Jared Howell Mission

Hey everyone, This was a pretty solid week to end off the transfer, talked to a lot of good people and surprisingly enough, no crazy people. We did get to meet with a new family this week, we've been trying to set up a time to meet with them for 2 weeks, but Satan kept throwing them curveballs. But we were finally able to sit down and have a great talk. We got to know them and what they are expecting from us, and we had just enough time to briefly introduce the Book of Mormon then we had to leave so we could get home on time. And it is only because of the extra strength of the Spirit that we were able to get home on time, we had about 4 miles to bike and that should've taken us almost 25 minutes but we managed to do it in 18, screaming into the backyard at 9:28. Then we met with Alex and Mona on Thursday with Sister Gish, who sent us over, and we had an intensely spiritual lesson on the Restoration of the Gospel, Mona told us that she knew the Book of Mormon was true w...

Hey Everybody, So this week has been a bit of a whirlwind, but in a good way. We had to jump from lesson to lesson, which is a good thing in missionary work because that means that there are a lot of people who are growing their faith in Christ.   Let's start with Kalil. He was a former who is dating a less active. We were out with Nephi and we decided to go visit that family. Well Kalil happened to be there too, so we had a good talk with all of them and set up an appointment to visit with Kalil and Ambur (his Girlfriend) the next day. So Monday night we went over and started talking to them, trying to figure out where they were at, and their questions kept pointing us to the Restoration of the Gospel, so that's what we talked about. We were going to meet with them again on Wednesday, but he ended up getting called into his recruiting office so we rescheduled for Friday. We met on Friday, this time without Ambur, and he explained how he and Ambur got together. We jok...

Hey Everyone, This week feels like it blazed by, but then I talk to Elder Merkley and he reminds me that what I think was a full week was, in reality, just the last couple days. So Tuesday, we were riding our bikes, when we both took a curve in the sidewalk too fast and we both bumped our tires on the railroad tracks. It was a little jarring, but we both stayed on the bikes and kept riding. We got to the top of the next hill and Elder Merkley stopped. When I caught up to him, I realized that his tire had gone flat. We were riding to meet a member anyway, so we locked up the bikes and had him pick us up. We went to a lesson with a part member family, it was a bit odd, but it ended up going pretty well. Then we went to a dinner with another member family, and visited a couple other people, all with this member, and I forgot to mention that he was one of the priests in the ward. So it was really good to have him out with us. Wednesday we had an extended Zone Conference with E...

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...