So This Week Has Been NUTS!!!!!!!!

He and his companion made chocolate covered bananas.  He sent this picture and a few of the broken bathroom sink.   Hopefully we'll get some of HIM next week. :) 

Email received today, October 29th.

After an interesting doctor's visit, he's healthy again and enjoying teaching his amazing investigators...

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this week has been NUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha ha first of all it started with a big training in the City and the traffic was HORRIBILE!!!!!!!!!! It took us 2 1/2 hours to get to the city and my area is only like 10 miles from the city!!!!!!!!!!!! That was on Tuesday and then on Thursday I had to go to the city again. Ha ha this is kind of a funny story. So anyways, I wasn't feeling good so I called the Hermana who's the nurse for the mission and she made a doctors appointment for me and told me to drink a ton of cranberry juice. So I went to the doctor and it turned out to be a urologist and she asked me all these questions and perscribed me a ton of medication!!!!!!!!!!!! I took a picture of it to show you guys how ridiculous it is!!!!!!!!! Ha ha anyways, I called the nurse again afterwards and she asked me what medications she perscribed me and then she thought i the amount of medication was weird so she called another doctor and he told her to tell me (yeah I know, this was a very complicated process) to not take any of the medication because it was probably going to be harmful and to just drink cranberry juice and he perscribed me an antibiotic that I took for 5 days because all it was was a bladder infection and I guess the Panamanian doctors always try to rip off the gringos and cheat them out of money. So anyways, I don't have the infection anymore I'm totally fine. Ha ha but anyways, it was SUPER nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Anyways, about the good stuff from this week!!!!!!!!! We were meeting with Katia (Davis' girlfriend) this week and randomly Davis called and she told him that we were teaching her so he asked to talk to us and he said that Katia had told him that she wants to get baptized so we need to teach her fast because they want to get baptized next Sunday. So anyways we talked to her about it and when we placed the Fecha with her for next Sunday, she said something that suprised us. Usually people are really hesitant about accepting a baptismal date but she said, "Yeah that sounds great!!!!!!! It's really soon but that's good because then I'll be able to learn faster!!!!!!" It was pretty dang cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Also another thing that was cool and strengthened my testimony of the truthfulness of the church is Katia's mom thinks we're crazy and we're banned from their Chino now. Why that strengthened my testimony was because you can see how true the church is because Mormons have always been persecuted whether it was really bad like the pioneers or even just a little bit like having missionaries banned from a chino. Anyways, I thought it was cool.

So something else that was kind of annoying is Davis and Katia didn't come to church yesterday. The good thing was they both had REALLY good excuses. Katia's grandma had a heart attack and so she had to go to the Interior (the inner part of the country) to take care of her, and Davis got called into work. He's a cop and for the past like 2 1/2 weeks there has been these huge riots in Colon because of something really, really, really stupid. There's this mall thing called Zona Libre where they sell stuff for SUPER cheap (it's all the stuff that ships coming through the cannal have to get rid of because the ship is too heavy) but anyways, the government is selling it and they are going to get almost a billion dollars for it and they are going to use that money to fix up colon and make it really cool. And for some reason the people here don't like that. So anyways there's these HUGE riots going on and they're spreading all throughout Panama (don't worry they haven't reached me) but they're SUPER bad in Colon. They're blowing up cars and stuff like that so Davis is a cop and he got called in to help with the riot control. So we have to post-pone their baptism for the 10th. But Carlos, the guy we were waiting on to get married, is getting married this week so he'll also be baptized on the 10th, and we found another girl in the ward who has been going for about a year or so and really likes the church but isn't baptized yet. So we're also going to probably baptize her on the 10th. So we're going to have 4 baptisms that day!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
 
So anyways, that's all that happened this week. Pretty crazy huh? But it sounds like you guys are doing GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm glad the halloween carnival was a hit!!!!!!!!!! I love and miss you guys SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. 
Here's the thing for your students, mom...{He wrote this note to my after school students encouraging them to work hard and do their best.  They were so excited he actually wrote to them! I sure do love this guy!!!!!! }

Hey Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!  

I don’t know you but my mom says you’re all pretty cool kids!!!!!  Anyways, I just wanted to tell you guys about the importance of school and working hard.  I didn’t really work as hard as I could have when I was in school.  And it really made it hard for me when I was trying to get scholarships and go to college.  My grades weren’t as good as I needed them to be to get any substantial scholarships and it stunk seeing all of my other friends who had tried really, really hard all through school get big scholarships and I wasn’t getting any.  So, work hard!!!!!!!  Even though it seems like college is SUPER far away, it’s really not.  Before you know it, you’ll be applying for college and you will either be regretting what you did or being happy for what you did.  Because seriously, college is SUPER EXPENSIVE and if you don’t have any scholarships it can be really hard!!!!! 

I once heard someone say, “Do the hard things, because if you only do the easy things you will have a cheap life.  Don’t have a cheap life.  Work hard and make something out of it!!!!!” And I know if you work as hard as you can ALL the time, you will have a FANTASTIC life!!!!!!!!!!!  If you look at all of the successful people in the world, they are all really hard workers and gained all the success they have because they never gave up.  So keep working hard and NEVER give up!!!!!! When you give up you lose.  So work your absolute hardest all the time.  Get help when you need it.  Don’t be afraid to get help and ask questions.  

Also, when you’re applying to college, be sure and apply to SUU (yeah, you guys should all go to SUU because it’s the BEST school!!!!!! WAY BETTER than BYU!!!! ;)  )  Seriously though, it doesn’t matter which school, but it’s important to get all the education you can!!!!!!!  

Make sure you have no regrets!!!!!!!!!!!  Work hard!!!!!!!!

We Basically Have the Best Investigators EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the email we received today.

Sounds like he's as enthusiastic and happy as ever! 

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everything is going good here!!!!!!!!!!!! My investigators are doing pretty dang good!!!!!!!!!!!! We have this Investigator named Davis (I think I told you about him before) Anyways we lost contact with him for like 2 weeks and then we finaly got in contact with him and we were SUPER excited becasue he was SUPER positive when we talked to him last. Anyways we met with him and It was basically the best lesson of my life!!!!!!!!!!! Our plan was to teach the Comandments mainly the law of Chastity becasue we thought he was sleeping with his girl friend. Anyways, we started with the word of wisdom and we started telling him about it and then he stopped us and told us he knew that already and went on to basically teach us about it. Then he said that he's already stopped drinking coffee and that was the only thing out of the bad things in the word of wisdom he was consuming. Then we got to the Law of Chastity and Meyer let me teach it because I've never taught it before (oh and by the way, things are getting a ot better with him!!!!!!) But anyways I was pretty nervous to teach it but about half way through I asked him if he was living with his girl friend and he said that he wasn't. So that was a HUGE relief becasue we thought he was. But then to make it even better, he went on to telll us that he isn't sleeping with her either becasue he is saving it until after they get married in the temple (yes the LDS temple) because that was his ultimate goal. to get married and sealed in the Temple. This guy hadn't even been to church before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I seriously almost cheered I was so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And then he went on to tell us all this stuff that he has learned from the D&C DVD's that he bought at the vistor's center at the temple. He was telling us stuff like how the towers of the Salt Lake Temple represent the Aaronic and Melchezidek priesthoods and how long it took the temple to be built, and then he told us he watched "The Mountain of the Lord" and he really liked it and ALL KINDS OF STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And then we continued on and had a conversation abou the Plan of Salvation with him. And not a normal discussion you woud have with an investigator. We were talking about deep doctrine type of stuff like how the Earth is going to be the Celestial kingdom and how we have the potential to be like God and we will be creating worlds and stuff like that. This lesson was NUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And then his dad and brothers came in and started listening to us and they were really positive about it too and his dad told us that he was Catholic but he never goes to church, doesn't even read the bible, and thinks it would be cool to find the truth. And then he told us that he'll talk to his boss and switch his day off so he can start coming to church. So yeah, they're a TOTALLY LEGIT family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our goal is to baptize Davis, his dad, his mom, and his 2 brothers by the end of the change. {I'm assuming this is before they get transferred which could be soon.} And his girl friend Katia, is investigating and she wants to get baptized too but she just wants to learn more first. So yeah, we have a very good chance of baptizing all of them by the end of this change. And we have 2 more people who are waiting on marriage papers and one of them, Carlos, will have his papers turned in hopefully by tomorrow and then he could get baptized this Sunday. So yeah, we basically have the best investigators EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the statistics about my mission. So there are about 200 missionaries here in panama. I don't know how many zones there are but my zone is the Tocumen zone. There are 2 districts in my zone. My district is Pedregal 1, Elder Van Weezup and Elder Barrie (the other two that live with me) are in Pedregal 2, and then we have 2 more elders who are in Nueva España. Then the other district constists of Mañanitas (that's where Elder Tukia is), Tocumen, 24 de Deciembre 1, 24 de Deciembre 2, and one more area that I can't think of the name right now. But anyways there's 16 missionaries in my zone. 2 of them are hermanas. We have a lot more gringos than most but we still have missionaries from honduras, mexico, guatemala, argentina, and columbia. Anyways, we have a pretty sweet zone!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways I love and miss you all SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I Had a Baptism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We received an email from Scott today!

He is really hot but happy!

He had a baptism and is working with many investigators. 

Here's what he had to say...

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I had a baptism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was pretty dang exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

One of the newest members of the church, Sara.  Isn't she beautiful!?!  I love her mom's shirt...it says, "Today MUST be my day!" Love it!!!!  His companion, Elder Meyer, baptized her and Scott confirmed her.  

 Also we have at least 2 more for sure this month. They're really strong fechas (that guy who we were waiting on his marrige papers, and Balbina) and we'll probably have 1 maybe 2 more!!!!!!!!! So I'm pretty excited about that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, I started uploading more pictures and and could you organize it in some way where all the Panama pictures are together and all the MTC pictures are together? Anyways, yeah it's pretty much incredibly hot all the time!!!!!!!!!! Like remember how everyone always pours water all over their heads and the water's dripping and everyone pretends like they're sweating a lot? That's how it is, but with real sweat and all over your body. Never in my llife have my forearms sweated. And here, they drip with sweat!!!!!! Ha ha it's pretty nuts!!!!!!!!! And yeah water gets into my house all the time. especially when it rains a lot. For some reason they decided it was a good idea to build the rain gutter on the inside of the house. So we basically have a waterfall in our house when it's raining hard. I'll get video of it the next time it happens. We also have a lot of other investigators. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot!!!! This area is nuts!!!!!!!! Investigators just seem to fall out of the sky!!!!!!! But yeah we've defintely got our hands full!!!!!!!!! Oh and one of our investigators works in a Chino (Chinos are little stores that they have EVERYWHERE here!!!!!!! They sell stuff for SUPER cheap!!!!!!!!!! and they're normally owned by Chinese people.) And most of them you don't go inside of the store, you just walk up to a a window and tell them what you want and they get it for you. And the girl we're teaching works in one of those kinds (with the windows) and she invited us inside and gave us free sodas and we talked to her for like 45 minutes on the inside of a Chino!!!!!!!! Nobody gets that opportunity!!!!!!!!! Ha ha it was pretty dang sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Like I said, everything's going good here!!!!!!!! Yesterday I had an interesting experience. We got invited by the lady who gives us lunch Sundays to go to the cemetary with her. Not knowing why, we went with her. It turns out her oldest son died 12 years ago. I guess he was 16 years old getting ready to serve a mission. And it was interesting becasue she told us that the only reason why she's not sad all the time is because she knows that he's in the Spirit world teaching and being a missionary to those who are in spirit prison. It was a cool thing to experience. I never realized until yesterday how big of a blessing it is to have the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation. And to know that this life isn't the end. 

Anyways, it sounds like you're all doing great!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That' SUPER cool about Cole going on a mission!!!!!!!!!!!! I have had like 3 dreams where we were companions!!!!!!!!!!!!  Anyways, I hope you all have a FANTASTIC WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love and miss you all SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pictures!

We finally got Elder Houghton's first pictures from Panama!

They are mostly of the surroundings and not so many of him but it's interesting to see what it's like in his area.

Elder Houghton and his companion, Elder Meyer, outside the Panama City Temple

Outside his first house in Panama.  The door/gate opens up to a courtyard and the house itself has no doors or windows.

The kitchen

His desk.  Nice to see he's as organized as ever! :)

Laundry day.

They are in the rainy season right now.  Apparently this rolls in just about every morning then POURS for a couple hours and then the skies are beautiful.  

Example of the crazy rains they get there!

Notice in the 2nd video how the rain comes into the house!  Crazy!

A neighborhood he tracks in.

Typical street in his area.

A "jungley" neighborhood.

The church building he attends.

Wishing Cole a Happy Birthday!

Panama City

So, Good News!!!!!

We heard from Scott today! 

He's happy and well!  I actually kinda got to talk to him real-time today.  

I had my email opened and saw when his email posted so I hurried and wrote a quick message back.  He  responded and said, "Haha!  We can kinda text for the next 4 1/2 minutes!" So we shared quick little emails back and forth for his remaining 4 1/2 minutes on the computer today.  It was like old times when he would randomly text me messages like, "Hey!  I love you!!!!!!!"  I sure miss those texts! It was great to "talk" to him today!  He assured me he is doing "SUPER great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  

He was able to send pictures this time but I can't see them at work so I'll post them later tonight.

Well, here's what he had to say....

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, good news!!!!! First of all I have a baptism on Saturday!!!!!!!! Second, I FINALLY got the pictures to work, and third, we had 3 of our investigators come to conference!!!!!!!!!!! How we found our baptism is actually a pretty funny story. We were just contacting one day and we saw a house with young women's poster on the door and we were confused becasue we didn't know any members that lived in the area we were contacting so we contacted that house to see what was up. It turns out the girl that gave the opening prayer that day in church lived there. She's 12 years old, been going to church for a little over a year, and isn't baptized yet. So, we're going to baptize her. Ha ha it was pretty sweet!!!!!! And yeah I uploaded my pictures to my photo bucket. I'm also uploading my MTC one's so I can have them saved in another place so you'll see those one's up there too. And yeah, I got to watch conference. It was cool they let us watch it in English which I was SUPER excited about!!!!!!!!!! And the first thing I said after they made that missionary announcement was, "Heck yeah!!!!! My brother's totally going to be on a mission this time next year!!!!!" How sweet would it be if he gets called to Panama?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I had a dream about it last night and if it all happens how it happened in my dream, it's going to be pretty dang sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But yeah there were some pretty dang good talks this conference!!!!!!!!!! I really liked Sister Burton's and also Elder Packer. That dude knows SO MUCH about the Atonement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was SUPER GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!! The whole conference was good!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I also noticed that in almost every talk the speaker mentioned either listen to the spirit, follow the spirit, or follow the promptings from the spirit. I thought that was really cool because that's a very important thing to do in life. God knows us better than we know ourselves and he knows our talents and how we need to use them (oh President Eyring gave a talk in Preisthood session about finding and using our talents given by God. It was also SUPER good!!!!!) and He sends the Spirit to come and give us promptings and help us make the right decisions. So we DEFINTIELY need to follow the promptings from the spirit because the Spirit will ALWAYS lead us to do what's right and to help others. But yeah, it was a dang good conference!!!!!!!!!!!! And it's going to be really cool because there's going to be a TON more missionaries now because of the new age. Because if you think about it, how many people are SUPER strong in the church, go to seminary, and have the desire to serve a mission in high school, and then when they go to college they either fall away or mess up? So I'm really excited about this new change!!!! And it's going to give a lot more women opportunities to serve and the hermanas are BEASTS!!!!!!!!!!!! They baptize like it's nobody's business!!!!!!!!!! So that's going to strengthen all of the missions all around the world!!!!!!! 

Anyways it sounds like you all are doing GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much for all the prayers!!!!!!!! Whenever missionaries said that they could feel the prayers helping them as they go, I didn't believe them. But I can actually physically feel everyone's prayers. There have been so many times where It's been a really stressful day and I didn't think I could walk any longer. Then all of the sudden I felt a boost of energy and I was able to finsh out the day. And I know it was because of all of your prayers!!!! So thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love and miss you guys SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOLDEN!!!!!!!

Here's the email we received on Oct. 1, 2012.  

(Sorry, I'm a little late posting it!)

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everything's going pretty good. Unfortunately the lady we were supposed to baptize yesterday didn't get baptized...We went and visited her on Saturday and made the decision not to baptize her because she doesn't really know what's going on. She's SUPER old and she's kind of losing her mind. We showed up and she didn't even remember that we had her baptism planned. So we don't want to baptize her until she understands what she's doing.  Our other investigators are doing good. Ha ha we got a reference from someone in our ward and he's GOLDEN!!!!!!! He's been studying the Book of Mormon for like a month now, been talking to his boss who's a Mormon, has a pretty strong testimony, and he told us this right as we were leaving, "Alright guys my first mission is me, my second mission is my family. So you guys need to help me get my family converted too alright?" He's a SUPER cool dude!!!!!!!!! He was telling us that his girl friend was confused why all of the sudden he was investigating the church and he told her, "You know when you think your whole life something is one way, then you find out that it's actually another way? That's what happened to me. I found the truth and now I want it." Yeah a pretty dang good refference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we have a fecha with him for the 13th. We also have 3 other pretty strong fechas and we're going to work hard to get Davis (our golden investigator) family baptized too. And I think we have a pretty good chance. We're pretty sure his dad likes us and felt something because he drove us home after our appointment with Davis because it was like 8:45. And they don't live close to us. Like 25 minutes walking. So that with Davis testimony, we'll hopefully be able to baptize them!!!!!!

Yeah I got all the letters and I sent letters back to all of the ones I've recieved so far and I just got more today. So tell everyone that they're coming and I'm working as fast as I can! The mail service here is SUPER slow and on top of that the mission takes a pretty long time getting the letters out to everyone so tell them they're coming :) And it's good I can write them individual letters. President Ward said that we can write letters whenever we have free time at the end of the day so it's not too overwhelming.

I haven't heard from Jose but I just got a letter from him today! And it's Jose, so he's probably baptizing like a maniac!!!!!!! :) And yeah I heard about Braden's call!!!!!!!!!!! That's SUPER CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And SUPER SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm glad to hear that everyone is doing good!!!!!! That's awesome that Cole is playing in State!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A Houghton will FINALLY go to state for a sport!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha ha but seriously that's SUPER COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And a 75 at soldier hollow is a RIDICULOUSLY good score!!!!!!!!!!! That's nuts that Jakes bike got stolen again and this time it was pretty crazy!!!!!!!!!! Jake has pretty bad luck with things like that. It was funny he sent me a letter and asked if I live in a huge apartment complex becasue in my address it says AP 0823 or something like that. Ha ha I thought it was funny :) And I'm trying right now with the pictures. I don't know why but it's not working right now and I'm trying everything I know how to do so HOPEFULLY it works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If not I'll buy some kind of cord or something so I can get this stupid thing to work!!!!!!!!! And that picture thing would be pretty sweet!!!!!!!! I'll talk to my bishop and the primary president to see if maybe we can set up some thing up and it will be cool you can teach how the church is the same in all parts of the world. Anyways, I'll let you know about that. Anyways I'm glad you all are doing good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh wait, I just remembered something!!!!!!! We were contacting in a new area the other day and we came to this house and a black 57 chevy belair was sitting in the driveway. It was pretty sweet!!!!!!!! Ha ha it's the black version of Papa's car!!!!!!!!!!! Anyways, I love and miss you guys SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!