May 28, 2018

Hey all,

Transfers were this past week so Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent packing and saying goodbye to the members in Luray. Elder Miles and I had to wake up at 5 am to make the 3 hour drive to Colombia where we had coordinated with our new companions so we all arrived at about the same time. But got there safely and with minimal traffic, for which I was grateful . My new companion, Elder Apgood picked me up there and we drove to the Susquehanna, north of Baltimore. Since we had to conserve as many miles as possible, we drove right through Inner Harbor as opposed to going around the city. It was a bit strange driving through my old area, one where I'm used to having to walk or ride the bus everywhere. We had a few good laughs about the area, because we've both served in the Inner Harbor ward in the past. The Susquehanna ward is very large boundaries wise, but most of the work is in Havre De Grace, Bel Air, and Aberdeen, although we aren't allowed to work on the Aberdeen Proving Ground. 

Since Elder Apgood is the District Leader now, he had to go to Zone Leadership Council on Friday, so I got to go on a mini exchange with the other District Leader companions for an hour in the Chesapeake ward, which was a lot of fun to be back in the city. We all started talking to a few people who were waiting for a bus, and out of the 6 people sitting there, I somehow got the one guy who didn't speak English. I was really wishing I had one of my French speaking friends with me because he only knew a half dozen words in English. So that was interesting, trying to communicate with someone who couldn't understand you and you can't understand them. After the meeting, we went back up to Aberdeen and helped a member split a bunch of wood. Once we finished, he said we split enough wood for the next two years. We also had a skype call with the Special Assignment Elders to prepare for our exchange this week. After dinner we decided to walk in order to conserve miles, and we met Amanda. She was a very interesting lady, she called us from across the street and we started talking to her. Turns out, she's a medium and she told us all about how she can't predict the future, then proceeded to predict the future. Then she told us about how she wanted to summon Satan once to try and talk to him and told us that she talked herself out of it, then told us about how rude he is. It was a very interesting conversation that ended up going absolutely no where. Elder Apgood and I had a good laugh about that one.

Saturday was unbearably hot, and the pollen count was through the roof, so Elder Apgood was dying from the heat, and I was dying because my nose decided that sneezing every 5 seconds was a wonderful idea. But we worked through it during the afternoon and it cooled off after dinner, and I took my last allergy pill, so I'll have to pick up some more of them at Walmart today. On Sunday was Church, obviously. :) It felt a little weird being in a congregation of more than 20 people again but it was a really good meeting, and the building style is different from any building I'd seen before. The east coast has such unique buildings. This one was obviously built by the church, unlike Luray and Inner Harbor, but it is a different design than any other building I've been in. We had dinner with a family that night who had a pair of twin boys who were the most nervous I've ever seen. They were literally latched onto their parents for most of dinner, the fact that they had just woken up from their nap probably didn't help. But after they got some food, and especially after they got some sugar, in them, they were running around, acting like normal kids. We also had the chance to go to a get together that a member was having, which was a great chance to get to know some of the other members of the ward, and to get to know some members of the community. I'm sure you've already seen, but the mission got slammed with rain yesterday, Ellicott City got hit worse than the rest of us, but there were a couple times yesterday that we couldn't see out of our windshield because of the rain, or the cars in front of us were throwing up a ton of water because of the puddles/rivers on the roads, so needless to say, I'll be putting rainx on the windshield today, it's a rain repellent that Elder Funk introduced me to last Zone Conference. One of the members we visited said it was the remains of a hurricane that came up form the gulf. Whatever is was, it was probably the worst rainstorm I've been out in, and I've been in some pretty bad rainstorms, especially in the past month.

Love you all,

Elder Howell