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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"And Yeah I got my Letters" (FINALLY!)

We received this email from Scott today.  He finally got all the letters everyone's written him! He said he's going to try and write back soon.  I guess it takes two weeks to get to Panama and however long for his Zone Leaders to pick them up from the mission office!  (I don't know if they even deliver mail to the houses there.)  Overall he's doing good...

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everything's going good. And yeah I got my letters ha ha it was nuts!!!!!! They handed me a huge stack of letters!!!!!!! But yeah I'll be sending them soon. But it does take pretty long to send. Because I have to give them to my Zone leaders and then they have to give them to the Elder in the office who's in charge of mail, then he has to send them out. So it's kind of crazy and the Zone leaders don't go to the office very often so tell everyone that they're coming!!!!

 Anyways like I said everything's pretty good here. It's getting really frustrating with Elder Meyer though. It's frustrating because of how lazy he is and it's hard becasue we could be doing so much more!!!!! But he doesn't want to do much and I can't do much without his help...But Beth told me about a talk by President Uchtdorf and in it he talks about trying to find happiness in every moment. So I need to try to find the positives and then just pray and have faith that it will get better. We do have a baptism planned for this Sunday. We're baptizing a lady named Balbina who's 73 years old so that should be pretty exciting!!! She's a really funny old lady. Ha ha she thinks that I think she's crazy because I don't say very much when we talk to her. But I told her that I can pretty much understand what she says but it's just hard for me to speak. But she's really funny. My investigator who needs to get married is so close to getting there. He has everything he needs but his soon to be wife needs to finish getting her stuff put together. But we're going to baptize him next month so that will be really cool to see because it's been a struggle getting this all together. We also have a lot of investigators and a lot of potential baptisms for next month. So I guess we've been doing a lot of work, it's just that we could be doing a lot more too. 

Thanks for creating a photobucket account for me!!!!!!!! Unfortuneately I was dumb and forgot my camera at home today so next week I PROMISE I'll send some pictures.

There wasn't anything too out of the ordinary that happened this week, but i did remember something I was going to tell you but I didn't. About 2 weeks ago I was taking a shower and then when I was washing my hair I noticed that there had been a frog sitting in the corner of the shower the whole time. And not just a regular frog, it was HUGE!!!!!!!! Ha ha it was nuts!!!!!! It took us forever to catch it and stuff. Also yesterday for lunch I ate the most rice I've ever eaten in one sitting. Like I said, they normally give us a TON of rice, but yesterday was RIDICULOUS!!!!!!!! The plate seriously weighed like 2 and a half pounds and it was only rice and 2 little pieces of chicken. It took me like an hour to eat it all!!!!!! Ha ha it was nuts!!!!!! I'm used to only eating a plate that weighs like 1 1/2 pounds (ha ha it's funny that that's normal for me now!!!!) Anyways, nothing else too crazy has happened. Anyways, I hope everything's going good for you guys and I'll talk to you next week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"A Really Humbling and Spiritual Experience for Me..."

Email received 9/17/12...

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah everything is going good here!!!! We had 1 of our investigators come to church yesterday. Her name is Balbina. She's a really old lady and she said that she really likes church and she wants to get baptized so hopefully everything works out and we get her baptized by the end of this month!!!!! We'll most likely have another baptism this month too. There's this guy named Carlos that wants to be baptized, but he needs to get married first. He's been going to church for like 12 years or something like that but hasn't had the money to get married until now. Becasuse getting married here in Panama is a lot harder and it costs a lot of money (they have to have all kinds of doctors appointments and lawyer stuff they need to do and pay for) so most people just say that they're married and then just live together. But he's finally saved up enough money to get married. So we're helping him with the mariage process and we should have him married by the end of next week and then baptized my the end of the month!!!!!!! So if everything goes as planned we'll have 2 baptisms this month and that will make 20 for the Zone (the most any zone has had in a very long time) so that will be SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My Spanish is coming along, slowly, but it's coming. It's really frustrating but I just have to have a positive attitude about it and work hard and it will come. Elder Meyer is doing good!!!! To tell you the truth, he hasn't been that lazy lately and we've gotten a lot of work done!!!!! Well a lot of contacting but not very many people want to listen...And that girl who was really excited about the Book of Mormon, her and her family have been out of town this week so we haven't been able to talk to her. But hopefully this week we'll get that opportunity and hopefully she had a good experience with it!!!!!!!! And that sounds cool if you guys send those testimonies!!!!!!! That would be a pretty sweet tool to use!!!!!!! Also about the letters, I haven't recieved any of them yet. But I was talking to Elder Tukia last P-Day and he said that he went into the mission office and saw that there was a ton of letters there for me. So hopefully I get them soon!!!!! My Zone leaders are kind of "out of it" as far as missionary stuff is concerned (they only have 2 more weeks left) so they are lazy sometimes and forget things a lot. So hopefully I get them soon!!!!!!!! I'll ask them about it today.

Alright so I wanted to share something with you guys that really made an impression on me. Yesterday we went and visited 2 recent converts Nichole and her sister (for some reason I can't remember her name right now) one of them is 12 and the other is 14. We went and visited them because they haven't been to church lately and we were going to see if everything was all good. Now I didn't know these girls too well becasue they were baptized before I got here but when we went into their house I was shocked. These girls are the only members in their family, their mom is a single mother who's also a dead-beat, their house is as big as our living room (just the area with the T.V. and couches), they don't have a bathroom or a shower in their house, and they share a bed with all the members of their family. They've had a rough life. They wouldn't tell us why they hadn't been at church and they kept saying that they were doing good. But you could tell from the look in their eyes that things had been especially hard the past few weeks. Man it was really hard sitting in that house talking them and talking to them. Because seriously, their lives have been SUPER ROUGH!!!!!!!! Elder Meyer had them read some scriptures in 3rd Nephi. They are in chapter 22:10-15. It talks about how the Lord is always there for you and that He will help you with anything you need. Man hearing them read those scriptures and then looking at their lives. Man it was  hard...But I know that becasue they are trying hard (and they really are trying hard. They're reading the book of mormon and praying everyday) the Lord will bless them greatly!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh man it really made me think of my life and even though I've been thorugh trials and hardships, nothing even comes close to what they've had to endure and I know they will be blessed because of it!!!!!!

Anyways, I just thought I should share that because it was a really humbling and spiritual experience for me. And sorry there aren't any pictures this time either...I'll for sure make it work next week and I'll send my pictures!!!! 

We've had Some Pretty Sweet Lessons...

We received an email this morning!  Yippee!!!  He seems to be doing well and working really hard. The language is coming but probably not as fast as he'd like. He hasn't figured out how to send letters yet and he should be sending pictures next week.  He's doing well...

Hey!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah I'm doing great!!!!!!!! we've had some pretty sweet lessons this past week and 2 of our investigators came to church yesterday!!!!!!!!!! So that was super exciting!!!!!!!! One of our lessons in particular was really cool!!!!!! We were contacting in this one area that SUPER Junglely!!!!! I'll take some pictures of it the next time we're there because it's SUPER sweet looking!!!!! Anyways we contacted there 2 weeks ago and one lady let us in and we taught her and her son the plan of salvation. Then we made an appointment and went back last week and she was actually there (which doesn't happen very often) and this time her daughter was there too. And we taught them the restoration and about the Book of Mormon. Then at the end of the lesson Elder Meyer asked them if he gave them a Book of Mormon would they read it. Then the daughter jumped up from the couch and said, "Da me lo" which means give it to me. And as soon as we gave it to her she sat down and started reading it. We're going back again this week so hopefully she had a good experience with it!!!!!!!!! It was a good lesson but I only wish that I can speak more spanish than I can. Right now I only bear my testimony a few times during the lesson which is good, but I wish I could actually help teach....

My house is pretty nice.  And it's pretty huge. Well, huge compared to the houses here in Panama. It's about the size of Jose's old house. But seriously compared to the houses here it's pretty dang big!!!!!!!! We live with 2 other elders. Our area (Pedregal) is really big so they split it into 2 areas and the other missionaries who I live with work in the other Pedregal area. Their names are Elder Escalante and Elder Van Wessup. Elder Escanlante is from Columbia and doesn't speak English and Elder Van Wessup is from Utah, I don't remember exactly where from but somewhere up north. I think he went to Alta high school. Anyways they're both pretty cool. I see Elder Tukia a lot because he's in my Zone so I see him at district meetings and on P-Days. But other than him, I don't see anyone else because they are all in other Zones. 

Here's a picture I got online that is an example of a house in
the Tocumen area where he is.  

 We don't knock doors. The houses here are different. Pretty much every single house has an enclosed patio area with these big barred doors. So we just walk up to them and yell "Buenas" until someone comes out to talk to us. But yeah, we do that a lot!!!!! One day we had 5 appointments and all of them fell through so we contacted all day. And even the houses that don't have patios don't have real doors, they are those bar doors like I was saying. The houses here are way different to tell you the truth!!!!! And EVERY building is built out of cement blocks. Even in the main part of the city the hugh skyscraper buildings are made out of cement blocks!!!!!! The people are pretty nice towards us. 

P-days here are WAY better than in the MTC!!!! We actually get to do things!!!!!!!! Ha ha like last week we went to the temple (Which was SUPER COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The temple is SUPER small--only one endowment room-- and they only have like 5 sessions per day) but it's so sweet inside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was nuts!!!! We had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to catch a bus and then take a taxi to get to the temple before 8:30. We've also gone around to different places in Panama and went to the church and played soccer and all kinds of stuff. Today we were going to go hiking but it's pretty stormy. We think that the tail wind from some hurricane hit here (don't worry, it's just windy and rainy and it's not doing any damage or anything) But I'm not sure what we're going to do. Tocumen is pretty cool. There's some really sweet Junglely places like I was saying before.

Anyways, it sounds like you all are doing pretty dang good!!!!!!! I miss you all so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .  I love you guys and I hope you have a FANTASTIC week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Oh and I was going to send pictures but the computer is being dumb and it's not working. And I don't want to mail my SD card because I don't want it to get lost. Next week I'll try a different computer. And the picture of Max and Emma is pretty much one of the best pictures I've ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I'm Just Loving it Here!!!!!!

We heard from Elder Houghton today!!!

He sounds a little more settled this week and says, "I'm just loving it here!!!!!!"

So good to hear!

Enjoying some Subway sandwiches with President Ward during President's Interviews last week.

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Yeah it's all good here still!!!!! I'm starting to get used to the different lifestyle here. And yeah I'm sure the bite didn't break skin. It just left a bruise. My pants are fine and I'll try to stay away from dogs. My house is pretty good. It's really big compared to most houses in Panama but it's pretty disgusting. But it's all good. Yeah I sleep pretty well at night and no I don't need a mosquito net. There actually aren't that many mosquitos here. Well at least there aren't any right now. 

My investigators are doing good. We have 10 of them right now. 5 of them with baptismal dates, but it's been hard getting them to come to church. Also one of our investigators was in a really bad gun fight about a year ago. He got shot like 10 times, 4 times in the head but he lived. His left side of his body is pretty much paralyzed and he has a hole in his neck to help him breathe. And he's really interested and he wants to get baptized but the problem is the hole in is neck. He can't be underwater or his lungs will fill with water. So we're trying to figure something out but if we can't, he'll have to wait a year for the hole to heal up. And also, he's not coming to church so we need to get him to church also. 

The church here is good. I don't really understand what's going on when I go but it seems to be good :) the members are really cool!!!!!! Most of them are really strong in the church and they help out a ton!!!! They also feed us dinner every night. And we have a concinar that cooks us lunch everyday except for P-day (since we're out doing stuff) so we never have to cook our own meals. We pretty much just eat rice and spaghetti. Ha ha they also usually give us some salad and some fried plantains and some kind of meat. But it's mostly just the rice and spaghetti. Yeah I've been taking pictures. I just noticed that the computers we use have a slot for SD cards so I'll remember to upload some pictures next week.

I'm glad everyone is doing great!!!!!!!! Ha ha I think it's funny that out of all of my shirts cole could wear, he wore my attache shirt! Ha ha I just thought that was funny. 

That's so random that Cole is playing the harmonica!!!!!!!!!!! Ha ha that kid is a fool!!!!!! Sorry for the short e-mail this week. Nothing too crazy has happened. Anyways, I'm doing good and I don't need anything and I'm just loving it here!!!!!!! Tell everyone hi!!!!!

I love and miss you guys SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!