Christmas

12/22/14

Dear Ohana!

Wow, sounds like quite the eventful week! The Messiah sounds like it was amazing as usual!

Overall I don't have a ton to update on. Honestly this week has been pretty rough. Besides just the usual stresses of missionary work it has been difficult to really do much of anything with any of our investigators, Less-active members, or well anyone for that matter because everyone is either preparing for, left to the main land for or just doing anything and everything else besides talking to missionaries for Christmas! haha! Soo... it's been a little odd but we do have an AWESOME military couple who is having us over on Christmas day to Skype you guys and hang out for a bit since they also are far from home and family so them and one of our single members in the Elders Quorum who's family is all in the mainland will all be spending at least part of Christmas together in our own little island of misfit toys! :) haha! but yeah, I'm SUPER excited to get to see all of you and talk and hopefully my ramblings will make slightly more sense than they do in my weekly e-mails... maybe... but no promises! haha! anyway, much love and aloha!! Don't forget to be awesome!! :D

-Elder Powell

p.s. one of the oddest sensations has to be having one sock completely soaked and the other dry and I'm learning that while standing here at the library computer.

Crazy week and crazy people

12/15/14

ALOHA OHANA!!!!!!

First off I apologize for the rushed and unexplainably odd e-mail last week. While I would LOVE to send you a nice simple and normal e-mail this week... well simple and normal as you well know are not things which us Powell's do too well! haha

Now then, on to my crazy week!! As referred to earlier in this e-mail, this week was much less than normal! It started out odd because our p-day which was supposed to be pushed back to Tuesday to accommodate our Temple trip got moved back to Monday AFTER we had already planned three lessons for that day! So oddly enough p-day was our most productive day that whole week including two with member lessons a less-active visit and a new investigator, who is VERY solid but we may or may not run into some trouble…

Our crazy week didn't stop after just an odd p-day however. Towards the end of our p-day we found out that the temple trip WAS back on! So we spent most of our day Tuesday at the Laie Temple which of course was AMAZING!! :D And then Wednesday we had service on the Pearl Harbor however they only could have so many go and so ONE companionship from our whole zone had to stay and well... of course that was us :P Anyway, we ended up doing a little exchange that day so Elder Manning could go since he's been off island for a while and hasn't done it in a long time and I just walked about the streets of Kane'ohe with Elder Bergman. And then Thursday we got the opportunity to go to the PCC Christmas Lagoon if we brought and investigator so that was GREAT!! Definitely not their most amazing show but still it was free and it was fun! One of my favorite parts was the "Brazilian dance"!! :) (don't ask me why they had that at the Polynesian Cultural Center as well as "dances" from France and India... but it's was cool none the less! haha!

Anyway, the Friday was filled with.... well literal crazy people! haha! We started off the day with an extra-long zone meeting which ended up getting a little crazy, we have some funny zone leaders but they're cool! haha! And then our dinner had to cancel because the bank that the wife works at got robbed, and then later that day while visiting a less-active member we found out that it was one of those less-active member’s friends that robbed the bank!!!

 And then later we ran into a crazy person who was making all sorts of weird signs and saying things like "your name tags mean nothing to me" and "you don't have to keep secrets from me!" and well we found out later from a person we just happened to street contact who ended up knowing the crazy guy making those signs that apparently that guy thought he was the all mighty, Pharaoh, and Mohammed, and Christ, and was trying to put a curse on us... so as if that wasn't weird enough we found out that his friend who we street contacted into worshiped the Sun and thought that "God is the Sun, the Earth is the Mother, and the moon is their wedding ring." ....and it ended up he's a member as well! So yeah... we're definitely getting missionaries over to talk to him cause he was very nice and just had some well... interesting ideas about things. Anyway, then to wrap up that day we went to one of our investigators houses to try and visit with him and found out that he was going to visit a friend of his who was here from Egypt who was going to be sacrificing a lamb for his son’s birth... so that was very exciting! :P

Anyway, I also ended up getting a call late Thursday night from Bishop asking if I could throw together a number for church THAT Sunday!! So, I spent most of Saturday frantically practicing with Sis. Sampaio and we pulled together a very nice arrangement of Gesu Bambino. It felt GREAT to sing again! It'd been WAY too long! haha! anyway, so that's the condensed version of my CRAZY week! I've gotta run now - stay strong, carry on, and don't forget to be awesome!! :)

Mele Kelikimaka!

-Elder Powell

Summarizing - No down time

12/9/14

FAMILY!!!!!

So, sorry but this is going to be CRAZY!!!! Apparently the library closes MUCH earlier than expected and as such I am left with practically NO time to write much, but as a quick response...

It has remained very hot and very wet out here as tropical islands tend to do no matter what month of the year. (although it has cooled down SIGNIFICANTLY at night! and by significantly I mean it gets to maybe 75 but that's pretty cold for out here!) As for my week well, here's the very short, un-descriptive paragraph I sent to Elder Evans a couple minutes ago! :P haha!.

"Anyway, yeah it's been a CRAZY week! Basically summarizing it in a few sentences. We lost our investigators with baptismal dates, hooked up two of our single members for their first "date", found a homeless member and checked him into detox and rehab where he only stayed for a total of 1/2 a day (so that's still a fun work in progress) got THREE reactivation! (hopefully I didn't just jinx it and they all stop coming again!), got a member referral that turned into a new investigator with VERY GOOD outlooks, watched a Christmas parade (and drew more attention to ourselves than the people marching in the parade! haha!) We went fishing, went to the temple (AMAZING of course) are going to Pearl Harbor tomorrow had two amazing sessions of stake conference followed by a special missionary fireside given by a visiting GA (Elder Johnson from the Seventy) and now I'm trying to e-mail everyone with the library closing in 15 minutes!! WHOO!!! Life never slows down! :) haha! Anyway, much love and Mahalos!! DFTBA!!"

Anyway, I love you all and promise I will send MANY pictures and much more details next week of the crazy week we've been having and are continuing to have this week! I guess no down time is a good thing in the mission though! haha!

Aloha Nui Loa!

-Elder Powell

STAYING - Football - Charlie Brown

12/1/14

Aloha Family and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I hope everyone had an Ono thanksgiving week filled with many grindz and relaxation! It is exciting to hear about all the family gathering together and brings back many great memories. Oh and tell Brian if he wants something to do he could respond to the e-mail I sent him two weeks ago! :P haha! We also had the great pleasure out here of making new memories and enjoying some thanksgiving traditions Hawaiian style with the beautiful people of Kane'ohe! :)  Speaking of which I found out that I AM staying here in Kane'ohe at least one more transfer so I'll be here for Christmas, New Years and Dad's birthday! haha!

with Sis. Tani

 Honestly, I kind of have mixed feelings about all that stuff with transfers just because I LOVE Kane'ohe and the members and am VERY excited to be able to spend Christmas with them, but at the same time … I'm honestly starting to forget that there's more to the Hawaii Mission than just Kane'ohe. I'm starting to feel almost more just like a ward member than a missionary sometimes! If that makes any sense :P haha! BUT We did have some VERY exciting progress in this area in the last week!!  So I don't know if I mentioned last week that we were having a dinner/lesson at a member’s house and they had over one of our investigator families as well? Well it did happen and long story short the Mom and her two kids over 8 all agreed to be baptized and we put them on date for Dec 27th!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOOHOO!!!!!!!

Also we have another family (our dinner tonight actually) who has a friend that expressed desires to get baptized without ANYONE pushing him or anything!! So that's super exciting!! haha! We've only met him once at the Thanksgiving activities at the church but the member we were talking to about him said that she thinks he could be baptized by the end of the year!! So that's also super exciting!! :D

Anyway, I just realized I never even talked about Thanksgiving! :P hahaha! So yeah, thanksgiving day was GREAT! As you might image we weren't really able to do much so we really just cruised with members all day. We actually got up "SUPER EARLY" (according to our members) or just a half hour earlier than normal for us :P haha! to go play turkey bowl with the ward! :) We were hoping for a lot bigger turn out especially with non-members and LA's but we still had a blast (and don't worry mom it was flag and in fact pretty much any contact made was a minimum five yard penalty! haha!) But it was fun no matter what! I actually made a pretty cool 20ish yard run which was awesome! (although we still ended up turning over the ball and getting destroyed by the other team! haha!) But anyway, after a little morning exercise we cleaned up and went over to the stake center to start the days grinding! We had a ward lunch-in with CHOKE food!! (choke- pidgin for "a lot") and yet we had pretty much our average turn out for activities which is about 30. Consisting primarily of the bishopric, single sisters, and young couples with no family (or missionaries with no family! haha) but it was still very enjoyable and VERY good food!!

apparently this coconut tree got pretty kanak attacked as well

 So then after that I got MAJOR kanak attack and we went home, took a short nap, and then wrote thank you cards to a bunch of the members and ran all around town delivering them and wishing everyone a happy thanksgiving! :) But the best part had to be our dinner! We went to the Kapele's, this old traditional sort of Hawaiian family! While the food (for the most part) was of a more traditional mainland style it was still prepared INCREDIBLY!! I'm telling you Hawaiian's know how to cook!! (oh speaking of which, fun fact... two pairs of pants don't fit me anymore and the other two are getting tight... so hopefully I can get those let out soon. :P haha!) Anyway, they had an entire party so there was plenty of food and good people to talk to and overall just a great thanksgiving! :) 

It has been hard though with the holidays not only to stay focused as missionaries but for the members and investigators and everyone to focus at all on missionary work or learning or anything so that's been kind of hard but of course the church being as INCREDIBLE as it is has the PERFECT solution for that! :) He is the Gift!! I'm sure you are familiar with the video and cards by this point but if not GET FAMILIAR AND GET SHARING IT!!! It's hard to miss. Just go on lds.org and it's kind of dead center on the home page! haha! anyway, I'm VERY exciting for that and hopefully it will have some good effects on the mission work as well but if not at least it can help us all to keep our selves a little more focused on the true meaning of Christmas! (that and Charlie Brown Christmas, that always helps me to focus on the true meaning of Christmas as well! :) haha) Anyway, we've gotta get going but I love you all and know that I am VERY thankful for each and every one of you and for your prayers on our behalf! Time is still creeping by slowly as ever and yet it goes by! haha! I wish you all the best! Don't forget to be awesome! Mahalo and Aloha Nui Loa! :)

-Elder Powell

Click here He is the gift to watch the video Luke mentions  

SotW: John 3:16 (see He is the Gift card)