Semana 51 - Mariano Moreno

¡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-

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Semana 50 - Mariano Moreno

¡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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

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Semana 49 - Mariano Moreno

¡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-

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Semana 48 - Mariano Moreno

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-

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Semana 47 - Villa Alem

¡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-

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Semana 46 - Villa Alem

¡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-

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Semana 45 - Villa Alem

¡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-

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