Blessingcitas

Hey I have like no time to write today... super lame email coming you way just as a heads up. Ive been stressing over all this Christmas stuff for Y'all this year.. I'm trying to get you guys a package ready to ship out here now. Its a risky one, I'm about 50% that it will even get there but I figure that this will probably be the only thing I will send my whole mission, and its going to be tiny small too. So wish me luck with that and I hope that it gets there even if it doesn't by Christmas.

So Jonathan, our what we thought baptism date last week, decided to go to darn Peru for the week without telling anyone! So, after that we didn't know what in the world was going to happen with him, luckily enough he got back Saturday in the night and we were able to talk with him and figure out everything that was going on and replace his new baptism date for this next Saturday.. December 1st. He is sooo funny. This week in church he came in his huge dark Harley Davidson sunglasses and kept them on during the entire time. Gotta love weird things that people do:) Also, and very happily I am proud to announce that KAREN ROJAS is also getting baptized this next Saturday... and her husband Claudio(who just got the Aaronic Priesthood last week) will be baptizing her! I'M SOO EXCITED for them! This is the young couple that we have been working with for quite some time.. They were at the point of divorce and separation but now though the infinite power of the atonement of Christ we have been able to find mediums where as this family has been able to forgive one another. And now, they are on the path to an eternal marriage. I guess that's just a little tiny itty bitty reason why I'm so thrilled. So please keep them all in your prayers this week!! We need all the extra blessingcitas that we can get!

Love Elder Howard

PS. So we are going into week 6 of the transfer and so the next Monday I will know what my future will look like. I Really want to stay here in this same ward with Elder Packard for the 3rd time but I think our time is up together.. I know president normally keeps companions together if they have problems left to solve. So I think I might email president right now and tell him I'm at the point of killing Elder Packard just so he keeps just together!!! I'm still a believer in miracles!

Work Hard-Play Hard

Halloween BBQ

4 Amigos 

Salvation & Family

Talk about an eventful week! This week we had tons of things go on... 1st we were blessed to be able to put a baptism date with our investigator Jonathan for the 24th of this month. Its cool because we have been working with him for a while because he is a friend of Diego - a missionary that is preparing to go on his mission here in the next few months. So we have been helping both of these young men to start this new spiritual adventure. We´re stoked for the both of them!

One of the references that we received this last week as turned out to be such a cool challenge for us! Her name is Yesi, she is recently married to a less active member of the church (ovalo) and they live together with his mom (margarita). And just right off the bat I can already say I love this family! They are great! Anywho, in our 1st lesson we just started as usual and very quickly we came to the understanding that Yesi does not believe in God. "oh, elder Packard and I thought"... so we changed our plan on a dime and we just talked about God. After asking some good questions to her she came to the decision that "ya it would be nice to really know that God exists." So now we got her on the track of reading the Book of Mormon and just last night started to pray.. oh and they came to church as well. Shoot, I might be getting ahead of myself right now but I cant help but to feel that this family will be getting sealed in the temple in a year from now! Every time I'm with them I just have this vision of them dressed in white ready to go.. Lets just hope. Oh and that reminds me of a quote I heard in church today.. A very common phrase down here is "Salvation is personal" and there is a lot of truth to that.. but I have come to know that "Salvation is NOT just personal, it comes only through the family." 

So Im going to be using that one a lot! hehe.

Love Elder Howard

Ps. Do you guys remember SEBASTIAN (the 20 year old in Alto Hospicio that we baptized)???I heard just this week that HE HAS ALREADY STARTED HIS MISSION PAPERS!! WHOOOT WHOOOT!

P-Day Fun

Bowling adventure

Pull-ups with Elder Packard

Great references

Hey my beloveds... Happy Halloween! We had a great week here from the north of Chile.. starting with Vianka our newest reference from a sweet girl in our ward (Nayabet) has been progressing sooo well. She was invited to the young men and young womens ward activity in which they all went to some sweet beach (and no, we weren't invited) and all the kids that were there help make this girl feel like she was queen of the world! They all talked to her about baptism and how she should continue to prepare for her own baptism. I LOVE it when the real ward members do missionary work for us! It makes the whole process so much easier and effective! I absolutely love this great ward. The members here really do so much for us missionaries.. and now imagine it, we are in the biggest ward of the whole mission and the people would just do anything for us. They often times offer us rides, loads of sweets, and treat us missionaries as little American princes. and actually the 4 missionaries here in our ward have developed quite the reputation here in the ward. They call us the crazy happy fun spiritual elders. hehehe I love it!!

My favorite part of the week just has to be president Bruce´s talk in our stake conference yesterday! he said "if you have to ask members for references that means that they don't trust in you" hehehe I loved it. And this week we received 8 great references ;) hahah the work of the lord is moving forward!!

Love Elder Howard