I don't really have that much to say this week besides the fact that my testimony of faith and obediance and the power of prayer and of the Holy Ghost grows stronger every day, along with my anxiety and anticipation to get out in the field...and I have only been here three weeks! I have to admit that after the 1st week at the MTC the excitement of "Oh, I'm finally a missionary at the MTC! I can't believe this!" starts to sink in after being here 3 weeks. Don't get me wrong I still get those moments of "wow, I"m a missionary" and one of my teachers Irmao Cannon says that will happen a lot during my mission haha, but I hate to say that I've felt discouraged and a loss of enthusiasm while being awake for 16 hours days (way longer than I used to be awake for) and going on 3-4 hour straight times of MDT (basically free study time). It's hard to stay focused at times. Lately I've been praying a lot for diligence and it's helped a ton. Plus whenever I feel the Spirit, its like my energy bar is refueled, and my drive to learn is back. Luckily I feel the Spirit here tons as well :) and luckily I have two of the greatest teachers in the world. I always look forward to class time with Irmaos Porter and Cannon and whenever they bear their testimonies in Portuguese, I feel the Spirit so strongly. A couple nights ago Irmao Porter bore his testimony on fe' (faith) and he just started tearing up and he got me going as well (I'm such a crybaby when I feel the Spirit). I can't tell you exactly what he said, not because I couldn't understand him...it's because he was talking so fast, but I got the profound message he was trying to get across that faith is the foundation of our testimonies and of prayer. There are countless examples of the importance of faith in the Book of Mormon, like Enos.
Also a recent example of having faith in the power of prayer was this week during TRC, which is the greatest practice for missionary work. We first contact a random stranger through a door contact, then set up a lesson with them. Then we try to teach this random person acting as an investigator about the gospel and the situations vary every week. Well, before we were about to be assigned our investigators this week we found out that we didn't have enough volunteers in that day. So our teacher told us to pray for someone to come and so we immediately did such and immediately after a bunch of people came in saying "um we're not scheduled to do this today, but we were bored and felt like we should come here." It was amazing and just little things like that keep my testimony on prayer strong.
Also on faith, Irmao Cannon said an awesome quote that I loved "Miracles won't happen for you if you don't believe in them, but if you do believe in them, they happen all the time."
We lost our District Leader this week. He got his visa! He left Wed. It was really sad to see Elder Harston go but it was great to see that visa's exist! Your prayers are working, lots of Brazilian missionaries are getting their electronic visa confirmations! Thank you so much for the prayers! Plz keep it up! I pray that everything is going well for you guys! I love the MTC so much and the love that I feel from you guys and from the gospel and I love you all very much and wish you the best week!
Love,
Elder Howell
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