8/31/15
ALOHA OHANA!!!!!
Well in an effort to
avoid wasting time with pedantic jabbering (and at my fathers request) I
suppose I will just get right into the meat of things this week for us here in
the Kekaha ward (and surrounding areas).
These last two
weeks have been pretty crazy! Not a ton going on as far as your traditional
missionary work is concerned. We do have a couple investigators... One is an
older fellow who is very nice and very sincere in his desire to learn and so
far he seems to have really felt the spirit as well in lessons and at other
times. The only major hold up I can think of is that he is rather hearing
impaired. He definitely can hear! You just have to speak very VERY loud! But on
the bright side with how much shouting we seem to do at lessons with him I'm
starting to debate whether or not to count it as a lesson with his and the
neighbors on either side and in back as well! I guess there really are
advantages to proclaiming the Gospel with a loud voice! :) haha!
 |
| You are never to far from home to plank a little bit!! |
We have also been
teaching a GREAT family who most of them got baptized already a couple months
ago but now we're working on getting the husband baptized, the only problem
right now is... well... he's not her husband... they still haven't gotten
married... which seems to be an issue with actually quite a few families out
here. BUT we did talk with them and they talked with bishop and so on and so
forth and they agreed to start working on getting married and subsequently
getting baptized! Woohoo!!! :) The only other hold up with that is while they
agreed to get married and such... they, and everyone else here "stay on
Hawaiian time" basically meaning they aren't necessarily worried about when
anything happens or when they get things done. They just kind of relax and
"go with the flow" so... will he get baptized? Yes! Will either of us
be here to see it? ...well we're not too sure... but they did promise us both
me and Elder Chen invites to their wedding... even if we're back home... :P but
anyway, I digress! Back into the important things!!
So those are a few of our
investigators but other than those couple of lessons most of this week was
actually filled with one of my favorite things to do as a missionary......
DRIVING!!! Man, I definitely really enjoy being in the more remote parts of the
islands but it is also hard when you do have to do things in the not remote
parts of the islands and it takes a long time to get there! (also as a side
note and clarification in case you couldn't tell driving is NOT my favorite
thing to do as a missionary and is actually rather unproductive...) Anyway this
area is definitely not as bad as Ka'u on the big island where we had to drive
for 2 hours to get to the stake center and an 1 1/2 for district meeting but it
is still long. It’s about 1/2 an hour here to get to Kalaheo where the next
closest missionaries are (the other set of Elders in our district) and about 45min
to an hour to get to Lihue where all the shopping is and the stake center and
such. Well thankfully we don't have to go into Lihue very often if at all on a
normal week, but... well this week made up for all those other weeks where we
didn't with travelling there 4 days in a row!! (soon to be 5!) It was a LOT of
travel time... But it was all for good reasons!
Thursday we had a zone
meeting where the zone leaders train us on what President Warner trained them
on at MLC. Friday we had one of the Assistants to the President come and do a
district leader training meeting with me and the other district leader on the
island. Saturday we had the adult session of stake conference and Sunday we the
general session. All of which took place is Lihue and all of which were
INCREDIBLE and VERY uplifting and edifying!! So anyway, long story short. We
had a lot of traveling back and forth but in the end it was all worth it
because every trip helped us to be better missionaries, better leaders and
better Latter-day Saints! :)
Alright last thing from this
week! My sort of lesson learned and advice for each of you from what I got out
of Stake Conference is, as I'm sure you are aware of, the importance ESPECIALLY
in these days of Keeping the Sabbath-day holy! I won't go on too deep into all
of it because I'm out of time but it suffices me to say as the spirit confirmed
to me this last weekend that it is INCREDIBLY important and that ALL of us in
and out of the church could really use a much deeper study into and observation
of the Sabbath-day and learning to keep it holy! Anyway, as Callie would say
"and that's it!" :) I hope you all had a fantastic week! I love you
and will continue to pray for each and every one of you in the coming week! Know
that your prayers are felt here as well on our behalf! Mahalo nui loa and aloha
au ia oe!
-Elder Powell
p.s. we took a hike this
morning in Kokee state park and the view at the end of the hike was just
INCREDIBLE.... at least that is for the couple of minutes we could see it
before the fog rolled in and we could hardly see 5 feet in front of us.. but we
still got some cool pictures even with the fog so here are some of those! :) |
| We also ran into some mountain goats at the end of the trail! :) They seemed to be just as interested in us as we were in them! |
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