November 2, 2015

Ok this week was awesome! Started with ripping my suit but ended with baptism!

So the beginning of the week was hard on me. We walked up to someone on the street and long story short afterwards I felt very frustrated and like a failure and all sorts of bad stuff. BUT when I got home I was sitting there feeling miserable and I opened the Book of Mormon to a random page and I don't even know what it was that I read but after I had read one verse- Everything changed. I had something change within me that changed as quick as a light switch being flipped, I felt peace and my mind was clear. The Book of Mormon brings with it the Holy Ghost. I know that because on this day the spirit came as it has countless other times when I have read from that book. So now to help you, will you read the Book of Mormon when you are feeling frustrated, alone or afraid? I promise you that if you do, you will feel as I felt and the Holy Ghost will show you the love your Heavenly Father has for you and bring you the peace, hope and joy that He wants you to have.

Okay I have to tell you about this baptism! It was crazy. So Wade is this guy... here let me try and paint a picture for you. So he is 38 and lives alone in Newport (super sketchy city). So he has hair that goes down to the middle of his back or so and has a goatee/soul patch thing going on that isn't centered under his lip, it's a little off haha,  He has 2 sets of earrings and always wears chains hanging from his waist. His favorite holiday is Halloween so we set his baptism to take place on Halloween and honestly reminds me of a buddy I used to work with Tim Graham. So Wade comes to his baptism 3 hours late! Yeah so all the ward members had left, leaving like 4 sets of missionaries and like 2 members stuck around. So not only was he ridiculously late but he came in still half dressed up in costume! He came as the Joker from Batman. Most of the makeup was gone but he still had some red residue around his mouth and cheeks and his hair was green! It was super funny, the joke is now that we baptized joker! (We are currently trying to find batman as a new investigator) 

We also had zone conference this week!!! That was so cool! It was my first but I already can't wait til the next one! It was a day of Revelation Nation! It was better than general conference... ooooh, can I even say that? Oh well, too late. Yeah it was awesome, and I learned so much and questions that I previously went into it with were answered! One little bit that I'll share is that we repent (hopefully) each day but on Sundays when we take the sacrament we are fulfilling the repentance process by inviting Christ to come into our lives and help us change. We try and change all week and we do all we can, but ultimately we can't do anything without the atonement of Jesus Christ and so by partaking of the emblems of Him we are literally taking him into our life and his grace is then what gives us the power to change. Because that is what I've learned the most out here so far, repentance isn't just apologizing to God for sinning, to repent =to change.

November is a month for miracles so just expect to be hearing about those :)

Love you guys!

Elder Howland