Sorry low on time this week!

This week was a great week we taught a ton of lessons. I picked up my brand new companion so that is awesome and he is from St David, AZ. His nmae is Elder Anway and we went to the same middle school in Marana for a semester so that is crazy. We did a lot of teaching this week so that was awesome and on Sunday we got 3 people to church and we set a baptism date with two people for Aug 13th they don't live in our ward though so we probably won't keep them, but it was still awesome the work is moving forward! It is super fun. This is my last transfer so I am just trying to talk to as many people as I can and do as much work as I can in 6 weeks. So far it is off to a good start! 

From my studies this week in Alma 12:24 a part of it says "a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state which has been spoken of by us," And I was pondering that part of it and I realized even the older Prophets talked about having an eternal prospective we need to be looking forward to the eternity the choicees we make now greatly affect what it will be like for us there so we should always have that
in mind. I am doing all I can to have that perspective in my mind as i go forward with my life! Every choice I make I will think about what I am doing to lay a good foundation for the eternities! I hope you all do the same. Have a great week sorry it is a lame email! Next weeks will make up for it! 

Love,
Elder Howe 

Teaching a very interested investigator

The last transfer begins! And a ridiculous patterned week!

So this past week was a good week, but a weird one. So ya to tell you the pattern off the bat. Literally every other day this week every single one of our appts fell through. It is all good we saw some cool miracles this week anyways. One of the big miracles on Wednesday was the lady that we found last week, Joan, who we prayed and then only knocked on her door and she said she went to our church in Alaska and so ya we tried seeing her early in the day  and we stopped by and met her husband outside and then we left and then we were at the church and we got a text from her saying that she had a sister who was interested in coming to church as well and so we set an appt. to see her that night at 6 so in an hour and we got a joint teacher to come and we showed up and it turns out while they were in Alaska her whole family all 10 kids got baptized and so her and her sister were members, but the cool part was her sister who's name is Chan just got cancer free and while she was in treatment she prayed and said that if she was healed she would go back to church and then she called her sisters and told them she wanted to go back to church and Joan hadn't even mentioned yet that she had met us and ya so the both want to come to church and Chan has an 11 year old daughter who wants to come to church and should get baptized they might not be coming to our ward, but it was just a super cool experience! We had a ton of success on Wednesday we also found this guy named Paul. We were biking by his house and he was working on a bike and I felt like we should stop and ask if he needed help and so we did and we helped him fix it. kinda made it work and he is from Liberia and said he heard of our church there. He was a pastor in Liberia but we started to teach him and he seemed disinterested in what we were saying untill we said Joseph Smith's name and he said I want to know more about that man and so we gave him the testimony of Joseph Smith pamphlet and I had that in my bag for over a year so ya it was meant for him apparently and we found out he fled from Liberia because of persecution from this secret group that is no good. He was next in line to be a part of so he left that town and then they killed his daughter and so he fled here for protection it is a crazy story! But ya he seems to have a lot of potential it was super cool. 

Some other highlights from the week on Friday we made a number of smaller pizzas and took two to this family in the ward that is struggling and then us and the sisters took 5 small ones to a family that is low on money that feeds us every time we visit them so we were paying them back they are African and recent converts and he sang a song then taught us the song and I have a video of it, but ya it was super cool. Ya the rest of the week there wasn't anything too super awesome all though I may have willed my bike to this 77 year old African man who needs a bike. so ya but it was a good week. Today we found out about transfers and ya so I am staying here and I am going to be able to train a new missionary this transfer my last transfer and I am excited it is going to be awesome! But ya I am super excited! It is going to be a blast. 

From my studies this week so in your last transfer you have to do this program called "My Plan" where you just set goals and make plans for your last transfer and I was doing the first part and it was about remembering and the scripture Alma 5:6 stood out to me 

"6 And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, you that belong to this church, have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers? Yea, and have you sufficiently retained in remembrance his mercy and long-suffering towards them? And moreover, have ye sufficiently retained in remembrance that he has delivered their souls from hell?"

And it hit me hard that all I need to do is to remember all the Lord has done for me on my mission and all that he has helped me be on mission and as I do that I will be able to keep moving forward and keep becoming better and ya to remember is a great principle of the gospel it is taught through out the whole Book of Mormon and as we remember what we have learned in the past and all the Lord has done for us then we will be able to keep moving forward and keep progressing and be able to stay active for all our life! 
Well that is all I hope you all have a great week.

Love, 
Elder Howe

God blesses preservece and diligence

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸Happy 4th of July!🎇🎉🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 everyone! Hope you are having a great day I know I am! But ya this past week was a week of perseverance and diligent hard work as stated in the subject. The start of the week was good on Monday we didn't have a full p-day because we went to the temple on Saturday, but it was a good day we had almost nothing fall through it looked like the start of a great week! And ya Tuesday and Wednesday we did a lot of service and we were at the Food Shelf we do service at and we were short a person so we were running the whole floor and man it was rough. I was really exercising patience! There was a group of ladies and all they did was complain because the shelves weren't full enough and I was trying to stock and do my other jobs checking people's carts and helping people and man I was just glad when they finally left, but ya on Wednesday we helped Bro. McLafferty bulid an outdoor enclousre for their rabbit because he is tired of it pooping all over the house. But ya it was good and then everything fell through that day but we had a good lesson at 8 with a less active.

But ya on Thursday same story all day stuff was just falling through left and right and then we got in with his guy named Zogo and at first he was just basically arguing with us. Ya he said he wouldn't touch let alone read the Book of Mormon but then we talked a bit more and he gave these 5 reasons he had that made no sense at all but I just bore my testimony about how we can feel the spirit and get to know Christ better through the Book of Mormon. And after that the lesson went better pure testimony can make a huge difference it says in alma 4:19 

 19 And this he did that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them.

It is is only by the baring of our testimony that people can be brought to repentance when a testimony is borne the Holy Ghost is there as well and will testify to them and that is how people make changes and keep commitment and make covenants by the power of the Holy Ghost and hearing testimonies and building them.

But ya the rest of the week was kinda just falling through but as we diligently kept pushing forward the Lord blessed us and on Friday while we were tracting we knocked on this guys door and he was like my wife knows a lot of Mormons and we said ok and he called her over and she said ya I was a Mormon when I was 16 and he said he had questions and so we got in and taught him about baptism for the dead and it was good it is a part member family that God led us to and so ya we got another appt. with them for the next week so that was awesome! And then on Friday the trend continued  and things kept falling through. Then at 8 that night we had an appt. with our investigator  and there roommate told us he wanted to have a reasoning session with us and ya it was a waste of time he was just trying to tell us that Jesus was black and just that it is all one god and no one true church but ya then afterwords we had a real lesson and they had this lady who is with them now because she was in the US to take care of her brother and he died and she had nowhere to go so they took her in  and her name is Viola and we invited her into the lesson and we had a great lesson about temples and the Restoration and it was great I think she has alot of good potential Then Sunday was good Joseph and Viola came to church Joseph loves coming to church and it was Viola's first time and she loved it so that was great. I think she could  progress faster. I am excited about her potential! But ya  the new bishop of our ward is great he is making it all about people and so ya it is just awesome he is going to do a great job! It was a great Sunday we ended the night at the church syncing up our numbers for the past week and one of the other elder's tire went flat and so he sat on my comps seat while he peddled. It looked funny I have a pic and a video but ya it was a good week we had a lot of stuff fall through but the Lord blessed us with 3 new investigators because we went on and persevered it was good I am loving it out here I am coming up on my last transfers, but i am working hard till the end! 
Hope you all have a great week! 
Love Elder Howe  

Pinnacle of being a missionary seen!

Ya so I will get to the title of this email a little later! but ya highlights through this week. 
On Monday we went to the building and everyone brought something we bought pizza and we hung out with our district and another district and we got a VHS version of the Singles Ward and watched that. It was fun haven't used a VCR in a while, but we figured it out eventually! but ya it was a good day! That night we had dinner with a family from Laos and it was super good. The first time the elders had dinner there the wife wanted the sisters there because she was shy and then the 2nd time she was still reserved, but this time she was super open it was super awesome! We had a great lesson with them they are active, but she has a ton of less active family in the Ward with a lot of part  member families so we were able to commit them to share there testimony with one of her sisters and it should be great! 

On Tuesday we had a lesson with Donny and his task for the lesson was going to be to teach us the gospel of Jesus Christ lesson well he was only supposed to teach about baptism and the Holy Ghost, but he taught the whole lesson and I asked questions and he answered them great and I asked well is my baptism in my other church just fine? and then he answered it by bearing a super awesome and powerful testimony it was awesome to see. This kid has only been a part of any church for 2 years and his testimony and knowledge is already so great it is awesome to see. He is going to be a great member and an awesome missionary one day! but it was awesome! 

On Wednesday we had an alright day the whole day, but the evening was really good we went out after we had dinner at the apt . and went to do some stuff and then were supposed to go tracting, but we only had time for like one door so we prayed we were looking for a specific guy we had heard of, but we felt like we should  knock a certain door and we did a lady named Joan answered and we talked to her and she said she just didn't know what church to go to in the city she has only been here 3 years and I invited her to church and asked he if she had heard of us and she said ya that is the church I went to in Alaska. She had being seeing the missionaries over there and she said she would come to church with us so it was awesome GOD lead us to her and I feel she has a lot of potential! and then that night we went on splits with some members I went with a guy named Brother Newman and we went and taught our investigators Joseph and we also had another member come who is his main fellowship! and it was a good lesson and then after I switched companions and walked to this another complex with the other guy who came with us and he walked me to our next appt which was with a member and then that member became my companion and ya then my comp showed up with the guy he was out with who leaves on his mission next week and it was a good lesson on the sacrament with this less active we were with! and ya it was a great night that night! 

On Thursday we had a Zone Meeting with another zone and it was a good meeting President Forbes started the meeting with teaching us doctrine. He talked about Priesthood, women, and temples it was super good I learned a lot from it! but the rest of the meeting was good. It was about helping people we teach progress and keep commitments!  So Friday this is where the title starts to come into play so it was just a normal Friday at first and we were planning then we get a phone call and it is the Andover elders and they call me from time to time with questions about people or where things are at, but ya so I thought it was normal and I answered and they told me they just found out that Harry Gbotee was going to the temple the next day at 3 and so ya I texted President right away for permission to go and started to organize a ride and I reserved spots all before I got full permission, but I was going on faith and then we went on through the day and got to dinner and Pres hadn't answered yet so i called him and he said yes as long a I switched my p-day to the next day instead of Monday so we did that and ya so then Saturday in the morning we had this Stake service activity that went from 10-12 and it was good we cleaned up a park and it was p-day so we just hung out at the apt and waited until 2 when our ride was picking us up for the temple and he picked us up and we went to the temple and it was awesome I walked in to the room and Harry was sitting there and it was awesome I haven't seen him in a year so it was great and it is just super awesome to see this man that when I met him he was so sad and unhappy to be able to make eternal convents with God and come closer to Him it was an awesome experience. He is a man who just wants to follow God as best he can so it is awesome to see him doing the things that are leading him in that direction! After the session in the Celestial room it was awesome. There were a number of people from the Andover Ward and it was good to catch up with them as well and Harry walked in last and every one that knew him gave him a hug and it was super awesome! One of the best moments on my mission to see him in there and then he rushed out because he really had to go pee, but it was awesome and then I got pics with him in front of the temple and it was awesome. Just an awesome day! Nothing super awesome happened on Sunday it was kinda just a normal Sunday, but it was a great week! and the Temple is a spiritual place. A thought for the week it is just an amazing thing to be able to be in the temple of God to be in God's house the spirit is strong there and it is awesome to be able to do service for others there! I love temple and plan on going regularly for the rest of my life as long as I am physically able to! I love the temple I hope we all make it a goal to go! 
Hope you have a great week. 
Love,
Elder Howe

Down in the hood things get weird and small miracles

So this past week was an alright week. On Monday we went to the driving range and one of the elders taught me how to swing and I hit a couple good ones. I like golf, but ya Monday night was alright we ended up having a lesson with one of our investigators Adam and Adam claims to be a satanist, but he isn't a hard core one. He has been meeting with the missionaries for a while so the point of the lesson was to drop him because his wife is super against us. Like she would delete our number out of his phone and we can only comes when she leaves for work. Ya but he likes to read the Book of Mormon, but refuses to pray and he knows that is why he doesn't have answers of what truth is, but ya in the end I just bore testimony on how we need to do it and how it will bless us and we left and we wont see him very much any more. We are here to teach and baptize those that are ready and he just isn't ready right now

Ya on Tuesday it was wet we were at the food shelf doing Service and right when it was time to leave it stated to rain so we waited a few minutes, but it wasn't letting up so we biked home and after lunch it stopped for a bit, but then it picked up again after we did some stop bys. it started so we found cover at a park, but there were these two drunk people there so we left while it was still raining and then it started to lightning and we went to the church and did some planning because it wasn't safe to bike around and ya then later that night we were biking around again and got soaked and ya we got lost so we got pretty wet but it was good. Wednesday was a good day the highlight was we had a dinner with a family called the Woodward family and we had a really good message with them about Christ being the light of the world and how when we follow Jesus Christ we become the light and we were committing them to pray as a family and find someone to give a Book of Mormon to and then Sister Woodward had a name come to her mind right away of their new backdoor neighbors and I know that was the spirit that brought that name to her mind so they committed to give it to them within two weeks and it was great. Super awesome it could lead to a great referral so we are praying for it. It is awesome! 

Thursday I had a cool spiritual experience as well so we had been having a good day and then we were tracting a street and we were talking to someone and the phone was buzzing and after we were done I looked at and it was the sisters and they were calling because Sister Frank wanted a blessing because she was having super bad exhaustion like not just regular exhaustion form working out, but constantly kinda zoning out and mumbling and not realizing it so she asked us to give her a blessing and my companion anointed and and I did the blessing and it was cool I could tell the spirit was telling me what to say. I was saying what God knew that Sister Frank needed to hear and it was just cool and there is something in my patriarchal blessing about seeing people recover through my use of the Melchizedek Priesthood and she has been a lot better so it is just cool to see the priesthood is real! 

But ya Friday night the crazy stuff happened so that night we were biking down the street and then this random lady was waving at us and blowing kisses at us and then we pass her and they are on another street and then we passed this guy on the other side of the street he just said did you get asked to leave and we said no..... And then he said are you the police and we said no and then he started going off about how we would fight me if we came to his mom's house and ya I have no idea what he was doing. He was drunk so we just kept going and ya then we were sitting in a parking lot and we see this car just hop a curb and drive across this grass and ya then park and then further out in the parking lot there was another car just driving around with his hood up it was a crazy night so ya! Crazy stuff and on Friday we had this appt. fall through and we were unlocking our bikes and this lady walked out of a house and walked up and she is member of a neighboring ward and she said she was a PCA for this lady and she was asking questions about the church and she wanted us to visit the lady and ya so that was a miracle. Ya we won't be seeing her the sisters will be, but it was an awesome thing!  

Saturday was cool we had a elders quorum pinewood derby and so ya I will send a picture of our car it was fun. Sunday we had the stake presidency in the ward because they were changing up our Bishopric. Our bishop is moving to Utah so we have a new bishopric and ya it was a cool Sunday, but it was a good week this week and from my studies In Mosiah 24:15 it says this "15 And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord." And this is when hey are in bondage and they cant bear up their burdens without the Lords help and it just shows the enabling power of the Atonement and how when we have trials that the Lord won't just take our trials from us, but we need to pray for strength and then he will bless us with the strength to over come anything he will make it so we can do all that he needs us to do in this life. Christ suffered not just for our sins, but he suffered so that we can have strength to overcome all the hard things that happen in this life! So always pray for strength to do hard things and then it will happen! I am extremely grateful for my Savior and I love him!
Have a great week
Love
Elder Howe

Crazy stuff and awesome experiences!

So this week was kind of a crazy. On Monday we had a good p-day we just went out to the Ward mission leaders house and played games and stuff and just hung out it was good! And then ya we just did stuff and then on Tuesday we had a good day we went and chopped more wood for a less active and it was a good day and then that night we had a good lesson with Bro McLafferty it was a great one he is going through a lot these past couple weeks and it was good and then Wednesday was the crazy day we were having a Coordination with the sisters in our ward and we were splitting up the ward list and then we get a call from president and Elder Gwynn answered it and he was told he was getting transferred so that was crazy so I got a new companion on Wednesday. He was told at 11 and the AP's picked us up at 12 and we drove up to Princeton, MN where he was going and where I was getting my new comp from and ya it was like a 45 min drive there and then one back and them we went to work. My new companions name is Elder Kjar he is from Eagle, ID. Ya that day we found a new investigator and it was cool so we knocked on the door someone said I will go get my  mom and and then his girl downstairs opened the window and we taught her through the window for most of it and them she came to the door to get the Book of Mormon and it turns out she is in the 11th grade so we are bringing the sisters with us to pass her off to them so ya it was good though. 

So ya the rest of the week on Thursday we had to bike 30 mins to the library and I found a way that cut through a park and then I was going over a bridge and I got to the end and started to go down and it ended at some water and so I hit the brakes and turned around so that was fun. Ya super good highlights the rest of the week. On Friday we were supposed to go tracting At 6, but i felt like we should go try and see a less active first instead of who we were supposed to see at 7 and we biked all the way and 
then they left as we were getting there so I was like man why did we bike all the way over here for this. So we biked all the way back to where we were going to go tracting and on the street we found Michael and had a good lesson with him and he said he had gotten home like just 30 mins ago. So if we hadn't come later we wouldn't of found him so that was awesome it was a cool expreince. The spirit knows best. Just not always what you think it will be! 

But ya then on Saturday we had plans to go work around where we had dinner and then our dinner ended up calling and bring us food at 12 so it would of been real easy to just change our plans to be closer, but we kept the same plans and becasue of that we taught 3 lesson to new people we had never met. One was super awesome We taught a lady named Ivo who if from......... Talladega........ Alabama  so that was cool Talladega is not far from Birmingham, but it was great. She was super into it and had great questions and it was awesome, but she is just visiting here for 3 months with her daughter and her son in law she said she thinks they won't let us come teach her so we gave her our number and the Book of Mormon and encouraged her to call us and if not us then the missionariews in Talledaga, but it was a super awesome lesson! It was a great night. That night and then Sunday was good we had a lesson on fasting in gospel principles and some of the Africans faith is amazing this new lady fasts every Wednesday because that is the day she was born and she does it just to get closer to God it is great to see. It is amazing how much faith these people from Africa have i love to see them embrace the restored gospel! But from my studies this week. So as a zone we are studying the Jesus Christ part of the topical guide just the heading that says Jesus Christ and so I was doing that and this Sunday before church I was reading a part it said to read in Luke 2 and the verse that I gained a lot from was verse 51 so this is the part where Joseph and Mary find Christ teaching in the temple and this is the verse i learned from 51 "And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart." So it says in that verse and he was subject unto them and so Christ was teaching in the temple doing Heavenly Father"s will but when his earthly parents beckoned him he came and followed even though he may of not been done he followed and I realized it was because it is a commandment to obey thy father and thy mother and Christ was perfectly obedient to all of God's commandments and so when his mother called him he followed and so it shows the example that he really set even though
we don't understand all things at the time we must still be obedient to the Lord's commandments Christ showed us the way it has been an amazing experience so far studying the topical guide Jesus Christ it has made me grow closer to him and has strengthened my testimony of him it is amazing and I invite all to do it as well it is an awesome study I have learned so much! Well I hope you all have a great week.
Love
Elder howe

Good week and perfect time for revelation

So this past week was a good week we did a lot of teaching this week so that was good it was mostly less Active teaching, but it was good. On Monday we went into Minneapolis and we went to the stone bridge and walked across to St Paul. I got some pics that are pretty good it was a fun day. On Tuesday we had a really good lesson with our investigator Joseph Hope. We were teaching the Plan of Salvation and at the end of it we were teaching about the Atonement and we then watched 3 bible videos on the atonement and it was great the Spirit was super strong and we then we finished teaching the Plan of Salvation and it was the most he has ever comprehended before in a lesson. He has had a stroke before so his mind is not 100% and it is hard form him to comprehend and retain but he did really good and I know it is because the spirit was super strong and it taught him. So that grew my testimony of how the spirit is the great teacher! And ya so the rest of the week was good not super exciting that  I feel like I should write about except On Saturday so we have this less active part member family that we work with and their daughter was turning one and they were throwing this huge party we got the invite and it was from 2:30 until 9pm crazy. Africans party long. Ya we were biking around and then we saw him and talked to him this was before the party and he told us he needed help carrying stuff so we went and helped him and they had so much dang food we carried at least 15 of those big aluminum pans things to a car and then tons of drinks and then while carrying drinks I squatted down to pick up four 24 packs of soda and my pant spit right down the middle. So ya I have a pic of them after I had taken them off. It was a big one, but luckily i had a jacket with me so I just tied it around my waist so ya then we went home to change and then we did some more stuff. We Then went to the giant African party and ya we had some food it was OK. So I was making conversation with people asking them about the food and stuff and they were all drinking these glass bottles and I was like what's that because it was in a different language and Bro Dewh, the member, said try one. It is Malta there is no alcohol in it.  He opened and gave it to me and so I drank it and it was nasty. So it was fake beer made form everything beer has minus the Alcohol. So ya I drank fake beer i have a pic of the bottle it was nasty. I never want to drink it again so that was good, but ya then Sunday, this is where the perfect time to receive revelation, so I was fasting our area is struggling with finding new investigators right now and so during the sacrament I was praying and reading the Book of Mormon trying to seek what we need to do in our area to make it better and I was reading and flipped open to the story of Ammon serving the king and then flipped to mosiah 2:17 and it hit me really hard we need to do more Service in our area the Lord really confined that to me and that we need to be better at talking to everyone and the sacrament is just the best time to receive revelation thee spirit is just so strong during it and it is a time meant for reflection where if we are seeking we can receive the guidance and council from our Father in Heaven on what we need and he will bless us with it as we worthily partake of the sacrament we can receive the guidance we need it is an amazing time to receive revelation it is awesome! I love how the Lord works and I love being able to ask questions and receive great answers like I did this Sunday well that is all for this week hope you all have a great week
Love,
Elder Howe