Subject to Change

Hey all,

So this week has been interesting. Elder Haslam and I have definitely gotten our quota for walking this week. For some reason, the whole transit system has been so slow this past week that we usually have ended up walking from place to place because it's either as fast or faster than waiting for the bus. We had a referral that we've had for a while and haven't been able to get in contact with so we decided that we were just going to go down there since I hadn't ever been to that part of the area, right near the southwestern tip, where it takes a few long bus rides to get to. So we went out there and realized why we couldn't find the house on my GPS. Because it  doesn't exist. Not only does the house not exist, but the Whole ROAD doesn't exist. It's just a big field... So we walked back to the bus to go to the next closest referral. When we got to the stop we learned that it was going to be at least 20 minutes until the next bus. So we decided to walk to our next stop. We walked for about 30-45 minutes, along the bus route, and a bus never passed us. We met a lot of interesting people along the way. And that same type of stuff happened everyday from about Wednesday, to Friday. We had the ward Harvest Festival on Friday which was a lot of fun to be able to talk to the members and see them in a different setting, they are all so sweet and care about the missionaries so much. Mary Jones is back from Rehab too! On General Conference weekend, she had a lung collapse to she's been in rehab since last Wednesday, but her rehab facility has been outside the ward boundaries so I haven't been able to visit her during that whole time, but she's back now and all is right with the world. 

I had an interesting experience this week. We run into a lot of preachers from other churches and while most of them are friendly, there are always those who aren't. But with those ones that aren't we've discovered a common theme, The less we talk, the better they feel. That always makes us laugh when we walk away from it becasue we can list off the questions that we asked them then they just bounced around but never actually answered. And when they do that, all it does for us is motivate us to keep asking those basic questions that we have answers to but they don't and maybe by some way we may help bring them closer to Christ. I'm not saying in the slightest to argue with them, because they won't go anywhere, I'm simply saying that if you try and find common ground then work up from there then it may help them, even if the only help is that they stop thinking that we're poligamists or that we believe in blood atonements, both of which I ran into this week. And if you ever run into anything that makes you doubt yourself or hear something that is apparently in the scriptures that doesn't sound quite right, then the best thing to do is to go do your own research, don't let anyone just sit there and talk to you, find it out for yourself. I had one guy this week just go off about how we can't see angels so I went home and opened up to Luke 1:11-12, which gave Elder Haslam and I a good long laugh. And that's the other important bit, We've found that if you aren't laughing at some random point during the day, you're doing it wrong. Maybe that's just us, but we love laughing, it's one of our favorite activities. 

Elder Howell

2 Nephi 2:25 (Don't know if I've used this one before, but it's worth repeating)