Dealing with Obsoletion

Hello my few and faithful readers,

It's come to my attention the fact that I've been very negligent of this blog, enough to reconsider whether or not I want to keep on writing to it. I've considered the reasons why a blog is normally kept, as well as the possible things I could accomplish through a blog. I have come to the decision that my original intent on keeping this blog was to update public viewers on the recent events of my life. While this blog does allow me to be a little bit more verbose about what has been going on, I feel that enough is posted on my Facebook account that this blog is becoming obsolete. If you're looking for a more detailed description of things that are going on, send me a message there and I'll be happy to strike up a conversation! So for future updates on my life, I would strongly advise you look me up on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jeffr.powell

I'm a fair administrator over my resources, and have considered ways that I could keep this blog alive while avoiding its former obsolete purpose. I could talk about opinion-based topics such as religion, or just a general reaction to news reports...but I don't know how I'd feel about negative comments toward my opinion--I'm a fairly non-confrontational kinda guy. I could do experiments in cooking or craft-making and put them on display here, but I doubt I'd update the blog frequently enough--I'm just not as passionate about the hobby as would be ideal. I could take on topics and projects related to my major, computer science, showing off solutions and creating helpful user guides...but I doubt I'd get a big audience, which I feel would be ideal.
I guess in the end, I'm built for commission-type work: you ask for information, and I'll give you plenty of it!

So for now, until I fall upon an unexpected passion to share, or someone comes probing and prodding, consider this blog a silent one.

Beating the Busy Life

I apologize for being so late in posting about my Christmas break! You can be sure that I'm not turning in my school assignments this late. I have been rather busy, though, since break ended. Classes are definitely starting to push me just a little, so you have to stay on top of the game. But enough about the present, let me jump back a month and show you what's been happening.

I'm so excited about my new Canon Rebel SLR camera I got for Christmas!!!!!! Thank you parents for that one :D I spent all break practicing with it, because it's got quite a set of bells and whistles to it. Here are some of the shots I made:

The rest of the shots are from Spokane's New Years celebration called First Night Spokane.

The famous trash-sucking goat!

I was especially excited about the chance to try out some sweet fireworks shots. Here were the best two that I managed:

So yeah, I had a bunch of others, but I don't want to bore you all with my growing feddish of taking photos :P I hope to be able to get a bunch of other really cool shots in the future.

I've continued a ton of volunteer service from last semester, especially for the church. I continue to go to the Missionary Training Center to be taught by the Spanish-speaking missionaries. I've also discovered this really cool website put out by the church called Helping in the Vineyard. The actual link is http://vineyard.lds.org, and is directly tied to http://create.lds.org, which is a service that allows members to submit media and other services for the church to use in it's various productions and projects. So instead of sending a church photographer all the way to Africa to get some photos down there, they can just put a request on the site, and African photographers can just upload professional-quality photos of whatever is needed! Right now, you're able to submit photos, video, music, audio programming for Mormon Channel Radio, and you're also able to provide your services as an actor, translator, genealogical indexer, and computer programmer, with future plans of adding a graphic design element, and a writing section!!! There's a ton of stuff you can do obviously! So I've gone and started translating stuff into Spanish, and happened to find a club here at BYU that works together on the translation projects in all the languages we can. It's a lot of fun, and helps me feel like I'm accomplishing something rather useful in the world. I also put together some panoramas I took of church historic sites and the Hill Cumorah Pageant, and submitted them through the site. I'm happy to say that they were accepted by the reviewers and are stored away somewhere in the church's massive media database!

I also recently took a simple job at the MTC cafeteria, just to get an income coming in. I now have three different nametags that let me just walk into the MTC (alright, the black one is kind of expired, but the other ones do the job :P ). They just can't keep me out!

School's going pretty well. A couple of projects have kind of beaten me up recently, but I finished them all the same, and am now treading through midterm-week. It's weird, but it seems like all of your classes, regardless of major and semester, all collaborate and put all their midterm exams out at the same time. I had one at the beginning of the week, one I have to take today, another that has to be taken before the end of tomorrow, and my second Spanish midterm on Monday!!! Lots and lots of tests! I've been doing pretty well though, so I'm riding on my confidence for this one. Speaking of though, I unfortunately must go and study :P
Have a good day!

The End of Summer Break

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

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

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

¡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-

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Semana 101 y 102 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 100 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 99 - Villa Muñecas

¡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

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Semana 98 - Villa Muñecas

¡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

 

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Semana 97 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 96 - Villa Muñecas

¡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

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Semana 95 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 94 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 93 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

 

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Semana 92 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 91 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 90 - Villa Muñecas

¡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-

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Semana 89 - Villa Muñecas

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-

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Semana 88 - Villa Muñecas

¡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 

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