¡Hola Todos!
Well, I made it!
my P-day is Tuesday so I'll answer any mail I get on Tuesdays. I can only email family, so all other responses will be answered by snail mail. I can send an email to non-family only if I email family first and then have them forward it. Don't question the rule, it's just there. Do your best NOT to send packages. It's just complicated and annoying (they'll break open the boxes down here) and it costs money for me to pick them up. If you must, send it through USPS, NO other company, and try your best to use padded envelopes. I do have a request though: please send a camelback and some stamps por favor. Now that that's out of the way, let me give you the quick story of my journey down. 5 of us came from the MTC, all headed to Salta, Argentina. There were a few others that were leaving a little later on a different flight that were headed to other areas in Argentina. We landed in Georgia and a sister missionary came into our gate waiting area, also headed to Salta, Argentina! Apparently she came from a temporary reassignment in Tennessee and got her visa in as well. We flew down and found that pretty much everyone that was waiting on a visa all converged at the international Buenos Aires airport, including the two from my MTC district that went to Nashville, TN (for 2 weeks :P Elder Anderson got a baptism in already though)! So there were about 18-20 of us (coming from the MTC, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, and I'm sure plenty of other places) that were bussed over to a domestic airport in Buenos Aires where we split up again--9 of us were headed to Salta. Quick reminder: I left the MTC around 6:30 AM...I arrived in Salta and got to the mission home around dinner time the next day!!! All of us were rather pooped. We went through a quick orientation (and a fun trip to some government building to make me legal here.) and then we were shipped off to our respective areas and companions.My first area is in Salta, about 15ish minutes from the mission home actually, and my first companion is Elder Young. He's from Kaysville, UT and is about to hit his 18-month mark. Picture Dallin Briggs and you have a close picture. He used to work in the offices as well so he's pretty knowledgable about everything here. He's been a great trainer so far, not really talking at all whenever I'm talking (it kills me because I have a hard time communicating with and understanding the people, but it's good practice). He's there if I need help though. My 1st two street contacts made him laugh though: the 1st didn't believe in religion because he thought it was out to take over the world, the 2nd turned out to be drunk. Good people to practice Spanish with I suppose. I'm told the language is actually called Castellano and not Español here. The difference is in the pronunciation of 'y', 'll', and 'rr' (all make the 'sh' sound; the 'rr' is more of a 'rsh') and the use of the voseo form instead of the tuteo form (vos vs. tu). Everything else is the same both ways though, so I just have to get used to using the accent, learn the vocab, and I'll be good to go.I figure everyone's curious about daily life in this area. The food's been good, but I haven't had anything extravegant or over-the-top delicious yet, but I have 21 months to do so! At any given time, about 30% of the people are walking around, 20% are in cars or taxis (lanes pretty much don't exist; just drive wherever you can fit yourself; most of the streets are 1-way anyways), 10% are on bikes, 8% are at work, and then the rest are at home just sitting around not doing too much. With good reason though--IT'S HOT!!! I'm sweating buckets down here! I tried putting sunscreen on my face one day, but I sweat so much that it fell into my eyes and I couldn't keep my eyes open because of the sting. So I've given in and just accept a little burn--it'll turn into a tan, right? :P We had a rare thunderstorm last night. It poured like no other (practically 2 rivers running on the sides of the streets), lightning within every 2 seconds, no one in sight--except for the taxis and myself and my companion...knocking doors! It's a good thing that these people are a lot more giving and considerate of random people, so we were let in. But yeah, except for last night, it's just been scorching--I'm told this isn't the hottest area either! Because of the hot weather, they actually have a siesta here: 1:00-4:30 is nap time...every day. My lunch runs from 1:00-3:00, but that still leaves an annoying 1.5 hours where we can't get too much done.You asked about my first Sunday here. It actually turned out to be stake conference...I didn't understand any of the talks...but I did run into one of the sister missionaries from my MTC district so we took 2 minutes to catch up on the happenings. We also had a regional broadcast fireside later that night as well with Elder Bednar! He was broadcasting from Buenos Aires to all of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. It was a interesting fireside for 2 reasons: He had to speak phrase-by-phrase so that a translator could translate each phrase into a mike; and then he actually didn't have a prepared talk. Instead, he answered questions the entire time, either from the congregation he was at, or anyone else watching the fireside by telephone. He said that there will be many more firesides like it in the future, so heads up. I actually laughed because they did practically the same thing at the MTC: we were told to submit any question to our Branch President that we thought was important that we would ask 1 of the 12 Apostles if we could. I wonder what's up...I hope I've included everything!
Mucho amor,
-Elder Powell-
November 24, 2009
November 22, 2009
To the family of Elder Powell
Dear Powell Family,
We are excited to have Elder Powell in the Mission Argentina Salta! He has just arrived and is in the process of recovering from a long trip. We wanted to let you know he arrived safe and sound and has been assigned to his new area in the mission. It was such a pleasure to spend some time with him and we look forward to working together for the rest of his mission! What a blessing this is to us!
Thank you for your love and sacrifice that has gone into getting this special missionary to our mission. He left here today excited and with one of our very best missionaries. We only assign our best as trainers for our new missionaries!
Thank you again for sending this wonderful missionary to us. We´ll try to e-mail this to you and send a copy by land mail as well.
Our best wishes,
Pres. Dan Northcutt Sister Cynda Northcutt
We are excited to have Elder Powell in the Mission Argentina Salta! He has just arrived and is in the process of recovering from a long trip. We wanted to let you know he arrived safe and sound and has been assigned to his new area in the mission. It was such a pleasure to spend some time with him and we look forward to working together for the rest of his mission! What a blessing this is to us!
Thank you for your love and sacrifice that has gone into getting this special missionary to our mission. He left here today excited and with one of our very best missionaries. We only assign our best as trainers for our new missionaries!
Thank you again for sending this wonderful missionary to us. We´ll try to e-mail this to you and send a copy by land mail as well.
Our best wishes,
Pres. Dan Northcutt Sister Cynda Northcutt
November 17, 2009
Semana 11
Hola Todos,
Congratulations to Sierra Alcazar and her call to Korea! She'll have tons of fun out there. And Happy Birthday to Dad! The amount of fun you have is often consistent with the attitude going into it ;) Just remember when things are getting rough, especially with your 9 HOURS of church, I've been going through just short of 1848 hours of living the life of a church representative, and I still have roughly 15624 more hours to go! I was quite proud of Nick and Jason's grocery shopping trip--I definitely know mom didn't trust me like that when I was 8 and 11 so good job at being the youngest children ;) Thanks for the early X-mas package mom!
Well, 2 district changes, 5 companions, and 11 weeks later, I'm finally leaving tomorrow!!! Everyone here's been really supportive and I've found plenty to keep me busy, learning, and helping out others. I got my wish the other day: it snowed!!! It mostly melted pretty quick though, but it wasn't anything too puny, so I'm happy and ready to head down to Argentina. I'll try to call home during my layover in Georgia.
My new mailing addresses are:
Elder Powell
Argentina Salta Mission
Los Eucaliptus 75
4400 Salta, Salta,
Argentina
(that's my mission home)or if you recall the pouch mail system rules, you can use
Elder Powell
Argentina Salta Mission
PO Box 30150
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150
(or http://www.dearelder.com/ works perfectly great as well, especially because it's FREE!)
I'm not sure what the rules are about emailing yet, but if you'd like to try, my email is: jeff.r.powell.MAS@myldsmail.net
I'll definitely be able to read your emails, but I don't know if I can respond to them (only a 10%-15% chance that I will) I'll still be trying to email home often so hopefully things will still get out to everyone.Not too much more to say though. I'll be flying down with at least 2 other elders on my flights, but I've been talking with other elders that I know were delayed and it seems like we have the same travel plans, so I may be with more--we'll see!Well, I love you all. Thanks for the love, support, and prayers in my behalf. I hope all is well with everything back at home.
Con Amor-Elder Powell-
Congratulations to Sierra Alcazar and her call to Korea! She'll have tons of fun out there. And Happy Birthday to Dad! The amount of fun you have is often consistent with the attitude going into it ;) Just remember when things are getting rough, especially with your 9 HOURS of church, I've been going through just short of 1848 hours of living the life of a church representative, and I still have roughly 15624 more hours to go! I was quite proud of Nick and Jason's grocery shopping trip--I definitely know mom didn't trust me like that when I was 8 and 11 so good job at being the youngest children ;) Thanks for the early X-mas package mom!
Well, 2 district changes, 5 companions, and 11 weeks later, I'm finally leaving tomorrow!!! Everyone here's been really supportive and I've found plenty to keep me busy, learning, and helping out others. I got my wish the other day: it snowed!!! It mostly melted pretty quick though, but it wasn't anything too puny, so I'm happy and ready to head down to Argentina. I'll try to call home during my layover in Georgia.
My new mailing addresses are:
Elder Powell
Argentina Salta Mission
Los Eucaliptus 75
4400 Salta, Salta,
Argentina
(that's my mission home)or if you recall the pouch mail system rules, you can use
Elder Powell
Argentina Salta Mission
PO Box 30150
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150
(or http://www.dearelder.com/ works perfectly great as well, especially because it's FREE!)
I'm not sure what the rules are about emailing yet, but if you'd like to try, my email is: jeff.r.powell.MAS@myldsmail.net
I'll definitely be able to read your emails, but I don't know if I can respond to them (only a 10%-15% chance that I will) I'll still be trying to email home often so hopefully things will still get out to everyone.Not too much more to say though. I'll be flying down with at least 2 other elders on my flights, but I've been talking with other elders that I know were delayed and it seems like we have the same travel plans, so I may be with more--we'll see!Well, I love you all. Thanks for the love, support, and prayers in my behalf. I hope all is well with everything back at home.
Con Amor-Elder Powell-
November 10, 2009
Semana 10
¡Hola Todos!>
Here go responses to family letters: Nick, what do you mean nobody is here?! I have tons of friends here at the MTC :P I letters everyone once in a while, I got a lot more at the beginning, but now I don't get as much, but it's ok, I'm always really busy so I'm never really bored. Jason, you asked about how I pass the time at the MTC. Well, I'm either in class, studying Spanish, reading scriptures or Preach My Gospel, eating, at the gym, sometimes at a meeting, or sleeping--that's pretty much it! I actually didn't have a Halloween party here. We definitely have enough candy to eat though. Thanks for sending the photo compression info--I knew for the most part how to do it already, but it's nice having the specifics, especially in Spanish. The only thing about what you gave me is that you need to insure that you'll be able to open a .rar file. It's similar to a .zip file, but I forget if Vista/XP is able to extract from a .rar file by itself. You might consider getting WinRAR, but just the trial version. It will still work for you even after the trial period expires (at least when I was still using it). I can't view any email-attached pictures now because of the MTC computers locking everything up, but I'm guessing I'll be able to in the field. You mentioned Pres. Lee's brothers (?) that got delayed from Brazil--there's about 130+ Brazilian missionaries overflowing this MTC because of visa issues! Not sure on the exact problem, but it's getting pretty big. I only know as much as what you found out in your email to the travel office, nothing more. If I call next week, wanna test out calling the payphone back? Dad, you're actually backwards: you've been using the pouch system the entire time because that's what dearelder uses. You'll probably want to switch to just emailing this email address because it'll probably be more reliable in the field. I laughed when I read that you're headed to Big White! Nerds......:P All these people that are asking about me, you definitely should tell them to write me: I CAN talk to people after all ;) Good luck with the Creche and the swing dance, you definitely have quite the load Mom! Thanks for the pics too! Happy Birthday Dad!!! Hope it will be a wonderful day for you! I'm glad I could help you out.>
Well, because Elder Jones, my 2nd companion, was recovering from his ankle surgery, I got to travel out of mission boundaries to go to therapy with him! It wasn't as weird as I expected it to be, but it gave us a nice atmosphere to have study time in. I couldn't really contact anyone there either because it's Provo--everyone is a member of the church! Elder Jones got his medical release though so he left yesterday morning, I moved rooms for the 3rd time, and I'm on my 3rd companion now! Elder Robison is in the district that was below my original one. He leaves on the 16th as well to Nicaragua, so I'm hoping that this times out nicely.>
Well, hopefully this will be the last email home from the MTC! I'm planning on sending one more packet home with letters and such. If there's anything you want for 40% cheaper (from school supplies to all kinds of church materials) let me know!>
Os Amo,>
Elder Powell
Here go responses to family letters: Nick, what do you mean nobody is here?! I have tons of friends here at the MTC :P I letters everyone once in a while, I got a lot more at the beginning, but now I don't get as much, but it's ok, I'm always really busy so I'm never really bored. Jason, you asked about how I pass the time at the MTC. Well, I'm either in class, studying Spanish, reading scriptures or Preach My Gospel, eating, at the gym, sometimes at a meeting, or sleeping--that's pretty much it! I actually didn't have a Halloween party here. We definitely have enough candy to eat though. Thanks for sending the photo compression info--I knew for the most part how to do it already, but it's nice having the specifics, especially in Spanish. The only thing about what you gave me is that you need to insure that you'll be able to open a .rar file. It's similar to a .zip file, but I forget if Vista/XP is able to extract from a .rar file by itself. You might consider getting WinRAR, but just the trial version. It will still work for you even after the trial period expires (at least when I was still using it). I can't view any email-attached pictures now because of the MTC computers locking everything up, but I'm guessing I'll be able to in the field. You mentioned Pres. Lee's brothers (?) that got delayed from Brazil--there's about 130+ Brazilian missionaries overflowing this MTC because of visa issues! Not sure on the exact problem, but it's getting pretty big. I only know as much as what you found out in your email to the travel office, nothing more. If I call next week, wanna test out calling the payphone back? Dad, you're actually backwards: you've been using the pouch system the entire time because that's what dearelder uses. You'll probably want to switch to just emailing this email address because it'll probably be more reliable in the field. I laughed when I read that you're headed to Big White! Nerds......:P All these people that are asking about me, you definitely should tell them to write me: I CAN talk to people after all ;) Good luck with the Creche and the swing dance, you definitely have quite the load Mom! Thanks for the pics too! Happy Birthday Dad!!! Hope it will be a wonderful day for you! I'm glad I could help you out.>
Well, because Elder Jones, my 2nd companion, was recovering from his ankle surgery, I got to travel out of mission boundaries to go to therapy with him! It wasn't as weird as I expected it to be, but it gave us a nice atmosphere to have study time in. I couldn't really contact anyone there either because it's Provo--everyone is a member of the church! Elder Jones got his medical release though so he left yesterday morning, I moved rooms for the 3rd time, and I'm on my 3rd companion now! Elder Robison is in the district that was below my original one. He leaves on the 16th as well to Nicaragua, so I'm hoping that this times out nicely.>
Well, hopefully this will be the last email home from the MTC! I'm planning on sending one more packet home with letters and such. If there's anything you want for 40% cheaper (from school supplies to all kinds of church materials) let me know!>
Os Amo,>
Elder Powell
November 3, 2009
Semana 9
Hola del MTC
Well, the biggest thing is that I watched my district all leave yesterday morning while I moved my things into a different room...I'm sad that they're gone, but I've gotta keep busy here--there's definitely plenty to do. My new companion has actually been here a week longer than me because he had surgery on his foot and is still going through recovery. This has kinda turned us into the example/ameritus companionship of our zone :P We're in the oldest district right now and I'm just working on adjusting for the next couple days. Everyone's supportive though, things are going well. I'll get to Argentina eventually.Thank you for the pumpkin bread! I devoured the whole thing this morning for breakfast ;) Nothing really happened here for Halloween, just that we enjoyed the extra hour of sleep, oh yeah, and that the outside world LOADED us with candy, so we've just been munching and passing around handfuls of candy to everyone. You asked about the teachers giving us treats--they're not even allowed to bring in copies of conference talks, let alone treats. They really are not allowed to bring anything to us.You also asked about Jace: he left like 3 weeks ago :P It was just the 30ish November 2nd missionaries having issues. I did know about the swine flu issue with their government--found that out like week 2. I knew about the consol going to Salt Lake on the 14th, but I wasn't specifically told he comes every 6 weeks, nor that I would fly on the 16th, but thanks for the info.It was so weird calling home. I froze when the phone started ringing because I started to think "Umm, how do I start this conversation." and then Mom answered the phone, but it's been awhile so I couldn't tell if it was her, so then I started to wonder "Did I dial the right number?!" so I had to check :P I'll be a little more confident next time.We were visited by Elder L. Tom Perry last Tuesday. He gave a nice talk on how to be better teachers. It kinda surprised me that he didn't really come out with anything groundbreaking, totally unique, or incredibly spiritual. It was rather a good reminder of the basic things we should be doing to better our teaching skills.I got my 2nd Hep A shot, so immunizations should be good to go.Well, I've gotta run. I'll get 1 more email in before I SHOULD be flying out. Here's to hoping I will.
Love you tons!
Elder Powell
Well, the biggest thing is that I watched my district all leave yesterday morning while I moved my things into a different room...I'm sad that they're gone, but I've gotta keep busy here--there's definitely plenty to do. My new companion has actually been here a week longer than me because he had surgery on his foot and is still going through recovery. This has kinda turned us into the example/ameritus companionship of our zone :P We're in the oldest district right now and I'm just working on adjusting for the next couple days. Everyone's supportive though, things are going well. I'll get to Argentina eventually.Thank you for the pumpkin bread! I devoured the whole thing this morning for breakfast ;) Nothing really happened here for Halloween, just that we enjoyed the extra hour of sleep, oh yeah, and that the outside world LOADED us with candy, so we've just been munching and passing around handfuls of candy to everyone. You asked about the teachers giving us treats--they're not even allowed to bring in copies of conference talks, let alone treats. They really are not allowed to bring anything to us.You also asked about Jace: he left like 3 weeks ago :P It was just the 30ish November 2nd missionaries having issues. I did know about the swine flu issue with their government--found that out like week 2. I knew about the consol going to Salt Lake on the 14th, but I wasn't specifically told he comes every 6 weeks, nor that I would fly on the 16th, but thanks for the info.It was so weird calling home. I froze when the phone started ringing because I started to think "Umm, how do I start this conversation." and then Mom answered the phone, but it's been awhile so I couldn't tell if it was her, so then I started to wonder "Did I dial the right number?!" so I had to check :P I'll be a little more confident next time.We were visited by Elder L. Tom Perry last Tuesday. He gave a nice talk on how to be better teachers. It kinda surprised me that he didn't really come out with anything groundbreaking, totally unique, or incredibly spiritual. It was rather a good reminder of the basic things we should be doing to better our teaching skills.I got my 2nd Hep A shot, so immunizations should be good to go.Well, I've gotta run. I'll get 1 more email in before I SHOULD be flying out. Here's to hoping I will.
Love you tons!
Elder Powell
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