Jared Howell Mission

Hey Everyone, it looks like I spent all my juice on last week's letter because I've been trying to figure out what to write this week and I got nothing. Brother Gish asked us to come to seminary so the youth can get a little more exposure to the missionaries. It went really well, we just attended the class like we were students, then Brother Gish asked us to talk for a couple of minutes at the end. We also had District meeting that day, which was really good as always, and we had to get our oil changed, which we thought would take an hour, but ended up taking more than two, but we adapted. Wednesday I got to go to Frederick 1st with Elder Musonda, our third exchange together, so that was a lot of fun. We found a really nice man from Ghana who had had a lot of member friends growing up, so we had a nice talk with him about what we actually do. Thursday, as I'm sure you're aware, was Thanksgiving, so we spent a lot of time eating with few different member familie...

You may recognize part of my subject line as being from the popular Hymn, "Be Thou Humble". While the original words are, "Be thou humble in thy weakness," for my purposes today, meekness makes much more sense than weakness.  Yesterday, we participated in the Zone Blitz in the Frederick 1st ward. It was a wonderful experience, but there is one man who I wish to focus on. I don't recall him ever telling us his name, so I will call him Mike, because we met two other Mikes that night. So we saw Mike sitting on a step, preparing to light a cigar. We stopped and started talking to him, and I very quickly realized that this could turn into a Bible bash at any second. We ended up standing there for more than 30 minutes while Mike "educated" us on keeping an open mind, while simultaneously keeping one of the most closed minds I've ever encountered. He would not accept anything from us that was based off of testimony (he claimed it was all someone told us t...

Hey Everyone, So these first few days in Walkersville have been jam packed, so I'll give you some of the highlights. When I got there, we decided that we needed to share the car with the Frederick 1st Elders, instead of their previous arrangements with the Sisters in their ward, which only allowed them to swap the car every other week, as opposed to every other day which we can do since we live so close. Which means I get to ride bikes. I could've ridden them in Savage Mill, but I opted to walk most of the time, but here I don't have that option. That made Friday interesting, because we had a meeting in the morning, and it was our first day on bikes, so naturally, it was pouring rain. But we zipped up our coats and hit the road. About a half an hour later, we got off our bikes, soaking wet and cold, we walked over and knocked on our appointment's door. He wasn't there, so we started walking to our next plan in the area. We started talking to another guy and ...

Hey Everyone, I'll start with the big news, I'm getting transferred! I'm being sent to the Walkersville Ward in the Frederick Stake. Now for the week, Tuesday was interesting because we had to stop by the mission office after District Council; I was talking to Elder Peters, the housing coordinator, and he asked me where I was. When I told him Savage Mill, he glanced at his computer and told me that he'll be closing my apartment this transfer, so to make sure we pack everything up. So that was Elder Mitchell's and my first clue that we were both leaving, which was kind of a weird feeling. So the rest of the week we've been packing up, which has included a massive weight machine that no one has any idea how we got it. The Assistants are coming by with the truck later today to load it up to make Elder Peter's job easier when he comes to empty the apartment.  Saturday was the other big day this week, we had the blitz all day long. We all met at the l...