Howard, Keaton

Olá everyone, hope you all had a great Christmas! We had a great week, and a great Christmas. This last Thursday, we had zone conference and it was awesome. We heard some amazing talks and had some fun trainings. During lunch, the mission president came in as Santa and gave everyone chocolates, and all the elders cool Portugal ties. After everything was done, we had a huge zone white elephant party. It took a couple hours, and I ended up with an Axe bathroom kit thingy, which is sweet. On Saturday, we were able to have Christmas eve dinner with some members in our branch, so that was cool being able to spend that time with them. For Christmas day, we were lucky enough to be able to spend the day with another family, and have lunch with them. We ate a ton of food, and a ton of dessert. They even had chicken feet and hearts as one of the dishes. So I was a bit weirded out, but it's actually not too bad. They also run a dog sitting business, so there were about 16 dogs running ar...

Olá gente! This last week was a good one. We were able to put two of our friends on date for baptism! They're awesome, and we love teaching them.  Last week, we found a new friend from the Congo. At first, she just wanted to do a Bible study with us in Portuguese, because she wants to learn portuguese. Then after a bit, she started asking questions about missionaries, the church, and other things. She spoke English with us, but she's a native French speaker. So her Bible was French, which she read with us, but she somehow had a Spanish Book of Mormon. So we spoke English, read Spanish and French scriptures, and spoke some Portuguese. It was a very fun and interesting lesson. On Saturday, we were able to have a branch Christmas dinner. It turned out great, and we all had a great time. There was a ton of chicken left over, so us elders had leftovers for almost a week. Spiritual thought: Luke 2:10-12 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of...

Oi todos! Not too much happened this past week, so I apologize for the short email. We did have a crazy miracle too, but I'll get to that a bit later in the email. This week, we did a bit of shopping for 3 white elephant parties we're doing. We have stores here that we call "China stores," which are basically glorified dollar stores. lots of the white elephant gifts were bought there. We also decided to make a ton of cookies for members in our branch and our friends. It took up most of our p-day to bake, but it was fun and they turned out well. The miracle we had this last week was awesome. Might be a once-on-a-mission miracle. I hope not though. Anyways, this last Friday, we were walking around town finding people to teach, and we tried talking to a guy we were walking past. He said that he had no time and had to go pick something up, and so we just kept on walking and didn't think anything of it. After about 10 minutes of walking, we heard someone running up beh...

Olá everyone! This last week was a fun one, but not a ton of things happened. We did have transfers and we got 39 new missionaries, which is a ton. So there are lots of missionaries that are training. In my apartment, we have 4 elders and the other companionship has a greenie. He's really cool, and it's cool to see how I probably was when I got here.  My trainer was also made the district leader too, which is weird because he's leaving next transfer for Angola. But it's still fun getting to better see how mission leadership callings work.   Here in Caldas, things just get more Christmas-y by the day. They had these gnomes, and little houses set up in the park, which is fun to see. They’ve also got a little snow machine in the park since it doesnt snow here, but it barely makes any and melts when it hits the ground. It's funny to see everyone playing around in it though. There is also lots of bands that walk around town playing Christmas music which is awesome. We...