The College Diaries

The End of Summer Break

2011-12-22T22:12:00.002-07:00

It was brought to my attention that these past few months have been like a summer break for me, right before school starts up again. It seems like 2 seconds after that was mentioned to me, the "break" ended all of a sudden--I think it would've lasted longer had I not compared my time off to a stereotypically-short summer break!

I've been keeping up most of the same activities that I mentioned in my previous post. The only real changes have been the various end-of-semester activities our ward participated in. One of the highlights was our trip to Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Check out the pics!

It's been a few years since I've seen these lights, so that was definitely nice to be back again.

But yeah, not too much else is going on. I'm still cooking every once in a while...

The trip home for Christmas break was rather interesting. I got to the airport on Saturday about an hour and a half before my afternoon flight to Spokane, and was waiting at the departure gate for about an hour, when all of a sudden, our flight got cancelled due to bad fog in Spokane! So I started making phone calls and getting my flight rescheduled. The first offer the guy at the Delta desk gave me was the following morning at 10:00 to Minneapolis, and then layover for a few hours there until a 5:00 flight back to Spokane. I was rather skeptical of his ability to book a reasonable flight! His next offer was the following night at 10:00 (more than 24 hour wait).......I didn't know what to say, so he confirmed me on both flights, that way I could just show up at either one. Luckily, my Grandma lives about 20 minutes from the airport, so I called her up and got a free bed for the night. As I was reclaiming my checked baggage, I got a hold of my Dad, who was skiing without me (grrr), and he remembered he had a funeral to go to tomorrow, so he suggested I go to Delta's front desk (a different one than I was originally at), and nicely beg them for a better flight to get home in time for this funeral I wasn't planning on going to! After the gal called over 3 other coworkers to fix a fairly trivial-seeming technical difficulty, they got me checked in on the 8:42 AM direct flight to Spokane!!! What was that other guy trying to do in hiding that flight?! The following morning, I checked out the departure board, and noticed that there was another direct flight at 11--what gives?! So the second flight worked out fine, and I got home. Can't wait to see what the last few remaining days of the year have in store for me!

The first 2 months back

2011-11-05T13:52:00.000-06:00

So I have had lots of time to reflect and review over stuff in general these last couple of weeks, and the thought crossed my head: "I still have that blog, maybe I should actually update it again!" I think lots of my friends with blogs have had similar thoughts--I've seen your last posts ;)
I decided to celebrate the occasion by changing up the blog's look a little bit. Let me know if it's too annoying--this is so that others can enjoy seeing it after all.
The first 2 months being back have been nice and relaxing, more than anything. I haven't gotten back into my picture-taking frenzy yet, so I don't really have that many pictures to show what's been happening. I don't know if my poor Sony camera that I bought in Argentina could take it! But I still have just enough to give you an idea:

The homecoming was nice and simple, which is just fine for me.

...and where did I end up first?

I couldn't help but give in to the magnetic pull that our piano has on me! Drew and I had some nice rock-out sessions on it. During my mission, I actually had ideas come to my head for an arrangement of "Where can I turn for peace?" (listen to the basic melody of the original here). I wanna try and write flute and cello parts so that Jason, Drew, and I can pull a trio on it! I think it's going to be pretty cool!

We had lots of family members come up to celebrate my homecoming and Drew's farewell to Manaus, Brazil. It was so great being able to go to the temple with all of them.

About a week after Drew left, I packed up my bags, room, and everything else, and made the big drive down to Provo, Utah. I'm pretty sure that's the first roadtrip I've ever been on without having mom or dad there--I must be pretty grown up for doing that, right?! It was pretty scary crossing from Idaho to Utah though because I had to do it at roughly midnight while it was raining, and with a bunch of construction all around! Good thing mom thought ahead and got me Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol on audiobook to listen to--definitely effective at keeping you awake! It was nice stopping at friends' and family's places on the way down too.
I'm rooming in a 4-person apartment with 3 buddies of mine from freshman year. They were excited to see me because they had already been going to school for a month. I've slowly been catching up with old friends and acquaintances over the past few weeks now, but I still have lots to go.
I was fortunate enough to be here right in time for a mission reunion that President Northcutt decided to hold in Draper a few weeks ago, so I got to see a bunch of old friends there. Again, I didn't really get any pictures of the event, so you don't really see the fact that there were about 150 people at the event, and that I knew roughly half of them!

Alex Young was my trainer in the field. That was great seeing him again!

So yeah, it's been great catching up with everyone.

I've been doing some light job searching in my spare time here. Among other places, I applied at the MTC both as a Spanish teacher as well as a Spanish investigator actor. I'm kinda waiting to see what they say before I start going for other ideas. I've also been volunteering there, doing some familysearch indexing, having fun at ward events, carving a sweet pumpking...

...practicing my cooking skills...

...playing more piano, strolling down memory lane on campus, registering for winter semester classes, reading the scriptures, going over old calculus and programming notes (man, I forgot practically everything!!! It's coming back though, so there's hope), and just feeling surreal!!! The weather is finally starting to turn, threatening snow every once in awhile.

I feel like things are going pretty great though! Hope this next month will be an exciting one too! I love you all! Thanks for all your love and support.

Semana 104 - Villa Muñecas

2011-09-19T10:08:00.000-06:00

Hola Todos!

Well, this is a really late letter, but for those that have been reading my blog, you might be curious as to what happened my final week in the mission field. Well, let me tell you!

We played more soccer on p-day--I'll miss being able to play with just about anyone down there!

I was pretty busy fitting in goodbye-visits with the members throughout the week. I got pictures and contact info from pretty much all of them though, so we're doing good!

The real highlight of the week was Daniel's baptism! We got him baptized on Saturday and confirmed him on Sunday, which also happened to be my last day!!! He's doing really great and has lots of friends in the ward, so I know he'll do just fine.

I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting, which was rather bittersweet. And then we had lunch with the Argañaraz family. What did they do? They showered me with eggs, flour, and this thing called polenta--it's basically like corn meal, or shredded corn seed! I tried to protect myself with a tshirt, but it didn't work, I was SOOO dirty! You'll have to see the photos (picasaweb.google.com/cpu3140).

I washed my head off while I was at their house, and then we took a taxi home. By the time we finished cleaning ourselves off, it was time to be back in the pension so that I could pack and Elder Rasmussen could clean. It was a crazy sensation, but it had to happen that way I guess. I left the following morning at 10:00, and got to the offices around 2:00. We hung around there with all the other missionaries until 7:30, and then we headed to President Levrino's house for a special dinner with his family. It was a special evening for sure!
We all piled into a van, and then piled into the office elders' pension to sleep. There were roughly 20 in total in that pension, but there was space--it's a pretty big place. And then we started our flights Tuesday morning at about 11:00. And then Buenos Aires, and then Miami, Florida, and then I saw the family in Texas!!!!!!!!! We flew into Spokane late night at 10:30, and then I was released the following afternoon! What an abrupt ending, but it's definitely time to move on. I'm glad I had this wonderful experience, and definitely don't regret it.

I love you all--thank you for your support and love through these two years of missionary service. Hope to be in closer contact with you now!

Love,

(as they would say in Spanish) ex-Elder Powell

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Semana 103 - Villa Muñecas

2011-08-29T13:45:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, time is quickly slipping by, just like they all say. I finished the Book of Mormon again this last week. What can I say, it's the best book that will ever be written in all history! ¡Hay que leerlo!

It's been a little tough balancing between all the last-minute things I've been wanting to get done, and this last week will be a little tough still, but I'll make it.

We had a good visit by Elder Aidukaitis, 1st counselor in the South America South area presidency. He invited us to come to a double-stake leadership meeting to talk about how the wards need to better apply the 1st presidency's rescue-less-actives plan in our units. He finished off the meeting with a nice talk about miracles and the doctrine behind them. I hope our bishop gets to work on the things that were mentioned there because I can tell what Elder Aidukaitis said was the truth.

Argentina's provincial elections happened yesterday. Voting is obligatory, and lots of people are needed to help carry out the voting process (it's not as nice and easy as it is in the states). So unfortunately, we experienced a 30% decrease in our average sacrament meeting attendance. No one was home afterwards to visit either, so it was an interesting challenge for the week. Things should be a little more normal this week, so it'll be a little easier to finish out good!

Hope to see you all soon!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 101 y 102 - Villa Muñecas

2011-08-22T11:53:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!
Sorry about not getting last weeks letter out. I totally spaced out and didn't realize that I didn't send it until it was too late. 2 Sundays ago, our recent baptism was ordained to the office of priest in the Aaronic Priesthood! That was a little surprise because I didn't even know about the interview he had with the bishop. I gave him a white shirt and a couple ties to start working on the sacrament next week!
We were going to have another baptism this last week, but because of unforseen conflicts in our schedules, we have to wait 2 weeks to do it. That's alright though, because that puts his confirmation on my last day--going out in white! ;)
We had interviews with President Levrino 2 weeks ago. Mine was pretty quick, nothing too special.
Elder Aidukaitis, 1st counselor in the area presidency is coming this week to give a couple firesides to the priesthood leaders and the youth and young adults. The missionaries got invited to the leadership meeting, so we'll be heading there Friday night :)
Not too much different though, just starting little by little to get things ready for my departure in two weeks! I got rid of a lot of stuff in my suitcases that I won't be bringing home, and I've started getting the members to write in my (what's it called?) farewell book...where they leave their names, contact info, and a little goodbye-note. I know that the last 2 weeks will be a little hectic, trying to say goodbye and keeping up with the work, so I'm doing the little stuff early.
Love you all!
-Elder Powell-

Semana 100 - Villa Muñecas

2011-08-08T12:30:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

...I can't believe I just hit the 100-week mark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Break out the soda, slap on the steaks, get the fireworks ready--let's party! :P Not really, but wow, that's quite the incredible landmark.

What better way to celebrate than another baptism!!! He's a 19-year-old that is a member of a part-member family and he's so awesome! He invited lots of friends to the baptism, and even got up this last Sunday during testimony meeting and gave a very spiritual testimony! I was amazed. It felt just like 2 Nephi 31:13.

President Levrino changed around the mission key indicators this last week. It's sooo much better for us now, because he's having us look for a few less investigators to be able to see the investigators we already have more times during the week to be able to help them better in their progress. Unfortunately, I won't have too much time to put it into practice, but at least I can get the foundation ready for a "great and marvelous work" going here in the Villa. We're also now commanded to dedicate some of our time to help the recent converts and the less-active members. I think it was a good change for us.

I tried out this local wild fruit that's called a "níspero" (nee-spehroe). It tasted just like a lemon warhead candy in fruit-form!!! I loved it ;)

I was also pretty floored this week. I feel like Heavenly Father proved me wrong a couple times this week. In two different cases (one right before lunchtime, the big meal of the day, and one bright and early in the morning), we were looking for new investigators by knocking on doors. I specifically told my comp that we probably weren't going to find anyone because that's been the trend my whole mission, but we knocked during those times anyways. Sure enough, in both cases we entered into a door! So when something doesn't seem probable, if it's convenient for the Lord, He'll get you inside.

Gotta run--love you all!!!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 99 - Villa Muñecas

2011-08-01T12:22:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

The weather has taken a colder turn, especially with the rain we had yesterday. I still can't believe that I'm needing to use my under armour, and a huge coat right now, when just a short 9 months ago, I was dieing under 130 degree weather!

We had a pretty good week as far as the work is concerned. We have lots of good investigators from a while back that are really close to getting baptized this week, and we're also finding some interesting new investigators as well. It's kinda funky getting close to the end, because the work is pretty much the same, but at the same time, you realize that you have fairly little time left to get things done! Hope we can pull this transfer off well, especially since we're through the first of 6 weeks!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 98 - Villa Muñecas

2011-07-25T11:57:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

It's been an interesting last week of the transfer. We were walking home on Tuesday night and thought it was weird that there were large groups of people scattered around our block just kindof staring off in the distance. We asked our neighbors what was going on, and they told us that a lady was assaulted and killed about 2 blocks down the street! We didn't really feel a threat, but we made sure we locked up good :P

We have 3 investigators that are SO close to baptism. The hardest part is just that we can't see them that often during the week because they either work or go to school. We'll get there though!

President Levrino changed up the transfer system a little bit. We didn't get our transfer call until last night at about 8:30--talk about anxiety attack! It's official though, I die here in Villa Muñecas with Elder Rasmussen! I'm actually really excited, along with a few members that were calling me to find out how the transfers turned out. We'll have to rock this transfer, cuz it's my last! ...that's so weird!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 97 - Villa Muñecas

2011-07-18T12:22:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, the big highlight was our zone conference this last week. The picture that's posted up on the internet of President Levrino looks nothing like him. Get a couple more wrinkles on him, slap on these extremely 80's glasses on, and make him a little taller looking, and then you're closer :P

You can tell he's pretty prepared for the job. He didn't show any timidness when he taught us the importance of focusing on our purpose when we're working. He didn't really change anything, but it was a nice reminder on the perspective I need to have about mission work. His wife is really nice too. We got to know 3 of their 5 children. One is at the Buenos Aires EFY activity (first time ever that it's here !!!), and the other stayed at a friends house the night before. The youngest has a type of epilepsy, so he just kindof wanders around, doing whatever he wants without paying much attention to us. I had an interview with the president as well. It turns out I'm still cursed with being close to the last interview, which made me wait until 6:00 before I could leave! He gave me a couple of good pointers, and we said goodbye until the next time I'd see him...in the offices before I go home :P

Other than that, nothing super different happened this week. I could tell you all about different investigators and their lives and situations, but I just have too many to choose from, and not enough time to talk about them. You'll just have to remind me after the mish.

I love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 96 - Villa Muñecas

2011-07-11T11:51:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Happy Independance week! We had USA's on July 4th, and Argentina's on July 9th. The kids here have started their 2-week winter vacation, so we hope to be able to see our younger investigators a little more frequently this week. President Levrino planned out a combined zone conference-interview session this week on Thursday. We're really excited to get to know him and see what he's got.

We continue in the good fight. It seems like all our investigators are slacking off and getting replaced by new investigators that we're starting to find. I was having some struggles in finding some new investigators to teach, which worried my leaders a little bit. We're starting to enter into the more humble and slightly more dangerous neighborhoods because everyone else is just a little too prideful to listen to what we have to share. It's going pretty good so far. We hope to find someone that will make the effort to get to church!

Don't really have much else. Kind of a normal week if you ask me.

I love you all, all the same ;)

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 95 - Villa Muñecas

2011-07-04T15:47:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, at first glance, this wasn't that fun of a week. There were tons of fodged appointments, a few investigators dropped, lots of walking around, and out of the 10ish that we were expecting in church, not a single one made it...

But then again, looking at our numbers, we actually had a really good week! It's really weird how it all worked out. The biggest struggle right now is weeding out our investigator list, giving a main focus on just a select few and leaving the rest as backup options. The idea is that if we give a lot of focus on just a few people, those few people will be baptized and clear space for others to step up to the font. There's a lot of potential here, it's just trying to get everything just right in the process.

We had the official mission president switch this last week. No idea when I'll hear from or see President Levrino, but we'll see.

I did some souvenir shopping today. I'm starting to get a nice little collection. If anyone has anything specific they'd like, let me know--I'll see what I can do.

I love you all!!!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 94 - Villa Muñecas

2011-06-27T13:51:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This was a really funky week. We didn't start out the week too well, but then I had divisions on Wednesday. My district leader and I found all of the new investigators and set all the baptismal dates we needed in the week in just that one day!!! I expected to have similar success the following days, but it was quite the opposite: we just found 1 new investigator and set 1 baptismal date with that same investigator. Not sure what happened, but I can't complain too much, the numbers show we had a good week :)

The cold is really setting in. The killer part is that it's humid here, so no matter how many layers you have on, the cold still penetrates everything. It's keeping a lot of people from making it to church because the shock of getting out from under the covers is just too much...it doesn't help that we've had rain for a couple days too, so things are just freezing down here :P

We took a district trip up this hill today to see one of the world's largest statues of Jesus Christ. It was really pretty being up on top of everything. Too bad the cyber lady just prohibitted me from plugging in my camera to upload the pictures..."I don't have a virus, I swear!"

President Northcutt and his wife leave for home on Friday, bringing in the new president--President Levrino--and his family from Santa Fe, Argentina. Hope the switch goes smoothly!

I love you all! Keep reading those scriptures!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 93 - Villa Muñecas

2011-06-20T15:52:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

It's been a rollercoaster ride this week! Still having the same difficulties with finding new investigators and keeping the current ones progressing. I was surprised with President Northcutt's last zone conference this week! It was a very very spiritual one--dead silence after the closing prayer :P It was really good though and we learned a lot, yet again. There's a certain kid from the ward that got his mission call to Chile. He was supposed to leave 2 weeks ago, but a volcano in Chile caused a ton of ash to cover the two airports in Buenos Aires, making travel impossible through there. He got set apart all the same last Sunday, so he actually accompanied us for a couple days, which was a great help! He finally had to take a bus down to Buenos Aires to go to the MTC there until he can fly out to Chile. The missionaries that had to leave last transfer got jipped as well, seeing as they couldn't fly out to the US again! 3 poor elders from Chile had to make the 36-hour bus trip to Santiago to be able to go home! And then supposedly 2-3 incoming elders from the states got stuck in Texas, so the mission pres had to go and pick them up and keep them there until they can travel! Such a nagging issue!

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers seeing this! Unfortunately the holiday coupled with really cold weather made mission work impossible yesterday, but happy holidays anyways :) I had to give an emergency talk yesterday because none of the speakers showed up. I talked about how fathers should be like Heavenly FATHER, using lots of scriptures that explain who he is, and the blessings that come from being like him. I also showed examples of good fathers in the Book of Mormon, showing how their knowledge of God helped define their character. It turned out really nice :)

Love you all!!!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 92 - Villa Muñecas

2011-06-13T15:03:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This was a rather rough week, but we made do with what we got. The hardest part has been finding new investigators to teach, as usual. We're still managing though because we have a rather large list of people to be visiting anyways, so we keep busy. The big highlight of the week was an area conference that we had on Sunday. President Packer, Elder Anderson, President Wixom, and Elder Zivic gave a broadcast conference from Salt Lake to every stake and district center in Argentina yesterday!!! It was so great! The talked about a good variety of topics, from family scripture study and prayer, to tithing, serving a mission, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Elder Zivic is from Buenos Aires and showed a little bit of worry in his talk because he says statistics are showing that a great majority of Argentina will go less-active in 20 years if we don't take care and spiritually mature. It was a funky conference too because Elder Zivic spoke Spanish, President Wixom didn't (live translation), Elder Anderson spoke sorta-badly-pronounced-Spanish, and Elder Packer took the English option as well. Watch out though, Elder Packer gave a subtle farewell during his testimony, saying that "perhaps" he might not return to Argentina...It was a nice conference though.

Elder Brown had his last day in the area and is now in Santiago del Estero. My new comp actually comes from his MTC group. His name is Elder Rasmussen, from Pocatello, Idaho. He a really nice, smiley guy, and excited to get going in his 2nd area of the mission. He'll probably be the elder that's going to kill me off, seeing as I only have 2 transfers left! We'll see......

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 91 - Villa Muñecas

2011-06-06T15:29:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This was a rather gloomy last week. The cold weather has been coming on now--practically every day was cloudy. Lots of plans failed this last week, with door knocking being at its worst!

I hit my 21-month mark this last week. Tomorrow, I hit 21 years old! That seems just a little weird :P I'll be celebrating tomorrow during lunch with a family that has 2 members of their family that have the same birthday!

Schools are ending all over in the States...the schools are still going in full force down here, setting sights on their 2-week winter vacation, and then ending in the beginning of December. We're going into week 6 of 6 in the transfer as well, so we could be seeing a change in companionship next week. The fun never ends!

I just got my travel plans home today! The secretary wrote me a note saying, "Just FYI......don't get too trunky!" I couldn't help but laugh :D I should be getting home late on September 7th, just so y'all know ;)

I love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 90 - Villa Muñecas

2011-05-30T15:16:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

My shoes hit their last straw and are just destroyed X) I took pictures, but due to the bad USB connections in the cyber that we're using here, I don't think I'll be able to upload photos any time soon. Just imagine really terrible shoes :P I made the official switch to my last pair this week. I think they'll last the 3 months that are left!

We had to switch last weeks baptism to this week. It should be a good one!

We also had divisions with our district leader today. It killed me that all 4 of our morning appointments failed us!!! We need to be narrowing down our investigator list though, it's still just a little too big for us to be working completely effective.

Cold weather is starting to kick in. We went out and bought a space heater, so we should be set for the winter coming up. Yesterday was just a little colder than usual, complete with a nightly sprinkling, so not too many made it to church.

Just the normal work though, not too crazy in comparison to other weeks.

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 89 - Villa Muñecas

2011-05-23T15:42:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

Well, we didn't quite have the other baptisms like we were planning. It was just due to a couple small complications, so we're still looking forward to their baptisms in the near future. We had a ton of investigators at church though, so that was nice at least.

This week was a little better than last week with respect to our teaching goals. We found a few more people to add to our already-large list of investigators and recent converts. A few of them are looking like good baptismal candidates for June as well!

We did have to experience the "opposition in everything" though, complete with family members of investigators dying, investigators going in for surgury, and a whole day of just walking all over the place, trying to find people that weren't home. I was wiped out that day! I hope this is paying off on my cardiovascular health!!!

But in all seriousness, things are going well here and I'm happy with the progress. I just got a letter from President Northcutt today responding to a weekly letter I sent to him a couple weeks ago, when we had 2 baptisms and 10 investigators at church. He congratulated me for the great work and the new attentance record! :P I don't think it's a mission record that he's referring to, but still, it feel pretty nice!

Keep working hard everyone!

Love,

-Elder Powell-

Semana 88 - Villa Muñecas

2011-05-16T15:16:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

We were blessed this week with 2 baptisms: Teresa Perea and her daughter, Clara Luna! They've progressed the fastest out of any of the investigators I've ever seen in my mission. We first spoke to them about a month ago, and through the help of a member that always gave them rides to our lessons and to church, they were baptized this last weekend. Teresa has gone through some crazy family situations, leaving her with her mom, 23-year-old son, and 12-year-old Clara, and really wants to get things set straight in her life. Clara also has noticed that if she hadn't decided to become a member of the church, she'd be going down a path that would lead her to be doing very bad things. It's been quite the experience seeing the change in their lives and the happiness that they're feeling that comes from living the gospel. Clara used to not get along very well with her mom, but now she's quite attached to her! It's going to be a pleasure continuing to teach them in the coming months.

The good news continues: there's a possibility of 2 more baptisms this week! Can't wait to see if it happens!

Of course, like it says in 2 Nephi 2:11, there's an opposition in everything. The challenge with these baptisms is finding new investigators to replace the ones that are getting baptized. We've had a pretty hard struggle finding people this week, with lots of rejection. The mission is just one big roller coaster!

We had our interviews with President Northcutt this week. It turns out this was the last that I'll have with him, because he's leaving for home July 1st, leaving just enough time to have one more zone conference with him! It was a quick interview--a good sign, because he didn't have any problems to discuss.

Hope things are going well at home!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 87 - Villa Muñecas

2011-05-09T14:50:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!
Happy Mother's Day to everyone! Calling home was a nice treat, as
always. Weird to think that this is the last one I'm getting!
This happened to be a rather tough week for finding new people to
teach. Not sure what happened, just no one filtered through the system
well. We still have lots of good progressing investigators though, and
hope to see a few more baptisms this upcoming month!
I started reading the Book of Mormon again! If anyone wants to race,
I'm already almost done with 1 Nephi, and I'm going to try and finish
the book before I go home in September ;)
Love,
Elder Powell

Semana 86 - Villa Muñecas

2011-05-02T15:10:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos!

We finished off the transfer pretty well. Lots of promising baptisms coming up in a couple weeks! Elder Brown and I will be staying together for another transfer, but a different elder will be district leader again.

I got some interesting paperwork this last week. I knew that they were coming because I've seen other elders get them. They're called Trunky Papers :P It's the paperwork that talks about preparations for my departure, including suitcase information, as well as a little piece asking for a couple quick pieces of information. I just completed 20 months in the mission today......It's going a little too fast. I'm celebrating though because I was walking around WalMart for the first time today, and on their "World Flavors" rack, I found Teriyaki sauce!!! Definitely taking advantage and testing out some teriyaki meatballs :P

I got to witness two baby blessings this last week. They were different blessings though. One was to a 2-week year old baby that was a little sick with pneumonia. I didn't get to participate in the blessing because of hospital regulations, but I was able to watch. The brother's reaction afterward was of gladness and surprise because he'd never given a blessing to a child that tiny before! The other blessing was the naming and blessing of the grandchild of a recent convert in sacrament meeting. I got to stand in on this one. The family is made up of a ton of converts and their testimonies are growing well in the gospel. It was a neat experience.

Last week I all-of-a-sudden realized that I'll be calling home in a week!!! I can't believe that snuck up on me so fast! We'll take full advantage of the opportunity!

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 85 - Villa Muñecas

2011-04-25T14:42:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This was a pretty crazy week for us. Easter celebrations are a lot bigger here than in other places, because the Catholics here dedicate the whole week as Holy Week "Semana Santa". It was a little crazy for us because they don't eat beef--just chicken and fish--and it just so happened that we had to cook ourselves lunch on Friday. We headed to the meat shop and were surprised that it was closed, and then it hit us that it was semana santa :P There were lots of large groups of people roaming around in the street participating in religious activities in remembrance of Christ and his death over the weekend.

We had a nice remembrance of Christ's resurrection in church yesterday. We were blessed with a whopping 10 investigators in church! Right in time because the talks and lessons were great, including humility, being a covenant people, faith in action, the resurrected Christ, and preparing to go to the temple.

Unfortunately, it was a little difficult to find a lot of our investigators and other new investigators to teach, but we're looking to recover this next week. Hopefully I won't be surprised with a transfer!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 84 - Villa Muñecas

2011-04-18T15:29:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This week went by fast, but was pretty difficult. Lots of people weren't home for some reason, and lots of members surprised us with hard schedules, so they couldn't accompany us as much. We're still working well though, so we're hopeful of another upswing. I got a random phone call this morning from the zone leaders. They said that a couple changes were happening in the district, the biggest being that I'm the new district leader for the rest of the transfer (2 weeks)!!!!!! I was stunned, because that never happens, especially mid-transfer, unless something super good or super bad happens. I called the current district leader to see if I could see what's up, and he said he knew why, but he couldn't really tell me. I'm a little worried about what's going on, but I won't have too much time to dwell on it, seeing as I have to catch hold of the district and have a good lesson with them in a few days! The mission never ceases to be exciting and crazy!

A special congrats to my brother, Drew, for his mission call to Manaus, Brazil!!!!!! Woot, woot! :)

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 83 - Villa Muñecas

2011-04-11T15:48:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, we were blessed this last week with another baptism!!! Nadia Diaz is the niece of a good member of the church and has been investigating the church for awhile now. She finally made her way to the font...8 months pregnant! :P Everything went well during the service. Pre-service arrangements were a little hectic though. We had to go around telling all the members it was going to happen because we didn't have the Sunday before to announce it in sacrament meeting. We had to figure out who was in charge of the baptismal clothing, and had to borrow some keys to get it identified and ready. We then realized that the draining system in the font was broken, so it still had the same water as the last baptism that they had, which was about a month ago! Unfortunately we couldn't wait until next week to fix the system because we had already had the interview and we just had to do it. So, a few of the members and us got together and we bucket-brigaded the water out into a nearby toilet! We cleaned it up a little bit (it all really wasn't that dirty), and then refilled it (luckily the warm water was working)! Nadia was content and happy, and we were too :)

The city has been a little crazy in the last week. A main water valve broke, leaving lots of homes without water. We walked by a street where water was just shooting out a river of water. The police also went on strike for a couple days because of salary issues! The situation was resolved though, so we're back to mild safety now :P We have a member that is a police officer, and he was completely worn out from almost no sleep and from his first protest ever! What an event, right? :P

We had a special training from President Northcutt this last week. He taught a lot of stuff that I've already heard from him, but it was a nice reminder for me and a good helper for my newer comp.

We're finding an ironic trial in the midst of a great blessing: we have too many people to visit! We made a list the other day, and found that we had about 30-40 individual homes that we need to be visiting, and it's getting pretty hard to get it all done! Hopefully things will lighten up a little so that we can focus a little more specifically on our good investigators and recent converts.

Love you guys!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 82 - Villa Muñecas

2011-04-04T15:16:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

We had a fairly successful week :) There wasn't anything too crazy that happened, we've just been trying to stay on top of the many visits that we have pending with investigators, recent converts, and less-active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (follow Elder Packer's orders, right? ;) ).

General Conference was basically THE big highlight of the week, as usual. We were provided an English room, like normal, so it was a pleasant experience for us. The recurring themes that I noticed in this conference were varied (my comments in parenthesis): marriage (all the missionaries were groaning at the multiple commands to get married; we agree that it's necessary, but we're grasping on to whatever protection time of badge-bearing that we can......I just have 5 months of it...), church welfare (appropriate, considering the recent need of the program and the 75th anniversary), the New Testament (it's interesting to note that the majority of the speakers mentioned or talked about a topic that comes from the New Testament (especially the Saturday morning session)), children (both taking care of them as well as their example for us), and receiving personal revelation and spiritual power (related because both come from the Holy Ghost). My personal favorite talks were Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk during priesthood session about using priesthood power, Kent F. Richards' talk on pain (creative and informative), Dallin H. Oaks talk on desires, and Lynn G. Robbin's talk on the similarities and differences between 'being' and 'doing'. Definitely take a look at the talks when they get published!

Today was a good p-day. We headed to one of the semi-professional soccer fields to have a double-zone soccer match! We played from 9:30 - 11:00 straight, and I loved it!!! The sun was beaming somewhat strong though, so I'll be sleeping well from tiredness tonight!

I love all of you!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 81 - Villa Muñecas

2011-03-28T15:51:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, my first week here has gone well. I'm actually extremely busy trying to organize a lot of people to visit. The last elder left a bunch of investigators and members to visit, and in the course of last week, I also discovered a bunch of recent converts, less-active members, and references that need to be visited as well! It's going to be an interesting next week!

Random thing that identifies me as Argentine--I'm using the bottom of our iron as a mirror so that I can shave :P

I've had a couple opportunties to improve my cooking skills this week, and the food is coming out good ;) I can't wait to host Argentine food week at home!

I'm having to get used to being around a lot of missionaries again, the Tucumán Oeste zone meets together often to have meetings and to see each other on p-days. It's a nice feeling though. It's kinda nice being in the big city again, but it also kills on the door knocking. Oh well, just gotta go get it done!

Sorry, I'm a little short on time today. I love you all though!

-Elder Powell-

P.S. Make sure you make it to GENERAL CONFERENCE this weekend!!!!!! It's going to be awesome!

Semana 80 - Villa Saavedra

2011-03-21T13:54:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This last week was pretty nice, especially because we never saw the sun last week (yay cooler temps!), and because we baptized a mom of 2 recent converts to the branch as well as another son of her's! She's been investigating the church for about a year now, but hasn't really been too involved in the process until recently. They're doing great now :)

The only bad news is that I'm now writing this email from a different city now: I've been transferred!!! President Northcutt actually sent both Elder Macias and I out of our area and is putting a former-zone leader in with a kid to white-wash the area! So I've been stressing out the last 2 days over making sure that all of our teaching records are up to date, and organizing all of the necessary information (map, schedule of week one, and other random stuff) so that he can work from square 1! I hope everything turns out alright for everyone there. Elder Macias got sent to Santiago del Estero (from Tartagal, about 12 hours in the bus!), and I'm in Tucumán again in an area called Villa Muñecas (Doll-Ville). My new comp is Elder Brown from Rockhill, South Carolina. He's a cool kid that just came to Argentina a transfer ago (so I'm his step-dad). He's actually looking to get into the animation program at BYU-Provo, so we're able to find stuff in common easily ;). We're looking forward to having a great time in the area, especially because everything is bigger and nicer in Tucumán, compared to the north! I'm also hoping to actually be able to stay here for a time, unlike my last spree in Tucumán, when I got yanked out of Villa Alem a month into the transfer......I still grumble a little about it because they've had an incredible amount of success in that ward--it's huge and functioning! No worries though, Villa Muñecas will get up there too ;)

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 79 - Villa Saavedra

2011-03-14T13:50:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This was a great week, as far as mission progress goes. We had our zone conference this last week. It's always a wonderful opportunity to see other missionary friends and learn a ton from the leaders of the mission. It was kinda sad though because I realized that the sister missionaries from my MTC district are going home next week--way too fast! Elder Anderson, who was in my MTC district, is another district leader in the zone, so both he and I said goodbye to Hermana Hanson, who was there as well and was in our district. Crazy to think we're on the home stretch now! But we'll keep focused for sure ;)

The district members were a little sick this last week, but we're managing alright. The weather isn't really cooperating: all last week, it was scorching hot, until Sunday morning when it just dumped and incredible load of water along with a cold wind blowing! It's still a little 'fresco' (chilly) outside, and I love it!

I too heard about the disaster in Japan. What a crazy thing! Everyone keeps asking us what we think about the events that have been going on there: everyone here is scared about the end of the world. Just like when "2012" came out and everyone checked with us to see if the world really would end that year, everyone's checking our opinion on Japan, Haiti, Chili, and every other major disaster that happens. Just listen to the latter-day prophets, they know exactly what you need to do to be ready physically and spiritually for the upcoming events.

I got a chance to weigh myself again......I'm still stuck at the same weight that I've been at for the past few years now...man, not even Argentine weight-gain diet does the trick!

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 78 - Villa Saavedra

2011-03-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

The big pension-move happened this last week! We got everything in one of these special moving-truck taxis and moved in in about 2 hours! Now it's just my comp and I in a little apartment. I like how peaceful it is though. I just so happened to move right on my year and a half mark......man I feel old!

We also carried out what we call a white storm in a little area nearby called Aguaray because the elders there are getting a little discouraged about the low success they're having. All 10 of us from the district got together there, and under the organization of the 2 elders there, we split up in 5 regions of the area and just worked craziness--looking for less-actives, asking for references, knocking on doors, and visiting investigators--and we worked for about 3 hours doing all of that. It worked out pretty well for them.

I got through the Pearl of Great Price this week for the first time in my life. Lots of cool little pieces of doctrine in there!

Not much else happened this week, just lots of attempts that didn't quite work like we had hoped......oh well, here another try!

We're getting excited because we have zone conference tomorrow! Can't wait to just get blown away again by President Northcutt!

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 77 - Villa Saavedra

2011-02-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, rumors are spreading around about the new mission president coming our way! President Northcutt is out of here the first week of July, and rumor has it that the new president is from Santa Fe, Argentina; in his 40s (young!!!); and 4 kids coming with him to live in the mission! Nothing guaranteed yet, but it's enough to get one extremely curious as to how things will turn out.

This last week was full of downers as well as a few pretty good things too. I usually like to start with the bad news so that I can end on a happy note. All of the recent converts here are going through various trials now--a never-ending battle! A couple are fighting off temptations to break the word of wisdom, a couple are hitting economic struggles, and one depends on her less-active mom to take her to church. We're doing what we can though and that's all that Heavenly Father asks for.

I did divisions with companionship that's pretty discouraged. I went over to their area for a day and was glad to be able to help with a few things in how the senior comp is working. I hope things turn out good for them in the end. They're just getting tired of knocking the same doors multiple times in the transfer (it's a small area).

Our week was chock-full of appointments this week, we were practically running a couple times! Unfortunately, the members were pretty busy all this week for various things, especially the fact that school starts tomorrow for them!

(Now the couple good things ;) )

Last week we did a zone fast to find those that are prepared to accept the gospel as well as to be able to help the investigators we already have to get baptized. I think that fast is starting to pay off. Saturday we were walking pretty quickly to our next appointment, when we here this guy yell out "Elders!" We looked over and saw this guy that we've never seen in our lives before. We started talking with him, and his dad who came up behind him, and found out he's a higher-up of the border patrol here and he just got to Tartagal about a month ago. He and his dad are members and wanted to know when church was so that they could come on Sunday. Yesterday he introduced us to his wife, who isn't a member ;) 2 random investigators that we had dropped found us this last week, and showed complete interest in continuing where we left off! To top it off, we were knocking doors yesterday late at night. We were going to go home in 15 minutes or after someone let us in, whichever came first. As we were walking around, I saw this front porch that had 3 chairs situated around a little table with the outside light turned on. I could practically imagine us just sitting in those chairs, and found the opportunity irresistable. Turns out the lady that let us in was great! She had lots of great questions and recognized that what we had to share was true. We're now waiting to get the baptism half of the fast to kick into gear ;)

We'll be moving into our new apartment this week! The guy's leaving two sofa chairs and a love seat in the apartment!!! Can't wait for study time ;)

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 76 - Villa Saavedra

2011-02-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

This was a fairly crazy week, but it turned out good for me in the end. I had divisions scheduled with the zone leaders starting on Tuesday night. My comp made the 3-hour trip down to the zl's area and one of the zone leaders came up here. We got lots done Tuesday afternoon, but when he woke up Wednesday morning, he started feeling headaches and a little bit of stomach-achyness. He felt pretty bad all day long too--good thing we didn't have an intense day planned. He had planned to stay until my district meeting on Thursday morning, and then return to his area, but all Wednesday night/Thursday morning, he had diarrhea and was vomitting! So I cancelled the 2 appointments I had in the morning to let him rest. He almost didn't make it to the meeting, but he was there and gave a quick little lesson with mine, followed by a rush to the bathroom again (just diarrhea at that point). After analyzing the situation, he knew he wouldn't be able to make it to his area without needing a bathroom again (he was given antibiotic that didn't allow him to take diarrhea meds), so we let him rest all day Thursday, meaning that we had to work crazy switch-offs with the other 4 Tartagal elders to get to all the appointments in our 3 areas! We got it to work though. He felt a little better Friday morning, so we gave the trip back a try, so I finally got my comp back Friday afternoon. He's feeling a whole lot better now, but man, that was a crazy midweek event!

I can't remember the last time that Sunday felt like a Day of Rest--this last Sunday was definitely not an exception. I worry too much about the investigators, but at the same time, the members here are sometimes pretty crazy in comparison to how things should be in the church! Unfortunately I can't really make comments, it's just up to the leaders to figure things out.

I had a cool inspirational moment the other day. I was thinking about the gospel of Jesus Christ with my comp and reading a little section in Preach my Gospel, when a cool way to explain the gospel popped into my head. It's kinda long, but I liked it a lot. The main points of the gospel are faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and persevering (I like the Spanish "persevering" better than the English "enduring") to the end (see Article of Faith #4). We normally picture the 5 points in a timeline, but in reality, it's also like a circle. We start out by showing faith in Jesus Christ and his teachings (faith is a trust in something isn't seen, but is true). Our faith makes us feel the need to change our lives so that we live in harmony with his teachings--that change is called repentance. When we repent, we make a covenant with Heavenly Father that we won't digress after repentance, rather progress afterward. Covenants are made through sacred acts called ordinances (a few examples are baptism, partaking of the sacrament, receiving the Priesthood, as well as the ordinances in the temple). After making a covenant with Heavenly Father, He always promises that the Holy Ghost will be with us to guide us. Well, the first time we enter the circle, the covenant we make is baptism. Once we're baptized, we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. If we follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost, we will realize that we need to prepare ourselves to renew that covenant by taking the sacrament every week, therefore entering into the circle again: exercise faith, repent, covenant (sacrament in this case), and we receive more guidance from the Spirit. We continue going around and around and around in this circle until one day, we're prepared to make other covenants, which gives us even more momentum in this gospel circle. As we hit more times going around the circle, we get closer and closer to Heavenly Father, kindof like a tornado going upward. You can try and disprove it, but it's so logical: you can't have the Holy Ghost unless you make covenants, you can't make covenants unless you repent first, you can't repent unless you believe and trust that it's possible (faith), and you can't have faith in something that the spirit doesn't testify of. So, in a sense, the gospel is eternal, because you can always make another turn around the track and come closer to Heavenly Father--that's how enduring to the end comes into play.

There might be flaws in how it's worded, but I think it's totally true. If it's confusing, I'm sorry. President Northcutt has us exposed to pretty deep stuff every once in awhile. Just study the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon--the principles are all over the place.

Well, I've gotta run.

Love you guys!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 75 - Villa Saavedra

2011-02-14T13:38:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

This week was a little crazy, but not too bad. I finished the Book of Mormon in Spanish--absolutely LOVED it! Everyone needs to read it for sure because there are plenty of life-lessons that are taught in there.

President Northcutt raised the mission's weekly goals a little bit, we're feeling the pressure! I dunno, personally, I was still working on getting better at meeting the old goals, now it's really starting to push...I know I can do it, just gotta figure out how to get it all done.

District meeting went well. There are 10 of us in the district here in Tartagal. It interesting to see the diverse situations that are in each area and each companionship. It'll be a fun little transfer, for sure.

Yeah...can't think of much else to write...I'm sure lots of crazy and funny things happened this last week, but I'm getting so used to the culture here, it all just seems kindof normal to me. You'll all just have to ask me about more specific things down here so that I can unfold the craziness that is northern Argentina!

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 74 - Villa Saavedra

2011-02-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

This week alright. I was really happy with the baptism that we had this weekend again! Roberto Cortez was a tricky one to find sometimes. He is the father of a member here in Tartagal, but before, he was living in a little nearby town called Mosconi. He had a big drinking problem there, but his family started bringing him here about 6 months ago to listen to the missionaries. I ran into him toward the beginning of my time here when he was leaving for Mosconi again. He came back and he all of a sudden set his own baptismal date for the 6th of January (a Thursday)! We gratefully helped him prepare for that day, but then he disappeared right before the New Year again to Mosconi. It turns out right on the 6th, because of his drinking done there, he had a case of headaches that led to what seemed to me to be a stroke! He couldn't use his left arm and leg for about a week. The doctor got on his case about drinking and it kindof scared him and made him realize the importance of making good decisions always, so he switched his address to his son's house and we baptized him two weeks later :) He's doing great now and loves reading the scriptures with the family and really helps out around the house! A great way to kick off 17 months in the mission!

We had interviews with President Northcutt this week. My interview was short and simple--a good sign usually. We didn't talk about too much really, just about these study guides that he's having us look at, how my area's going, and how my comp is, that's about it! He bumped me up to district leader again though, so we'll see if life will be as challenging as when I was district leader the last time!

We got a phone from the pension office elder: I'm going to have to move pensions AGAIN!.....We're splitting the 4 Tartagal elders away from us two in Villa Saavedra, so I have to go look for something smaller. I think it'll be easier than it was in Jujuy though, so that'll be nice.

We were blasted with a crazy rainstorm again on Sunday morning, so our two branches were forced to combine sacrament meetings again, due to low attendance. At least the 3 newly baptized members showed up for their confirmations, so that was a nice addition to fast and testimony meeting!

Everyone down here is hearing lots about crazy snowy weather all over the U.S. Hope everyone is surviving up there ;)

Well, I've gotta run, but I love you all!!!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 73 - Villa Saavedra

2011-01-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
This week was better than what I've had for the past little bit. We
got lots of work done, including getting the over-grown weeds and
grass cut in front of our pension :P
We were blessed this week with a great baptism! Osvaldo Naranjo is the
dad of a part-member family, so it's a big step for them. I didn't
realize how big of a baptism this would be for the people here, until
this week I started hearing things like "Osvaldo's getting baptized?!
No way! He's been investigating for about 4-5 years! He was my old
professor/my son's professor. He's my mechanic. I never would've
thought this day would come!", and a bunch of stuff like that! He's a
really great guy that has found a love of reading the scriptures. He
was especially surprised and excited when we presented to the family a
Bible and a Book of Mormon in an extra-large size because they have
trouble seeing things! He's been excited too to get right to work in
the church, so we're planning on using him well ;) The baptismal
service was actually one of the smoothest services I've ever had on
the mission--normally there's something crazy that happens! But no,
everything was just nice and pleasant :)
We were also blessed with various new investigators, so we have people
to teach and prepare in Osvaldo's place, as well as the other
investigator we're planning on baptizing this next weekend!
Can't wait for interviews tomorrow, and receiving transfer calls this
week (I'm always curious to see the changes in the mission)! Gollee
time is flying by!
Love you all!
-Elder Powell-

Semana 72 - Villa Saavedra

2011-01-24T14:34:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, this was a rather miraculous week! To start, we were protected during crazy weather conditions. On Tuesday, it was super-rainy in the morning, but as the afternoon hit, the sun came out and blasted the clouds out of the way, making it extremely humid. And then all that evaporated rain hit us again, but even harder this time, on Thursday morning, right at the point where we needed to get back to the pension. I didn't have any raingear on, so I just gave in and let myself get completely drenched in the middle of the street. I felt rather special as I just sang in the rain and as the rest of the Argentines just stared at us, probably thinking we were going crazy! I was just loving the fact that it wasn't hot! The next day, I kid you not, I saw in total about a few hundred thousand of butterflies heading in a southern direction! We're guessing that they were migrating, or something, but for a few hours, butterflies just kept appearing out of nowhere from the north! And then Sunday, all the rain hit hard again early in the morning. If there's anything that spooks Tartagal citizens, it's lots of rain and water. Last year, a huge landslide ('alud' in Spanish, I tell you because there are youtube videos of the news footage) came through and just destroyed Tartagal. The people almost never leave now if there are heavy rains. The rain alone killed assistance at church, bringing a total of 40 people between our two branches and the entire city of Tartagal! We just held a combined sacrament meeting and called it good because there really weren't enough people to hold the other classes! As we were waiting about an hour for the decision to be made to combine the two branches, I decided that the silence in the chapel was a little awkward, so I just decided to start playing prelude music until something happened. Well, it turns out I never left the bench for that hour, right up until we started the meeting. It was a little hard finding enough hymns to play for an hour, but I managed! The miracle came halfway through that meeting: 4 investigators showed up!!!!!!! 2 of which are getting baptized within the next 2 weeks--talk about faithful ;) 3 of them are actually the dad and nephews of a member-family and were brought by them, so I was glad they were able to get to church.

We're having some success with our investigators. We're hoping to have a baptism this week. It's this older guy that has been investigating the church for a really long time, but he was finally able to get over his chewing-coca-leaves addiction! We're hoping for the best.

We're looking forward to another good week. Good luck during your last week of January (time flies, doesn't it? :P )

-Elder Powell

Semana 71 - Villa Saavedra

2011-01-17T13:39:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

We had a fun little p-day last Monday. We went to the church and made Chilean hot dogs (regular hot dog with tomato, lettuce, lemon, mayonaise, ketchup) and sugar cookies (thanks Mom!), and we watched church movies for a couple hours! Super great on the projector screen!

We did our zone meeting in Orán on Thursday, where we make the 3-hour trip down to chat with other missionaries, listen to a quick lesson from the zone leaders (one of them is actually from my MTC group), wait a couple hours for our bus to get there, and make the 3-hour trip back home! It's nice seeing everyone, but the trip almost isn't worth the time it takes...

As for the missionary work, we're getting a lot of support from the members here, it really helps a lot. We're working on a new method of knocking on doors, basically leaving a pamphlet with the people that tell us to come back another time so that we have something to talk about the next time we come back. It's rather simple, but I think it's making a difference. We'll see!

It got hot again this week...Everyone should be grateful that they don't live--let alone work--in such hot conditons! I'm surviving though--enjoying my nice farmer's tan ;)

Have a good week everyone!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 70 - Villa Saavedra

2011-01-10T14:08:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

This has been a pretty nice week. We had lots of people to visit. Sorry if it seems a little boring, but you just have to have served a mission to know how a regular week feels.

Our whole district of 10 was invited by the district president on Thursday for a big lunch--way fun! I was surprised that he did it, but it turned out great!

We had a nice surprise training from President Northcutt and his wife on Saturday. He's trying to get us on the new teaching patterns that the church has come out with, so he came straight to Tartagal to work with our district! I'm working on making the changes that I need to, but it's a little tough being a good enough teacher to help these people change their way of life to something better! President Northcutt also made an appearance at church as well! It just so happened that our Gospel Principles teacher didn't come to church, so I had to improvise a lesson with President Northcutt sitting in on the lesson! I was a little nervous, but it turned out good. He also spoke in sacrament meeting and gave a powerful talk about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon often. He gave us a ride home afterward--I felt privileged ;) I also forgot to note that our pension got a bad cleanliness rating from our district leader, so President and Sister Northcutt came and checked out the pension after the training on Saturday. It's a good thing we had already suspected that they would do it, so we were able to get a deep-cleaning of the pension done before they came! It was really weird seeing President Northcutt walk into my bedroom--just seemed a little frightening! :P They were content though, so we're relieved!

That's about all I have though, hope this week goes well for everyone!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 69 - Villa Saavedra

2011-01-03T13:57:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

This week was super-funky. Every single day was cloudy and/or rainy!!! I didn't need to take my hat out at all!!! Too bad today heated up again, I would've loved a couple weeks of "fresco" as they say here, basically meaning just a little cool!

It was rough doing missionary work this week because everyone had plans for the New Year. We found lots of old investigators though that we could teach and help out, so that was good.

We celebrated the New Year at our pension again. It was almost a perfect repeat of Christmas, except that the zone leaders didn't come, and we made tacos at the church! It was nice though. Really weird thinking that I'm entering into the same year that I'll be going home in! It just makes me feel really old, especially because yesterday I hit my 16-month birthday, leaving only 8 to go!

Once again, we had low attendance in church. I don't know what the people are thinking, but I'd picture the first Sunday of the year to be a good opportunity to make good habits. Oh well, I enjoyed it at least.

My new comp is really nice. Elder Macias is from La Plata, Buenos Aires, and has a really quiet personality, which is completely opposite from your stereotypical "porteño" (resident of Buenos Aires). He just has three months in the mission, but I'm already his 3rd comp in the field!

Don't really have anything else for this week. Hope the New Year's celebration went well for everyone!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 68 - Villa Saavedra

2010-12-27T13:57:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, we had a pretty crazy week, but it was crazy-awesome! The first crazy thing was zone conference on Wednesday. We had to wake up at 5:00 to catch a 6:00 bus down to Orán, which is about 3 hours away! As we were travelling down there, we were bombarded by a huge rainstorm, making a bunch of streetside rivers! We got off the bus and had to walk about 3 blocks to get to the church and we were drenched. I even had to jump through a couple street-rivers to get there! We walked in about 3 minutes before the conference started too! It was a good conference though and really helped us get in the Christmas mood. President and Sister Northcutt have done this tradition every Christmas where a bunch of people dress up and act out the nativity scene and we sing pretty much all of the Christmas hymns (at least in the Spanish hymnal)--super spiritual! We had a nice lunch, and then another hour to kill waiting for our bus to come and take us back to Tartagal.

We had a small branch activity the next day that was nice to participate in (just some refreshments and a spiritual thought basically).

And then Christmas Eve: With the dangerous situation that we run into during Christmas, our normal schedule is changed. After 4:00, we can't knock on doors or do street contacting at all--we have to use all set appointments, especially with those that don't have family to celebrate Christmas with. We went around sharing a quick Christmas message with a ton of families and it was great! The weather took a crazy turn this weekend too. In the middle of Christmas Eve, it got extremely windy (which is perfect for all the sandy roads we have here!), and brought in lots of clouds for Christmas.

Christmas went really well. We had 12 elders sleeping in our pension the night before after watching all these huge fireworks go off at midnight, and hearing lots of drunk people outside, of course. We organized a huge steak and sausage lunch, played ping-pong in the church, and we carolled in this park downtown. And then we had our big phone call home! I'm definitely glad for the privilege to call home, I'm sure the majority of you reading this letter don't quite know what it's like talking to your family for the first time in 7 months! But yeah, that was a definite highlight for all the missionaries here.

We found out transfers on Thursday and my comp, Elder Speakman, is off to Salta capital. My new companion is Elder Macias from Buenos Aires. He's a fairly quiet and timid elder from what little I've seen so far of him here, but I have a feeling we'll do well this transfer.

It's been a great week overall! We're getting ready for another fun one with the New Year!

Love

-Elder Powell-

Semana 67 - Villa Saavedra

2010-12-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

Kind of a tougher week, especially because of more blazing heat, but we were blessed with another baptism this weekend! Carolina is in her mid-twenties and is married with 2 kids. Super-nice and really loves to learn in the church!

We decided to host a movie night at the church. We showed "The Testaments" (my favorite)--they were all in tears afterward!

We did lots of visiting this week......nothing too new. We've just been doing lots of planning for this upcoming week: zone conference, Christmas stuff (I have a whole luncheon planned for 16 missionaries!), last week of transfers: it's going to be a crazy week!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas week!!! Just like Helaman reminded his sons, Nephi and Lehi, to remember Christ in Helaman 5, so to we should always remember our Savior and Redeemer in this wonderful Christmas season!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 66 - Villa Saavedra

2010-12-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

Crazy awesome week this week! Everything kindof led up to our 2 baptisms that we had this weekend! One was a 9-year-old whose name is Abril Garatti, the other was Mario Chave. Mario is this huge guy that weighs about 250 pounds. We had to go out and buy some white clothing for him for the baptism and we actually found these cool white dentist's scrubs that totally worked! Mario has been through a lot of crazy stuff in his life, but he started to listen to the missionaries and realized that he needed to change up things in his life. It's crazy to see how much he actually trusts in us, but both he and we know that what we're sharing with him is true. If he keeps going to church, he'll definitely be an awesome help to everyone! Abril is this really nice girl that lives with her mom, who is also a member of the church. Her mom hasn't really been going to church too much, but when we had the confirmation, her mom actually showed up! So Abril will definitely be a good influence on the family.

Our district leader is serving in this area called Salvador Massa, which is inside the city of Pocitos. I had to go work there for a day so that he could come here and do the baptismal interviews. It just so happens that part of the limit of that area is the Bolivian border! So I got to go and get a picture on the bridge connecting the two!

The weather has been extremely hot, as usual. But just yesterday, the weather took a sudden turn and cooled way down! Like we're talking windy, cloudy, drizzly, cold! I was in heaven!!! The people say that this is the first time ever that the weather has been so crazy.

I got to see the rebroadcast of the First Presidency Christmas devotional. I have to admit, I really wanted to be there as I was watching it! When the congregation joined in the 3rd verse of Silent Night, the people in our chapel didn't sing because the music and words came on the screen in English, but the English missionaries and I just sang really quiet--it made me just tear up singing in English again!

Hope the Christmas spirit is thriving back at home!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 65 - Villa Saavedra

2010-12-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

We've officially dived into December! Man, time never does stop flying by! I hit my official 15-month mark in the mission--I'm feeling old down here!

We've been dealing with crazy weather down here. Just the other day, it was 133 degrees fahrenheit outside, and then in these last couple of days, it's been super-rainy, making it hard to walk in the sandy and muddy pathways! People keep thinking we're crazy, but we keep going! We got our AC unit working now, so that helps a little when we get back home on a hot day. The cool air doesn't quite push back to the bedrooms though, so we still have to sleep with fans on our faces all night.

We're totally kicking butt on the work down here, but the result is still falling short. Out of all the visits we made, and the success we had in those visits, general assistance in church was cut in half (from 60 last week to 38 this week), no investigators made it to church (we were expecting around 6), and the investigators close to baptism still haven't made it to the font yet...all because it was raining on Sunday...We'll get'em though!

Other than that I really don't have much else that happened in the week...It just went by super-fast and that's it! Hope all is well as you're all preparing for the Christmas season!

Love,

-Elder Powell-

P.S. *cough*Letters to missionaries make great Christmas gifts*cough* ;)

Semana 64 - Villa Saavedra

2010-11-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

Hola Todos,

Another solid week. We didn't have those baptisms like we were hoping, but we have lots that are still super-close to getting wet! The big highlight of the week was Thanksgiving. We initially planned on finding a turkey to kill, cook, and eat, but that didn't happen, so we tried to settle on a duck...cancelled on us at the last minute, so we just went with the oven-cooked chicken and ham, but it turned out delicious. We also bought stuff to make deviled eggs, corn on the cob, rolls, mashed potatoes, salad, jello, pudding, and cinnamon rolls! WAAAAY delicious, and all homemade ;) What really made the night though was that we invited and had in total 11 elders in the pension at night, and all slept over and left the following morning! So it turned out way great for us! With the passing of Thanksgiving, we've started listening to Christmas music officially. It really helps to block out all the heat we've been getting here. Just the other day, it was 125 degrees outside! But luckily, we finally got this air conditioning unit hooked up that we got as an extra from another area! It's raining today as well, so things are starting to cool down for a little bit. Too bad it'll get hot again really fast.

The only bad thing that really happened this last week was that a bee stung me right underneath my left eye! We were sitting outside and a member invited us to drink some Sprite with him. Sure enough, as he poured us glasses, a ton of bees showed up--we're talking like 30ish! Yeah, definitely was killer, but I'm doing fine.

Not too much more to write for this week though, low on time. I love you all though! Hope all goes well as we enter into December this week! (gollee, time is just flying by!)

-Elder Powell-

Semana 63 - Villa Saavedra

2010-11-22T14:15:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

This has been a whole lot better of a week. Even though the weather has been crazy-hot, we had success in the week. It was so hot though that I went out and bought a big hat just like the rest of the elders here. I'll have a picture up in the next couple weeks.

Villa Saavedra is full of sand: I feel like I'm walking on the beach, especially with the sun just beaming down on us! It kills me to here about the snowy weather some of you are having up there--super jealous!

There are 6 elders in our pension! It's pretty packed, but we make do. It's a party every day, that's for sure ;) Speaking of, we're really planning on partying it up Thursday night for Thanksgiving! One of the elders in the pension is from Ecuador and Peru, but he also studied at BYU-Provo for a little bit, so he knows English as well. It turns out though that he's never celebrated Thanksgiving, so we're planning on going as big as possible! We're talking chickens, potatoes, corn, bread with honey butter, salad, drinks, and desserts! I'm really wondering if I want to make cinnamon rolls, apple crisp, or banana bread!!! :P

We had a zone meeting in Orán this week. It was really lame because we had to leave on a bus at 6:00 AM and we travelled for about 3.5 hours to get there! We missed the bus coming back, so we didn't get back home until 8:00 PM!!! It was nice seeing other missionary friends, but it was a little bit of a waste of time. We made up for it in the bus ride though ;) Let's just say we had a little bit of fun!

There's actually an indian tribe that lives on the outer edge of Tartagal called the Wichi tribe. I really want to learn their language because there aren't too many that speak Spanish, but unfortunately it's out of my area :/ oh well.

We had a good day in church. Our branch hit 56 people in church. I was attacked with the assignment of a talk for my first Sunday! It was because the missionaries and the ward mission leader give talks every 3rd Sunday of the month...I made a good one though on how to be more useful to God and to Zion. I basically just took ideas from 3 of the talks I already wrote in Yuto ;)

All in all, this week was rather successful. We're looking to have a couple baptisms this weekend if all goes well. It's going to be a rocky ride all the way to Saturday, but we're really hoping for a good result!

I love you all!!! Have a good Thanksgiving holiday!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 62 - Mariano Moreno

2010-11-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, I've received a transfer and I'm writing this letter in a different area. I'm now in Villa Saavedra, which is nearby a slightly bigger area called Tartagal. I'm in the province of Salta again, but way way up north this time. We're talking very close to the Bolivian border! This part of the mission is known for it's hot weather and mosquitos, and I've just transferred into it right in the thick of summer! We'll see how I can handle 40-50 degree celsius weather (100-120 degree fahrenheit)!

My last week in Mariano Moreno went well. We had our interviews with President Northcutt on Thursday. He expressed his concern for my recent run of low numbers, but we talked it through and figured out a little plan to get things going again. We did hit a record attendance in church yesterday--60! We were super-excited for that. But other than that, it was a fairly normal week, except for right at the end when I had to say goodbye to the good families I got to know there. Check out the photos!

I'm now a step-dad as we call it here in the mission. In other words, I'm the second companion in the field of Elder Speakman, my comp, of course. He's from California and ready to rock and roll! I'm not district leader, so that'll be nice to be able to just focus on the work for a little bit. We're out in the middle of nowhere here in northern Salta, but I've already got experience in small pueblitos, so I think I'll be able to get into the groove of it again. I'll definitely have to enjoy it to the best because I'll be hitting Thanksgiving and Christmas in this transfer!

Don't really have too much else to mention for this week. Just that I love you all!!!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 61 - Mariano Moreno

2010-11-08T14:46:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
Well, this week was still a tough one, but we were blessed
nonetheless. We had a baptism this weekend!!!!!!! Susana Ochoa is
about 50-60 years old and has had quite the crazy life. She never knew
her real family while growing up: she lived alone. Her friends weren't
the best in school: she had a baby at 13. The doctors were about to
put the baby up for adoption because there weren't any parents to take
charge of raising the kid, until one night she escaped from the
hospital. She spent all her time raising the kid instead of going out
with friends. In her 20s, she took whatever little job she could take
to survive. She even picked up sewing and started making little bags
and other stuff to sell. Since then (I'm talking in the past few years
now) she sews for a living, her son now lives in Switzerland (no idea
what he's doing there), she's the Catholic godmother of this other
family that sortof took her in for awhile, and in the past year, she
got to know her birthmother and her whole family that lives in Salta,
all of which happen to be members of the Mormon church! She's been
talking to the missionaries for some time now; just didn't really
receive the push to get baptized. But, she's a very spiritually
intelligent woman and has a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book
of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the church itself. With the help of other
Relief Society sisters and Heavenly Father, we were able to help her
make the decision to have her baptism this past weekend. The service
was rather small, seeing as a member of the seventy decided to come
during the baptismal service to give a training to the ward and stake
leaders, but it was still very spiritual and very touching.
We were also blessed with a new pension! We were talking with one of
our richer less-active sisters that we have a good relationship with
about how we were without a place to live. She couldn't believe it and
was interested in helping us out, so she asked what kind of place we
were looking for. We described what we wanted, and then she showed us
in back of her house this separate apartment that she doesn't use
that's absolutely perfect for us! We moved in on Friday and we're
loving it so far!
Even with these blessings, Satan is still working on me, from big
things like discouragement to little things like a bird pooping on me
and a dog peeing on my leg during the week!!!! (I couldn't believe my
luck!!!!!!)
Nevertheless, the work moves on, especially in this last week of transfers!
Also, quick news: I received my Argentine 'National Identification
Document', so I'm official now ;)
Love you all!!!
-Elder Powell

Semana 60 - Mariano Moreno

2010-11-01T15:48:00.001-06:00

Hola todos,

The battle surges on: we still haven't found a new place to live, the success still is a little low (I'm driving the zone leaders crazy because the 3 of us can't figure out what's missing), seasonal allergies are coming on a little, and the heat bakes your head a little! We have this one lady though that's terribly close to her baptism though. She basically just has to make the decision that she wants to do it and she's already ready for this weekend! I'll give her full story once she hits the water!

We had a unique experience this week. The 10-year census rolled around! So we couldn't leave the pension until the census person came and interviewed us. We played Monopoly until she got there :P It was a rather odd interview for the lady because we're 8 20-year-olds that all come from places other than locally here in Jujuy. We did "work" last week, but we don't really receive an income :P We couldn't really tell her where we habitually live either because we randomly switch between all areas of Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, and Santiago! Our names were a little funky too. It came and went though, and luckily she came by at 12:00, so it wasn't too late. We were walking around that same day and actually spotted our bishop giving the census interviews as well!

This week was our stake conference. The talks were really nice. It was also nice to see the mission president and his wife there! We'll be seeing them again in a week and a half for our interviews.

As for Halloween weekend, it didn't affect too many people here. We actually spotted a few trick-or-treaters though, but just in the richer neighborhoods. If you want to say "trick-or-treat" in Spanish, it's "truco-o-dulce" (you can get away with combining the two 'o's together). Lot's of people kindof ignore the holiday though because they don't want North American comercialism to impact their northern Argentine traditionalism. It's slowly creeping in though, it can't really be helped seeing that more people are watching tv and watching all the US shows with Spanish translations. Oh well!

That's about all I've got though, love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 59 - Mariano Moreno

2010-10-25T15:47:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

For those that have been following along, this week has gone a little bit better than the weeks before, but we can still improve.

We were walking back to the pension one day for lunch and I was trying to decide what to make. I remembered I had some hot dogs that needed to be used soon, so I thought about ideas that I could use, when all of a sudden, I remembered about pigs-in-a-blanket! It was actually really easy to make and it turned out delicious! For those who don't know what it is, you cut a line in the hot dog, stuff it with cheese, you make a bread dough and wrap the hot dog in dough, and then oven-bake it! I also made a great salad with vinegar and oil: I was so full--it was great!

This week was the big moving week. Unfortunately, we still don't have a pension set in concrete yet, so we had to move all our stuff to the zone leader's pension, making that 8 missionaries in a single apartment! We're looking hard for somewhere to move out quick!

We also had divisions with the zone leaders this past week. We had so much success when they came over! I learned a few things from them, as well as my comp, so we were hoping to be able to put it all into practice the rest of the week. We tried and didn't really have too much success with it......not sure what they had that we are missing, but there's hope!

I've gotta run, but I love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 58 - Mariano Moreno

2010-10-18T14:54:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!
Well, this week turned out to be just as bad, if not worse, than the
first week: nothing is working for us as we desperately try to find
new investigators. We're in a huge drought it seems--which is an
ironic statement because we actually got rain in the past few days,
which, coupled with it being Mother's Day in Argentina yesterday,
really killed church attendance! We're now trying to focus our efforts
a little more on the active and less-active members to try and talk
with their friends, family, and coworkers that aren't members. We're
especially paying attention to this approach because we've also
checked and confirmed that every investigator that we have right now
already had a family member or friend that is a member before we
started teaching them. 'Preach my Gospel' also promises that if the
members do their job in finding new investigators, giving references,
and then help out with the conversion process, more baptisms happen
and post-baptism retention rate goes way up. In my opinion, it's the
second-best method to raise retention rate, just below doing
family-history and temple work. I've had lots of meditating time on
the topic of low-success and I know that my challenges are growing my
character and that I'm going through a very important self-conversion
process, but I'm done growing up for awhile--I wanna teach someone
that wants to learn!
As for other news, due to Mother's Day being yesterday here in
Argentina, my comp got to call his family yesterday! Sorry fam, but
you'll have to wait a few more months ;)
That's about all I've got for this past week though. Here's to hoping
for happier news next week!
-Elder Powell-

Semana 57 - Mariano Moreno

2010-10-11T15:58:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!
Wow, this has been one of the toughest weeks yet. We've had to resort to knocking a bunch of doors this week, but it gave us 0% success. All our numbers were low. There was a lesson we taught with an extremely hard-to-teach man that fulfilled what 2 Nephi 9:27-29 says. Lots of appointments cancelled or just weren't there, even though we had members walking around with us a ton to help us out. Not a lot of people in general went to church this weekend (38). We tried having a ward council, but the bishopric postponed it because the required leadership callings still don't exist in the ward, so we have to wait--which means we won't be able to get as many references from the members as we could......yeah, I felt rather beaten emotionally, mentally, and spiritually by the end. It doesn't help that the neighboring sister missionaries that I'm the leader over had numbers literally 4 times as big this last week......from doing the same things as I'm doing too: knocking a ton of doors whenever you can...still trying to discover where the difference is.
I'm not giving in, that's for sure. I know I need to keep doing the things I have to do if I'm ever to leave this rut in the progress of this area, but I've found myself doing a lot of praying for these people so that we can actually get in their homes to help them out in their hectic lives. A quick question to return-missionaries: what're some ideas for finding new investigators when doors don't work? Ideas involving the church building don't really work here either because it's out of the area, out of the way, and there aren't many people that normally pass by the church.
But yeah, that's about all I've got for this week...we're all hoping for a better week coming up.
With love,
-Elder Powell-

Semana 56 - Mariano Moreno

2010-10-04T14:52:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Today's the first day of a new transfer so I was at the bus terminal for a large portion of the day saying goodbye to a ton of missionaries and hello to a bunch of incoming missionaries! My district just had 2 leaving out of the 8 of us: 1 sister goes home tomorrow and one of the other elders is headed to Tucumán--Elder Grzelak and I are together for another transfer. The funniest part is that my old comp from Tucumán--Elder Bjorklund--is coming up to be the zone leader now! Go figure :P

Zone conference was nice this past week. Being Elder Grzelak's first, he loved it. There are lots of changes in the day-to-day things that we have to do now. I'm pretty sure these changes are worldwide: officially, we are in charge of teaching new converts the new-convert lessons that they must receive (because the members aren't really teaching them), we must invite the head-of-household before teaching a 2nd time or we don't teach, and we can only take an investigator to church one time during their progress. These are hard, but good changes in protocol and will help out in the long-run.

General Conference went well this weekend. For those that don't know, we watch conference live down here, but for the missionaries from the US, and any others that understand English, there was a tv set up in English for us. It was interesting to see lots of talks on prophets, family strength, raising youth, personal spiritual development, and lots of other wonderful topics. The biggest talk that stands out to me was President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk on bringing down your stress and busy-ness levels. There were plenty of other good ones though, so definitely check them out if you didn't see any of it.

On the flip-side, we're actually getting a little stressed out because the contract for our apartment is ending soon and we need to find another to rent! It's getting tough though because no one is renting anything in the two areas that we are in! Hopefully we'll find something soon!

Well, I love you all! Hope things are going well as you are passing your first month in school/another month more in work :P

-Elder Powell-

Semana 55 - Mariano Moreno

2010-09-27T13:57:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

The weeks never cease to be interesting! First off, I'd like to mention a few funny quotes of the week. First, from a less-active sister that is really fun to talk to: I was showing her the church's book of paintings and pictures, and as she hit the prophet's photos in the back, she said "Alright, where's that Thompson!" X) Sister Cruz, it's President Monson :P The other quote was from a random door contact: we asked him what place does God take in his life, his answer was "Monday to Friday--first place...Saturday and Sunday--second place, because there's soccer games!" He isn't the only one that thinks that way too around here!

We had a big combined-ward talent show on Friday that went really well. I made a singing group out of us 4 missionaries and 2 sisters from the other ward and we sang the EFY medley, but in Spanish of course! It turned out really great! And then I couldn't help but also perform my version of 'If you could hie to Kolob' ;)

We then had our ward conference on Sunday. We had 47 in church, which is the 2nd highest it's been since I've been here, and it can definitely be a lot higher. Everything went well though. Unfortunately the day ended terribly with every single one of our appointments failing us......the mission can't be all easy and fun I guess.

We're getting super excited for zone and general conference this upcoming week! Definitely look forward to me just geeking out in next week's letter :P

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 54 - Mariano Moreno

2010-09-20T15:35:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Wow, what a week! I spent about a total of 24 hours spread across 3 days in training meetings from our mission president this week! And now I've gotta teach what I learned in those meetings to those in my district for the next few weeks in our weekly meeting! It's kinda changing the way that we go about teaching the doctrine to our investigators because we're quickly losing the sense of when the investigators have no idea what we're talking about. So what we do now is we ask a TON of questions during the lesson in order to find their comprehension as well as their doubts. I spent a few days experimenting on the idea, as well as a ton of other things we learned in the training, and I've seen amazing results and success! So I've learned that if you want to be a good teacher, you at least have to follow these two rules: teach people, not lessons, and always be asking good questions.

I finally found a scale the other day: I've gained 10 pounds, yay! :D

We also had a beautiful trip today for p-day. We visited these places called Purmamarca, Tilcara, and Humahuaca (check out the photos!). It took about the whole day, but it was definitely fun!

Not too much else this week (basically because the training took up so much time), just general success throughout the week (and the normal not-so-much-success, but the successful parts definitely make up for it!)!

Love,

-Elder Powell-

Semana 53 - Mariano Moreno

2010-09-13T15:32:00.000-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

We had a big conference with Elder Bradley D. Foster this past week. He taught lots of great things, but having been called just a month ago, he and his wife really struggled to understand and speak Spanish! We had a little meeting with the mission leaders first to talk about a few things, and then we had the big meeting together. The biggest thing that they introduced was this new plan for the ward council meeting that came from the 1st presidency. It was rather helpful because we could see what was missing in our ward and how to use the various people and resources in the ward to help the ward grow. This is really going to change the church here in Argentina! Now if only we had ward council meeting in the first place......

I had my first, second, and third baptismal interviews this week! The sister missionaries in my district are on fire! It's a little embarrassing though, seeing that I'm not having quite as much success here in Mariano Moreno. But, the work goes on! This week will be a little tougher because I actually won't be working at all for a total of 27 hours this week due to a 3-day training for the mission leaders and trainers that our zone, the neighboring zone, and another zone is doing this week. It's gonna be fun though: there's only 13 of us that fall in the category of those that have to go, which makes me feel like President Northcutt is going to just drop cane and make us work harder......I can't wait!!! :P

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 52 - Mariano Moreno

2010-09-06T15:33:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, it's true: according to my counting method, there are 52 weeks in a year......because I just hit my one year mark this past week!!!!!! Unfortunately, we had a fun 2-zone activity that went a little overtime today, so I don't have much time to write more details about the week than what I have written below!

We recently received a new video series from the church called "The District 2", which basically follows this district of 8 missionaries around in their mission in California, showing us the various teaching situations that they're in. The cool part is that it's all real: there aren't any actors at all! I learned a ton from what was shown, and we still have to see a little bit more this Thursday! It killed me though because it seemed there were a lot of nice luxuries in the California missions compared to here!

We also received word that the newly called 2nd counselor in the South America South area, Elder Bradley D. Foster, is coming to the mission to give us a big conference!

We also had a baptism yesterday! His name is Zair Segovia(sounds like sah-eer) and is a 9-year-old son of a less-active family. The baptism actually turned out really great with lots of people there! We'll be confirming him next week! You'll have to ask me for the detailed story sometime later because I really don't have too much time.

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 51 - Mariano Moreno

2010-08-30T15:26:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, this week has been rather rough. About 95% of our appointments didn't happen, and about 90% of our backup plans didn't work either......but we're still going strong! My new companion is from Sárate, Buenos Aires, Argentina! He's doing great and I'm sure we'll have a good couple transfers together. We did have a crazy situation when he came in: I was walking around in a trio on Tuesday, waiting for the phone call to come in letting me know information about him and when he was coming in. Around 7:15, I got a call from my zone leader, asking me if I had picked up my kid yet...I was like "Uhhh...no....no one's called me yet...", to which he replied "uhh......I'll call you right back."!!!!!!! So we started walking right to the terminal anyways--really quick! Moments later, one of the office elders called, telling me that he actually left around 5:30 for Jujuy and should be at the terminal already!!! And then the zone leader called again, telling me that the assistants to the president actually failed in calling anyone from our particular zone about arrival times! So we rushed down to the terminal where we found Elder Grzelak (my companion, that's not a typo either), and another Elder that had to wait for his papi to make the 40-minute trip to Jujuy to pick him up! My area brushes up against the terminal, so we were elected to wait until the other missionaries got there before we could head out, so we had a good conversation! Things are going well though as far as the companionship is going. Being District Leader isn't so hard either, I just have to make a little hour lesson for Thursdays, and that's it basically ;)

I have to say, I'm super-super excited for the new Duty to God program for the young men that just got here this past week!!! I almost want to go back and do it again :P

Well, that's about all that happened this past week. Hope school is starting up well for everyone!

-Love

Elder Powell-

Semana 50 - Mariano Moreno

2010-08-23T13:49:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, lots of changes are happening to the mission program in general, as well as what's happening in my particular mission experience as well. We now have an interview with our president every 3 months, starting this past week. The interviews will be completely separate from the zone conferences that used to be every transfer but now occur every 3 months, a little offset of the interviews. After my interview (which always seems to be extremely short in comparison to the interviews of other missionaries), I went on divisions with the zone leaders, which was a little bit of a surprise. It turned out alright though, nothing too special. They also recently came out with a new training video series for the missionaries (for those that are familiar, it's The District 2). We've actually received word that the Area Presidency really wants us to focus our study for the next couple weeks on these video clips and to give feedback to the mission president, because the president will be meeting with the area presidency and one of the 12 Apostles to review the effectiveness of the videos!!! It's crazy the kind of contacts you have when you start to be a leader in the church.

Speaking of leadership, big news: I'm finally moving up to be senior comp starting today!!! But it's even crazier: President Northcutt is making me district leader and giving me a brand-new missionary as well to train here in Mariano Moreno!!!!!! Things never get terribly comfortable in the church, but it's a good uncomfortableness :P I'm not sure who my son is, they haven't told me anything yet. I'm thinking he'll be getting in around Tuesday or Wednesday though. So I'll have lots to share next week!

Other than that, things are pretty normal here. The Book of Mormon is still my favorite book ever!!! You have to read it if you never have before!

Love you all,

-Elder Powell-

P.S. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Semana 49 - Mariano Moreno

2010-08-16T12:27:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

This week has been fairly normal. The most interesting lessons that we taught this week were between the following:

-The less-active parts of the Segovia family. Bro. Segovia is a great-grandpa and had 15 kids between 3 wives!!! That's not the norm down here btw

-Leila. She's 9, incredibly smart, yet very innocent. Elder Contreras and I have decided that her ability to reason is at a gift-from-God status! It's pretty crazy the questions that she asks us sometimes. She has a baptismal goal for Sept. 4th. The only thing is that her dad is not in favor of the decision, saying that she's way too young to make that type of decision. In my personal opinion, she's almost more mature than her once-separated-recently-returned dad. Mom is completely in favor of us teaching her though, so we'll see what happens there.

-the gay man that fell for me fast!!! ¡¡¡¡¡Que asco!!!!! He tried taking a picture of me to put on Facebook......I didn't let him. We left fairly quick...

The only other things this week were a couple small guys: we found these amazing mugs that are black to start with, but as you pour in a hot drink, it magically transitions the outside to show the photo of your choice!!! I'm so so tempted to buy it: the only thing stopping me is that I still can't decide what photo I would put on there!!! It's also been quite some time since I've last used an elevator before! All you in the U.S., and other richer regions, be grateful for that amazing invention!

Other than that, not much else went on this week. Love you all!!! Read your scriptures and don't be ignorant of the teachings in there--follow them!!!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 48 - Mariano Moreno

2010-08-09T13:47:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

Well, right as I was getting settled in and just rocking the house in Villa Alem, I got an emergency transfer call which brought me all the way back up to the capital of Jujuy on Saturday!!! I was a little sad because I had to leave 9 really good investigators that seem like they'll be baptized at the start of September! It was also a big change from a fairly-functional ward with 90 in sacrament meeting to a fairly low 30 in church this last Sunday. What happened was that the 3 missionaries that were waiting for their visas in the U.S. finally got them and arrived in the mission Friday night. Elder Bjorklund was already going to be one of the trainers this transfer, so he gets to train his kid in Villa Alem, booting me up to Mariano Moreno. It was also perfectly fit because the missionary that I'm replacing went to the offices to be trained as the new materials office elder ('materialista' is sooo much easier to say :P ). Elder Contreras, different than the Elder Contreras that was with me in February, is my new comp. He's from Bogotá, Colombia, which is known for the dancing gene that runs through everyone from there. The people are a little more hard-hearted here towards us, but the work goes on anyways!

I got here right in time though: Sunday afternoon, we had a steak 20th-birthday lunch with one of our investigators, that is the daughter of a member-family, and then I had more 'asado' today in a zone activity that was held! So I guess I can't complain too much about the early transfer.

The only other thing I have to report on is how weird an airplane stream looks like in the sky when I haven't seen one for months! That's about it though for this week: Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 47 - Villa Alem

2010-08-02T10:45:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!
This week was one of the more memorable weeks of the mission up to this point. Out of the 50ish appointments we had set this week, even more doors being knocked on, and the 20ish houses we actually entered into, none of the people we invited to church actually came yesterday. I even had someone that tried to rob me (I'll let you know the details in a sec)! And even with all these things going on, we were still blessed with 8 investigators that we've never seen before in church: a boyfriend, a complete family of 3, a returning-inactive brother with his whole family, and another lady!!!
About the robbery attempt, it happened at around 6:15 while there was still sun out. We were approaching a corner when the robber passed in front of us walking and kindof looking at us funny. As we passed him, he turned and grabbed my scripture case that I was holding and started running towards his friend that was starting to run a moto in the other direction. I was able to catch up to him before he got to the moto, at which point he threw my scriptures back at me and hopped on the moto and they drove off. We headed straight to the pension and left everything there except for one Bible, 2 missionary copies of the Book of Mormon, and a small amount of pamphlets. We feel a little less like targets now because we really aren't carrying anything of personal value now, but man that was a little tense for a second! We even had the guts to go back the next day around the same time to drop off a thank-you note to the family that came out, gave us water, and talked with us a little until the coast was clear.

We also had to buy a bunk bed this week--what I least expected I would have to do while I sang "I Hope they call me on a Mission" :P President Northcutt has been planning to have 4 elders in this area, but with the shortage of elders (visa problems in the US), it's still just the two of us.

After district meeting this week, we decided to experiment the bus system here to get back to the pension. It's rather difficult to navigate on the busses here because there aren't any route maps. Well, we got on one that seemed to be heading close to where we wanted to go, but quickly realized that we were being taken to the clear other side of the city instead! I'm still a fan of taking the taxi instead!

The Gospel Principles teacher didn't show up on Sunday, so I had to teach a Word of Wisdom lesson on the spot. I was a little worried at first, but the manual is well-written and I was able to make it good and edifying for the new members of the church here. As we were walking around on Sunday, we found a brother that was constructing a little house of wood planks because his contract was ending in the other house that he was living in. Unfortunately, he doesn't have very much money so he just has a couple days to put something together for his family to sleep in from scratch. We jumped on the opportunity and started helping him put up the walls of the little house: he was pretty grateful for the help. He still insisted though that we eat the traditional 'merienda' meal of milk and cookies before we could keep on working on the house! He's a really great man for all the sacrifice he's having to put forth for the family.

That's about all I've got for you this week. Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 46 - Villa Alem

2010-07-26T13:15:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, base jumping went well this week, that is until I got my comp this week! His name is Elder Bjorklund from Holiday, Utah. He was the old financial office elder, but he was in a trio with the new financiero and his other comp in the offices waiting for his kid to come from the states (kid = new elder in the mission). Turns out President Northcutt decided to just send him down here with me so that we wouldn't have multiple trios in the mission. We're not sure if he'll be heading out of here as soon as the new missionaries come down here, or if we'll just stay as comps anyways, but either way, we got right to work in the area. From Wednesday afternoon to Sunday night, the main thing we did was just knock doors all day. We wanted to do it especially because all the kids gets off of their 2-week winter break today, so yeah. We were blessed with a little bit of success, which I'm grateful for because it's been awhile since I've had to do straight-up door knocking--definitely need to practice again. We also recently got to doing a hard-core cleaning of the pension-hace falta (it needs it).

I actually don't really have anything else to write--can't really remember anything special that happened this week. If someone starts showing big progress, I'll have to mention something about them.

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 45 - Villa Alem

2010-07-19T14:21:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Phew, it seems I've got a lot that happened this week that I need to inform you of! It turns out Elder Perkins has OCD, anxiety, occasional panic attacks, and a recent run of depression, making his mission a rather interesting and difficult one! I spent a few hours Tuesday morning studying the scriptures a bit extra because he couldn't get to sleep until 5:00 and stayed in bed until 9:00 (we're supposed to leave at 8:30 and do studies starting at 3:00). He then had to go to the cyber to write his psychiatrist, which took more than an hour too. Well, Tuesday midday, he got a call from President Northcutt, telling him that he was going home on medical release! I know he mentioned that he was taking the maximum amount of anti-depressants that you can on the mission and apparently it wasn't helping too much, but I'm not sure of the other factors that went into the decision. Either way, he then had to talk to his psychiatrist again, as well as phone his mom to inform her of the emergency transfer home, which ate up our day. He was carted off to the offices Wednesday afternoon, which put me in a trio with the district leader, Elder Mayhoffer, and his comp, Elder Smith. We thought I'd have a comp in a couple days, so we just worked in their area for the next couple of days. They work in an area called Diza, which is the ward that shares the church building with my ward. When we hit our weekly planning session, we figured it would actually be much more time before I got a new companion, so we've now planned to jump between the two areas every once in a while to spread out the work between the two areas. We're even utilizing our two apartments as little home bases for us--it's kinda fun actually! We'll see how everything goes this upcoming week.

It got WAY cold this past week--0 to 1 degrees celsius with 93% humidity and occasional rain!!!!!! I couldn't believe that I actually had to put on my underarmor, a long-sleeve button-up shirt, a vest, and my gigantic winter coat with gloves, and I was still cold! I'm used to the dry cold of Spokane, but that humidity is just penetrating!!! This week seems like it'll warm up a little because the sun finally came out, but man that was intense! It even snowed in lots of areas in the mission! My area just had a wet slushing going on, but still!

As far as the church building and the ward goes, it's all huge--at least from what I'm used too! My ward had about 70 in church, which was so great! It's nice seeing the organization of everything actually working as well. I went to ask a few things from the bishop (who was called 2 weeks ago!) and he basically directed all my questions and concerns to other people in the ward who could answer them for me! I also ended up playing piano for the Diza ward in their sacrament meeting. We spent Sunday afternoon starting up work in Villa Alem, basically getting to know the members a little better and trying to find the leftover investigators from the last companionship. Again, we'll see what progress we can make this upcoming week. I love my new area though!

That's about all for this past week--more details next week!

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 44 - Villa Alem

2010-07-12T18:31:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

That's right, I got transferred! I'm now in the capital city of the province Tucumán. My area of the city is called Villa Alem, and it's definitely colder here! I'll start with this past friday. We were getting a little antsy because we hadn't received the call yet which would tell me if I was leaving or not. We spent all friday preparing a big activity for the branch where we celebrated all the birthdays of the branch. We prepped a slideshow of a bunch of random photos that we took of the members, we had a ton of food, and a few games to play, but unfortunately we had about half the people we were expecting there...perhaps planning the activity on Argentine's independence might have been a bad idea. Oh well, it was a fun night anyways. We finally got the call on Saturday, telling me that I was going and Elder Sangroni was staying in Yuto, making his stay there 9 months--he ends his mission there as well! It was a wonderful and unforgettable experience in Yuto and I'm definitely glad that I was there--for now, my favorite area! It was a little rough trying to pack everything and make my final visits with all the members, but I managed to get it all done. All the families were extremely generous in their farewell gifts, letters, and wishes--I was almost overwhelmed by the love. I even finished off the night with a little surprise party--complete with lomito (a type of meat, like a thin steak) sandwich and a cake! and yes, they popped a balloon full of flour over my head too :P I was very happy with the farewell though.

Just so you guys know, I left my used pair of shoes, a suit coat, the matching pants, the old belt, and one of my 3 underarmor-type shirts there as a donation to the branch, especially Nahuel that is preparing for a mission in about a year. I won't need replacements either--I'm doing fine for now.

The trip down to Tucumán lasted about 9 hours in total. I did fine and landed safely and found the other missionaries, including my new companion, Elder Perkins, waiting. Elder Perkins is a big and tall lad, weighing in at 260 pounds (yes, he told me). He has OCD, so I'll be sure to be nice and cautious in the stressful moments. He's a big teddy bear though--big heart, lots of good desire, and he hugs a lot! We'll have to work together on loosening his Spanish tongue a little as well as finding our way around here because he only has 1 transfer in Villa Alem, but I'm getting excited. It was wonderful to land in the terminal and go to the equivalent of a good-sized grocery store instead of dealing with the smallness of Yuto! Supposedly, Tucumán capital is the largest city in the mission! So we'll see how everything goes.

I've gotta run, but I love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 43 - Yuto

2010-07-05T17:57:00.001-06:00

¡Hola Todos!

Well, a couple of relatively big things happened this week. I'll start with the little stuff though to give a good emphasis to the bigger things.

We found a dog randomly sleeping in our bathroom yesterday! We named him Amulek, taking the name from the Book of Mormon, for lack of a better name.

I hit my 10-month mark this past week...time still flies by fast--double-digits!!!

I had a quiet celebration yesterday, the 4th of July. I had a little flag drawn in my planner that I saw all day, and then I sang all the patriotic hymns in the English hymn book at night. Just getting warmed up for Argentina's independence day, the 9th of July. May 25th apparently was a different thing, sortof related to the independance of the country, but July 9th is their independance day.

We also had a less-active sister actually come to church towards the end of the meeting yesterday! We were talking with her a little bit and she actually offered us lunch yesterday--we happily took advantage of the offer and the opportunity to talk with her more! It seems that she's doing alright. I was particularly interested how she was applying gospel principles to her somewhat-political career! She just needs to come to church now and she'll be perfectly well off--the secret to just about any stress problems these people might have!

The first day of this transfer, May 31st, I made a somewhat accurate guess that I would be going to the mission offices next transfer to take the place of the secretary. There are lots of reasons and random coincidences that made me make the guess: it's time for a new secretary, my trainer was the secretary before, the two 1st counselors that came to Yuto before me are in the offices now, one of them went straight from Yuto over there, both of them were companions of my current companion, (quick definition: a group of missionaries is the group that all came to the mission at the same time) the 2 groups ahead of my group and the group behind my group each have an elder in the offices--mine doesn't--many of the missionaries from my group recently changed and became senior companions and a couple are district leaders--I'm still in Yuto and I could leave soon--and, to top it all off, I'm pretty well destined to an office-job in the future! Don't worry, it gets better :P Elder Sangroni called his buddy in the offices this week to see if they knew anything about the new secretary. This is the conversation that followed:

(office elder) "We were actually just discussing that. It turns out President Northcutt forgot that we needed to change the secretary. So he asked us to prepare a list of potentials."

(Elder Sangroni) "Wow, well, you should put my companion's name in that list" (I thought, "oh great...")

"Oh, don't worry, that name is already in the list."

"hehe, well, you should vote for his name then."

"Oh, don't worry, I think it's gonna be him."

The current secretary was saying it was definitely me, and then a couple days later, the same office elder dreamed that I was the new secretary!!! It was all driving me crazy to be honest! We found out in the end though that it's gonna be another elder from my group, whose name happens to be the name that comes right before mine alphabetically :P So now that that dust has settled, I'm now starting to get anxious to hear transfers this week, especially because we all believe that I'm leaving this transfer. I'll definitely let you all know!

Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 42 - Yuto

2010-06-28T16:33:00.001-06:00

¡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

Semana 41 - Yuto

2010-06-21T16:46:00.001-06:00

¡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

Semana 40 - Yuto

2010-06-14T18:14:00.001-06:00

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-

Semana 39 - Yuto

2010-06-07T16:43:00.001-06:00

¡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

Semana 38 - Yuto

2010-05-31T16:02:00.001-06:00

Hola todos!
The transfer has already ended--way way too fast! It didn't quite end as we'd like, but it still ended well. We had another person in the hospital, so we got to make a few more trips there. I already described the lack of security there, but it actually gets better: this time, there were a couple of stray dogs wandering the hallways as well as a guy smoking in the middle of the hospital as well! Be grateful if you're near a good hospital where all the doctors don't leave and come back every day as well ;)

We had the big May 25th celebration this past week--Argentine's 200th birthday. The celebration was nice, but absolutely killed the missionary work for the week--nobody was home!

As I said, we've switched to next transfer now--I'm still here in Yuto for at least another 6 weeks with Elder Sangroni, so we'll have a good 4.5 months together. We can already read each other's minds on occasion! I also heard of a lot of the other transfers in the mission: my dad and stepdad (1st and 2nd companions, respectively) died today (flying home because they completed the 2 years), so I'm a little sad about that, but I've got 2 brothers (missionaries trained by the same "dad") to have fun with!

I made a huge plate of french toast for the seminary kids this week to let them try out the maple syrup I made. I received good remarks for the french toast, and about half-good remarks for the syrup--they still prefer dulce de leche.

Sunday was the big day for this week. I had to improvise a full-length primary lesson, but it turned out to be a great lesson on how to have a happy family. I then headed to the chapel where Elder Sangroni informed me that I would be conducting the meeting...as the meeting was about to start! So I rushed to get everything organized and ready, but we had a good meeting as well. I'm sorry to surprise everyone again, but we then had 2 more baptisms after church!!! I'll describe the situation of both baptisms real quick:
About a year ago, the missionaries in Yuto found the Herrera family and started to teach them. They found that the daughter had a lot of interest in the church and just about baptized her, but the parents weren't super-supportive--they eventually stopped passing by the house. Fast-forward to my time in Yuto--we were teaching in another member's house, close-by, when this same daughter came to the house, unexpected and uninvited (but certainly welcome), to listen to the lesson we were going to share. We found her teaching record in our area book, found the house, and started up teaching the family again. The whole family is actually pretty great, but unlike what you're thinking, we actually baptized one of her younger brothers, Gabriel, who has been coming to church on his own for the past few weeks now, even though he's 9 years old! We're looking to baptize more members of the family this transfer. The other boy is Gabriel Vidal. The Vidal family was a reference from our new young woman's president. We started teaching the 3 kids and set their baptismal date for yesterday. Because of a few last-minute complications, we didn't baptize the 2 older daughters, but the son was ready! So yeah, we ended our Sunday nicely!

Hope all is ending well in school! I love you all!
Love,
Elder Powell

Semana 37 - Yuto

2010-05-24T15:39:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

Lots of stuff to mention in this week's letter! The circus came to town on Tuesday! Pictures of that and more at picasaweb.google.com/cpu3140

We had divisions on Wednesday to help us get some missionary work as well as branch presidency work done for this week. It was super helpful and we finished off the week with fantastic numbers! We hope to have a few baptisms this upcoming Sunday!

Tomorrow is a very important day for Argentina. May 25, 2010 marks 200 years since the first governor of Argentina--the whole town put on a big celebration on Friday because all the school kids had presentations, costumes, and such for the festival. It was really cool to see all the decorations and to share this special holiday with everyone here. I will admit, it was a little awkward when they sang the enormously-long Argentine national anthem...I just kinda stood there, lips shut, listening to their rather quiet voices singing the song--the people of northern Argentina don't really like to sing at any moment it seems. Lots of photos of everything at that website too.

We had district conference (equivalent to stake conference) on Sunday, which means we had to organize a whole 'nother 2-hour trip just like General Conference to head out there. The only difference was that we left at 8:00 am...super early for these late-risers! We brought 53 to the conference, which was still a good number, especially because 8 weren't members either! When we walked in, I caught President Northcutt and his wife on the stand, but Elder Diaz of the 70 definitely wasn't there. Turns out his daughter-in-law had an epileptic attack and passed away the day before, so he couldn't make it out here! The conference was still nice though and we heard some nice talks. Our choir was assigned the closing hymn slot. As we walked up there, I noticed that every single person in the choir got stage fright...quick! I didn't realize I had made a mistake in having them memorize the song so that they could follow the director (wasn't me, I was playing the piano). We sang 'Joseph Smith's First Prayer', but I wrote a quick arrangement where it sings normally the first two verses, but then I take a moment in the middle to transition to the music of 'Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing'. We then finish off the last 2 verses there. The switch was a little rough because I was switching from a 4/4 to a 3/4, from the key of A to the key of C--for musicians, that's a little rough because the switch sounds a little minorish--but I got it to work in the end. The singers all did well even with their stage fright, but as we picked up to sing the 3rd verse, they all skipped the 3rd verse on accident and sang the 4th verse! Luckily they all made the same mistake and just went with it, so I cued the director to just cut off the song there, and no one caught the mistake! We got lots of great comments from everyone, which was definitely relieving. Now I just hope I haven't scarred the choir members for life :P I think they'll be alright.

Things are starting to pick up for World Cup season--it starts in a few more weeks! Elder Sangroni has asked a few people this week if they watch World Cup. We were discussing the question though and we realized that the question here actually implies something totally different than expected: he's not asking whether or not they watch World Cup, his implied question is whether they watch every match possible, or just the ones where Argentina is playing! It's super interesting to see how these humble residents of Yuto still have this concept of World Cup embedded in their heads that is distinct from how we view sports in the US. It's kinda close to how lots go crazy about the NCAA tournament in the US, predicting the charts and everything. We've got the charts for World Cup all over down here too. Speaking of different concepts of soccer, another weird question is this one: just like 'What's your name?', 'How old are you?', and "Where are you from?' are basic get-to-know-you questions, another valid and normal question is "¿De qué equipo sos?" (more or less 'What team are you from')! It's as if you're born into a team because you can ask the kids too and they'll name off their team!!! Here in northern Argentina, you normally get one of 2 teams: Boca or River. It's a country-wide rivalry. It's hard to comprehend the rivalry if you're not here, but trust me, it's big.

Well that's about all I have to ramble about for now. Have a good week!

-Elder Powell-

Semana 36 - Yuto

2010-05-17T13:58:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

Sounds like you've all had a great week! Hope things turn out alright for the elder in Spokane...I guess I get to count my blessings for being in a super-laid-back pueblito! I have a few more English songs to add to my running list (I have to find something fun to do here ;) ) : "Wake me up when September ends" - Green Day; "Mambo #5"; and "Walkin' on Sunshine".

The big event of the week was zone conference--time is just flying!!! We got up early to catch the only bus that headed to our destination at 6:05......wanna guess when the bus finally got to Yuto? Try 8:50, almost 3 hours late!!! So we walked into conference late and had to miss about the first hour--we got there just in time for the first hourly break :P The day before conference, the zone leaders called one of my buddies in the district to organize a musical number for the conference--you really should avoid assigning a musical number the day before! Well, he called me right afterward and we decided to just sing a hymn a capella real quick. We were going to practice before conference to get it down, but...yeah I couldn't get there. So what we had to do was find another room during our 40ish-minute lunch break, practice the hymn and figure out what we were going to sing, and then we sang after one more talk! It turned out great though and we got plenty of thank-yous from President Northcutt. We then had our personal interviews with President Northcutt. He spoiled Elder Sangroni and I with tons of compliments about the work that's being done in Yuto. Apparently the progress we're seeing now in Yuto is the most that has ever been seen there! It turns out President was also considering something totally wild for my comp. He's headed to his house after 2 more transfers (in August), but he already has 4 transfers in Yuto (6 months). As branch president in a small-town place, that's plenty of time to wipe out a missionary. President Northcutt wants him to stay a little bit more, but he considers it suicide to transfer a missionary for his last transfer (it's true). He's been praying a lot to know what should be done, but nothing has come. So instead, he gave the choice to my comp--to go now, or stay till the end!!! For those that are unfamiliar, that just doesn't happen--you don't really ever get the chance to choose where you go. My comp decided to stay in Yuto--he loves it here and was already talking about how great things would be if he could stay. So it's been decided--he'll be here for 3 more months. That means a lot of things for me: I could leave now to open up time for another counselor to be trained by my comp, I could stay longer than my comp still and inevitably become the branch president, or a couple other combination of things! It's pretty crazy! We left zone conference super-excited about things. We took a bus to the exit to Yuto and had to wait an hour until someone drove us in. I finished off the night making maple syrup--thanks fam!!! :D

Caimancito is still seeing a lot of progress. We have had 100% entrance in every door we've approached so far! Granted they're all friends of a member that has been coming with us there, but still, they're all curious and want to hear more! We have a few showing genuine interest in coming to church too, but it still hasn't happened yet. We've seen super-interest from this 20-year-old girl, Daiana, and her 19-year-old sister, Graciela. It's a little rough for them because they're living alone essentially and they each have a kid--one of them was born 3 months early, but seems to be doing alright right now at 2 years old. They keep telling us they'll for sure be coming to church, but they still haven't made it yet. We'll keep working with them for sure.

I had a rather interesting discovery the other day: 3 Nephi 17:11-12 (Book of Mormon), the people are situated in a circle around their children, with Christ in the middle of them all. It's a symbol: As we find ourselves situated in the outer circle, we need to focus our attention on our children and how they act (I think of Mosiah 3:19 (again, Book of Mormon)), but also on the ultimate and perfect example--Jesus Christ himself.

I had a talk in church yesterday on sacrifice and it turned out super-great :) I'm starting to gather a good collection of research for various topics--I'm loving it!

Well, that's all I have for this week. Hope everyone is finishing up school well!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 35 - Yuto

2010-05-10T13:23:00.001-06:00

Hola Todos,

We discovered a possible reasoning why 'sister-in-law' (all of this also works for brother-in-law too) means 'cuñada' in Spanish: the word 'cuña' means 'wedge' in English, so 'cuñada' is saying that the sister-in-law is trying to wedge her way into the family! I thought it was pretty funny.

Just like I had San Lorenzo as a little extra part of my area in La Loma, there's also a place called Caimancito that is also a part of my area, even though it's a 30-minute bus ride in between. We headed to Caimancito this past week with a member who used to live there and we actually had a ton of success. We had 6 new investigators turn up there! So it seems like we'll be received well there, the trick is finding those prepared to travel to Yuto every Sunday to go to church...there's usually always something tricky about the situation. We also found a less-active family there too, so it seems we'll be working through them as well.

Speaking of traveling far, our investigator, Alicia, who needed to get married or separate has already made the decision to separate...and she's already left to a city called Palpalá! We were surprised by her quick departure, but it will be good for the kids to experience the city.

This weeks service project was digging a 2-meter deep and 2-yard wide hole for a bathroom! I'm telling you, there's no place like Yuto!!! I'll be getting a photo of it this week. In the meantime, I have plenty of other photos at picasaweb.google.com/cpu3140.

We recently received our church's computer back from Buenos Aires from a month of repair time. We found out even more recently that the modem is now disfunctional so we can't send or receive anything to Buenos Aires now! We're supposed to buy a new modem using our branch's budget, but the credit card has been blocked because we didn't send any financial info to the church during the month that we didn't have our computer--talk about complicated!!! We've sent a backup of our financial info to Buenos Aires and we should be getting the problem fixed somewhat soon, but holy cow this is frustrating a lot of work that we need to do!

We had an awesome mutual activity this past weekend. For the past week and a half, Elder Sangroni and I have been planning and taking pictures of Yuto for a photo scavenger hunt. We had 7 locations picked out, all close by a member's house because the two teams had to find where the photo was taken first, and then they'd go to the member's house, tell them where it was, (in one of the houses, they had to share a scripture too), and then they would receive their next photo clue. We were pretty brutal though--they were walking in circles all around Yuto instead of in a nice straight line! They took about 2 hours to find them all, so while they were out searching, Elder Sangroni and I actually left the church as well and did some teaching to pass the time--talk about working both our callings at the same time!!! The kids cheated a little, and a few got lazy and left in the middle of everything, but I'd still say the activity turned out to be a success!

Well, that's about all for this past week. Hope things are going well in everyone's lives! I'll have zone conference (and a new cellphone!) for this next week!

Love,

Elder Powell

Semana 34 - Yuto

2010-05-03T14:43:00.000-06:00

Hola Todos,

Well, yesterday was my 8th birthmonth in the mission, which means I'm a third of the way through...wow, that was fast! We celebrated Elder Sangroni's birthday last week: we ate way too much cake. There's been a ton of English songs this past week: "I'm Yours" - Jason Mraz, "Bailamos" - Enrique Iglesias, the theme song from "Mama Mia", "Real Lady Marmalade" (spell?), "I'm just dying in your arms tonight", and tons of other 70's rock songs.

We had a fantastic lesson the other day with a couple of less-active sisters. The secret really wasn't anything we did, I just asked an interesting question and then the others struck up a good gospel discussion, coupled with good scriptures every once in awhile. So if you're looking to have a spiritual lesson, I'd suggest finding out a way to do less talking yourself and getting the rest of the group talking and teaching themselves the lesson through your guided questions (bonus points if they start asking each other good questions during the discussion). It's been awhile since I've had a good discussion like that. I'd say the last was in the MTC, with studying at BYU coming in 2nd place!

I got to call home yesterday as well, since Mom won't be home for Mother's Day! It was nice to hear everyone's voices--I didn't notice any changes in voices though. Now I get to work another 8 months to earn my next phone call!

I had our branch choir sing yesterday during church as well. We sang "Divina Luz" (Lead Kindly Light) and it turned out alright, even with their very-untrained voices. We're working on "La oración del profeta" (Joseph Smith's First Prayer), but with the music changed to "Come thou Fount of Every Blessing", for a performance during district conference on May 23rd. I found out the other day that Elder Diaz of the Seventy will be presiding...and I'll be the pianist! Oh the fun things I get to do down here!

We held a special fireside for the young men of the branch last night where we set apart their president and 2 of the quorum presidents, I taught the history of the Aaronic Priesthood, we listened to David Beck's talk in General Conference, and then we talked about their responsibilities in the church, including initiating the first ever home teaching program in Yuto! I hope that things work out well with them because they are vital to the survival of the church here.

Hope all is going well in everyone's busy lives! Drop me a note if you ever get bored ;) (jeffrey.powell@myldsmail.net)

Love

Elder Powell

Semana 33 - Yuto

2010-04-26T15:00:00.001-06:00

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-

Semana 32 - Yuto

2010-04-19T13:50:00.001-06:00

¡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-

Semana 31 - Yuto

2010-04-12T13:29:00.001-06:00

¡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

Semana 30 - Yuto

2010-04-05T13:42:00.001-06:00

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

Semana 29 - Yuto

2010-03-29T15:38:00.001-06:00

¡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-

Semana 28 - Yuto

2010-03-22T15:04:00.001-06:00

¡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

Semana 27 - Yuto

2010-03-15T15:53:00.001-06:00

¡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!!!!!! ;)

semana 26-Yuto

2010-03-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

¡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

2010-03-01T15:40:00.002-07:00

¡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-

semana 24- Salta

2010-02-22T21:38:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
Quick questions: any advice for helping out a 1year-2month old child that just scoots around on her butt and doesn’t have the knowledge of how to crawl or stand up (she walks with the help of mom just fine)? And I have an hermana requesting a good waffle recipe (it took me about 10-seconds to remember what that word was in English!), of course making it from scratch.
It sounds like the family has had a fun week! I loved the pictures, especially the torch on top of mom’s cake—HILARIOUS! I’m glad you enjoyed the arroz con leche recipe! I’ll be looking for more recipes here pretty soon ;) Yeah, the winter olympics really don’t get covered down here; I’ve heard nothing from the people. Hope it’s fun though!
I got another baptism this past Saturday!!! Rosa Quiroga is the sister of the Relief Society President in another ward and has put off listening to the missionaries for 20 years and finally decided it was time with us! We’re currently working on teaching her 19, 15, and 14 year old kids too—perhaps baptizing the 14-year-old by the end of this transfer! Speaking of, that’s coming up really quick! I could very well be headed out of La Loma for good! We’ll see...
I started reading the Book of Mormon in the MTC and I just finished it again this past week. Everyone really should read the book: it will change your life for the better! I have read through it 3 times now and I’m still finding amazing things in there!
One of the hermanas in San Lorenzo fed us pomegranites!!! That’s just the 2nd one I’ve eaten in my entire life and I love them!
As for the weather, it’s very humid now, thanks to the fact that it rained just about every day this past week! It made carrying 10-kilo bags of flour 17 blocks to another member’s home difficult! I dare you guys to try it out ;)
That’s about it for my week. I’m also in a hurry so I don’t really have too much time to double-check...
I love you all!
-Elder Powell-

semana 23- Salta

2010-02-17T21:02:00.001-07:00

WOOHOO, MY FIRST BAPTISM!!! :) I’ll get to the details in a sec.
First off, since it’ll be in 2 days, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! I hope you have a wonderful week! I hear everywhere is getting piled with snow this year...except for the places that usually get snow! How’s the weather for you this year?
We decided to help out this member pour some concrete in his house to level out (and raise the level of) the floor of one of the rooms. A big thank you goes to Tyler Forbush for giving me the basic knowledge of concrete pouring! My comp is studying civil engineering in Chile so he actually knew more than me, but we’re pretty sure it’s the nicest floor in his entire home!
The baptism was great! Unfortunately the computers are hit-and-miss on recognizing my camera, so I’ll have to try next week to send you the pictures. Her name is Mirta Arce, a single-mother of 2. We actually had 2 baptisms on Saturday: the other was the granddaughter of the member we poured concrete for. Of course, being my first baptism, the horror stories happened: we entered the baptismal font and the water was WAY cold! And then I had to do it twice because air got into her sleeve. That’s not the end of it though: I get back to the bathroom and I realize that I forgot to pack my towel, so I had to do what I could to dry off the best I could! But with all of this going on, the baptism was still really nice and we’re hoping to have another baptism this next Saturday!
Well, that’s about it for this week. Hope all goes well for everyone!
I love you all!
-Elder Powell-

P.S. New email address: jeffrey.powell@myldsmail.net
The myldsmail system went through a major update and is now powered by Gmail (super nice :D ) I had to go through a whole transfer-over process, and in the process, they generated this email address for me. I think I'll be getting instructions from my mission president this week about the system. I wouldn't be surprised if the address changes again, but we'll see.

Semana 22-Salta

2010-02-02T18:47:00.001-07:00

Hola Todos,
I’ve known for the longest time that Spencer Finn (and Jeff Winkfield from one of the north wards) was heading home at the end of January. I really, really can’t believe the time has already come! Devon Wood goes next transfer, followed by Witter Case, and then right as I hit my 1-year mark in September, Matt Birch heads out as well!!! For now, I’m sitting at my 5-month mark tomorrow, but hey, I only have 19 months left!
I was looking at what Matt Rawlins was saying about Haitians being exquisitely clean and there’s kindof a connection to Argentines as well. They themselves aren’t very clean, often VERY much in need of a dentist and someone to fix their black and green toenails, and they throw trash around in the streets as well, but often I find that they have a fettish with washing the floor inside their house, and then finishing off with washing the sidewalk in front of their houses. Of course, it’s only clean for about 2 seconds, but that’s what I find them cleaning the most.

As for dad’s question about Argentine government and police: I don’t see very much government around here. I do see the police just standing around doing nothing about 90% of the time though. We always get a good hello from them though! I’m not sure if there are closed areas due to danger in the mission, but I do know Tucuman is known to be a little more dangerous.
Elder Contreras speaks no English at all. He speaks a little quicker thanks to his Chilean roots so it’s a little difficult to talk with him, but we’re doing fine. He has the ganas (just a little bit stronger than “he wants to”; ask one of the Spanish-speakers) to work in the richer parts of our area that Elder Young and I didn’t really touch at all. We’re especially looking forward to working hard in this area called San Lorenzo. We have to take a 15-minute bus ride to get out there (don’t ask me why it’s in my area, it just is for now), but the houses there range from the Hainsworth’s house to the Hawkins’ home! We dug out the address of a less-active family there and visited them yesterday and they are still a great family, reading scriptures, praying, etc., just not going to church because of the distance. We’re starting up a project to start up a branch out there! I’ll definitely let you know how it goes! It was a little tough leaving Elder Young, but he’s in 100-120 degree weather!!! I’m just fine here in Salta where we get a nice drizzle and rain every once in awhile!Baptisms haven’t happened yet, but we’re super-close with a couple people...
Thank you family for your Christmas love notes: they finally arrived on the 27th!

I tried out Argentine McDonalds for the first time today. The triple mac meal (not sure if you have triple macs in the US now, just add one extra patty to the big mac, that’s it) costed me 22.50 pesos, which is about 5.92 dollars. I still thought it was expensive though; I’m used to cheaper food here! Regular box of Frosted Flakes (Zucaritas in Spanish) costs about 9-10 pesos = 2.50 dollars! I enjoyed the taste of Americanized food for a little bit though.Well, hope all goes well for everyone this week!
With Love,
Elder Powell

P.S. I’m also making my ‘mission pics’ picasa album public so that people can check it out. http://picasaweb.google.com/cpu3140(/MissionPics)Thanks for letting people know!

Semana 21-Salta

2010-01-25T19:46:00.001-07:00

¡Hola todos!
Well, I’ve got a few responses to dad’s letter first. First off, if anything big happens in the world, you have to tell me because there’s only a 10% chance that me or another missionary will hear it from another person or see it on a tv somewhere. I just learned yesterday that something bad happened in Haiti and I just learned from the missionary next to me right now that there was an earthquake there. I loved Matt’s emails though—I’d like to keep reading them if you’re willing to keep sending them. It sounds like he’s finding and doing similar things I’m finding and doing here: kindof going around randomly, finding random people and their strange situations, lots of lines everywhere, dog issues all over, lessened sense of hygiene, drug problems every couple blocks, random service every once in awhile (although I guess there’s a difference between carrying a lady’s grocery bags and jumping out of the car to stitch up a forehead and reduce a dislocated shoulder!), and above all, spiritually-guided improvisation! Hope all turns out ok over there. Speaking of seeing things on the tv though, I did see a quick news flash that Osama bin Laden is still making threats towards the US. Is that becoming news up there?Good luck to Drew with all his auditions—crunch time baby! For the record, he hasn’t been emailing me ;) No se preocupen.Not sure why p-day changed, but it was by suggestion of the missionary department of the church, so…yeah. He actually had a lot of suggestions from them recently relating to the organization of the mission too. As for doing the Book of Mormon project in our native language, it’s so that we can easily discern the references to Christ and the doctrine as well. I’m totally fine with doing it in English if you ask me!Y el discurso que di durante la reunión sacramental : yo puedo dar discursos en castellano sin mucho problema. No es una sorpresa que tuve que dar un discurso. Tengo la habilidad para explicar basicamente mis sentimientos y pensamientos. Solo es que no puedo hablar con frases muy complicadas. Pero, bueno, un testimonio no necesita ser muy complicado para ser fuerte, ¿verdad?To answer Nick’s question: yes, I can speak Spanish fast now…as long as I know what I want to say ;) We made Mexican tacos using soft shells at this one lady’s house. Elder Young absolutely loves Mexican food and the spiciness that comes with it. However we discovered the reason why I was called to this part of Argentina: most of the people here really find it difficult to eat spicy food! It was good though. One of the 8-year-old members was baptized on Saturday. The service was really nice. I was asked about 15 minutes before it started to give a quick talk on the Holy Ghost though! I got my thoughts prepared and everything, and then the bishop got up to announce the program and said I was speaking on baptism! Talk about on-the-spot!!! It turned out fine though. The dad of the kid organized the speakers, but as he told the bishop, there was a miscommunication and the two speakers got switched. Both turned out fine though. Today is the first day of my 3rd transfer. Elder Young has left to tackle Santiago del Estero. My new companion will come in later today. His name is Elder Contreras and he’s from Chile. I’ll have more details on him next week. I’m still here in La Loma though. Looking forward to 2 baptisms here pretty quick though. I’ll let you know as soon as more details come in.
I love you all!
-Elder Powell

Semana 20-Salta

2010-01-25T19:43:00.001-07:00

Hola Todos,
Congrats to Parker Geren heading to Phoenix, AZ!!! He definitely needs to write Elder Case so he can get a headstart on the people and the places there! And Matt Rawlins got sent to Haiti as the…mission president…? What a fantastic surprise for everyone! I have lunch from 1:00 – 3:00 everyday so I chunk out a lot of the siesta time, but there’s no way I could give up that time!
Well as for me, I’ve got a few things for this week. One of the members gave me the name ‘Powell Ranger’ because the way that these people struggle to say my last name, it comes out sorta like ‘Power’, so yeah, I’m Powell Ranger now! Thanks for the x-mas cards everyone—they finally got in this week :P Most of the people here have never seen a camelback either. I walked into a door this week and they lady asked (pointing to the tube) ‘what do you have, oxygen?’ X) Ran into my first Buddhist the other day! He didn’t give me a chance to talk. As we were walking by the church the same day, we started talking with the guy hired to cut the grass. Turns out he’s from the Orthodox church in Ukraine! I guess the government is just messed up over there so he headed out here…kinda random though!
We had zone conference on Thursday and I loved it. I’m surprised that it’s already come and gone though! We started a new project as a mission: every missionary was given a Book of Mormon in their own language and we’re going through it marking all the names/references to Jesus Christ in red and marking all the doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in blue. We plan to have the project done by 4 transfers (24ish weeks). I’m already in 2 Nephi 2 and I’m just loving it! I’ll letcha know how it goes!I gave a talk in church on Sunday. It was pretty good, but I definitely hit language barrier issues as I was trying to talk. Good thing Elder Young was there to clean up my mess ;)We cut this lady’s grass yesterday…it was incredibly tall…and we were cutting with a weed whacker and macheties! Appreciate your lawn mowers in the U.S.!A couple other things happened this past week, but I’ve gotta run!
Love you all!
-Elder Powell
-P.S. Just found out P-Day is changing to Monday!!!!!! Make notice of it.

Semana 19- Salta

2010-01-12T22:57:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
The clothes are holding up pretty well. One of my shoes is already showing signs of wear, but not really that bad though. I’ve pretty much just resorted to wearing my washable pants all the time because of all the rain that comes down. I’m only bringing out the suit for zone conference so far. Yes, other’s are writing me...occasionally, but it’s ok. The letter from the family suffices. No, I haven’t been sick yet—even though I’ve been completely drenched a few times now. If anything, I’m just U.S. sick because the siesta here is ridiculously annoying. For example, today we did so much running around to do shopping and such—followed by a big CTF/water balloon fight—that we just wanted to order some food for lunch and call it good. We tried everywhere and their wasn’t a single place open to get food......if I haven’t explained this before, the siesta in this area starts around 1:00 and ends about 5:30. During this time, all shops close down, even in el centro (downtown essentially), everyone goes home and sleeps all afternoon. Everyone we talk to always complains about how they are working all the time...if only the siesta didn’t exist they wouldn’t have so much of a problem...especially with a bunch of American missionaries wanting to buy things from them!
About the Gospel Principles manual, you asked if I used it in priesthood—are you talking about using it before I left or right now down here? We’re using it right now down here as well and I love it as well, especially because a lot of the members of the church could benefit from learning more about the basic principles of the gospel.
Have fun travelling around for Drew’s auditions! It’d be cool to see all the different sites, I’m sure!Mom, if you send me a recipe, give it to me in grams, not mL—there’s almost no mL markings at all down here—just liters, grams, and kilograms. Thanks for forwarding my emails too!
About my week—nothing too big has happened this past week. Walking, teaching, trudging through rain, committing 12ish people to come to church—and just 1 comes, chuckling at the incredibly plastered and drunk people we occasionally run into, and doing it all in Spanish :) Found out I’m speaking in sacrament next week! We were teaching this one lady and noticed something interesting in her pantry. We asked her where she got it and she said a friend of hers that often visits from the U.S. always brings it with him. She then gave a bottle to us and insisted we take it because he would be giving her another one anyways. We happily accepted the gift and walked out with a full bottle of maple syrup!!!!! We’ll be making some pancakes here fairly soon ;)
Sorry I don’t have anything else...zone conference is this week and the transfer ends in 12 more days!
Have a great week everyone!!!
Love,Elder Powell
P.S. ¡Feliz Cumpleaños Nick!

Semana 18- Salta

2010-01-05T19:25:00.002-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
I loved your 2 left-feet skiing story! I can’t believe it worked out for you! To answer Nick’s question—no I don’t really watch tv or movies on the mission. Occasionally someone is watching tv in a house I’m about to teach or eat in and I catch a glimpse, but not really much. To answer Jason’s—I don’t know exactly when I’m going to change companions. We’re guessing it’ll be January 25th, but there’s still a chance that it won’t happen. I don’t know about staying in Salta either. The way things work is that every 6 weeks, we have what’s called ‘traslados’ or transfers, where the mission president decides where everyone’s going to work for the next 6 weeks—whether we’ll stay where we’ve been or whether we’ll head somewhere else. We don’t find out until a few days before the 6th week is over. The next transfer starts January 25th, so yeah! Have fun with the stake primary choir—that’ll be way fun!That’s cool that Jon Schmidt is in town though!I thought the car break-in was crazy! Was it just a crack in the window that they used to unlock from the inside? Reminds me of when I lost my CD case—only I had 75% of the music backed up...cuidado
Well, I finally got around to buying that camelback...for $170 pesos which is about $44!!! I love how things are cheaper here! I read that Peacegiver book you gave me...in 2 sittings of a few hours each :P Amazingly good, definitely recommend you read it!
New Year’s was nice. It turns out we had another dog-following-us story, only with two other elders in the district. A member has this dog that really is not that big, but apparently it follows the elders all around and acts as their guard just dominating all the other dogs! Well, it followed them back to the pension and we couldn’t take it back because mission rules kept us from leaving the pension due to security. Así que, we had a dog sleep over with us! The fireworks scared him to death though, so he slept underneath one of the elder’s bed! I filmed the fireworks for a little bit and I’ll work on getting that out. We woke up and cleaned a plaza up as 2 zones as a service project. Afterward we had about 40 poorer kids playing with us and we handed them out a bunch of candy—it was a fun morning.
January 2nd marked my 4-months in the mission—1/6 of the way through already!!! Super super fast!!! A bunch of kids are asking me for these little music-reading cheat-sheets I’ve written up. Apparently they’re learning from it too!
Scratch what I said about Argentines not liking the banana bread, I think the member lady we fed at first just didn’t like to eat super-sweet stuff :P We had another family think it was great and asked for the recipe! It’s a little tough to make it at their house though when the recipe is in American cooking units and they’re all about using grams! ¡Espero que todo tenga un lindo año nuevo!
-Elder Powell-

Semana 17- Salta

2009-12-30T15:09:00.002-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
Responses to your emails:The piano in the chapel is very basic—I can’t really record anything on it, let alone the fact that the ward members probably wouldn’t be able to figure out how to use it! We did enjoy the toy cars. We didn’t experience battery trouble, but then again, we didn’t try to use them for more than a minute so yeah :P It charges pretty fast though so it’s alright. I did get Grandpa Reeder’s letter and wrote him a response today because yes, I got your letter with the stamps on Wednesday. I laughed because his translator translated Drew’s name to ‘dibujó’ which means ‘(he/she/it) drew’ and the store Sears to the verb meaning to sear/singe! I couldn’t relieve it snowed in Dallas either! Glad to hear the family is keeping busy and alive.

Every 6 weeks is transfers, so the next transfer happens the 25th of January, and then 6 Mondays after that, and then 6 Mondays after that, etc. I noticed the General Conference podcasts and if their are any good talks I want I’ll grab them. It’s just that there are soooo many, I’d have to be searching for one—I can’t just window shop on this one. I’ll keep looking, but the hymns and other music cost money so I can’t really get those either.
Dad, I hope things go well for you with Rockwood and moving over. I often find your gut instinct is usually right, even if you have to feel a little sting after the decision. I’m not sure how buying out another company works, but I feel that the admins need to realize that there are always consequences to big decisions like this. If they really wanted to keep you, they ought to have researched into your situation a little bit more before making their move. You’ve done your research and with what you’ve been given/offered, you have discovered the better choice. Heavenly Father will guide things along for your benefit because you have done all you can. I know the Rockwood admins won’t be happy, but I’m not sure if I understand if there’s a threat or not. Again, I hope all goes well.
I can’t wait to hear Jason on the cello! I laughed at what Nick said about how “Jason…placed Joy to the World. And Drew…I don’t know what he played.” :)So guess what I totally just remembered family?!?! About 10 years ago, we made a 10-year time capsule and it’s sitting in the basement storage closet. I think it’s about time to open it up and I demand pictures of what everyone wrote/put in there!
Christmas time was quite interesting down here. The night of Christmas Eve was spent as the 8 elders in our district eating dinner and enjoying some of Heavenly Father’s fireworks and a huge rainstorm to go with it. At midnight, and for the following 40 minutes, everyone in the country just let every firework possible go off, ranging from firecrackers all the way up to professional-grade globos! I hear that because of the rain, it wasn’t as spectacular as it’s been and that the New Year will be even better! We woke up the next morning and opened gifts (thank you for those that them to me). We then walked around singing carols for a few families in our area, followed by a big lunch that our district put together. I got to call home after that, which for those that don’t know, is one of the 2 opportunities every year that I get to call home, the other being Mother’s Day. Elder Young and I then made some banana bread from mom’s recipe and gave some to a member family. It turns out we discovered an interesting difference in American and Argentine taste buds: the more flavor a food has, the more likely an American will like it, but the more likely an Argentine will think it’s weird/too overpowering. This was pretty much the case with this banana bread: the mom thought it was ok but insisted her budín de pan was much better tasting (of course, it was pretty bland :P). Our whole pension loved it enough though that we made a full second batch and just feasted on it ourselves! I think if someone wants to give me some weird Argentine food, I might give them some of my banana bread in return ;)
We had an interesting experience in church on Sunday. We walked to an investigator’s house to walk her and her 2 sons to church. Her dog decided to follow us all the way to the church. I thought it was great having the guard dog, until he insisted on entering the building too. He did everything possible to get in and even tricked me and got inside through a back door to the church that was left open (for security, of course!)—he promptly headed into the chapel and bugged our investigator! After getting him back outside and getting all the doors closed, I just decided to stand guard at the door and assist the latecomers because this dog would not give in! It was pretty crazy, but we still had a spiritual time.We were walking around yesterday and I saw the coolest thing ever! Many of the houses have little signs on their doors saying “Este hogar es catolico” followed by a little message ranging from blessing those that enter to “we don’t accept other religions, please respect this” (or something close to that; we knock anyways just because we aren’t forcing our religion on them, we’re just wanting to present our message to them ;) ) Well, on this one particular door, it read “Este hogar es cristiano” followed by a nice big logo of our church and the 13th Article of Faith (email me if you don’t know what it is) and ending with “In order to learn more, knock the door”!!! I thought it was fantastic!
Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!
Love,Elder Powell

Semana 16-Salta

2009-12-28T00:18:00.002-07:00

A quick note from mom: Jeff says he CAN receive email from anyone, he just can't email you back. So here is his email address if you care to write-- lamaspowell84@myldsmail.net

¡Hola Todos!
So what’s up with all the hype about 2012??? I can’t tell you how many people have asked about “dos mil doce…”The fireworks are getting a little crazy around here. It’s mostly just the really small but loud firecrackers and other little explosives, but I laugh because it’s only the little kids that are lighting them off!I have more puerta excuses for you: (I ask) “Are you alone?” “Sí.” “Oh, ok well…who’s that in the window?” (yeah, I get that happening a few times); “When is she going to come back?” “Más tarde.” (well duh!); (I ask a kid to get his parents, response after coming back:) “No hay nadie. Están durmiendo.” (so…which is it?)Everyone that asks how old I am goes crazy after I tell them 19. Apparently I look 25 to them! I definitely don’t feel that old!We were walking down the street a few days ago and a random lady walked up behind us and gave us 2 pesos in coins, saying it was for us. We asked her why and she just kinda mumbled and walked off! I wonder if it was fulfilling of Doctrine & Covenants 84:88-89…
One of our new investigators, who has a brother and his family that are members, came up with the idea to read the Book of Mormon with myself, my comp, and her 11-year-old son in English to help them practice speaking it (it’s interesting how much they struggle to pronounce the words; reminds me of a couple months ago!) and get some reading out of the way too! It’s been going pretty well and I hope she progresses well. She attended church this Sunday and she had a great time it seemed! It’s also really interesting how difficult it is to get some of these people in Salta to go to church, let alone just to ours! For goodness sakes, it’s one of the 10 Commandments that they claim to believe and follow! Slowly but surely we’ll make some progress on it out here.
Mom, if you want to get me any songs/talks for the ipod, just put whatever money is necessary on my cpu3140@yahoo.com account on itunes and tell me what you want me to get. I’ll install itunes down here on a comp (I loaded the installer onto the ipod itself so I just plug it in like a usb drive and install it ;) takes like 2 minutes) and get whatever you were going to get.Drew, he estado escribiendo una carta a ti cada semana. Pienso que sabés como está Salta ;) . Si tenés una pregunta especifica, pregúntame. (Notice voseo form ;) pretty sure I did it right)That’s about all I have this week.
Merry Christmas/Feliz Navidad!!!
Love,
Elder Powell

Semana 15-Salta

2009-12-28T00:13:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
Respuestas para toda de la familia:Yes, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the music, thank you. Nice work with the Big Mac Jason. I remember my first one was given to me by Sis. Briggs during my 7th grade year. I was a little nervous, but I eventually ate it all. You made me laugh when you mentioned learning how to multiply with fractions because of two reasons: I love math :) but also I recently taught a lesson in the house of a math teacher here and she had a white board with all sorts of multiplication rules, including multiply with fractions! My Spanish understanding and speaking abilities are getting better and better everyday—the key is slowly but surely. I’ve been teaching entire lessons to people so I can at least get the message across ok. I’m just working on learning a lifetime of vocab in a few months plus a few phrases here and there that are unique to Spanish. The hardest part really is trying to understand the people speak the language because they speak very fast for what I can understand. But it will come!
You mentioned the Christmas tree—I’d like to mention what Christmas trees are like here. Since everest-type trees don’t exist down here, every Christmas tree is plastic and ranges from 3-5 feet here—just a wee bit different, but it still works! Congratulations Dad on your poster! Glad things turned out well with it. Congrats on having fun with swing dancing too! I’m ok at it, but if you want to see someone that’s good at it, go watch Matt Birch—he’s amazing. I remember Cameron Latimer very well. He’s a good bass singer. That’s great to hear that he’s getting involved in the programs and school. I never was a stage manager actually so he’s taking my spot as well as Jenny & Whitney. The only thing he’s missing is the piano ability ;) Congrats on losing the herbst appliance Jason! Have fun with that because the braces bring a whole new kind of pain ;) I can access your blog...I’m probably not allowed to though, so don’t expect me to go and look. Send Brandon my congratulations with PSU!!! (And a verbal smacking porque él me prometió escribir para que pueda practicar su español…y ¡no he recibido NADA!) Pity points to you, Drew: I remember getting burned out from all the college apps I did…it’s worth it. As for me calling home, every companionship down here has a cellphone, so I’ll be using a calling card (not sure if I can use yours, mom, but they’re cheap down here so I’ll buy a couple and then try yours first) and using our companionship cellphone to call you. I will actually be calling you Monday, the 21st of December around 10:00ish-10:45 my time (I’ll let you determine what time that makes it at home) so that we can set up a time on Friday, the 25th (not sure why, but everyone else does it here, so yeah!) We’ll roughly be calling mid-afternoon here on the 25th so keep the morning sorta free (not too hard, I’m sure ;) )
Alright, on to my past week! Here’s the quote I told you about last week: “At this Christmas season we ought to remember that no gift we have ever received or could ever receive will surpass the wondrous gift of the Atonement. Our joy can be exquisite and sweet, and we have a promise of being in the presence of God. What greater gift in all the world could we hope for? In return, we ought to determine to give all we can to the Savior of all mankind—our total heart and soul, even our very being.” –Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone.I walked into a lunch appointment this week and all of a sudden the father asked me to offer the prayer in English. I was a little shocked, and kinda sad too, because since day 3 in the MTC, I haven’t offered a prayer in English at all! So I broke my pattern this week. It felt a little funky praying in English, I’ll admit, but it shouldn’t be a problem in 21 months when I get back. I’ve started a list of funny excuses that I, and other missionaries, get at doors because they can’t/don’t want to talk to us: “I don’t believe in Jesus Christ” (I noticed she had a nice CHRISTmas tree behind her); “My mom says she’s sleeping” (So what is she doing now...?); (I say..) “We’re looking for [this person]” “She left and I don’t know when she’s coming back!” “Oh, well [this guy] sent us here.” “Oh, that’s my uncle!...(a little later in the discussion) yeah, she’s at work until late tonight.”; “¡No hay nadie!” (and you are....?).I found out my MTC comp is going to be companions with Elder Young’s MTC comp—go figure!More on Argentine culture: you remember how Dad can’t go anywhere without seeing one of his patients? Multiply his problem by like 20 and you have my problem with dogs here—especially the stray street-rat kind! They’re everywhere!!! Luckily it’s mostly the ones that are inside the house fences that bark at us, hopefully it stays like that. The kids all got out of school (as in like school terminated this week, not Christmas break). Another funny thing about this part of Argentina: all of the lawns/grass patches here are small enough that they just use weed whackers as their lawn mowers!I had a little Peruvian moment yesterday (and this story also relates into a fun little challenge for you if you get bored). We were carrying these two 10-kilo bags of flour (not sure what that is in pounds, it felt like 15-20 pounds) to these 2 people for the bishop’s wife (we walked a distance pretty close to our house to Ferris going down regal, and then walking to the Finn’s after that (We only touched about 1/3 to 1/2 of our area too)). My arms were getting sweating from carrying it low and my shoulders were hurting a little too, so I tried it on my head. By far it was so much easier! Of course, my head was completely soaked afterwards from sweat!I tried my first blood sausage yesterday...yeah it wasn’t too bad if I just mashed it all in with my rice :P
We had this random boy stop us in the street last night as we were walking home. He was 15 and was asking all sorts of questions about who we were, what we were doing, and about the church as well. It turns out his family is all staunch-Catholics, but he doesn’t like nor agree with the religion at all. He even brought up possibly wanting to be baptized in some other religion—we were happy to get his phone number so that we could meet with him this week in the chapel (with a member present of course ;) )!!!Well, that’s all I jotted down to write home this week! Hope all is well at home and that things are winding down for the big day!
Love,
Elder Powell

Semana 14-Salta

2009-12-11T00:04:00.001-07:00

¡Hola de Argentina!
Bowling was fine. They didn't care what shoes we wore and the whole thing was using a different piece of technology--the pins were attached to long, thin chains and the display screens were a little old-looking, but it worked so I'll take it.We're able to sing the hymns just fine. English and Spanish hymns don't literally translate between each other. Spanish kinda rewords and uses slightly different phrasing to give the same feeling to the text as you would feel if you sang it in English. The new missionaries are the only ones that really have the LDS bible right now. It's not the cheapest and easiest book to come around after all. It's nice, but the real meat is the Spanish Book of Mormon because the topical guide and bible dictionary in the English bible are taken out of the Spanish bible and combined into one 'Guia para Estudiar las Escrituras' in the back of the Spanish Book of Mormon.Things are going great with the trainer. He does most of the 'getting to know you' talking, and then hands me the teaching torch. I'm getting more and more involved as the days go by though. The toughest is just understanding the people--I can talk just fine. I either lack vocab or the people really don't speak well at all--one of the two causes me problems, but I'm working on it.
Mom's Email:Ouch, Drew drove to Tacoma?! At least I only have to walk 30 minutes to play my instrument!I loved the pictures! No snow though? That's too bad. Speaking of weather, you know how I said that it was blazing hot here? Yeah...the past week has taken a turn and mimicked common Seattle weather--cloudy, chilly (by Argentine standards of course ;) ), drizzly, and occasionally raining. It's kinda funky, but I'll go with it. The mini wheats pic was crazy! I think that was actually 9 on there, not 6. I took a picture of a mini-wheat chain of 4 before--it's hidden somewhere in my misc. pictures on the laptop. I liked the Creche pic too--good job with that! Good luck getting people there.That was a good idea to donate for Christmas! I was given a little quote this past week related to giving a gift to Jesus--I'll remember to bring it next week. The boxes were actually waiting for me when I got here. Nobody told me to pay anything though...so they were free for me at least.....it didn't look like anyone opened them up though.I'll definitely keep the piano going (I HATE playing the Christmas hymns...they had to be the most difficult out of all the hymns to play...) I don't think a choir would be quite feasible--95% of the members can't really sing :P
Well as for my past week, the big highlight was my first 2 baptismal dates! I hope our plans for the 2nd of January and the 16th of January follow through! We had zone conference this past week so I got to see President Northcutt and Hna. Northcutt again. I could only understand about 50% of the various talks given, but it was still nice. We had a wonderful lunch, a scripture chase competition between my zone and the other that was there with us, and we even acted out the nativity scene! Of course, I was on piano duty, playing EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Christmas songs......I think I may need to go write my own arrangements of the Christmas hymns so that I can stop trying to sight read all of them. This past Sunday, during the first few testimonies (which I had a tough time understanding anyways), I worked on writing out the chords to Angels We Have Heard on High in the hymn book so that I could somewhat-fake the closing hymn! We'll see...P-day was great today! We made peach pancakes for breakfast and then our zone went hiking with the other Salta zone and we got lots of great pictures. It was drizzling/raining the whole time, but we loved it!1 transfer down this next week, 14-or-so to go!Mucho Amor,-Elder Powell-

semana 13

2009-12-01T21:24:00.001-07:00

¡Hola Todos!
Some quick clarifiers: that washer and dryer are both electric ;) The washer is just a little slower but works and the dryer just rotates ridiculously fast so the water is squished out the sides of the barrel; yes, drunk people talk slower, but they also talk quieter and they slur their words, so it's counter-helpful at the same time; with the 3 packages you sent, only 1 said "for x-mas eve", does this mean I get to open the other 2?! :)

Alright, on to this past week! I had another funny contact. We were walking along and a man started walking beside us, so we started talking with him. He pretty quickly sat at a little empanada station and offered us some. I hesitated, but sat down, pulled out a pamphlet, and started teaching him while we ate the empanadas! He "had to leave" halfway through and "lived on the street" (so we couldn't really "come back"), but I got free empanadas off of it!

All 8 of the elders in our district actually did celebrate Thanksgiving! We bought some cooked chickens, bread, gaseosas (soda), and made mashed potatoes and jello and ate it all for lunch, which is actually the biggest meal of the day--breakfast doesn't really exist and dinner is nothing too big either...so we have lunch appointments instead of dinner appointments. Anyways, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for (in Spanish of course) and it was pretty great!I saw my first aloe vera plant the other day. Totally looked weird with the lime-green juice coming out of the leaf!

My first day of regular church was interesting but good. We spent the first hour (priesthood/relief society) greeting everyone and waiting for investigators, the second hour (sunday school) going on splits to find investigator's we had invited that weren't at church (all of them), and then I walked into sacrament meeting with 1 investigator during the opening song...no piano player and everyone was sorta half mumbling-singing Onward Christian Soldiers. The bishop quickly motioned for me to play the remaining songs of the meeting. They actually have an electric roland piano that feels and plays somewhat close to ours at home, but less sophisticated (no screen). No other pianos in the entire building! I'll get some pictures sometime.

Today was a fun p-day! We went out of the slightly poorer areas that we've been working in and headed to El Centro to do some shopping around. I got my first authentic Argentina jersey! We then headed to a big all-in-one shopping store called Libertad where we bowled, ate lunch, and did some last-minute grocery shopping. It was about as Americanized as I can get around here, except for this place called Chango Más, which apparently is like an Argentine Walmart.No baptisms yet, but we have a few that we're going to set baptismal dates for soon, so in a few weeks probably! I'm always excited to talk to these people!Well, that's about it for this week.
Love you all tons!!!
-Elder Powell-

semana 12

2009-11-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

¡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-

To the family of Elder Powell

2009-11-22T20:28:00.003-07:00

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

Semana 11

2009-11-17T23:03:00.002-07:00

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-

Semana 10

2009-11-10T19:55:00.001-07:00

¡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

Semana 9

2009-11-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

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

Semana 8

2009-10-28T10:16:00.000-06:00

Hola Todos,

I got my flight plans on Friday......too bad I don't have a visa yet. Our whole district went to the travel office today to see what was up. Apparently 6 out of the 9 have their visas, 2 elders are going to a temporary reassignment until their visa comes in, and I alone am stuck on hold, which I'm guessing means I'm here at the MTC for a little bit longer. To be honest though, I'm more sad that our district is being split up than the fact that I'm not headed to Argentina just yet. The Lord has his purposes for everything though and I'm definitely keeping my eyes and ears open to find it. I'll tell you my flight plans just because I feel like telling you anyways: 8:30AM SLC -> 12:10PM DF (Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX), 2:10PM DF -> 6:00PM MIA (Miami, FL), 9:00PM MIA -> 9:00AM EZE (Buenos Aires, Argentina). I'm not sure if the itinerary takes into account the time zone switches (even though that seems awkward), but yeah, all the US flights are American Airlines. I got a calling card for the US and I'll be able to call from the airports, but the international cards will be purchased in Argentina. I'm told that they have them there for cheap. I'm guessing I won't really need stamps too much either. Again, I'll keep you posted as best as I can as things happen around here.I couldn't believe what I was reading about Rockwood! Good luck with working things out--I hope that things do work out in the end. Definitely keep me posted!Speaking of hard to believe: Drew had a vocal solo?!?! I never thought I'd see the day!!! :P
Dad asked about what church is like here. We are divided into branches here, so obviously headed by a Branch President. The branch consists of my zone of 4-5 districts. The callings that we have are more like assignments that are included in our callings as missionaries--in other words, I didn't receive a sustaining nor was I set apart when I became the District Leader. Priesthood is at 9:10AM. The Relief Society meets at an MTC-wide level (10:00) and has their own little devotional-type meeting. Lunch is right before Sacrament at 12:30 and we have a little chapel room in the main building that our branch meets in. One cool thing here is that our Branch President served his mission in Chile, so he knows Spanish. This is important because we get the opportunity to bless the sacrament in Spanish ;) We'll then have our own little district meeting where we take care of announcements and have a lesson, similar to Sunday School. After that is Missionary Directed Time where you can study or head to the temple for pictures out front. Choir practices at 4:15, dinner afterwards, MTC Fireside at 8:00, and then you can watch your choice of 1 out of 4 church films. They rotate every week between "The Testaments", "Legacy", "Joseph Smith", "Mountain of the Lord", and various talks given here at the MTC by general authorities.The Line of Authority works great, Dad, thanks!I haven't heard of an N1H1 vaccine here yet, but I'll keep my ears peeled.Everyone is back and completely healthy from quarantine. We actually got 2 of them back a day or 2 early! It's been nice having everyone together again--our district is so awesome!!!Thanks again for all your love and support. I hope all is well at home. It definitely got cold really fast here, which reminded me of home and how you sent the cold to us ;) I will probably send out my package on Thursday, which I hope I will know a few more traveling/sticking around details by then so that I can inform you.
¡Os amo muchísimo!
-Elder Powell-

Semana 6

2009-10-21T12:42:00.000-06:00

Hola Familia!This is draft 2 of my email home, the email client bugged and lost my draft to you and now I only have 21 minutes instead!!!I laughed when mom mentioned the MTC parody of Hey There Delilah! Yeah, I filmed that one and it went viral quite a few months ago actually. It's cold here as well, but nowhere close to freezing yet! I'm not sure about sending home one of my suitcoats yet, I'll think on it. Felicitaciones con su miembro nuevo! If you're so worried about mental stability, maybe you should be talking to your friends more so that the missionaries can teach some referrals ;) Madre, comeré lo que me envia. Si quiere enviar manzanas, go for it. It doesn't matter to me. Dad, neither I nor any of my district could decipher what you were trying to say when you said ¿Cuál es hasta? Were you trying to say something like "How is it going?" Or were you asking for the meaning of hasta (it's "until" btw)? No visa yet...I'm a little surprised actually, but I'm patient...we'll see what happens. Teaching in Spanish has been going really well! Y sí, he estado ayudando otras personas con español, mas o menos. Jason and Nick, you have an assignment to come up with at least 1 question you have for me about anything you want. I know exactly how curious boys your ages are about everything ;)I finally got to play the piano a bunch this past week for various reasons. It's amazing how out-of-practice I feel after 5 short weeks!I'm not the district leader anymore. Elder Anderson reigns over the district now. It's a little funky only being in charge of my companionship now, but I'm doing fine. Since my district is on a pilot program here at the MTC, we actually lost Hermano McCoy as a teacher and gained a brand-new teacher yesterday. His name is Hermano Chojolan--a little shy and timid, but I think he has a lot to teach us. Our other teacher, Hermano Jackson, will stay with us all the way to the end.I got to thinking the other day: My last name is actually somewhat difficult to say with Spanish pronunciation! :P So I took a couple minutes today and came up with the Spanish way of spelling my last name so that a native would pronounce it as close to an American as possible: Páuel! I thought it was pretty funny looking!That's pretty much it for this week. I'll be starting up teaching lesson 2 in Spanish this week, so a fresh new batch of vocab is coming my way! ¡Tengan una semana buena!Mucho Amor,Elder Powell