Which one is the real Jesus?

Hey all,

This has been a long week full of walking and talking to people, let's start with Wednesday.

Wednesday was by far our longest day of walking, we met the Sisters at the Library so we could talk about the Zone Blitz that's happening on November 3rd. I don't know if I've mentioned the blitz at all yet, so the background is that President Mutumbo was watching conference, as he should've been doing, and he received revelation to start doing something called Zone Blitz's. Pretty much what that is is you take every missionary in the Zone, all 9 companionships for Colombia, and they get together and work a single ward for an entire Saturday, focused on finding and Less Active work. They want the ward as involved as possible as well to work alongside the missionaries. So naturally, they chose Savage Mill as the first area to get blitzed, so the Sisters and us have been trying to work out any bugs before we get to the day of so that it runs as smoothly as possible. So we divided up the area based on which missionaries we felt would do best with which people. After that we walked home so we could take an early dinner because we had a meeting with Todd. Brother Tobey was supposed to come with us, but he had a family thing come up a couple hours before, so we ended up walking the three miles there. Before you ask, yes we have bikes, we've just elected not to use them because during the Mission Conference with Elder Christofferson, one of the Seventies that accompanied him told us about how he was able to talk to so many more people when he walked everywhere instead of biked, even though it takes longer. So we walk. We had an awesome lesson with Todd about Ether 12, he loved it, especially v. 6. We had a great discussion with him, he's been making so much progress it's amazing to see. Afterwards, we walked around, trying to visit a few people, then walked the 4 miles home. I added up everywhere we walked and it added up to more than 10 miles, so suffice it to say, we slept well that night. 

We had interviews on Thursday morning, it's always amazing to see President Mutumbo, he and I have forged such a good relationship. When we were going into the room, the first thing he said to me was, "Elder, you look tired." Without even missing a beat, I responded, "I'm always tired President." He and I probably spend just as much time laughing in our interviews as we do talking. 

The other main event that happened this week was that we got to do service at the Henderson's this week. They had an old, rotting shed in their backyard, so they called in the deacons, supervised by the leaders, us, and Brother Gartside Jr, who returned from his mission this week, and we emptied it out, threw most of the stuff in it out, then ripped it apart. The hardest part for me was after they hoisted up what was left of the floor, mostly because the foundation trusses were filled with spider nests and big spiders, some of whom were jumping around. But I lived to walk another day.

Saturday we also had one of the funniest lessons of my mission. The Sisters had contacted a man and sent us over to teach him and his "Fiance". The man neglected to tell us that his girlfriend didn't know they were engaged, she must've brought that up at least a dozen times during the lesson. She also took four pages of notes, although I'm not sure what she was writing because there were times she was writing faster than we were talking. They also had two of her brothers living there, we talked to them for a few minutes but they didn't stay for the lesson, he asked me my name and just out of pure habit, I said Elder. Then he asked Elder Mitchell, who said Elder as well. After we explained why we're called Elders, we all got a good laugh out of it. The couple's two sons, aged 8 and 7, kept walking in and out, and while we were talking about Joseph Smith, the kid was looking at the picture in the Pamphlet which depicts the First Vision and he kept asking, "Why are there two Jesuses? Which one is the real Jesus? Once we explained the First Vision, it made it a lot clearer for them. It was hilarious simply because of how many times he repeated his question. They're a great family who really seem like they want to learn more.

Brother Gartside Jr gave his homecoming talk yesterday, it was really cool to see how different missions work differently, but the work is always the same.

Love you all, support your local missionaries,

Elder Howell