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

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.