Picture Little You

It has been a while!  I will start with some photos 

Where can I possibly start?  We had 20 other missionaries staying with us this week at our Mansion!  Everyone who is a Member of the Church from the entire Island groups around Vanua Levu Fiji came for one meeting at our Branch Chapel. Got to help feed 800 people 3 times.  We had the wonderful Baptism of Sanjeeta by her husband Avneel!  They are excitedly marching forward toward the Temple and making their romance an eternal glorious story.  Marriage not done by God's restored power and authority found only in His church, at death it is divorce.  How blessed to know that we can be together forever in God's plan thanks to this unique message Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ personally came and restored in brilliant fullness in our day.  This church is true, but we can each know that, straight from God Himself.  How clear God has made the path in these most confusing of times in this world.  

We are working so hard, playing so hard, and just thriving

As the Title states, picture little you.  Where have you come since you were a toddler?  Consider the whole path you've walked from then till now.  God is at every point in it.  I loveyou

You ARE Eternity Changing

बुला विनका !

How are YOU?

Written in my Journal from the last 19 minutes being 19 the day before my Birthday: "It is a very prayerful moment.  A special stepping stone; milestone of millennia it took me to travel forward thus far.  I am now to focus and rise and put away all that isn't fully Christ. For i am now 20.  An age of greatness, service, solidifying and building what will determine every year after in my life and posterities lives that will ever happen.  The next 20 years, like the past 20, are in my Father's hands.  This marks the greatest chapter of my life yet."

My teen years are forever behind me.  20 Years Old as of the 27th.  It is a new dawn, the best and grandest chapter of the book of my life yet written, because these chapters are ALL about Christ. Nothing can or will ever be the same.  I am ready for all adulthood, and am fully undaunted by the mission I have to fulfill in this life. I am empowered.

Just Some Highlights of the Week:
Gave away literally 1000's of invites to the Temple

Taking literally 100 people through the Temple

I finished training with Elder Datoon, and got transferred and now have a new Companion

I am now District Leader of a very large district of 8 Elders

Have arrived at a beautiful vista in the mission, seeing about 30 children of God who have been able to be Baptized through the Lord's working through me in not even 2 years of the mission yet, and watching them all having come back to the Savior Jesus Christ and make their families more prepared for Eternal Joy in this life and Eternal Life and Exaltation in the life to come... it hasn't been an easy 15 months, but it has been the ultimate joy and highest life experience I could imagine at this point for my time on earth.

(I took this photo after having gone through the Temple for the 6th time with some of the people I love the very most in Fiji. These ARE the most special days of my life yet.)

​I spent my 20th Birthday at the Suva Fiji Temple, BRINGING more than 20 PEOPLE to the Temple.  It was the best Birthday I could have wished for.  On that special day, Riznal had his Baptismal Interview and was finally after over a year of working and praying and hoping and not giving up, he is finally able to be Baptized!  And I found that out on my Birthday!  While in the Temple in a tour with Asmin, Junior, Nafisha and Ansh, I sat down in the Celestial Room of the Temple, and it was one of the most profound and warm moments of my life.  I had a conversation with Heavenly Father in His holy house where He prophesied some very amazing blessings about my future and about my family. No gift could top the gifts that God has personally given me through the Temple.  I know that God wants you and your family there. I can testify that, even before it has been Dedicated and set apart by the living Prophet on earth, the Temple is the House of the Lord even now while it is just open for public tours.  As we go there, holiness overrules and reshapes our very nature, and we are welded in unity to our Savior Jesus Christ who is the Author of everything good in your life.  We need to be in the Temple.  I testify that the work of eternity is real.  In Temples really truly is where Eternity meets Eternity.  I have watched miracles happen right before my very eyes as people of other faiths or beloved Recent Converts have gone through the Temple with me.  One family walked into the Temple and when they got to the part of the tour about eternal family and eternal marriage, they felt the spirit of our loving heavenly Father just envelop them, and they actually stepped forward and knelt at the alter and looked into the mirrors of eternity that really have no end in either direction in that beautiful sacred room, and the husband said, "It is time for us to move forward, as a family."  They weren't members.  This story is the kind of special miracles that are happening every day here in the Fiji Suva Mission right now.  We have stopped focusing on teaching people for the time being, just so we can get the entire nation through the House of the Lord, His Holy Temple.  These free tours are more powerful than weeks of lessons with those investigating the church.  I feel so privileged to be a part of this miracle.

February 20th it will be broadcast worldwide.  If you are on the East Coast USA, it will start 10PM Friday the 19th.  The world can watch this Historic event. I will be participating.  All the Missionaries in the Entire Nation of Fiji will be on the field for part of this special national Temple Opening Celebration. 

​Almost all of the people I have been able to see come into the church through my mission, were able to go through the Temple with me.  It was one of the sweetest moments I had always wished for when I traveled there with them and heard them make earnest comments like, "I can't wait to serve my own mission."  "I promise myself that that is where I will be married."  "I promised God in my heart that I will come back to this place."  "My family should be baptized too, so they can be eternally happy, eternal family."  "I am coming again!"  "I can't imagine what my life would be like if this Gospel had never come into my life." "Can I come and do the work for my ancestors who never had the opportunity I had, to receive this message and gospel of joy? I want to do their work."  "I can't walk nicely, but, when I come here, I know it is my Father's house, so I won't be using a wheel chair when I come back.  He will take me through His house. I know He can do miracles." "This was the most special day of my life."  "Wow!  Look at it!  It is so beautiful!"  "I felt so good inside." "You brought us here."  "God has worked miracles in our lives." "We can't wait, we are just going to go right now!" and "Elder Howard, we're here together.  Think back to the first day we met, and now we're all at the Temple."

This was my last day with Elder Datoon as my companion!  In Mission Terminology, as a trainer, he is called my trainee or "son."  And I am so proud of him!  He is now leading the area I got transferred out of.  Leading 2 wards and a huge area with 15 Baptismal Dates and much to stay on top of.  He has risen to the task.  His Hindi and his abilities in the mission have just blossomed.  I love him.  Having him as my companion was a main highlight of these 2 years.  He is going forward now and doing great things. His new companion is a good friend of mine, Elder Halbert.

This is my new companion, Elder Mo'uga.  It turns out he and I were kind of almost neighbors as kids!  We were born in neighboring cities.  He is just a couple years younger than me, but his is very tall.  He is Samoan, from Utah.  He is so much like one of the best friends I've ever had--Brandon Agre(who is now serving a full-time mission in Chicago Spanish Speaking)--and has all my favorite qualities in a person I could wish for.  He is so pure and humble and willing and funny and we are always smiling and laughing about something.  He was my trainee's companion in the MTC.  He and Elder Datoon had been companions before.

My new area is my old area.  Nasinu 2nd Ward, Hindi.  All my mission (except for when I was in training,) I have been responsible for either 2 or 3 entire wards, and had to balance and juggle non-stop.   While I was doing that with Suva 1st, 3rd, and Nasinu 2nd, I enjoyed working in Nasinu.  But now I am blessed to be able to give it my full attention!  I finally only have one ward.  It has become my favorite area in unique ways.  Each area is so beloved to me and my heart is in each area, but there really is something special about Nasinu.  When I arrived into the new flat with my wonderful new missionary companion, by my request, he gave me a Priesthood Blessing.  Many things were promised and prophesied in that blessing that have just filled me with strength and vision and promise for all that is to happen in my time in this area.  I AM HAVING FUN. Wow!  It is such a unique and sacred privilege to be allowed to go back to one of the areas in the mission where you have already served--for now, I can experience being with my recent converts over there that I have grown to love just as if they were real family.  I know the Lord has great purposes in all He does. It has only been a few days in my new area, and I already see exactly how this area needed me and I needed this area.  It is perfect!

Rachel and Shaun.  We taught and Baptized them many months ago.  It is such a joy and a miracle to be WITH them now, to see how far they've come and help them go further.  They loved the Temple.  I am beside myself thinking how richly the Lord blesses us as we just trust His path and be willing to press forward whatever the next step be.

This is a family that we are privileged to be working with.  They are a miracle!  They want to be sealed as a family for time and all eternity in the Temple after they are soon Baptized and then prepare themselves.  Going through the Temple with them was a good experience. 

I celebrated my Birthday with this girl and her family.  This is a family I will come back to Fiji to visit after my mission.  This little girl's name is Kushi--meaning "Happy" in Hindi.  So, we wanted to celebrate our birthdays together because we share the same personality and name and funniness.  We sang, prayed, laughed, and had the best time with this family on the night of my birthday in Fiji. This is the Kumar family.  As we have built a deep relationship with this wonderful, beloved family, Brother Kumar the father of the family, has become the Chapel building representative and their family has just transformed.  I am so proud to have known them.  There is nothing like serving a mission.  That's why I'm going to do it for eternity.  I am an eternal Missionary--a true and everlasting Disciple of Jesus Christ the Son of God.  I have been called of Him, to declare His word among His people that they might have everlasting life. 

This is Ansh.  We celebrated his birthday as well.  He is a miracle.  Everyone thought he wouldn't survive, and we were all praying for him.  But now, his surgery cut across his stomach is fully healed up and just a scar!  He is Baptized and stuck with nothing but a smile on his face every day!  He is building his life around becoming a missionary, and going to the Temple and being like Jesus Christ by reading the scriptures every day and becoming more and more happy and kind and Christ like each day. 

Way of Joy: Things of Eternity

Merry Christmas!!!!!!

Hey!  Sorry I didn't email you well last week!  I'll hopefully forward on the pictures I sent to just family from last week. I send my love and my most Holly Palmy Jolly Hindi Merry Christmas wishes your way!  I miss you and always look forward to your response to my email--10 more months and that's it...help me reach higher, help me help you reach higher; and lets ascend together.  Let's stay in good focus and clear vision together as we just get to all our potential together.

How is your Christmas season kicking off so far?  Have any Christmas challenges; anything you're doing to show your love for Jesus Christ this month?  What gift can you give Him?  If you've got any good ideas, email me!  I want to join you in it!

May I suggest: The best gift we can give Him is giving Him to someone else.  Plus, that's the fastest, surest way to get closer to Him.

 Humans aren't capable of working as hard as missionaries do.  It certainly requires the power of heaven non-stop. What a thriving ground.  And that is fully what my life has been non-stop.  It has been holding nothing back and smashing into realms of growth and achievement that I've never known humans could reach.  These past weeks have been more than you could imagine.  And now I have to figure out how I'm going to transfer it into words for you.

Happy Happy Happy has remained the best motto, for over a year now.
This life is meant to be enjoyed.  We have the power to choose JOY.

Thriving is what I have, to report, every week; because "He who is consumed in Christ is not just alive, BUT RIDICULOUSLY THRIVING in Christ."  Its The Way to being Too Happy and Too Perfectly in-line with the Divine Within you.  I love the work of the Lord!  We're all a part of this short chance to prove God we're ready to take on all He's got to offer.

Children of the Highest and Most Glorious Being in all Existence can't and DON'T settle for less.  Shoot higher.  Achieve more.  Don't let a day go by without lost in giving yourself for the benefit of someone else in following promptings from the Holy Ghost to your mind and heart.

Develop a hunger in your heart, that each new day says: "I'm hungry to go out and do some Christlike thing for someone else."  Crave it!  Crave the light of pure love--how it feels to have it flow through you from Him, to someone else--EVERYONE else!

Here is a picture of my new daily pocket-planner I designed.

​I See What You Can Become. Become All of It.
You Become All.  I See What Can Become of It.

Each day is meant to be two things:
A thing to enjoy; and
A thing to rise above.

That way you're higher than you've ever gone before, every new day of your whole life. You will meet God  as a full grown version of what was once just the raw potential--now the living breathing embodiment of that vision Heavenly Father once had of you.  Prove Him right just one day at a time!  Join with Him in His efforts to make you even the fullness of all He is and has waiting for you.

This week Jesus Christ personally sent one of His divinely called and appointed servants to come to our mission and teach all of us heavenly Father's vision and will to be carried out at this time just before the Savior will be personally coming and receiving an accounting of how we lived our consecrated missions on this brief earth.

God directed His living Prophet to send Elder and Sister S Gifford Nielsen to our mission.  I must share what God taught us through one of His divinely commissioned servants over this nation.  What a spiritual feast it was! 

We now have 12 people that are working toward that glorious goal of starting on their journey of following Christ and making their families forever.  They will be Baptized in the coming weeks.  Miracles are just everywhere every day. We are teaching 30 lessons every week and just watching Heavenly Father lead us where He needs us.  There are so many people who need your help.  You can rise to a higher level of love.  You can be more inspired in how to give simply and by the direction of the light of His love for that person.  Just get up and dare to enjoy.  Enjoy life by giving it more than you've ever given.  We have a world to save and change.  There are lives waiting to be touched by YOU.  Today!  This week!  I can testify of it, and that Christ needs your willing heart.  We can rise to a new higher level.

This is a truly incredible man.  He came and conveyed to us, so many things that have changed my life and will change the lives of everyone my life will touch.  the ripples from the day of his training will carry through the rest of my life.

​I will have to send you a lot of his most profound teaching by request.  They are very, very sacred and have changed everything for me.  If you're willing and ready to know, you'd have to personally request it from me.  I'll leave one week of organizing my notes from him, before I share what he relayed.  If you request it, I'll share what God tells me you're ready to receive.  I'm so grateful we have true and living prophets on the earth today.  These men really are connected with the full power and vision and authority of heaven.  This work is true.  I can never deny it.

I will wait till next week to share his teachings, if you request it.

As for how the mission is going, my "Mom" in Fiji, Asmin--is just amazing. She is everything a mother is, and is just such a good caretaker of this Elder.  Mommy, you can know that this, your sister is taking care of your son, but not replacing you.  You two will be so perfectly celestial friends when you finally meet.  I can't wait for that day.  This family is your family. They are so inspiring.  They are transformed and transforming all the lives of all the friends around them.  As they go forward on their path in their new lives, it is amazing to watch the power of the gospel change everything.  Everything about the smallest to the biggest aspects of their lives, I've watched it all.  Their actions and natures and even their home and happiness and habits and choices have all been just wonderfully transformed.  This family is one of the main reasons I ever came to Fiji in the first place.

​
Junior calls us up early in the morning before we even wake up, to excitedly ask if he can come out with us and save the world.  One day after working just as dramatically and non-stop action packed as the most epic movie you've ever seen, we finished for the day and went to drop Junior off, and Junior prayed, "Dear Heavenly Father, I thank Thee for preparing me to serve my own mission, so I can make people happy like these Elders have done to me..."  It touched my heart and filled me with a glimpse of celestial joy.  The fruits of our lives depend on how closely we are willing to align our lives with God at this moment.  Lets plant right now, so the fruits can be abundant tomorrow.  Junior is going to change the world for good.  He is so pure.  He honors the Priesthood he now holds.

Do you have a vision for who you are and who you want to become?

One thing that heavenly Father sent to us through His servant in our training with him, was "Who Are You?" And he answered it with John 10:34, and Psalms 82:6 and then expounded heavenly Father's plan and vision for us as His boundless and limitless heirs to divinity.  Children can't become adults, unless they gain a vision of who they are and what they were born to become.  Christ lives.  He lives to transform us if we will seek Him and let Him.  We can keep being spoon fed or learn how to be like our Father.  He wants us to become all He sees in us.  We are not here to be ordinary or fall short; but to succeed gloriously.

​

This is a practice I do often.

Get a paper and write on it all you are.  Make your life naked and get to the core of things about yourself you might not even want to admit or face.  Put it all there on the paper.  Get your full definition of who you are, to yourself.  Get all the good and all the bad.  Be liberal in it.  Just pour it out.

Then, write down and paint a picture with words and your mind and the help and inspiration and personal loving guidance of your heavenly Father, of who you want to be.  Your full vision of who you can boundless become.  All and anything you'd like to be, or qualities and characteristics you would like a part of you.

And then, if you have enough faith to do those two simple things, God can then build you a bridge of action to get from A to B.  Let Him then guide you in your bridge of action.  And you can and will become all you wrote, if it is in line with Him and His highest vision for you--which is every good thing, for you as a Child and Heir of His, have no limits at all.  There is nothing you can't be or become or do.

I challenge you to take this seriously.

I love you. And I know this church is true.  I know Christ lives and you are meant to be all the divinity in you holds.  You just won't reach it if you never discover it.  That's why Heavenly Father restored the full brilliant light of this gospel; because it is the only way you.  Families are meant to be for time and eternity.  The work we are doing here, together, me and you in this cause... there truly is no greater work.


Do you understand how much Christ is ready to transform you?

​

Center . on (*) the . Savior = JOY

Hey! It's Elder होवार्ड. How was your week?  
I really hope it was great.  I wanted to see how you're doing, and to let you know what I've been up to.  Aaaaand, Can you share with me one meaningful insight that you feel God wanted you to learn from this past week?  Could you share that with me? I would love to hear about that, and it's good to think about.  Weeks can pass by so fast without a deliberate meaning, can't they?  I notice that on the mission here in Fiji.  I love learning from insights like that; because I want to live a life of deliberate and flourishing progress one week at a time. :)  

Let's both do it!

  It's been a year now(if you're counting months,) and you'd better not forget about me!! Hahah.  Time flies and so soon it will be another week.  Let's put our heads together and see what insights we can use to make this week EVERY HAPPY THING it can be.  

We just barely had the opportunity to hear from the living Prophets who communicate with the living Savior, Jesus Christ.  Did you like what they said?? Frankly, I haven't actually heard it yet, because Fiji is a little behind.  Maybe you heard it already.  I'm looking forward to it!  

Here's the juice of my weekly report:

This week has been quite an adjustment for me.  I love it!  The work is really challenging and demands every minute of my every hour, and is literally non-stop.  We are truly looking to the Savior as He personally is raising His expectations of us and we are rising up to the offer He extends to us to rise to higher levels than before; hastening the Lord's work.  

He is opening the way for us to open the doors to Exaltation and Joy and the best that this life has to offer for others.  It takes a lot of work.. but, it is Heavenly Father's will and we give ourselves non-stop fully to it, because it matters more to us than anything else--anything else. 

Challenges never stop.  And so we aught to realize that because of that, we might as well make all of our challenges joy and growth and fun, because in the end when we face and transform our burdens is the only time they can then fulfill their purpose: to positively transform us. 


We were created to have joy!  Not despite, but because of all the opposition.  We must deliberately live our lives and grow and shift and mold to grandeurity God designed of us.  Now.  Simply by looking away from all the dark, and looking to Christ the light--and keeping our eyes there on Him. 

 Here is my new Daily Planner I designed after saying a prayer and going to work.  It is like our life... we are given a white sheet, and all we are expected to do is say a prayer and go to work, and He'll provide the outcome grandly if we Center on the Savior.  We just have to make sure we are good now and getting better.  That is all we have to try to do in the moment we are in, day to day.  

Let's live our lives deliberately, serving for Him... and without even realizing it, becoming like Him.

Life is Good! 

a bit more coming.......

I just typed up a really long and eloquent email, and then it deleted itself.. and now I have no more time to email. Haha, so sorry.  Gotta go 

Write Away!

Elda Howard's sister here with something you all WANT very much...

His Mailing address!  

Elder Brandon Howard
Fiji Suva Mission Office
GPO Box 215
Suva, Fiji

Fiji

Really, Write away!  You'll make his day and he will spread MORE joy than he already does because of YOU!  Then you'll be blessed for it... then you'll just HAVE to tell him all about it, then the cycle continues, right?  :)

My Favorite Flavor of Happy

Hey!  It's me, Elder Howard.  How was your week? 

I wanted to send you an email, telling you some of the things I am experiencing from my mission here in Fiji this week.  I wanted to know what's going on in your life, and if you know of any good advice for me or things you learned this week I could use in improving myself this week.  I will live what you suggest.  I love you and hope you get something you can maybe use from my email this week.

Is there anything I can specifically pray for to help you?  Please send me an email letting me know how things are going. :)

Here is the bottom line of what I have gained this week of my 2 year mission: I am stripping everything out of my constitution of "who Elder Howard is," and then putting it back together in priority order with the Savior at the center.  I am interested in just becoming a deeper level of humble, pure, effective, changed, like a child, usable, fully usable in Heavenly Father's hands, and who He wants me to become.

We have no time to become absorbed in ourselves.

I have recognized and attacked my weaknesses.  And that is what I like about living!  I love learning about what my weaknesses are and then targeting them and completely stripping them from me.  I have a lot to learn, but I am so exuberantly excited about it, because I am all the way willing to change and be molded by the Lord and to live whatever He suggests I live.  He is going to teach me how to be a real humble servant. That is what I want to be, perfectly: perfectly humble. 

I listened to this talk by President Uchtdorf this morning:
Pride and the Priesthood

There was another one too, 
To BEcome

They are really good talks you should read :)

I am finding any levels of Pride anywhere in my thoughts or actions, and am really happy and enjoying the growth.  I am loving the Lord's mission.  I am learning more about Jesus Christ every day. And it isn't just happening upon things about Christ--now it is that I have a real and undying hunger to REALLY know what He not only is, and not only what He wants me to do, but more importantly, what He wants me to be/become.  

What are ways you think we can really come to know Christ and be more purely close to Him in real, daily, actual ways?


We had several of our investigators come to church on Sunday!  The Hindi program here really has sooo many prepared people.  In the time I have been in Suva, as we follow the patterns and promptings the Lord gives us, He leads us to what has now become around 40 new people who are eager to come learn about the Restored Gospel and then receive Baptism.  As we work with them, we are realizing how much potential the Lord has for each of His children on this earth, and how He loves each one personally and knows each of us intimately. These people are ready to come unto Christ. 

How can I direct people to Christ?  What has worked for you?  How can simple things i do, more effectively point people to Christ?  That's what I want to perfectly get good at.

Teach me any ideas you've got.

We will have a lot of eternally changed lives this month as we continue to be all the way humble and absorbed in Christ and in consecration.  THIS IS HAPPINESS:  to console others, and take them from their current level, to a level where they feel understood, listened to, heard, helped, valued and important.  I am changing a lot.  I am making sure, with the Lord as the friend by my side, that all those changes are only good.  I am enjoying following the schedules and rules with exactness and being patient with myself when I make mistakes, and forgiving all who otherwise would tempt me to be impatient.  I love loving others, making them the one in the spot-light. 

"Listening is an expression of love.  It often requires sacrifice.  When we truly listen to others, we often give up what we want to say so they can express themselves."  that is a quote I ran into this week and have been practicing a lot.  

Man, my companion, Elder Luatua--He is the man.  He is my mentor and superior in soo many ways.  I am the senior companion in the companionship in our work here in Suva, but all that means is I get to serve him in lowly humility and perfect united friendship.  I take my role humbly, but seriously.  I know the Lord has made me responsible for what happens in my area.  But, Elder Luatua really is so pure and I just enjoy him.  There is no one who is a better listener than him... and he knows how to do all the things I am working on improving in my actions.  He is an amazing guy and I treasure our close friendship.  We are lifting each other to our potential.  We are learning important and life-changing lessons of discipleship and relationship and effective work ethics.  

How do genuinely listen to others? How can you make someone really feel understood?  do you have any ideas on that, you could share with me?

 I am amazed at how he is serving his mission--and right now my mission is just to be there for my companion and spend my time making people other than myself the spotlight, valued, and loved and make them important; through letting the Light of Christ lead my actions and conversations to Christ and not Elder Howard. 

Any of the "natural man"(ways I'm like the world instead of like Christ) you see in me, point out to me.  I am nothing but mold-able in the Lord's hands now.  I am ready to be and reach heights I've never known, by living President Uchtdorf's talks, living your advice, and consuming my mind in just learning deeply about Christ and how I can really be like what He IS, not just on the outside or superficially--but really reaching Him as urgently and desperately as He is reaching out to me.

Anything you are prompted to send to me, please don't hesitate.  Anything you thing could help me be a better me more like the Savior, send it my way.  I am hungry to be like the Savior, and that has no limit, so send me all the good you come across that i can use to better myself toward being like Him.


Bottom line, humility is my favorite flavor of happy.  It connects to all great and happy attributes and opens all doors to all the best destinations.

I love you.  

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 

_humbly and meek, your friend
Elder Howard