That Crafty Little Continuum, Woo...I did it! Hikes and Lobsters

9/14/15

ALOOHHAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

It always makes me so happy to hear from you!! Although If I am being honest I am starting to question if e-mails come around once a week or twice a week now because the days in between sure don't feel like it was a full week. Although I guess it was. Time just slips right past you when you're not looking, that crafty little continuum. But anyway, speaking of time slipping away I better get into this letter before it slips away from me again and I can't tell you about all the awesome things that happened with in those ever hastening days!!

So the week started out on a spiritual high when I got the opportunity and great blessing to be able to perform my first baptismal interview for an investigator in the Kalaheo ward (the only other companionship in our district :P haha!) who got baptized this last week. It was funny because he was a little nervous but I don't think he realized I was just as if not more nervous than he was!! It reminded me all too much of my mission down in Yuma when my companion (who was also a first time district leader) had to do an interview for someone in the district and afterwards the investigator came out of the room with a sigh of relief and proclaimed "woo.. I did it!!" after which she left the church and my companion let out a great sigh of relief as well and said "wooo.... I did it!" haha! :) But anyway, that really was a great experience to be able to see and feel firsthand what it means to discern people’s needs and ask inspired questions and so forth which we do anyway in lessons but this one was just very strong and clear promptings and it was just great! :)

As for the rest of the week in our area I had a chance to work with Elder Kang on exchanges for a day. He's one of the Elders from aforementioned Kalaheo ward and Jim might be interested to know that he is from Korea, although he speaks very fluent and actually rather eloquent English because he went to an "American school" for most of his life before and is actually an English major at BYU too...) but anyway. He's a really cool guy and it was fun to work with him even just for a day. But the rest of the week Elder Chen and I still had fun as we worked extra hard and got to see little bits of success every single day pretty much!! We have made a lot of progress with our hearing impaired investigator who came to church again this week for two hours instead of one and hopefully will stay for all three next week! We also came really close to setting him with a baptismal date although he's still hesitant to make that specific commitment but I sure it will come soon enough!

We also have spent a lot of time this week with the many pure Hawaiians that live here in Kekaha. I think I mentioned before that because we are the closes part of the islands to Ni'ihau that we have quite a few full-blooded Hawaiians from there who speak better Hawaiian than English (which you won't find pretty much anywhere in the islands any more. But anyway, one of those families that all came from that island a long time ago and is still pretty much pure Hawaiian is the K family. I believe I mentioned before about K K, he's our Hawaiian investigator, but this last week we also started teaching J K, a small kine pastor for the Hawaiian church in Waimea, who happens to live next to his cousin D K, an active and very strong member of our church. And those are all just a fraction of the many many K's that all come from Ni'ihau and are now scattered around Kekaha! :)

In other news we also hosted our first ever ward FHE!!! The Book of Mormon class I think we mentioned before is still going on (and having great success I might add) every Thursday night, but just to change it up a little bit and to include some of the younger generation, the ward has decided to have a FHE every other week in class and this last one was the start of that!! It was GREAT!!! We actually had such a huge turnout we almost had to switch to the primary room from the relief society room because it is a little bigger but at the rate things are going we will be the cultural hall in no time! haha! Anyway, it really was a great experience and a lot of fun for all of us! :) Anyway, I think that pretty much wraps up the week for us over here on Kaua'i. We're just learning to get by with what we have a be happy with the rest just like the rest of the community here who can't afford milk and cereal... :P haha! Well I hope you all have a FANTASTIC week and a great time with whatever adventures may come to you through the course of that week!

Mahalo nui loa and aloha au ia oe!!

-Elder Powell :)

p.s. we had a pretty cool hike this morning with an awesome look out over the Na Pali coast line.... that was again cover in fog like the last one... haha! But it was still fun!! :) We also had a cool lobster dinner last night courtesy of one of our investigators brothers who went night diving this last week and picked us up some lobsters from the coral reef! :)