Elder Houghton's Blog

Part of the email we received March 11, 2013

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

 

How´s it going?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Everything´s going pretty good here!!!!!!!!!!! My companion is doing good. Living with all latin Elders is definitely different but the one from Argintina worked in a Call Center before the mission and learned a little bit of English. So when I don´t understand something he helps me out. My Spanish has DEFINITELY improved A LOT this change!!!!!!!!! It´s still got some room for improvement but I think 1 or 2 more changes with a Latin comp I´ll pretty much be fluent!!!!!!!

 

Our Investigators are doing good. We have 2 right now that are REALLY close to baptism.  It was cool becasue they come to church pretty much every week but only to sacrament meeting. But they actually stayed the entire time yesterday and REALLY enjoyed themselves!!!!!!!!! Also, they are A LOT more resposive when we talk about baptism and they get pretty excited about it!!!!!!!!! So we´re going to try to put a fecha with them for the end of the month. So hopefully it all works out!!!!!!!!!!! We have some other investigators too that are all doing pretty good. They´re not progressing as fast as them but they´re still progressing and hopefully we can get them baptized here pretty soon too!!!!!!!!

 

Church here is pretty good. They have all of the callings. Every once in a while we have to teach Sunday School but usually everyone with callings are here. It´s interesting being in a branch though. Yeah it´s kind of big for a branch (we have like 50ish people that come every week) but it´s different because it´s still pretty small. But it's really good. :)

 

No, we don´t have daylight savings here in Panama. But it´s weird. The sun goes down at like 6:30pm and rises at like 5. So daylight savings would actually be pretty sweet here!!!!! And that´s SUPER cool that the scouts are going back to Moab!!!!!!!!!!! The other day we were eating lunch and my branch president´s house and he was asking me why Utah is so great and so I told him to bring up pictures of Moab on his computer and I showed him all of the SWEET AWESOME things that are in Moab. And then I topped it off with a picture of Delicate arch. Ha ha after that he said, "alright, that was pretty coold. I guess Utah is a pretty awesome place." Ha ha it was pretty sweet!!!!!!!!!! 

President Bell´s talk sounds like it was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It kind of sounds like the talk that Elder Christopherson gave in the last Priesthood session. A nice matchette talk is always good ;) And Secion 88 in the Doctrine and Coveants is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is FILLED with TONS of great counsel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It´s AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Another thing that I noticed the other day while I was studying was the Pearl of Great Price. A lot of times we take the Pearl of Great Price for granted and never really study it or anything like that. We just kind of put it on the back burnner and forget about it. But in reality it´s one of the BEST books of scripture that we have!!!!!!!!!! It is FILLED with all kinds of stuff about the Plan of Salvation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It´s SUPER GOOD and I encourage you all to read it.    It´s really short so it won´t take long, but I promise you all that you´ll learn a TON from reading it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 It was pretty funny because my ZLs were freaking out because I had a letter from Africa (Ethan), Japan (Jose), and 2 from Utah (Daddy and my friend Alyssa) Ha ha it was pretty funny!!!!!!!! It´s cool to know that I have friends all over the world right now!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Anyways, I´m glad you all are doing GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Keep working hard and have a SUPER FUN SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!