My world turned upside down

Transfer day

Ooops

hey hey hey yall. We are coming off a much better week here in Calama! The work is still progressing slow.. but it is progressing which is really good! We found 3 new really good investigators this week named Claudio Claudio and kati. they are legit just great people and I hope that we can continue being blessed with the opportunity to teach them. When we 1st met them they asked us if we wanted to drink so tea, so I quickly responded with a "yeah do you  have Herbal?" haha which translates to mean Do you have marijuana.. What a great way to start off our relationship. But we all laughed our heads off when they explained to me what I really said to them. We ended up not having any investigators in church Sunday so we took the sacrament and left to go work. And the blessings sure came into our lives. We reached above and way beyond our weekly goals and found some great people. Were starting to get the hang out things here in this sector after a rough start. Well really we don't have time right now... we have to get to work. but take care everyone and I love you all

Welcome to the desert

Where are your parents when you need to pack your bags?? It was transfer week and finally it was my turn to leave from Alto Hospicio!! It was sad and quite hard to say goodbye to all those people that I have loved for the past 6 months of my life! but that's part of the mission I guess. So here I am 1 week later ALIVE in the city of Calama! Its pure crazy here.. Super hot in the day.. Super cold in the night. I sleep with 9 layers of blankets and clothes. (i have plenty of warm stuff). We are in the middle of the desert.. all the people work in the mine and I mean EVERYBODY! The climate is so crazy that your skin instantly dries up, the wind blows so hard that the skin inside your dries up and bleeds. (sorry, gross mental picture) Thank goodness for blankets, chap stick, lotion and sunglasses! My companion is Elder Garcia from Peru. He is 25 years old and is a pretty good guy. He is really extremely quiet and doesn't really talk to people, but that's perfect for me. I'm just going to get that much better at speaking Spanish that much faster!! haha But I'm glad that he is a chill guy. We are excited to be here together and work hard. The sector that we are in is a WRECK! We have so much work to do its not even funny. We only have 70 people coming to church on Sundays. and that's not okay for how many people are here in this ward! The dog of our mamita broke into our house, ate our food and peed all over the place. we spent all day cleaning that up. Well the members here have really accepted me with open arms. I already feel that I have won their confidence and their love. I have met some great people this week and am super optimistic for this sector. I am grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary here in Calama, the conditions are miserable, perhaps the work here isn't classified as Ideal. But I am happy, I love what I'm doing and I'm going to give it all that I have. I love you all so much.. Have a great week and ill talk to you next week. 

Elder Howard

New members

Shiny and new

Transfer

Yep miracles can happen.. wanna know how I know? Because I am a WITNESS of them. It was such an incredible week here in Alto Hospicio!! Soo I don't know If you guys remember Jorge Diaz, one of the most incredible people in the world that I know.. We have been working with him for a while. His wife, Jessica, was a less active and their daughter, Kata, is a strong youth in the branch. Jorge works in the mine and is there 10 days on 10 days off. So its super hard for us to teach him. Earlier this month we tried having his baptismal service the 21 of July.. but he didn't feel like he had received a true answer but that he needed to REALLY JUST FEEL IT. So he got back this week and we went to visit with him and we had a really strong lesson with him and left him with the commitment to read 3 nefi 11 again and to pray to see if he gets his answer.. we came back the next day. And what happened in this next lesson changed my life. Really, to make a really long story short... He read, he prayed, we talked, we taught, we challenged and the result was that he said he knows he has to do it. He received his answer and that he wants to get baptized Saturday and we set the goal right then and there in one year from Saturday to be their temple marriage date! Really just listen to the voice recording because this letter doesn't do justice. Everything went incredible this week and both Luis Borquez and Jorge Diaz both got baptized. It was the high note of my mission and now I am going to be leaving this sector. We received the transfer calls this week and after 6 months here in Alto Hospicio I will be going to CALAMA BABY!! I'm so excited Calama is one of the best cities in the mission. More on Calama next week when I know what its really like. I leave tonight at 11:30... and its about a 7 1/2 hour bus ride. I'M SO HAPPY but I'm sure going to miss my home town here in Alto Hospicio!!

I LOVE YOU ALL and have a great week.

Elder Howard