Theory of Relativity, Sunrise Hike, Smiles and Laughs

9/29/14

Dear Family!

WOW this week went by fast! but at the same time it feels like it's been forever since I've written you! Haha! I honestly don't understand time anymore. I've always assumed it was a constant but then again I suppose Einstein's Theory of Relativity has something to say about that! Basically to make it really simple and object moving SUPER fast (like speed of light fast) would pass through time faster relative to those resting objects around it (if you want a good example watch the beginning of the original Planet of the Apes) but it works on a smaller scale as well so when you're up and walking you're actually moving through time just a couple femtoseconds faster than those that are lying around. So moral of the story? if you're ever feeling like life is just dragging along slowly GET UP AND WORK!!! You will literally make time pass faster!! :) hahaha!

Anyway, so yeah it's been a great week! As you might guess, a lot of walking (whoo! We've gotta be at LEAST 0.0000000000000002 seconds (2 femtoseconds) ahead of all you sitting at home watching TV!!) haha! Anyway, but in between the walking we've also done some awesome things! So we did some more service throughout the week. Building clean-up, yard work, that kine stuff. But we also have been getting some of the members really excited and thinking about names and people to refer to us and so forth! so that's SUPER EXCITING! :D Not quite as exciting we did find out that we WON'T be getting iPads for a while, probably late December early January, BUT we did get to have interviews with President Warner (which was GREAT and we just finished Zone P-day which involved a sunrise hike (although the sunrise was slightly disappointing because of the cloud cover :P haha) and then ice-skating, and sports. I really love our Zone! We actually spend a LOT of time with the Zone leaders since they both came out with Elder Basag so they're all really close friends and close to heading home!! crazy!

One more SUPER exciting thing about this week... actually it hasn't happened yet, but, we just found out that tomorrow we get to go to the Laie VC and watch Meet the Mormons!! :D I'm WAY excited! I know nothing about it but it sounds cool! :D haha! So yeah, if you haven't heard about it, look it up! and also you can go online I believe and request to have it show in theaters around you guys too and then you can bring other people to see it and they'll love it and get baptized and go on missions and it will all just be awesome! :D haha!

Sorry I've still got a lot of adrenaline pumping from Basket Ball and everything else we were doing today so this e-mail is rather all over the place and full of smiles and laughs... then again.. I suppose they pretty much always are :P BUT then again I suppose they always should be. I'm on a mission for the Lord.. in HAWAII!!! All I can do is smile and when times get rough I just remember the words of the Apostle Luke in the Bible (one of my favorites I might add) in Luke 6:22-23. Which by the way is my SotW! :) haha! anyway, yeah, I hope all is well and that you all find your own things to smile and laugh about this week! I know one thing FOR SURE that I will be smiling about most all the week love is the opportunity to hear from our Beloved Prophet and the Apostles and other General Authorities this weekend!! :D Well I gotta get going, but I love you all and hope that all is well in Az!! Keep on doing what you do and as always Don't forget to be awesome! :)

-Elder Powell

Oh, I forgot to tell you one of the Greenies that came in last transfer is named Elder Luke so it makes zone meetings VERY confusing! But it also made for a pretty cool picture! :) haha! 

SERVICE - "Forget yourself and go to work"

9/22/14
Dear Family,

It has indeed been quite the exciting week! First off I am very glad to hear that all is well back in Arizona. As well I cannot even come close to expressing how incredibly happy I am for Ben!! I seriously could have never imagined something as tiny as humming a primary song in our hotel room in Texas would lead to well, all of this! But I guess it just goes to show you how important it is to "stand as a witness of Christ AT ALL TIMES!!"

At the Family History Fair by our display

I guess that was kind of the theme of this week. Over all this week was honestly pretty terrible when it comes to things like lessons and numbers, but when it comes to Missionary work it was GREAT!! We're still making an effort to visit as many active members as we can and get them a little more excited and involved in the work. We had MANY service projects this week. One especially was great.

At the USS Missouri after doing service there a couple weeks ago

As you might imagine being such a small chain of islands there's not really any "extra space" to just throw trash, so recycling here is a BIG thing!! So our whole Zone got together on Saturday and helped with this community non-profit group (founded by singer Jack Johnson) that gathered literally TONS of scrap metal, paper, bottles, glass, plastic, old-computers, printers, ect. and sorted them all out so they could then be taken to the different recycling companies and taken care of! :) It was fun having all of us there because with the whole 20+ missionaries we made up well more than 3/4th of the work force and a good part of the other 1/4th were members in the area as well! haha! It was great! I especially just felt amazing knowing that I could do something to help take care of this BEAUTIFUL world the Lord has given us and especially the beauty of the islands out here! :) 

Kolipoki's grandson meets Feki's grandson

Anyway, we also had another service the other day at one of our Part Members houses toiling in their tea leave garden :) And of course there was the other service we were doing at Kanoa Kanahele's house just before going to lunch with Feki and then service right after at a Tongan families house in the Zone Leaders ward (hence the raggedy service cloths in the picture instead of the normal pros clothing). So yeah overall a lot of AMAZING opportunities to get out and literally GET TO WORK!

Which was a huge deal especially for me this week because I made the mistake of thinking I could give myself one night this week to just relax and think about home and all the games and friends and music and whatever else I left behind. I was pretty stressed and thought maybe if I just let my mind wander to all the things of the past that I would find comfort but well... as you might imagine it was quite the opposite. While they are all good things and I still do think of you all and you are always in my prayers I allowed myself to lose sight a bit of what I was there for and what I was doing and the result was a very slow and groggy day the next day. Anyway, so I guess the biggest lesson I learned this week (and one I've learned in the past but keep getting re-taught through experience) is simple as Pres. Hinckley's father said to "Forget yourself and go to work!" Anyway, of course the result of all the work and sun exposure is that my brain in completely fried which is why this e-mail is rather void of any wit or continuity at all. So I do apologize for that but hopefully there is something you can take from it. :P haha

Sister Kahea Tani is a missionary mom whose son is serving with Luke's second cousin, Jennison Smith, in Tacoma Washington. She set up the get together with Luke and Feki, the grandson of Luke's grandpa Groberg's mission companion (also named Feki) in Tonga many years ago.

Well thank you again for all you do! I love you all so much and miss you! keep on doing what you do and as always don't forget to be awesome!! :D

-Elder Powell

Laie Temple & Primary Program

9/16/14

Dear family,

Sorry I know I'm always running short on time but I am especially short this week but for a very good reason. Most of our p-day today was spent AT THE LAIE TEMPLE!!! WHOOO!! :D It was so incredible!! It truly is such a beautiful Temple and it was great to get to go through with the whole zone of missionaries and just wow! It was incredible! I could tell you countless things about it and go off on multiple spiritual tangents bearing testimony of it, but due to time I think it will suffice to say two things; 1. If you are not yet able to get a Temple recommend for whatever reason DO NOT DO ANYTHING THAT WILL JEOPARDIZE THAT IN THE FUTURE!!! Your eye should ALWAYS be on going to the Temple and everything you do every single minute of every single day should bring you closer to that eventual goal of entering in it! 2. If you are able to get but do not currently hold a temple recommend GET ONE!!! and that goes into 3. If you do hold a current Temple recommend GO!!!! Go as much as possible!! Overall just remember that The Temple is the House of God on this earth and so if we are always aiming for it and living worthily to enter it than eventually when we pass on from this life we can be almost assured that we will be returning to our Heavenly Father!! :) 

  

Anyway, really tight on time, but other exiting news, we had the primary program this Sunday which was AWESOME! It’s always amazing to feel the spirit that comes from such innocent and loving (if not sometimes rowdy) little children. I actually got pretty teary eyed when they sang "I hope they call me on a mission" because I remembered when I was up there singing it and well... now I've grown a foot or two and here I am! :) Anyway, about to get kicked off. Love you all! Much Mahalo!!

Don't forget to be awesome! :)

-Elder Powell

SotW D&C 6:33-37 (I found this one in the Celestial room and it just really stuck out to me for some reason. The whole section did actually.) :)

p.s. I forgot to mention but I also had the GREAT privilege of participating in the Kaneohe Stake Family History fair this weekend!! Granted our display was just a general missionary table with pamphlets and pass-along cards and BoM's and such and the only people that really looked at or talked to us at the display were all members BUT I did make sure to put out as well my pedigree chart, my priesthood authority lines and the two mission pictures of Grandpa Powell I have in my wallet theoretically so I could talk to people about why Family history is important in the church and missionary work and such and maybe share the story of the Wimmers or others... but nobody asked or talked about it at all so I just enjoyed it myself :) anyway, yeah it was great! :)

Pearl Harbor, Obedience, the Big Picture

9/2/14

Dear family!!

Sorry for the late response! I promise I didn't forget you all! But as you know yesterday was a holiday so the library was closed, but we did get special permission from the Zone Leaders to e-mail today, so... yeah! Here is it!

As for this week, it's been, not surprisingly, another very long, very hot, and very exhausting week! But of course it was also another amazing week being in the service of the Lord! :) I don't have too much new stuff to report on (which is good cause I don't have too much time to report on it either! :P sorry!) But, one highlight was we got a new investigator!! Whoo! His name is D. and while he has some issues and he's not sure he really wants to change yet, he's still very interested in learning AND he walked for almost an hour to come to church on Sunday!! It was awesome!! Anyway, I also gave a talk on Sunday which went great! :)

Sorry! I totally miss judged and I'm like completely out of time!! But I guess if there was one thing I really gained a testimony of this week it was the power of prayer! It is more strong than any of us I think could ever imagine!! NEVER under estimate the power of a sincere and heartfelt prayer! He hears you and he loves you and wants to bless you as you do what he asks.

Anyway, I love you all! Thank you again for all you do! I promise next week I will write a little more! Keep on doing what you do and of course don't forget to be awesome!! :)

-Elder Powell

9/8/14

Aloha Ohana!!

Howzit!? Sorry, as always I'm a little short on time to e-mail, but it was great to hear from you all and especially great to hear your mad ramblings dad, in case you haven't noticed that is how I tend to talk as well so it's always wonderful to hear from someone who speaks my own language! :) 

As for my week down here it has been equally crazy! As you might have guessed we did a lot of..... (dramatic pause for effect) WALKING! WHOO!! It's actually not as bad as I make it sound, but since so much of our time is devoted to that I kind of feel obligated to include it in the weekly e-mail. But we did do quite a few other things which were almost as equally exciting as walking! :) For starters on Wednesday we got to go and do service at the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor! It was SO COOL!! September 2nd there was a HUGE celebration and presentation on board because it marked the 69th anniversary of the official end of WWII which took place ON the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay. So yeah we were helping clean it all up and it was fun! :)

Also another quick highlight of the week... WE GOT S. BACK!! :D :D :D So our dinner on Saturday was with the family that gave us his referral in the first place and so we were talking to the dad and he agreed that we should go check up on him and while he still has a lot of trails and challenges he's facing he's still just as amazing and kind and loving and open to hearing the Gospel as ever before! And his family is HUGE to him (as it should be to any father) and so Bro. C. agreed to take him and his kids out to see the Families display at the Laie Visitors Center which I am REALLY excited about!!! Speaking of which we get to go to the Temple this transfer and I'm SOOOO EXCITED!!!!!! :D :D Anyway, yeah, so we're moving a lot slower this time but we are meeting with him again and I have faith that he'll be pretty much ready to be baptized by the end of the year so hopefully I'll still be in the area, but if not I'm sure whoever is will be just as happy for him as we are! :) haha

Anyway, yeah that was probably the biggest highlight of the week, but as always I just wanted to bear a short testimony about Obedience this week. There tends to be an attitude in this mission about the overall rules and council given to us by President, the AP's and Zone Leaders (which I will admit can get a little ridiculous at times) which I honestly got a tiny bit caught up in this last week, not to the point of being disobedient but just where I was getting really frustrated with them and with everything, but as always I was reading in my scriptures and praying and I kind of realized something that I knew before but just had to be reminded of. I think a lot of time as missionaries (and sometimes as member missionaries even) we get caught up little nit-picky things and we want to do things our way and well frankly sometimes our way might actually make a whole lot more sense and be a lot easier or nicer or whatever, but, that is not what we have been asked to do. We have been asked and covenanted to be obedient in ALL THINGS!! That is the first law ever given to man and that is the law upon which all other laws AND BLESSINGS have been predicated!!!

We can't see the big picture, we don't know what he has planned for us and a lot of times we have no clue why we're asked to do what we're asked to do and frankly IT DOES NOT MATTER!! The only reason God has spelled out his promised blessings for many of his commandments is because he loves us, but he doesn't have to. He is God. He could say, Pay tithing, go to church, keep the WoW, 10 Commandments, LoC, and everything else and just do it, and we would still be obligated and under the same oath a covenant to do it. But he loves us soo much that he has told us the reward. He has promised us ETERNAL LIFE!! And really that's what we are all working towards and that, as missionaries, is what we are helping others work towards. Surely we cannot be so selfish as to Jeopardize someone’s ETERNAL SALVATION because we don't want have a full hour of comp study, or we want to hang out at our members houses for a little longer than we should or because we just don't feel like talking to the people (our own brothers and sisters I might add) that we pass on the street.

Anyway, sorry that was a little bit of venting mixed in with my testimony but well that's something that I've really been trying hard to follow and well it has been really hard!!  :P But yeah, overall all is well, all is well! :) I hope you all have a wonderful week! Remember you are always in my prayers and thoughts! I love you all and will talk to you in a week! :) Don't forget to be awesome! :D

-Elder Powell