6/20/16
Aloha ohana!!
Wow! It sounds like you
have all had a wonderful week full of spiritually uplifting messages and some
good fun in there as well! :) We're trying our best to match your awesomeness
out here in the mission field but that's becoming harder to do as you guys always
seem to have something new to report on that just brightens my day and leaves
me smiling because of your innate goodness! Thank you for your wonderful
examples of faith and righteousness!! :)
Anyway, so jumping right
into my update for the week out here in Hawaii!!
This week was full of
some of the most exciting and the most stressful days of my whole mission!
Things have, for whatever reason been extra tense out here. Although I suppose
it is simply a truism that anytime you move forward with renewed faith and zeal
that the adversary increases his efforts as well to try and stop the good you
want to accomplish. So it has been, that ever since that especially spiritual
zone conference and meeting with Elder Renlund that the trials and challenges
facing us out here have only seemed to get that much more difficult. But who
cares! Trials will ALWAYS come when you're trying to do good but that's NO
reason to stop doing good! In fact that's exactly when you need to try a little
harder and push yourself a little farther! So it has been with this week! But
anyway, enough of my general statements, so a few specific events from this
last week.
We had some exciting
progress with the area! First, the less-active member I kind of mentioned to
you last week that said "yeah, I'll come back to church next week!"
Well guess what? He actually did!!! And he stayed for all three hours!! It's so
incredible how some people, really all they need is just a simple little
invitation! :) We also got to know this new family a little better. They are
very young, (in fact the husband is a year younger than me!! ...man, I feel
old!) but they have been married for almost six months now and he is in the
Marines and they're just kind of struggling with adjusting to real life and
everything here in Hawaii and so we went over and talked with him and MAN, they
are great! They are such a great example of facing trials and pushing through
and even though they're young they have a lot of faith you can just tell! :)
Speaking of military, we
also had this really cool experience with a group of other young adults (all of
which were also brought over here to Hawaii by different branches of the
military and all of which were also within a year or two of myself). They were
out on the steps in front of their building, just kind of relaxing and we
started talking and ended up finding out that one of them in particular was
very religious and had a lot of really good questions. Anyway, long story short
(because I am quickly running out of time here) she opened up to up and said
literally the night before we showed up she was very troubled by some of the
questions she had and some of the problems she was facing in life and cried out
to the Lord for help for the first time in quite a while, and then not even 24
hours later, there we were! She felt that we were an answer to her prayers
which was AWESOME!! She also felt a great need to go to church that Sunday,
which was extra exciting until she informed us she would be going to her
regular Baptist church, but hey, it's a start! She said she definitely wouldn't
mind checking out our church sometime and agreed to let us come back and talk
more with her sometime about some of her questions and concerns! So yeah!
Pretty exciting stuff!! :)
We also are really
excited because we just met this new part-member family this past week and come
to find out, they are VERY closely related to this other family of recent
converts in our ward! So we already have an awesome in with them!! Also our
main progressing investigator (T) we just found out gave birth about a week
ago... so the lessons are kinda being put on hold for now I suppose, but it's
ok! I'm confident that she'll continue to make progress whether I am here to
witness it or not! :)
Well, I've gotta run, but
thank you again for all your hard work and your love and dedication to each
other and to the gospel! I love you all and look forward to talking more in the
future!! Mahalo nui loa and aloha au ia oe!!
-Elder Powell
 |
| Luke - golfing on P-day |
No comments:
Post a Comment