Leaving Kane'ohe

1/12/15

Aloha Ohana!!

and Malo e lelei!

And that's just about all the Tongan I know... BUT it sure won't be all the Tongan I know once I'm done in my next area!!! (hopefully!) That's right! I'm getting transferred!! I'm going from Kane'ohe ALL THE WAY TO..... Hauula... which well.. actually isn't that far at all... in fact it's the closest area to my last area as you can be without still being in the same stake. It's like a 10-15min drive from our house right now. haha! BUT still, as I've come to learn here in Hawaii not very far still makes a BIG difference! The islands are small and yet there is SO much here at the same time!! So anyway, other cool perks, Hauula is in the Laie Zone and as such we will have all the benefits of being... well... basically in the Hawaii equivalent of Utah... Hauula, Laie, and Kahuku are seriously more heavily concentrated Mormon towns than Mesa, Gilbert and Queen Creek! It will also be interesting though because it's also apparently very country up there as opposed to Kane'ohe which is VERY city!

Anyway, so yeah, anyway, instead of continuing to ramble on about an area that I still no nothing about because I haven't gotten there yet I'll just sum it all up in saying. I am leaving Kane'ohe 4th ward and Elder Manning and am being transferred up to Hauula 2nd (English) and Hauula 6th (Tongan) wards with Elder Reintmister. Anyway, I actually came out with him and while I didn't know him in the MTC the little bit I did get to know him at the mission home and from what I've heard about him from other missionaries who served with him on Big Island he is REALLY awesome and a really hard worker which is GREAT! And speaking of hard work, I was not about to leave Kane'ohe without having one of the greatest weeks here in a LONG time!! :) haha!

Elder Manning and I both committed to just give it everything we had (not that we don't do that every week) and it totally paid off!

And of course the week has been filled with many sad and yet happy, farewells to many of the Members, LA's and even non-members whom I have come to know and love here in the Faithful Fighting Kane'ohe 4th ward where I have now spent the first 1/4th of my mission!! (Crazy huh?! I've been out for 6 months already!!!) Before you know it I'll be back and drowning in technology and school and all those other problems that we have the privileges of not having to worry about out here! :) (Although I am VERY concerned about how much I'll have to eat in my next area and how much weight I'll gain because of that which I assume is not something that too many of you folks have to worry about back home... :P haha).

Anyway, love you all and I'm glad to hear that you are all doing Sai Pe! :) If I forgot to respond to anything or if I just am overlooking anyone or anything be sure to let me know cause I tend to be a bit of an air head especially out here! :P haha! It's so much harder to cram all of my communication home into a short e-mail than daily conversations but it all works out in the end! :) Anyway, stay strong, carry on and don't forget to be awesome!!

Ofa atu!!

-Elder Powell

Fireworks, Movies and a Crazy Storm

1/5/15

Dear Family!!

It's hard to believe that is has only been a week since I last talked to you! SO much has happened and yet at the same time it feels like none of it has happened! (because that makes sense :P haha) Anyway, we started off our week with a great visit with our pretty much only investigator…he's still great and making progress and still has a very strong desire. :P Anyway, New Years out here was pretty amazing!! We got together with some other missionaries and watched fireworks from there house and holy cow was there a show!! There was a cul de sac close by these other missionaries home and all the houses there had blocked off the circle and filled it with all kinds of fireworks and fire crackers and bottle rockets and fountains and everything!!! It was CRAZY! haha! And what made it even more crazy is we found out after the fact from one of our members that apparently Fireworks are pretty much entirely illegal in Hawaii as of a few years ago but it's just nobody listens and nobody really enforces it because of all the other crazy stuff they have to deal with on that night so all the neighborhoods still manage to put on some awesome firework shows! :) haha! Anyway, we also got to spend New Years Eve as a Zone together and watched Despicable Me 2 and then on New Years Day we got to get together again and watch The Saratov Approach (SUPER good and also super intense!!) It made me almost apprehensive to contact referrals but... well... it's Hawaii. Even the homeless people are full of Aloha as we found out again last night when one tried to buy us some Musubi's! haha

Anyway, so in other news, another month and a half have come and gone and all too fast transfers are coming up! This week will be our last full week and we should know by Saturday if I am staying or leaving, although I feel that I will almost definitely be leaving as I've been here for 1/4th of my mission already (isn't that crazy!?!?! It's been almost 6 months already!!!! Holy Moly!!) Anyway, I will be sure to let you all know when and where I will be! :)

Well I hope things start to warm up for you folks back in AZ soon (although I suppose you're probably enjoying the break from the heat) We have also been freezing at night out here! (but again I suppose I have softened up even more to extreme temperatures because low 90's is VERY HOT and high 60's is VERY COLD... so really I don't have a major reason to complain! :P haha! Anyway, thank you again for all you guys do and all that you are!! I love each and every one of you SO much and pray for you continually! :) Happy New Year! I hope that it is filled with many service projects, spiritual experiences, and of course a LOT of Star Wars and Doctor Who!! :) haha!

Stay strong, Carry on and Don't forget to be awesome!!! :)

Aloha Nui Loa!

-Elder Powell

p.s. I can't believe I almost forgot to tell you about the CRAZY storm we had the other day!!! While it didn't last too incredibly long it was seriously bigger than any of the so called "hurricanes" we had in the past months! In fact I heard from some members that there were hurricane force winds as one point or at least close to it! Tons of trees were knocked over and while thankfully our house was not damaged at all in any way, water did seep in through the windows cause of how strong the wind was so we had to move our beds and everything to the middle of the room! haha!

Holidays and Fishing

12/29/14

Family!!

Glad to hear everyone is doing well!! I’m learning why they say the Holidays on a mission are so hard! It's not because you're homesick and crying and stressed all the time, it's because getting back into the "normal" flow of things is worse than coming off of winter break and getting back into school! The last two weeks have just been filled with all sorts of fun and odd activities and ward parties and family visits to the point where it's been a challenge for not just us but the members and non-members alike to get used to us walkin' around and knocking on doors again :P haha! anyway, we're doin it though and hopefully after the new year is officially ushered in we can really buckle down and finish what might be my last week in Kane'ohe out strong!! :)

We had President Interviews! That was good! It's always nice to be able to see in person and council with our mission president.  

After skyping with you guys we spent the rest of our Christmas visiting with the Threet's and then fishing off the side of the road with them and one of our other members. Anyway, all three of us caught something which was INCREDIBLE especially since Oahu has pretty much been fished out especially with the small kine fishing we were doing :P haha! anyway, then we had a great dinner with the Kapeles where we enjoyed some home made Haupia (one of the only ways I will eat coconut!) and went to the stake center to watch Frozen! :) haha! That movie is a lot more enjoyable when it's not being sung and reenacted by multiple 5 year old girls. :P haha! anyway, and since then we've just been slowly working our way back into the groove of things only to be interrupted again by New Years this week :P haha! Anyway, I love you all and wish you the best! Thank you again for all that you are and all that you do! :) I pray for you always! stay strong, carry on, and don't forget to be awesome!! :)

Anyway, I love you all and wish you the best! TTFN!!Elder Powell

p.s. When you watched Into the Woods were the Giants in the sky? Cause last I checked they were in San Francisco.

-Elder Powell

 

Guess what the most popular Christmas gift is here in Hawaii? 

(hint: it's chocolate covered macadamia nuts...)

We don't kid around when it comes to eating "raw fish" over here! hahaha! :)

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)