Week 12 - Merry Christmas!

Hello! Merry Christmas and soon to be a Happy New Year! I hope all is well. Everything is good down on my end, Christmas wasn't terribly eventful, but it has been a great week to be a Missionary. I love it. We work hard, especially this time of the year. The opportunity to Skype was just wonderful, and much needed. And once we hit 2016 I know that time is just going to fly, so no worries there. But I hope all is well, not a lot to report on my end. Happy New Years, I will talk to you all Next Year! Oh, and I forgot to say last week, Go UTES!

Brad made bread from a pizza dough recipe laying around.  I think he's quite proud of himself.

Family Picture!
Sanibel, Florida and Tupiza, Bolivia

Week 11 - I'm now officially a Latin Missionary ;)

Hello all!

This week wasn't exactly the best. I was very sick Monday night and Tuesday. Then I had a 17 hour ride to Cochabamba by bus, followed by 7 hours there for immigrations. After that, I went to Burger King, which brought me indescribable joy. We left by plane to Sucre, a 30 minute flight. And I had 8 hours in a bus from Sucre to Tupiza, all on my own. When I arrived at 4 in the morning, we slept for a few hours and went to Quiriza where we harvested 3 garlic fields, weeded in another, and had a wonderful Sacrament meeting the next day. Now, I am in Tupiza, and have officially become a Latin Missionary. If you know what that means, it is probably from experience. I hope you all have an amazing Christmas, and I hope that the Spirit of Christ can be with every single one of you at this time of the year. Merry Christmas!

Elder Howells

Week 10 - Harvesting Garlic and Alejandro!

The work this week was good. We harvested garlic for two days straight. Watch a youtube video on the harvest itself, it is straight miserable. I really love the people in my area, they are just awesome. It is literally like working with the pioneers, they use horses and mules to break up the ground as we start to harvest, we harvest acres by hand, and it is great. I feel like I'm a few centuries earlier, which is a neat feeling. But the highlight of this week was one of our investigators came to sacrament meeting yesterday, he is 11 and his name is Alejandro. He rode his bike 30 minutes to come, and we didn't even get a chance to visit him this week. Before, we have talked to him about baptism and he has always been kind of skeptical about it. But he was sitting next to me and Elder Cortez was talking to somebody else and I started talking to Alejandro. And I shared John 3:5 with him, and he read the part that says, you can not enter into the Kingdom of God with out baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and he just sat there. Then he goes, Cuando suede ser bautizado? When can I be baptized? And I said, as soon as you want. So, we are tlking with his parents about it Wednesday at 10, and I think he will have me do it because he likes me a lot. I am so excited, he is just an awesome, obedient little farm boy. He does his chores, works hard, I love the dude. So excited for him and for this week. The spanish is coming along very well, probably in another month I will be completely fluent.

I love you all, have a great week!

Love, Elder Howells

Week 9 - Teaching

This week has been good and bad. We had the opportunity to teach 12 lessons, some of the best numbers my area has had in years. The work in Quiriza is mostly supposed to be service, harvest garlic and stuff along those lines. I will send you a picture next week of a rough map of our area. But we have at least a two mile walk to any of the other Pueblos in our area, and that's where the bulk of our investigators live. The area we are doing best with one of our investigators is a little place called Espicaya, and her name is Deila. Her husband is inactive but I think with more lessons we can baptize her. Here are the ¨cities¨ in my area - Tittihoyo, Monte, Quiriza, Kataty, Viscachani, Espicaya, Pampa Grande. Haven`t been to pampa grande yet and I think there is one more that I missed but I don`t remember.

It is hard to do Christmas with no snow or family out here, but we are managing. We hung Christmas lights on the Chapel and had a movie night for the kids in Quriza. Had 20 kids come over to watch Big Hero 6 in Spanish. A really cool experience. Elder Cortez and I continue to get along, but there is a clear culture difference between us, but we are making it work just fine. I am happy to be here doing the work that we are doing. Time is starting to move and Christmas and 2016 are rapidly approaching. I love you all and I hope you have a great week.

Espicaya, Bolivia