Oposicion en todas las Cosas :D

Hi fam bam :)

This week has been awesome! It has been great to see the lord strngthen me and my companion in all that we do. The reason that I titled this opposicion in all things is because this week our # 1 investigator dropped us. It was quite disapointing. We did all that we could and he even knew that he needed to be baptized. But he pretty much said he couldn´t live the standards. We told him about repentance and the beauty of forgiveness. Also we taught about the gift of the spirit and how he would be so much happier and have a better life. But, he used his agency and said he didn´t want that. :( It was very sad. We had been teaching him for two weeks.

Guess what happened the next day though. A flippin saweet miracle :D A guy named Manuel called us and said, ¨Hi, I´d like to meet with you. I found your website and am ready to be taught about this churh.¨ Yeah, I´m pretty sure the Lord is the greatest person ever. We have been working so hard and the lord gave us someone in the least expected way ever! :) So we taught him and he agreed to be baptized! He is so prepared and just such a normal person. I say normal because he has a job, a family, is about 40 and is doing well in life. (You don´t really find that here in spain) In the lesson though he said, Ï don´t know why but about three months ago after 30 years of not having interest in religion, I had a distinct impression to start looking and I found your website.¨ It´s almost too good so we will see what happens with him :)

I love the mission. I want to say it again :) I LOVE the mission! Can I tell you why?

I like the mission because I love learning the ways that the lord works. It has been interesting to watch as we serve and do the hard, tiring work and THEN see the tender mercies. Time and time again the lord has answered my prayers. They haven´t been miraculous answers but they have been miraculous to me. I haven´t had an unanswered prayer yet. I have learned how to recognize the spirit. That is what I have treasured the most. I have also learned to be obedient to those promptings. That has been a harder one to master but I have had some great experiences in doing so.

I can´t wait for this next week. It´s challenging, exhausting, and lots of work. But it is the work of the Lord. Isn´t that awesome! Woo.

Um that about wraps it up. :) Love you all!

Love Elder Powell 

Hi Family :) So I have kind been catching up on writing a few other missionaries and I don´t really have alot of time to write so this letter is going to be a little different than normal, but this week has been awesome! We have seen miracles and we have continued to work hard. In doing that, the lord has blessed us greatly! We have met or passed all "Standards of excellence". The standards set by the mission president. Ok got to go But this is my companions perspective of the week. Enjoy! :

 

Me and Elder Powell have three baptismal dates set and later today in one of our lessons we hope to set another one. One of those people is Paco. He is the coolest guy ever. He is very old and we actually found him by accident. We were going to a members house to eat and didn´t know which one is was. Knocked on his door and we were able to come back and teach him. He is progressing and reading everything that we give him to do. He had surgery on his knee and he is always home. Which is perfect because he is always willing to hear from us. Then we have one family that wants to be baptized but the dad won´t let us come by right now and teach. So that makes things a little challenging. Things are moving though and we are always contacting every day to try and find someone to teach. We need to work with our ward more though. We came to the conclusion that the Provo mission is so successful because they have members that desire to share the gospel. If our members really know that this is the church of christ they need to be willing to share it with others. So that is what we have been doing this last week and probably this coming week. Well I got some great news. Our mission goal for lessons in a week is 20. We got 24! WOOHOO!
Now it is story time, or even better ¨STORIES TIME!!¨
1. We were contacting on the street and talking to this lady about the gospel. I thought that she was interested but I still don´t understand spanish very good. Anyway, it seemed like Elder Powell was getting sidetracked. Then basically he kind of just walked off. So I just followed my trainers lead. Then we walked into a store. I was so confused. Come to find out that a seagull that had a broken wing just walked into this store. Makes sense why he was sidetracked. All the people in there were scared of the bird though. So me and Elder Powell took off our missionary names for a second and became ¨Bird Patrol¨ then as we were walking out I told people it was my bird. They really liked that. ( Ok this is Elder Powell speaking now: I did not just walk off. We had finished talking to her and gave her a card and she wasn´t that interested. THEN we walked into the store. Ok just had to settle that.)
2. We eat at this ladies house every week, Marilo. She has her mom live with her too because she has alzheimers. Her name is Angela. She makes me laugh every time. Anyway, when we eat she is always talking about her mom and how she wants to see her mom. Angela is 90 years old... either her mom is 120 years old or she is not alive... She isn´t alive. Anyway, it is about every 5 minutes and I have to do everything to not laugh at her. So we were eating and you kind of have to tell her that she needs to eat or she simply won´t do it. She always said she doesn´t have the appetite right now and then right after she would start eating. She is the best. Then she went to the bathroom like crazy. I bet she went about 15 times in a 1 hour appointment. She forgot that she went to the bathroom sometimes. And one time, there is no way that she had time to go. I think what happened was she went into the bathroom, thought that she went already, flushed the toilet and came back out. Anyway, needless to say I laugh about this all the time. And we get to go there this week again.
3. There is this guy that we walk by all the time. He just laughs uncontrollably at us. Sometimes when we see him we walk past him because he will laugh at us the whole time he can see us. He is totally crazy and homeless. But you can hear his laugh for about 1/2 mile away. Crazy

4. This is titled ¨Exploding Ball¨ So every saturday we go and play soccer. We ride the bus for about 25 minutes and it is the best! So we had a ball and we got off the bus and started juggling the ball. Elder Barbosa was juggling and passed to Elder Powell, Elder powell touched it once and then it rolled into the street. This all happened within about 10 seconds of us getting off the bus. It rolled under the bus and you see elder powell just running after it. It stops right underneath the bus and it explodes! It was just like a gun shot went off! Super loud. And then, the best part was that it looked like we shot a bird. This feather looking stuff just went everywhere you can imagine! It really looked like someone had a gun, shot it and hit a bird with the feathers going everywhere! I laughed for about 2 minutes. Awesome!

 

Hope you liked the stories :) I love you family. I see the changes in peoples lives all from the gospel of Jesus christ.

The Mission is the greatest.

Love Elder Powell

Milagros out the Wazoo

Hi Family!

I just saw you yesterday and it was the greatest. Today is the greatest! But there are some things that I wanted to share this last week.

We had a training on friday by the Ayudantes or AP´s to the president. They talked about the simplicity of prayer and when we have specific prayers we can have specific answers. But they also taught about continually praying. I´m not gonna lie. It´s really hard to concentrate on the things you are praying for, all the time..... unless your on a mission. :P So friday night we got back to our piso and we had very few solid plans, and very few people to pass by.

So we prayed. We told our Heavenly Father exactly what we were going to do that night. We told him where we would be going and when we would be there. Like I said, pretty specific. We then told him of our faith and confidence we had in him. We then set out to our first cita. On the way we met a guy who came up to us and asked for a BOM. we taught him a lesson on the street and it was great.

We got to the cita and no one was there.

So we went to our next plan. On the way we met another boy who was 17 and he was really curious about josephsmith. So we taught him all about the restauracion and he is super interested! 

We showed up at the church and taught a man while we waited for a baptism to start. (It wasn´t in our plans to teach him but he was just there) :) After we taught him he said he wanted to get baptized and he came to church on sunday! But he is in the Hermanas area so we´re not going to be able to teach him more.

*Milagro at the Baptism. So long story short with the baptism. We were there waiting for the Hermanas baptism to start. 12 year old girl. She is super prepared. 15 minutes before it started the mom decided she couldn´t be baptized. So we got everyone together and prayed for her specifically that she could be baptized. And then we continued to pray while the misioneras talked to her. 10 minutes later she gathered her thoughts and allowed her daughter to be baptized! We gave alot of thanks after that.

Then we walked to our next Cita and on the way we met this man from Norway. We taught him about the restauracion and he had a ton of questions. He set up a time we could meet with him this next week.

Our appointment failed that we were walking to. But right before we were about to leave that part of the city we got a call from a less active and she was in a lot of pain and needed a blessing! It was a miracle because we were literally like 3 minutes away from her house.

 

The Lord knows everything. As we prayed and worked our hardest that day the Lord answered our prayers. Everything that we had planned failed. But the Lord made up for it in his way. As we did our part as we continually prayed and worked, we knew we had the lords promise to answer our prayers. And HE DID answer our prayers. We met person after person who were guided right to us. It was Amazing.

 

So.... Say your prayers :)

 

Love you all. The mission is the greatest.

-Elder Powell