Three Months Oct.16, 2017

Hey all,

It felt weird to have this week go by, simply because it doesn't feel like I've been out for 3 Months! And this transfer has simply flown by. Elder Haslam and I hit yesterday and we both just looked at each other and said that we don't want to leave, and we especially don't want to get split up. Then we got the call from our District leader and found out that we are not only staying together, we're going to stay in the Inner Harbor!! We aren't quite sure if we get to stay in the city permanently or if we're staying in Pikesville permanently but either way we're super excited. We both have fallen in love with this area and these people. 

This week was especially long probably because we were able to get so much done. You might've heard me mention before that this area gets the most Headquarter Referrals in the mission. The past few weeks we've been absolutely swamped by them, at the beginning of the week we had close to 40 of them, so we've gone out with our ward mission leader, who is the coolest person in the world, a few times and we usually manage to knock 5 or 6 out in a night. There was one day that when we combined our day work with the evening referral runs with him, we got almost a dozen of them. And as normal, we receive more every day so there is always more work. We've managed to get the numbers down to about 24ish and we're still working. 

We also had a few really cool lessons this week. We had two lessons with Julia and put her on date to be baptized on November 4th. The baptism we were supposed to have this past Saturday had complications arise so we have had to push it back a couple of weeks. But our lessons with Julia have been amazing. She came to church yesterday and has been eating up all the things we've taught her about. I'm a little wary because her husband is a Jehovah's Witness but he is supportive of her meeting with us although he wants nothing to do with us. We had another lesson this week which was a first for me. We got a referral appointment from the missionaries in Ellicott City on Thursday. His name is Phil and he is a 7th Day Adventist. We went in and talked for a few minutes and he was incredibly nice. He listened to what we had to say then we listened to him. Then I noticed that every time we would open a scripture in the Bible, he would take out this little book he had and look at it. Finally I asked to see the book and he quite happily handed it over. It was a Bible Study Handbook that compared the beliefs of 7th Day Adventists to those of other religions. So that was kind of how the lesson went. I was surprised though that he only said that we were Blasphemous once, and he only compared us to Satan once too. He gave us the Bible handbook and another book called the Great Controversy, wrapped in plastic, and told us that he was going to read the Book of Mormon and compare it side by side with the Bible. When we left I smiled to myself as I thought of the story of John Tanner, who took a copy of the Book of Mormon to expose the Mormons as frauds so he read it alongside the Bible and became one of the most devoted members of the church ever. There is always the opportunity not only to teach but especially to learn. 

Elder Howell
The John Tanner Story (There is a great video about it too)

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