Semana 42 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

Last p-day, we decided to climb this huge water tower in the center of Yuto and got some great night-shots of Yuto! We'll be doing it again sometime to get the daytime shots too!

This week was a little rough. We got hit again with the curse that no one was home! We had divisions on Wednesday, which meant we had 4 missionaries in Yuto. Normally that will give you twice as much work done for the week, but instead, my planner was chock full of suggested names and houses to visit, making up plans A, B, C, D, E, and I think F as well for the day!!!!! It was pretty killer because it happened to Elder Sangroni too, even though he was in a completely different area of Yuto! We found a lot of new investigators this week, but none of them are showing real progress and interest just yet, so we'll just have to be actively patient for the next little bit.

 

We did have a couple exceptions though. The big highlight was the baptism we had yesterday: Jairo Marcelo Palacio. He's the 16-year-old brother of the Gabriel Herrera that we baptized a month ago (wow, time flies). As you can see in the photo on my Picasa account, I got to perform the baptism!!! It was a little scary at first because we had everything ready to go for the baptismal service, the members were there, but he hadn't shown up yet, even though it was 45 minutes late! We headed to his house at that moment and found him there. Luckily, we had the support of the rest of the family, so they kept insuring him that he should get baptized--he finally decided that he was ready and we left for the church. The water was a little chilly, but it was a wonderful experience for everyone.

 

Argentina is kicking butt in World Cup! We just beat Mexico 3-1 to put us into the quarter-finals. I was a little sad to see the defeat of the US team, especially because we actually passed to the top 8 round! But, I get to enjoy the thrill of Argentine victory for now ;)

 

That's about all I've got for now. Take care and have a good week!

Love,

Elder Powell

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Semana 41 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

We travelled to the capital of Jujuy as a district last P-day (the capital always has the same name as the province) to visit the sites and visit a few member some of the missionaries knew from past areas. Wow...it's quite spectacular walking around a 3-floored shopping mall when you've been in Yuto for a few months now, where essentially every building is 1-story! Except for the 6 hours spent in travelling there and back, it was a very pleasant visit.

 

We made our final trip to the little town of Caimancito because no one came to church, which caused our president to ask us to focus our efforts in Yuto for now. I'm a little sad that we didn't find anyone that fully progressed there, but I'm also glad to have more time to do things in Yuto again. As we were waiting at the bus stop in Caimán, a man came up to me and started talking to me in English! I had to make a quick switch to English-mode, but we had a nice conversation. It turns out he's one of the English teachers here and I think he was looking for a good practice moment. I tried to talk to him about the church, but I still am finding it extremely difficult not to switch back to Spanish as I start teaching things. Just the other day, an investigator randomly asked me to say a prayer in English. It's been a few months since I've said a prayer in English, and it shows--I struggled through the whole thing!!!

 

As for the world cup, things are going well for Argentina. We smoked South Korea 4-1!!! We had to travel during the game, but we listened to the bulk of it in the colectivo. As we got off, we found 2 other missionaries in the terminal watching the game, so we caught the last 20 minutes, which included Argentina making goals 3 and 4 within 5 minutes of each other! The terminal was packed with tons of people, eyes fixed on the various television screens spread throughout the terminal. As the players got super-close to the goal, lots of desperate moans sound out as a few others started to stand up because of pent up emotion inside of them. As the goals went in, the entire terminal errupted in cheers! Even a few people started dancing and running around in celebration! As the game ended and we started walking towards the chapel, a few fireworks went off and cars and motos were screaming through the streets, blasting their horns as loud as possible--it was pretty sweet witnessing it all! I'm told if we make it to finals, it's going to be just crazy!

 

The other day, I had 'empanadas de yakaré'--that apparently means crocodile! More than anything, it tasted like a really thin steak, but all the same, I get to add that to my list of funky things I've eaten!

 

On a more spiritual note, we were fortunate enough to find a family of 7 this past week that were just great! We decided a few days ago that if any kids said 'hi' to us in the street or called out our names, we would go to their house and share our message with the family. This was one of those cases, and boy did we have a wonderful lesson with them. I'll definitely let you know if the family progresses more!

 

Hope Father's Day went well for everyone! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Powell

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Semana 40 - Yuto

Hola Todos,

So, it turns out I need to write the continuation of last week's letter: we left the cyber last week and headed to the chapel to grab a few things that we had left there. Elder Sangroni asked me to head to the back of the church to check and see if the water drained from the baptismal font alright (from the baptisms the night before). As I headed into the darkened chapel, I got tons of paper shreds thrown in my face! The lights went on and I saw about 40 people waiting for me: the surprise birthday party had begun!!! I was super, super surprised and definitely had a nice finish to my birthday: Yuto rocks!!

 

As some of you may know, the World Cup games in South Africa started up on the 11th. We definitely knew about it! Nothing much happened on Friday, but on Saturday we knew that we wouldn't be able to do much in the morning because Argentina was playing against Nigeria. It just so happens that the game was going on during our lunch, so we got to watch it ;) Argentina took the win 1-0, but they definitely could've played a better game. They made the goal at minute 5, which means nothing much happened for the rest of the 85 minutes of the match! We also caught the last ten minutes of the U.S. vs. England match--a 1-1 tie (which is alright cuz England's pretty good in comparison). We'll defintely be looking forward to more success on the Argentine front in the upcoming weeks!

 

I had a funny little incident a few days ago. We have an inactive member of the church working on repairing the tiling in the chapel's kitchen, so we've had to leave the alarm turned off in the church for the past few days. However, we didn't inform the sisters that clean the chapel that we wanted to keep the alarm turned off for now. We passed by the church on Saturday and at the last second, we wanted to check just to see. We didn't walk into the front door though because we were curious about the other door that's a little bit off to the side that leads directly into the chapel. Normally, when we walk into the front door, the alarm gives off a few little beeps to give us time to type in the code. I couldn't remember if there was a sensor in the chapel or not, but either way, I was expecting the little beeps if there was one to give me time to run over to the codebox. We opened the door, took about 2 steps in, and then an enormously loud alarm siren started sounding off!!! I could feel my blood draining out, from my head all the way down to my legs, because I was startled so bad!!! I ran over and typed in the code super fast to turn it off and avoid more embarrassment! It turns out that although we have a super-loud alarm, no one really does anything about it. The last few times that it's gone off, the police didn't come, we didn't know, and the neighbors likely don't care too much or aren't there anyways. So we're hoping if for some odd reason there's a troublemaker that enters into the church without permission, his heart will be softened to the point that he runs away scared or just faints on the spot!

 

Other than that, not much else happened this week. We did a lot more than usual this week to try to find new investigators, and walked away with less than usual...we've got a good list to visit for this week though, so we're hoping for the best!

 

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

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Semana 39 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

I woke up this morning and thought to myself "I can't believe it...I'm not a teenager anymore......I'm 20.....gah, I'm getting old!!!" ok ok, now I know all of you that are older than 20 just let out a little laugh of "puh-leeze, you've got a long ways to go before you're old", but give me a break, I'm breaking groung here! My birthday went by well today. It was a fairly normal day, but enjoyable nonetheless. As for gifts from here, President Northcutt and his wife send a package of candy to the missionaries on their birthday, so I got that, as well as a family here in Yuto gave me some slippers! They're just a hair small, but they'll still work for just walking and lounging around the apartment.

 

The branch has been making a lot of progress recently. Elder Sangroni and I have put the home and visiting teaching programs into place here and have started seeing success already! We've got all the members making their weekly visits now and I think it will turn out well in the end. We also recently called a new primary and young womens presidency and we're looking to see improvements in their organizations as well. Things are looking bright for the church in Yuto, even though the future in Yuto is fairly dark! I was able to confirm one of the boys that got baptized last week yesterday in church. It's always an interesting experience performing ordinances like that in another language! We were going to have 2 more baptisms yesterday, but due to some rather confusing difficulties, they didn't show up to the baptism. We did all we could, including spending the hour and a half to heat the water for them, but they didn't come, so I just had to settle for a good choir practice instead. It's alright though, the next baptism will happen in our new baptismal font! 2 of the branches in the district joined together a few weeks ago, so the extra supplies in the now unused church are being distributed out. We scored 20 new chairs as well as the new baptismal font that is exactly the same, except for the fact that it's blue and it supposedly has 0 holes in it! We're super-happy that we can knock about 30 minutes off of our prep time for baptisms because we don't have to clean up all the water that spills out of our current font!

 

I have to mention this one girl that we've been teaching in Caimancito. About 2 weeks ago, we left her a Book of Mormon to read, giving her the first chapter to read before our next lesson. When we returned this past week, she had read the first 2 chapters and told us exactly what happened in those 2 chapters from memory with tons of details and everything! It was a very amazing moment because she was right on with her summary and even started to pull out the lessons that you learn from reading those two chapters! I hope she continues because she'll definitely get a lot out of the book. Speaking of which, I also started reading the book again, but this time in Spanish. I'm amazed at the little mini-revelations that I've been receiving in my study of the book, and I can't wait to find out more!

 

Well I've got to run, as usual. Best wishes to the recent graduates of 2010!!! Don't get to excited about the summer ;)

 

Love,

Elder Powell

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