Nampula for a few days again. We showed up, got a car this time (smart, very smart move) and headed to the current missionaries house. We got unpacked then headed out for the day with the house finding person (who after two visits and a stupid amount of time together looking at houses I still cant remember his name). We right away headed to where a the new 'chapel' -retrofitted house- is going to be.

House 1:

The house had no windows.... The roof was made of metal sheeting with nice holes in it for star gazing and ease of entrance for mosquito and lizards. No running water in the house to get in the way of things and there was no kitchen or bathroom in the house.... It was also filled with the largest spiders, and spider webs I have ever seen :) What a magical place! Super low rent and great location.

House 2:

Located close to the chapel again, also low rent but with some nice modern twists. This house had electricity and 4 bedrooms! The bedrooms all even had their own bathrooms... But the rooms where about small enough for 1 twin size bed and a chair... The "kitchen" area was a common area for the whole, yet partially developed, building... Oh, it was 100% made of cement too! Super nice. The highlight of the house was it having over 4,000+ units of energy (we maybe buy 600 for 2 months). That and the random ladies living around making food were real wins.

House 3:

We showed up to a store front, close to the chapel, super safe area, easy access to the main chapa stops... My money sense was tingling feeling the price rising. We then get escorted through 2 full metal doors and gates, down a hall to another 2 set of metal doors.... Up a flight of stairs to anther door, hall way and then the door to the house... At this point I just wanted to see what was so magically hidden and gated in but I was sure the price would be outrageous. We entered into this super nice apartment. New paint, tiled floors and nice wooden doors. 2 really nice bedrooms and a nice, yet small bathroom and kitchen. Then comes the upstairs. A massive roof top patio thingy with a cover over looking the city. It was a magical view. With sadness I asked about the monthly rent waiting for a horrifying price just to be told a price less than a forth of what I thought..... Wow.


In the end we got House 3 ---Obviously, it was a miracle to find that house. We saw several other houses that I can just picture missionaries sending photos home and them very quickly getting ordered home by their parents. Thankfully we found that awesome house and one other!

This week we also had "Natal Branco". We did a choir with the stake and it turned out pretty great in connection with the "Light the World" campaign thingy going on right now.  We did two "shows" for people on Saturday and Sunday which was interesting, thankfully it went smoothly.

People update:

Fei and Ana are doing well and were at church along with Chul and this other new person. We will hopefully be having Chul's baptism this week (I havent talked about him much, we kinda 'adopted' him as an investigator from that Elder with toe problems). He is Pedro's friend (Pedro was my first baptism in the office). Hopefully all goes well this week!

I look forward to Skyping my family and to seeing photos and such from everyone's Christmas fun. Enjoy the snow and cold for me...and some Tacos.... and slushees.... and good hot cocoa!

Love

Elder Howell

Weekly Email---As Required

Hello Everyone,

This week was a bit different than most because we were living in another dupla's house and on Monday we picked up an Elder who was headed home. He stayed with us in a strange version of a tripla for the week. We kind of mixed around between Elder Skraba, that Elder and Elders Lemmon and Godfrey (the other dupla we were living with). For a few hours I would go off with Elder Lemmon to the bank, money changing or making purchases then I would pick everyone up for lunch or would grab another Elder to do other tasks. Elder Godfrey is healing up well but he is supposed to avoid walking or sitting for too long.

A few key things from the week:

1. Flavia and the twins actually got baptized this week.... Finally. We had good member support and everything... Both twins required doing the actual baptism twice because they kind of freaked out as soon as they started going into the cold water.... One literally ran away, the girl I baptized just kind of angrily glared at me in the font looking like she was going to slap me for needing to get dunked again in cold water (though it was her fault for flailing her legs out of the water...) In the end it all worked out, everyone got baptized and confirmed on Sunday.  They are doing well an the twins aren't too upset at this point.

2. Elder Skraba totally organized my desk during one of my "You come with me *grabs closest Elder and runs off to do something" moments... So that was nice. Though my 'organized chaos" is now just organized, I will relearn it.

3. Ummmmmmm *flips through photos* Yup, nothing else super big.... Um, we dropped of that Elder yesterday... Matilde is back today, finally not sick.

Alrighty. Have great weeks you peoples.

Elder Howell

6 Months to Go

The timer has started. There are just 6 months until I am the one boarding the plane, not the one dropping everyone off. That is insane. The last however many weeks and months have felt like eternities, days or even just brief moments at times. I honestly can’t explain it. But I am excited for whatever time I have left. 

Due to some unforeseen things happening I just got home, very much late (but doing what I was asked to) So, this email will be very quick. 

The baptism of Flavia and her twins didn’t work out. There was a train wreck of 23+ people getting sick at a wedding (including the bishop), a canceled primary program practice and no water at the chapel.... That left us with no water to baptize in, no one to conduct (that we wanted to conduct) and no members there to support.... We pushed it back a week. 

Elder Gumbo is still far far way (plane ride then 9 hour train ride) in Marromeu —the dream land for missionaries, but I am white so I can’t go— but we were with two other elders this week because one really really messed up his toes. He got ingrown toe nails, the hospital botched the surgery and he can’t walk for 2-3 weeks.   The toes are infected really bad and gross.  #Africa  But he is healing up well but needs a lot of help. 

We did get an awesome new family this week though! Fe and Ana, and their 8 month old. Ana is a member since 2012 and her husband just started coming to church. They are super smart and after just 2 visits I love them to death and I am super impressed not only by how smart they both are but how awesome of parents they are and how well they follow through on commitments. Awesome investigators #Referrals 

​Tchau!

Elder Howell​

This is Elder Skraba and I emptying the baptismal font.

This adorable baby is the kid of my favorite family.   

This Week Was.... Destroyed

So, the biggest (in terms of literal size) thing this week was the 15 months of financial documents I had to destroy.... Boxes and boxes and boxes of papers, receipts and so forth... It was a pain. My awesome 12 papers per go shredder with a tiny wastebasket wasn't handling it well... So we got past the safety thingies (exactly what a mother wants to hear) and put it on a large trash can, got a small AC unit blowing on it and away I went... For 3 days..... Suffice it to say I got a lot of Mormon Messages, Conference talks and Face to Face videos watched. After 3 days, 3 burned out shredders and 20 large black trash bags I finished the task... Thankfully that is over, sorry to Matilde for the massive mess it made.... Oops.

Other than that we had 2 big things this week: Leadership Counsel (where all the Zone Leaders in the mission come together, and the office elders to talk over mission stuff, study and get training).... Not sure why the secretaries go as its mostly aimed to help each Zone, but Sister Senna cooked so it was worth going. We also got to have everyone at our nice little house... That only has 2 AC units and 1 small bathroom with a 4 gallon water heater.... It was, majestic.

We then had another 'leadership counsel' but for all the Branch Presidents in the mission (9 of them). It was, well, a flipping ton of driving. Way too much to and from the airport at all hours. But, once again, Sister Senna cooked and we got to enjoy the spoils of our 'labors'. Thankfully only 1 person missed their flight but we got them on a plane an hour later, everyone got back without any problems.

Some other random things from the week:
1. Flavia and her twin daughters will get baptized this week... For real this time.
2. We are switching houses---Finally! That means we will probably live in the office for a few days--as if we don't pretty much already live here
3. The time flies when you get little sleep and have tons to do!

Until next week!
Elder Howell

PS: Included is a photo of "Elder Howell's Gelo"... Its my unofficial cup at President Senna's house (he is probably the only person in Mozambique with an ice maker).... Anyway, this week I kinda, well, borrowed it and got my name engraved on it.... Thus making it officially Elder Howell's cup.

PPS:  The guy in the photo is Celso, he was one of my first investigators baptized in T-3 (3rd transfer). He and his two friends friends got baptized and are super active. They are in the bishopric or doing ward missionary stuff. It is awesome to see. I missed getting a photo with the other two but they are all doing really good.

Another Week, but in Queliname

This week was a bit abnormal---which is always nice when getting into a routine that can get very boring at times. The week started out pretty normal a very relaxing P-Day followed by Tuesday when we dropped off the mission president at the airport (stupid early at like 4 am, why are flights here always at like 4 am???) to go to South Africa for a training. After a nice nap we got going with the day: visiting house owners to figure out issues with paperwork/rent, getting supplies to missionaries and of course lots of spreadsheets and numbers. The day was broken up a bit around 14:00 when it got really dark then started dumping rain. Not raining, that implies rain drops, it was just waves of water raining down. We were doing "House Hunters: Mozambique" as we looked for a new house and had just left it. We got soaked to the bone after 10 seconds running to the car. The streets flooded with more than a foot of water in some areas and little cars were dying from getting flooded. We were fine in our truck and I enjoyed driving around because the whole city was like one giant puddle to drive through!

On Thursday we headed out of Maputo. Do I love plane rides? Yes. We flew out to a city called Quelimane. There is a branch of members there. We just took out the missionaries from there temporarily (hopefully just a transfer or two) and we had to help with some housing issues there and Elder Gumbo (my Mozambican comp) was training the branch presidency on some church system stuff.
We landed early afternoon to be told it was 43 degrees C.... About 110 F... If I could have I would have stayed on the plane and flown back right then. It was nightmarishly hot the first day (and the house didn't have a really working AC unit). We baked. That city does have very cheap coconuts for sale so we stayed hydrated well! We spent an hour riding around on bikes (glad I don't normally have to do that, its annoying) and about 2 hours hunting for "Frango zambaziano"... This type of chicken that the province was known for... NO ONE sold it, sad :(

The next day we had a family night with members though! We thought it would be this little family... Nope! They brought 30+ people who the missionaries were teaching or who had been taught... It was incredible. Best family night I have ever been to. We sang, gave a spiritual thought and played games (Including that 'Black Magic' game that blows everyone's mind). It was great. The beans and rice after were not too bad either. To top it all off they have a pet monkey... Its a racist monkey that doesn't like white people, but it was still fun to try and hold.

All in all it was a great few days there. We got back just in time to sleep for a few hours on Saturday night before taking the mission president, who had gotten back a Saturday morning, back to the airport at 4 am (I swear all his flights are at 4 am....) to go to a city called Chimoio. Then it was off to Stake Conference where they tried showing a broadcast from the Area... It didn't really work, but I got to see a bunch of recent converts and members from T-3 and Mahotas that I really love! Awesome people!

That's it for my week! Thanks Mum for the package and the letters (The true MVP here)

---Elder Howell

PS: Oh, someone got a 107 lb package, they have a friend at FedEx or something.... Anyway, we got the package surprisingly quick, but the rats got to it first... and when we got it to the office we found that one was still enjoying the snacks within... The chaos in the photos shows the fun we had dealing with it.