Semana 33 - Yuto

Buen Día,

Congratulations to Jonathan Price's mission call to Brazil--that's fantastic! I'm guessing you'll be bottle-necked in Provo though because I hear from recent arrivals here in Argentina that Brazil is still having issues with getting missionaries into Brazil in a rapid fashion...

Congratulations to Drew Powell for being the best flute player in Washington as well! Don't let your head grow too big ;) We inherit from the same genes, remember.

To answer mom's surprised reaction to my 2 baptisms last week: you need to realize that I'm always teaching somebody. I just haven't really reported on the weekly changes to the teaching records because it would just be too much. But I was planning on giving a teaching update this week anyways, so I hope this week will be better for you.

 

We were walking along the path when a nice little old lady (at least 70+ years) came walking up the path. We greeted her as we passed by, everything normal...until she passed by and said "¡Que lindo que sos!" (literally "How pretty are you", but takes on a feeling similar to "Well you're a pretty sight to see!") We just kept walking, not being able to believe what just happened...

 

We had a zone meeting this week because it was the beginning of a new transfer. I finally bought a new Sony Cyber-shot before the meeting, so I'm getting pictures of Yuto! Of course, I ran out of battery in the process of getting them ready to put on the internet for all of you, so you'll have to wait till next week when I'm better prepared. After the meeting, a couple miraculous things started happening. We recently ran out of gas in the kitchen of the chapel. Unfortunately, we got double-slammed with difficulties there because there's a shortage of gas in Yuto, and we need a 45-kg tank of gas to replace the one in the chapel! What's worse is that we also ran out of our regular 15-kg tank in the pension at about the same time! Yet the Lord is watching over us--we found a place after the meeting that will deliver the gas for us! As we were taking the bus ride home, Elder Sangroni and I got to chatting and playing with my camera, so we didn't pay attention to where our special non-existant bus stop was. Luckily, as Elder Sangroni looked out the window in a random moment, we approached the entrance to Yuto and got off just in time (the bus won't enter into Yuto unfortunately). We then started waiting for somebody to take us into Yuto. Just a short 10 minutes later, who drives up but the Yuto police truck, who gladly let us hitch a ride in the bed of the truck into Yuto!!! Got a picture of that one for sure ;)

 

Random trivia-type fact: we found out there's a Book of Mormon in the Yuto library, which consists of 2 bookshelves!!!

 

Here's your family situations request: Elder Sangroni has been working with this super-less-active family (mom used to be relief society president). Things have greatly improved with them and they're starting to have the desire to return to church and read the Book of Mormon. We're teaching their un-baptized daughter as well, so things are progressing well. The last time we visited them, we actually challenged them to prepare themselves for a temple trip that's happening January 10, 2011, and I think they're looking to meet that goal!

 

A little 12-year-old girl (Belén) approached us about a month ago, asking us when she could be baptized! We've been teaching her with her sister-in-law's (Alicia's) family, who lives next-door, for the past month now. The 2 baptisms from last week were 2 of Alicia's daughters. Belén's baptism was yesterday, but as we tried to talk with her legal guardian, her uncle, he didn't want to hear anything, barely letting us talk to him about it, so she won't be getting baptized unfortunately...just harshly yelled at by her uncle and other family members for associating with "the Mormons". She has her Book of Mormon though and other member-friends, so if she is actively patient, like we learned from Pres. Dieter F. Uchtdorf in the last Priesthood Session, she should be fine in the end. As for Alicia and the rest of the family, she's living unmarried with the father of her 4 children, like the rest of Argentina (it seems at least), which prohibits her own baptism for now because she would be breaking the law of chastity. She has told us though that she feels that our church makes her feel at peace like no other church has in the past, so she has prayed hard about a decision that she has to make to continue progressing--marry her boyfriend, or separate from him. A little about his background: he works in the "finca", the agricultural fields, and is gone almost always from the house; he drinks and smokes; and, according to Alicia, has shown traces of uninterest in the family. She has talked with him about the situation and is deciding to leave with her kids to Salta--a 5-hour bus ride that will feel like moving from the middle-of-nowhere in Washington or Oregon over to Seattle or Portland! Her story is really feeling like the stories of the early church pioneers, how they're dropping everything to move over to a better place. She reasons that there's a much more visible future in Salta than Yuto (she's right, you can't find work here in Yuto), and she needs the blessings of being baptized in the church. What an example-setter for all of us! There's a reason why we do crazy things in this church like dropping everything and leaving, serving missions for 2 years, and giving all we can to the church--it's because it's all true!!! The Book of Mormon is a book with power--it's scripture just like the Bible. Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, just like Moses was a prophet. It all really happened. If you don't know about these things, ask someone who does.

 

Well that's about all I've got for now :) I love you all!

-Elder Powell-

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Semana 32 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

Mom: I can't believe you remember Andreas and his dad--I barely remember them! But hey, that's great that they're receiving the missionaries! I burst out laughing once I heard Spencer's engaged--2 months!!! That'll definitely be a little funky seeing once I get back! What's her name? It could be that I know her from when I was in singles ward, but I'm not too sure because of the Montana part. I hope Jason and Nick aren't running for Bloomsday--let's keep in mind the Sabbath Day, like it says in Exodus 20 and Mosiah 13 ;) I'm thinking I'll be calling home once I get home on May 2nd--around 9:30-10:00 my time--so that should make about 5:30-6:00 your time...I think. I already have a 40-minute card that I've bought down here, so I think I'll just use it instead of having you call me like last time.

 

I finished the Book of Mormon project on the 14th, which makes about my 4th read-through of the book--still think it's the best ever! As they say down here--¡Leelo! (Read it!) Speaking of the Book of Mormon, we've been playing a fun little game in our lessons with the members this past week: we fan through the pages until they tell us to stop, they choose the page and column and then one of the verses in the column. We read the scripture and right there on the spot, we teach what that verse is trying to tell the particular member. We've had some funny run-throughs, like "And it came to pass that Nephi died," Ephraim in the study guide in the back, and other scriptures giving the accounting of what year it was! But we've had a ton of great teaching opportunities that seemed almost magically perfect for the situations that they were in! It's a great test to see how much of the book you really know ;)

 

Today is day 1 of a new transfer: I'm still with Elder Sangroni. We finished the last transfer with 2 baptisms!!! 4 hours before the end of the transfer too! We baptized 2 daughters of a great family. We just need to baptize the one son and the mother now! I didn't end up baptizing either of them, which left me in charge of directing the whole program. I got to direct, play the piano, and teach the whole first lesson while we were waiting for the wet ones to change. It turned out really great though. Our baptismal font is not buried in the ground, rather it's a rectangle metal frame with a pool liner as the font. Too bad the font has holes in it, so when we came back 3 hours after starting to fill it, we had a good-sized puddle of water on the concrete floor (thank goodness carpet nor wood floors exist here!) and the font about half-way full! Everything worked out fine for us though.

 

We had our first couple of cold days this past week. I'm guessing we hit about 50 degrees, but I'm a bad guesser. Either way, I just loved walking around in short-sleeves still while everyone else was super-bundled up!

 

I keep forgetting, but I ran into to the first bathrooms in my life where they charge you money to use it! The bus terminal always has a table outside the bathroom with a lady sitting there, taking 50 cents from you as you walk out!!! I couldn't believe it!

 

Gotta run--love you all!

-Elder Powell-

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Semana 31 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

Quick little one-liner stories to start off with:

I didn't hear too many English songs this past week, but I did pick 'Bittersweet Symphony' out of the bunch :P I had someone honestly think that I looked 28 years old!!! We were talking with the owner of our house and all of a sudden, 2 of her brothers that were present started talking to me in English! It turns out they took their education from high school and they kept on teaching themselves--they talk fairly good now!

We have a less-active sister that has been in the hospital for a week now, so we've been making a few visits during the week. As I entered the hospital for my first time, I realized something that I'm sure will make dad cringe a little: we walked right through the whole hospital to the back where she was sleeping--the only employee that we saw in the whole hospital was a janitor...that's about how dependable all of Yuto is ;) I'm sure there were docs around, probably in the ER, but there was absolutely no one watching over the patients, nor the people entering and leaving the hospital.

The big event of this week was the Easter egg hunt! Thanks for sending the egg-decorating kit mom! We had the youth spend their mutual decorating about 40 eggs for an Easter egg hunt we held for the primary kids the next day in the church building--it all turned out quite successful :) Unfortunately, due to the fact that I still don't have a camera, I won't have pictures to document the event...the work moves on though!

Not too much else to write this week. Hope all is going well in school, work, and life in general!

Love,

Elder Powell

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Semana 30 - Yuto

Hola Todos,

So I have a question (or rather all the gringos down here do): what exactly is being changed with the new health bill/code in the U.S.? How does it affect the doctors? How does it affect average joe? Opinion if it's better or not...cuz all we get down here in the newspapers is "oh, after nearly a century the health code changes in the U.S......." and that's about it; no details.

I got your easter package on the 31st of March--thanks!!! The envelope had a nice rip on the corner, but I don't think anything was stolen because it was in a sealed plastic bag with Argentina's "we understand you'd like your package untouched, but sorry things turned out differently--don't sue us" letter. It came at a good time too: we're thinking of using the egg-coloring kit as a primary activity! I'll keep you in touch, of course.

Well, this last week was fun: we had zone conference and then General Conference a couple days after! We got everything ready the night before zone conference so that we could wake up at 4:30 to get ourselves ready for the 6:00 bus ride there...we didn't hear the alarm. Thank goodness Elder Sangroni woke up at 6:10 to go to the bathroom and realized what time it was. Even more lucky, this particular bus starts in Salta, so it arrived an hour late! I always love conference, it's a nice little refreshing time with all the missionaries in the zone and with the President and his wife too. We found out that 5 sister missionaries were being emergency-transferred from Tucumán up to here to switch places with 4 elders in my district because there's safety issues for the sisters down there now. It turns out 3 of them were from my group in the MTC, which makes 6 out of the 11 in my district from my MTC group! So it's been fun catching up with all of them a little bit.

Lots to write on General Conference--holy cow I just loved it!!! Before I get to my thoughts on the conference itself, I wouldn't feel complete if I didn't tell you about my adventures surrounding the conference. The 2 days before conference, we scrambled throughout all of Yuto, at a rate of about 2 houses an hour, teaching quick little lessons preparing them for conference. We were surprised by how many scriptures we were able to use for the same exact topic! Try 1 Ne 22:1-2, Mosiah 1-6 (general conference with King Benjamin--notice how many people traveled to hear the conference that was "tomorrow" and notice their reaction in chapter 5; also see Mosiah 3:18), and 3 Ne. 19:1-3 (general conference with Jesus Christ--notice what the people did before/in between sessions of conference).

Our district center is a 2-hour bus ride away. Elder Sangroni and I took the trip Saturday with our young men's president (I don't think I've told you, he's 17) and our young women's president (19) to watch conference. Without too much trouble at all, the gringo missionaries (8 of us now) were provided with an English room, so I didn't have to decipher it all in Spanish. I wasn't able to stay for priesthood for a few reasons: being that we're very far ahead in time zones, our sessions are at 1:00, 5:00, and priesthood at 9:00--we're supposed to be sleeping at 11:00--we couldn't sleep over in San Pedro as originally planned either because it's occupied by sister missionaries now--also, the last bus that would enter into Yuto left at 8:00ish, so I didn't have luck there. But we needed to head back anyways to prep for the Sunday session. We planned out to rent a bus to take the whole branch to conference and provide them with lunch before conference started. With all of the efforts put in, we had a whopping 73 in attendance, investigators, less-actives, and members alike, and we crammed them all into a 35-seater bus! I stood the whole 2 hours there and 2 hours back after everything. Speaking of investigators, we set 4 baptismal dates and taught a couple of lessons in between the Sunday sessions--I definitely felt like Christ as we jump from pod to pod to give quick little lessons!

Our plans turned out pretty well though, and we're definitely grateful the church can pay for it all too.

As for conference itself, we definitely noticed the correlation between every single one of the talks to the family unit. I took the time to give one-line summaries to each talk, number them, and then draw a neat little diagram of the family and where each talk (number) fit into constructing the family. As for my highlights on the talks, all the missionaries started laughing as Jeffrey R. Holland started off with "It grieveth me that I must use so much boldness of speech..." because we knew exactly what was coming! They actually use the exact phrase "dropping the cane" down here--"bajando la caña" (although on 2nd thought, is it 'cane' or 'Cain'......?), but his talk was still a favorite though. I liked Elder Bednar's tips on finding the spiritual early warning signals in children, James B. Martino--how to react well to our difficulties (Dad, I also thought of Rosa during this talk. It turns out the 19-year-old daughter recently got baptized, so I feel things are progressing in the family), Gregory A. Schwitzer's advice on how to judge well and make good decisions, and really, all the talks that talked on building up and strengthening the family in general: you can't really pick one out, they just all go together so well. I'll especially be studying D. Todd Christofferson's talk on the scriptures because I'll be giving a talk on scripture study in a couple weeks to the branch. I definitely loved this conference though and we plan to use a lot of the talks from it to help out this wonderfully-progressing branch.

That's about all I have for now. Thanks for all your love and support!

Love

Elder Powell

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