Semana 29 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

I don't know where they came from, but I've been seeing those ripstick skateboards everywhere! I've had a couple opportunities to try and ride one, and I'm getting a little better--I'm sure Nick will still beat me up on it though.

Dad asked about the time that my comp and I will have down here. My comp is on his 3rd transfer here, and apparently Mission President told him he'd have 5 transfers here. I'm expecting 4 transfers myself because I'm thinking the counselor and president are on a fairly regular switchoff on knowing the area and members well, so I'll need a transfer or 2 to "train" the next branch president when Elder Sangroni leaves

Dad also was talking about the toilet paper in England being more like a thin, glossy paper. Yeah, that kindof describes what napkins are like down here--just thin wax paper. The toilet paper is thin, grey/brown paper that breaks rather easily--really not diarrhea-friendly...Good thing the bidet exists down here! For those that are unfamiliar (that's about everyone in the U.S.), it's a completely separate unit in the bathroom that looks like a sink, but really close to the ground and without the spout. You give a squat over it, reach back and twist the knobs, and you get a nice wash underneath! Super diarrhea-friendly! ;)

Speaking of cultural differences, I decided to start logging all of the American songs that I hear down here, because apparently the language barrier doesn't really matter too much to the people down here, so I hear these songs in English on the radio all the time! This week alone, I heard "My life would suck without you" by Kelly Clarkson, a few Coldplay songs, "Hot & Cold" and "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga, "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt, and a few others that I know the tune, but not the names.

(In response to Mom's letter) I can't believe Parker Geren already is giving his farewell! That's insane! You also spoke about the organ-skills of Brother Brocklebank...yeah, I already knew he's a beast at that instrument.

My companion requests that if you send me a package, you need to send Orbit gum. Apparently he likes it a lot :P

The people here (here as in the mission) have a very common interest in Mexican food--mostly their breads. Everyone always asks me if I know how to make tacos or their version of a tortilla (Argentine tortilla is very, very different--it's not flat and flimsy, it's a cube of bread that breaks apart in layers). One of the families here obtained a recipe for tacos and we tried it out. It turned out a little more like slightly crispier Americanized tortillas, but we had good-tasting tacos nonetheless, topped with homemade guacamole using the "palta" (avacado) straight from the tree ;)

I got to conduct my first sacrament meeting ever yesterday! and teach primary, play piano in both primary and sacrament meeting, and give a talk too, all in the same Sunday! Talk about super busy! Everything turned out well though--the members are very forgiving of my little mistakes here and there ;)

Not much else to tell about. Hope all is well at home! We're getting excited for zone conference as well as General Conference this week! I might not get to watch Saturday, but Sunday has a better chance because we're organizing the branch trip over to the district center (2 hours by bus)!

Love

-Elder Powell-

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Semana 28 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

I totally forgot last week: one of the young men was walking around with a Gonzaga University shirt on!!!!!! I couldn't believe a tshirt (from the 2005-2006 year) from my little Spokane made it all the way down to this tiny little town of Yuto!

Dad, I'd like to change the scripture on my missionary plaque: 3 Nephi 5:13 "Behold, I am a 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." Cool, huh!

I received mom's and grandma's package (from Jan 30) on the 18th. Thanks for the Valentine's wishes, especially you guys in the Reeder family! I think it could've gotten here sooner, but apparently we've been having "corta ruta" problems (cut route): people set a tree trunk and other stuff in the highway and they won't move it until they get paid by the government (or something like that). In other words, our mail bag doesn't make it to where it needs to go.

We got hit by a really bad rainstorm the other day--everything was just flooded! I was woken up at 2:30 in the morning by the leaks in the ceiling that were drenching my mattress, so I had to move my bed in the middle of the night. We then got to help a bunch of people take out the lakes that remained in front of their houses the next day! We also found a nice layer of brown in the church because the water entered through the doors of the church and left a bunch of water as well. 2 days after the flood, 2 guys from the church offices in Salta came to the chapel to give it a good inspection (of course)! They sent in a cleaning crew a few days later to help us out. There's still a lot more that needs fixing and/or replacing too. It's not my fault, I know that much! :P

We had a successful move-in on Friday into our new little house. It was just 5 houses down the street, so we just carried everything over, with the help of the young men, and got it all done in an hour and a half. Dad asked about the paying situation. For those that don't know, we, the missionaries, pay a certain sum to the church before heading out on the mission. The church then uses those funds to pay off things like the rent and food for the missionaries. Essentially, we pay for everything, but we do it through the church. We have to deliver the payment to the owners though, so it's not like we don't need to worry about it.

English class went pretty well. I just spent the whole first class tackling most of the pronunciation stuff in English. It's interesting having to explain how to talk in English. I've just taken it for granted in the past, but now I have to think about "ok, where is my tongue when I say this? Where's the accent? Why do I phrase this particular phrase like this?" and lots of other interesting questions. Quite the neat experience!

Not too much else for this past week. Hope have great stories for you next week!

Love,

Elder Powell

 

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Semana 27 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

Phew, what a week! Dad was questioning about our branch council meetings last week: we had me, my comp, and 7 other women this last week because there really aren't any men that are members! Things are going well with the branch though. We actually carved a bat out of a thick branch of wood, stuffed plastic sacks with clothing (for the bases), and used a mini-soccer ball all to play baseball with the youth! I was pretty much the only person there that actually knew all the rules of the game! It was pretty fun though. Also speaking of the branch, I gave a talk yesterday in church. I picked the topic of faith and how we can increase our personal faith (largely pulling from Alma 32). It turned out pretty well, but I'll definitely want to make a couple more drafts before it's perfect.

The owner of the house where we were moving to said no...for family reasons, he has to live there now. He quickly pointed us down the street to his niece who was renting a house nearby: we already have the contract ready for her to sign here in the next few days! We're hoping to be moving this Friday.

I'm teaching a bunch of weekly classes now: piano, choir, and (recently added on) English! I'm also helping out a bunch of kids with math as well. The trickiest I've had to deal with so far has been negative and fractional exponents, which I think I learned about midway through high school, so I think I could qualify as a good math teacher here!

I had my first stab at eating 'hígado' (ee-gah-low) the other day. If you take a look at the translation, that comes out as 'liver'!!! It was cooked well-done though, with onion and a sauce on top, so it wasn't too bad, but I know I wouldn't be able to eat it frequently! Speaking of firsts, I had another first on Thursday. We had a zone meeting about 2 hours away that we had to travel to really early. It turns out we missed the bus ride up there in the morning because we didn't know that it doesn't enter into Yuto, it just passes nearby. So what did we do? We hitchhiked! Both there and back too! I thought it was a funny little thing.

I think I've been withholding too many drugee and drunk stories from this mission; I'll let one slip out. I was sitting in a circle with some members talking with them when all of a sudden, this drugged up old guy walks up and starts talking to me. I can't really walk away or tell him to go away, so I just said 'uh-huh, alright' a bunch. He pretty much just repeated the same phrases over and over again as he started to vent out his complainings to me: "I have A LOT of money......A LOT of money," and "I never robbed...I've never robbed anything!" Every once in awhile, I asked him something to get him to spit out more of the story. Every response led back to these 2 phrases, but I figured out some of the story. He was dumped by a woman and wanted another. He has a lot of money and never robbed (I don't believe it...you'll know why in a sec), so therefore women should just be flocking to him, but he's not getting his way. He didn't tell me where, or in what, he lived, neither did he show me his monstrous load of money. As he kept babbling on though, he slowly kept progressing towards me. First he was just standing, then he sat on the ground next to me, then he was on his knees, then he was on his knees right in front of my face (I figure it was about 5ish inches away)! I didn't really get too bothered though, I was actually just having fun chuckling in my head. Well, after about 10 minutes of this, a policeman shows up behind him with a bigger 'buddy' of the man (just to add to my incredulous chuckling within), the police guard called him by name and told him he wanted to talk with him. After about 2 minutes of patiently waiting as he sputtered his last few words to me, they finally took him away. Yeah......kids, don't do drugs.

Well, that's about all I have for this week. Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

P.S. Hope you all had a HAPPY PI DAY!!!!!! ;)

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

semana 26-Yuto

¡Hola Todos!
Haha, I thought about Captain Moroni taking the lead of all the armies of the Nephites when he was just 25 when Dad mentioned the difference between him being first counselor at 43 and me at 19! :P Doesn't mean the job isn't tough though. We have to try and find a good balance between doing our normal missionary work and visiting our members constantly. We have some 130 members in the directory with an average of 40ish attending church regularly. Only 26 came to church yesterday though, so we have plenty of less-active work to do here. With all these people that have been in the church for just a few months to a few years, and taking into account the type of people that are living here, we really can't trust anyone to be active enough that we don't need to worry too much about them. They haven't quite built up the resistance of "...but I need to get to church" yet, if you know what I mean. More on the area in a sec, I wanna take care of responding to the email first.
Dad's neurology board reminded me of exams at BYU...not quite as bad, but I too kinda lose focus at about the 2-hour mark. Nick: Your letters still come to me in English. I can download something from Google though and make it translate if I want to though. Hope you had fun with skiing and I hope you have fun with the new DVR. Don't watch too much tv! Take advantage of the USA and drink water from the sink (because it's clean), roll around in the front/backyard (because there's grass there (oh wait, I forgot it's winter right now :P )), and do your laundry (because technology there is a wonderful thing)! Speaking of, there was a question about laundry: it's pretty much the same. I fill this automatic-washing tub with water, dump some soap in, toss clothes in, and just turn it on. The dryer is just a metal cylinder with holes in the sides. I'll toss a few clothes in and turn it on, after which it just spins rediculously fast until I decide the clothes are as dry as they will get, and then I hang-dry them the rest of the way. As for living conditions...we have beds, a fan, a sink (that gives bad drinking water), a fridge/freezer combo, a toilet (with an interesting flush system, but it works), a bathroom sink, and...the shower......which doesn't have hot water. Remember carpet doesn't exist here--everything's concrete, brick, wood, or beaten-up tile. To get a warm shower, we have to boil up a pot of water, (stand on a chair to be able to) pour it into a little tub up above in the bathroom, and then fill up the rest with the cold water. Unfortunately Elder Sangroni got a nifty little burn on his stomach a few days ago, so we've gotta work on being really careful! Oh yeah, lots of little critters too--mostly spiders and cockroaches. I've heard rumors of a few scorpions too. Good news though: we're moving to a small house soon. We're on good terms with a nearby shop-owner and he was renting out this little house. The missionaries before talked with him and he agreed to rent it out to us! Apparently there's air conditioning in there, so I have a better hope for a safer warm shower!
As for being in the branch presidency, we're having a branch council meeting tonight for the first time in awhile. There aren't too many callings to discuss as we don't really have priesthood-holders in the branch--a good group of young men though. I've already helped set people apart at BYU, so that's not terribly new. Elder Sangroni, from Buenos Aires, just has 6 months left in the mission, so he's been out for awhile. We've been doing really well together, especially because he lived in the pension with me during my first transfer out, so we already knew each other.
Speaking of church, I'm in charge of helping out in the primary. Turns out the presidency didn't show up so I got to wing a lesson for the 6 kids that were there. I actually skipped this week's lesson and taught next week's because it was on an Old Testament story that I had no clue what it was about! I need to read the Bible really bad if I'm going to teach it...especially in Spanish! Unfortunately I definitely don't have time for that out here...I'm also teaching piano every Tuesday and running the ward choir Sunday nights! It's pretty crazy!
Yuto is super small. It's very likely that a random person will know another random person. I've seen plenty of animals: dogs, cats, goats, chickens, roosters, horses, pigs, ducks, frogs (there are these frogs that make these bomb-dropping sound effects; it's so weird!), and all sorts of critters--including a praying mantis! Asphault really doesn't exist here. I often see 14-year-olds riding the family motorcycle around town (motorcycle is the vehicle of choice in northern Argentina apparently). I've used a toilet that was a wooden box over a hole in the ground. Addresses don't exist: often in the church directory, there are addresses such as "such-and-such barrio (it's like neighborhood), 2nd street, 2nd-to-last house on the right" and we can find the house pretty well. When something happens in Yuto, you'll hear about it within a day or so, or see it. And that darn siesta still hasn't disappeared either. The stars are super-pretty at night though!
Quick funniness: apparently Elder Sangroni's dad's and uncle's birthdays are the same as my birthday...go figure! A quick heads us (full caps because it's important) DON'T SEND PACKAGES THROUGH FEDEX OR DHL: apparently a package costed us roughly $350 to pick up...and the missionary has to pay it.
That's about all I have for this week. I'll let you all in on the fun details of Yuto in the coming months that I'm here!
Love,
Elder Powell

semana 25-Yuto

¡Hola Todos!
The rain finally let up about halfway into the week. I was walking in shin-deep water at one point!
We had zone conference this last Thursday. I must say I thoroughly enjoy going to zone conference! So many good talks, lots of missionaries to talk with, and it's always pleasing to meet with President and his wife. After conference ended though, I was given a rather unexpected surprise--I'm being transferred early up to a pueblito called Yuto in the Jujuy province. (If you want to pronounce them like an Argentine, it's 'shooto' and 'hoohooee' (accents underlined)) Apparently it competes for being the poorest area in the mission. They only have a branch there: my comp, Elder Sangroni, from Buenos Aires is Branch President and I'll be 1st counselor! There's still a week left in the transfer, but I already moved up here yesterday. I'll have more details on the place next week.
For now, back to Salta. I ran into these tourists the other day as I was printing out photos. They were have issues with a virus that got onto their SD card and were trying to work with the employees to get things fixed. Unfortunately (I learned later) she was from Israel and just knew the basics of Spanish and he was from Holland and didn't know a lick of Spanish! Luckily they both spoke English, so I gladly hopped in and played interpreter as we fixed things up. I got to talking with them more and found out that they found each other in Costa Rica, of all places! She was living in New York at the time but had since moved. Now they're travelling around here in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, etc.! I was shocked! They asked what I was doing here and I started to explain how I was a missionary and what I was doing here. Yet shortly after I started talking to them, the sheer fact that I was making a contact in English dumbfounded me enough that I really couldn't think of what to say next--my mind was so preoccupied that I couldn't talk in Spanish with them! We still had a nice conversation though, even though I could've made something more out of it.
February 27th was a crazy day... we started off the morning having heard about the 8.8 earthquake in Chile earlier in the morning--my comp was from Santiago, Chile. So he was a little preoccupied about that. We then got a call around 12:00--Lucas, the son of my most recent baptism, died. It was his 14th birthday. He was getting baptized this upcoming Saturday. We rushed over to the hospital to start helping out the family--Rosa, the mom, was sobbing like no other, with reason of course. My companion and I were brought into the emergency room to see Lucas--I didn't need to see a dead body to know that I didn't want to become a doctor. I'll spare the details. He died of a stopped respiratory system which was caused by 'hipertension endocraneana' (I'm sure you can translate that yourself). All I could understand of the situation was that he started having flu-like symptoms yesterday and was brought to a clinic. When he needed to get hospitalized the next morning, there weren't any available ambulances so he didn't get the oxygen he needed. A doc came in his own car to pick them up, but Lucas died fairly quick after that. We stayed with the family for a few hours, helping to calm them down. The whole time my comp was glued to the tv in the cafeteria as it was giving coverage on the earthquake in Chile. The damage actually wasn't as bad as it could've been, Chile was fairly well prepared. We headed over to a nearby member's house to inform them of the death of their recent-convert's son. We were standing outside of the house when we felt an earthquake as well! I don't think it hit us from Chile--their big one was in the early morning and the secondary earthquakes were smaller. The news said it was a 6.1 earthquake that hit Salta--I'm pretty sure it hit somewhere south of Salta because I was on the northern tip of Salta and it was fairly small compared to a bigger number like 6.1. I first thought that I was just getting dizzy as I was standing there in the street, but I looked upward and the light poles and power cables were definitely oscillating, but not enough to be in danger of falling or breaking. Definitely an interesting experience though.
The next day was Sunday, my last day in the area, ward conference, and Lucas' viewing and funeral services. Ward conference was nice. We headed to the viewing after that. And then we rushed off to the terminal...what a way to end my stay in La Loma--the death of an investigator!
I can't afford to dwell on it though. Preach My Gospel has a good quote that isn't directed towards this specific challenge, but it can apply (I've only got Spanish closeby, sorry; give Drew or your ward members some homework): "Los discípulos de Cristo sienten dolor cuando las personas deciden no arrepentirse [o se mueren], pero esos discípulos mantienen la visión de lo que son y de lo que hacen, y continúan avanzando con diligencia"
All of you are disciples of Christ as well. No se desanimen cuando algo malo les pasa a ustedes. Siguen adelante, no más.
Alright, I've gotta head out. I love you all!
-Elder Powell-