Balut, Baptism, Bellows Air Force base

7/6/15

Aloha ohana!!

 Thank you so much for the e-mails as well as all the extra little boost of strength and encouragement sent throughout the week via you prayers and thoughts on my behalf. They are felt and frankly I think they are the only thing keeping me alive out here half the time! haha! Anyway, that being said I'm glad you all sound like you had an amazing (or at least eventful week!) Glad everything went well with picking up Joe, travelling to Utah and celebrating the many exciting events involved in this last week with so many exciting and awesome people! Be sure to tell all the family I say hi and that I love them and will be back there to celebrate with them soon enough! :)

As for my letter home this week I have decided to send the letter "B" ......that is all. Hope you enjoyed that letter and I will talk to you next week! :)

-Elder Powell

...........just kidding! well kind of... I will write more but overall this week really was one that could probably be best described as a "B" week. "B" for Baptism, Balut, Bellows Air Force base, Beautiful fireworks, and Burning fevers.... I guess some of those were a bit of a stretch... but anyway, let me explain a little more one day at a time.

So first we started the week with trying to wrap everything up before transfers which took place this last Wednesday. Even though Elder Baker and I are staying together and staying in this area, transfer week is still always one filled with a lot of running around saying hi and bye to people, signing journals, trading pictures, and in this specific instance celebrating at a member's house with some fresh Balut!! (see picture) This time it was significantly harder to choke down than the last one I had approximately one year ago in Kane'ohe with my trainer Elder Basag, but I still got it down without too much difficulty so yeah, that was fun! It was especially fun to watch all the other missionaries try it for the first time and watch their disgusted faces as they got past the initial shock only to bite down and feel the crunch of a beak of pull a feather out of their teeth! haha! 

 Anyway, then on Wednesday (the actual day of transfers) we spent most of the day driving back and forth from town. First we drove with some other missionaries so that they wouldn't be alone between dropping his companion off at the airport and picking up his new one. Then we drove back to Mililani so we could do our studies and meet with a few people before driving back to town for my dentist appointment (thankfully all of that is finally taken care of! ....and now my companion has to go in pretty soon.... haha!) But the BEST part of Wednesday by FAR was getting a call from our ward mission leader saying that J wanted to get baptized as soon as possible!!! So of course without any hesitation we set up his interview times got things squared away with the bishop and other members of the ward and set everything up so that he could be baptized yesterday!!!!! It was so awesome!!!!

Anyway, as further proof that the Lord's hand truly was in J's baptism it is fun to note that we had originally set his baptismal date for July 4th and for whatever reason we kept it as that even knowing that things were getting more and more complicated every day and things probably we not going to work themselves out to reach that date. So finally as we were reporting out numbers last Sunday we decided we had better drop his date because things were still up in the air and probably weren't going to settle in one week.... BUT THE DID!! AND HE MADE IT ALMOST EXACTLY ON THE DATE PERVIOUSLY PLANNED (well plus one day but that was just human error on a few things) and yeah it was just super awesome and a super spiritual service and now we're working towards J and her baptismal date and honestly things are looking pretty good for that as well! But we'll keep you updated on all of that!

 :) Anyway, sorry I spent way too much time on all of that and other stuff and now I'm almost out of time so I'll hurry through the rest of this week. Thursday we had service in the morning with a rather interesting less-member of the ward.... how do you help people who genuinely think they are active but don't show up to church, read their scriptures, etc... It's an odd situation that missionaries have apparently been trying to figure out for years now... so yeah. And then Friday we got to go down to Bellows Air Force base to meet up with the rest of our ward who had been camping there all week and had a nice pot-luck dinner and played Frisbee for a little while. There was actually a very good turnout which was great for most of the ward (but not so great for those of us left back in Mililani all week who had to try and work with what little of the ward was left here :P haha).

And finally Saturday was filled with preparations for J's baptism, celebrating the 4th with other missionaries (since the mission president had up stop proselyting early that day for the holiday) and watching fireworks (from a rather significant distance) over Pearl Harbor. Anyway, so yeah a very eventful week that will hopefully be followed up by another eventful week hopefully with a little more missionary related events mixed into the other excitement. :) Well I've gotta run but I love you all and I'm trying to do everything I can to make you proud and to live up to the standard of excellence that all of you have set before me. I am grateful for your example you have set and continue to set and know that I am praying for all of you every day! Have a fantastic week and a fantastic rest of your summer vacation. Aloha au ia oe!! :)

-Elder Powell

p.s. If I ever forget to explain something in an e-mail or if you have specific questions about things just let me know cause most of the time I just get lost in my own train of thought and I'm sure I miss things from week to week...