Jared Howell Mission

Hey Everyone, So this week honestly doesn't have much to report. A lot of walking, a lot of sitting on a bus, we ran into the crazy lady Tanja again (I think I told you about her a month or so ago, she growled at me on the bus). We had dinner with a family that I sit next to the husband every week, he's a super cool guy, spent over 30 years in the military, then 30 more years as a police officer, and his wife has been a police officer here for decades as well, so they knows this city really well. It was a really funny dinner, they are super chill.  Travis is still doing awesome, he came to Stake Conference this Sunday and really liked it. He also had his interview with Elder Coombs and we got the green light for the baptism on Saturday, so be praying that it all goes through.  Quick note about Stake Conference, this is the third time I've served in this stake (Inner Harbor, Susquehanna, and Chesapeake), so Stake Conference on Saturday night and Sunday morning w...

Hey Everyone, So transfers happened this week, Elder Welling got here and we got to work. He's been in the boondocks his whole mission so coming to the city has been a pretty big adjustment for him. He's been reminding me how much trash is in this city, literally.  The main miracle that happened this week was Travis. We sat down with him before Elder Patterson left and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ ( Faith, Repentance, etc...). He loved it. When we left that day, Elder Patterson reminded me that we might want to tell him that he'll have to wait a year to get sealed. So I was preparing for that for the next two days, only to get there and he told us that he already knew about getting a temple recommend and waiting a year and all of that. So we threw Law of Chastity at him, and he responded by saying, "Oh yeah, I was reading that pamphlet last night." Needless to say, we were blown away by this point, so we gave him the Word of Wisdom, and he said, ...

Hey everybody, Here's a massive miracle from the past couple weeks!  So a member got remarried about a month ago and her husband started coming to church three weeks ago.  First week, we talked to him and he said he was thinking about converting, but he would let us know if he was interested in meeting with us. Second week, he catches Bishop Fa after Sacrament Meeting and asks what steps he needs to take to convert. Thankfully, Elder Patterson and I were standing nearby, so Bishop grabbed us and we talked to him in the hallway. He told us that he had already gotten on the church website and asked us a couple questions about the translation and the Urim and Thummin. So we get him a copy of the Book of Mormon and he said he had some reading to do. We met last Saturday and he told us about how he's been reading and praying about the Book of Mormon, and God keeps telling him to keep reading. He had also found the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration movie ...

Hey Everybody, The biggest non spiritual thing that happened this week was that we bought bananas from a guy in a horse drawn carriage in the middle of the ghetto. We were just walking around then saw a horse drawn cart crossing the street. We went up and started talking to the guy, apparently he walked here all the way from the west side, and this is what he does for a living cause he doesn't want to go back to selling drugs. We had exchanges on Saturday, so Elder Nelson and I took on the City, which was a lot of fun. We got out there and almost immediately our entire schedule changed, so that was fun to deal with, but the day ended up working out good. We stopped at Denny's for dinner (they have a deal where it's unlimited pancakes for 4 bucks). We had a good long discussion about life since our time in the MTC together and life in general. One of the lessons we had that day was with a family that's been coming back, two of the little kids got baptized a coupl...