Wow!! Just Wow :)

Hi everyone!

How is everyone doing!? 

We did a ton of missionary work this week. :) From teaching in parks, blessing of children, performing miracles, finding the prepared, serving investigators, changing lives and walking until we can´t feel our feet. It is the greatest. :)

Park Story: So We were having a pretty tough day and had had no lessons. We were walking and we passed this lady just eating a sandwich and we kept going. When suddenly both of us, me and my companion, just turned around and we started talking to her. We got to know her and it turns out she was just visiting spain for three days and then was going to head back to argentina. Heres the cool part. The day before she was planning to head down to morocco when she got an overwhelming feeling of lonliness. She didn´t know why she was here on earth or her purpose. She has tried praying and was ready to receive an answer. Then we turned up. We ended up teaching her the plan of salvation and she is going to be baptized in argentina. It was a powerful lesson.

Blessing of Children: We hadn´t visited this less active family in the four transfers i have been here when we finally decided to go two days ago. We get there and it turns out to be a part member family and the husband was listening very intently and has decided he wants to come to church. Anyway the mom said that she has been asking the bishop to bless her 4 yr old daughter who has been very sick for the past month. What do you know, then we showed up. My companion gave her the simplest and sweet blessing I have heard. I thought my companion was her father by the way he was talking. Anyway after the blessing she stood up and was laughing and smiling and singing like a brand new girl.

Finding the prepared: We have found 9 new investigators and about 7 of them are paraguayans. Yes I am now learning a third language :D Guadaneen. Anyway we have been teaching these families and they have been prepared by angels or something. Everyone has there problems but it feels good to have people to teach. :)

Oh and that super prepared spaniard has been asking for a CTR Ring and just bought a White tie for his baptism! But.... he didn´t come to church :( Like I said, EVERYONE has their problems. But we are being patient :)

Ok just looked at the clock!! 6 minutes left!

Kam Kilbourne Challenges are the best!! When they come you will love them. Just don´t ask for them ;P

There were a ton of funny small things that happened. But.... Can´t remember them.

The lord is guiding us even if we don´t know it. We have the spirit even if sometimes we don´t feel it. Just be good. :)

I don´t know how but the mission is the Greatest! Ok I do know how, and it is still the best!! :D

Love Elder Powell

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day Dad! Its kind of sad that we dont get to talk to our fathers on fathers day, but I guess its ok though! I hope you have the best fathers day Ever! Love you.

Ok so this week was quite good! For one thing we found 5 new investigators! That was a definite plus! 3 of them are from Paraguay. Paraguayans are the best. So open to the spirit. Also we found this lady who had to flee from the ivory coast. Her culture is very strange there, but she pretty much left everything and came so she wouldnt be killed. Very sad story. But she is here with her 10 month old and she has found the happiest message in the World :) Christ lives and has restored his church on the earth so we can be happy and return to live with him! :D Can´t get much better than that!

Little bit of sad news. The perfect spanish investigator named Manuel, who has already finished doctrine and covenants and is asking for a patriarchal blessing.... can´t get baptized on friday because he didn´t come to church on sunday! He only has to wait an extra 3 more days though. He is going to be baptized on sunday  after church! :) I´m so excited for him it is rediculous. And my companion will be baptizing him!

Oh we also had a baptism for this nigerian guy and it was all in English, which was really weird actually... but after his baptism he just gave me the biggest hug and said,¨I feel so clean.¨ It was so simple but so pure, I can´t describe the feelings. I wish everyone could feel and share that.

The Spirit is powerful and really can let you know ALL things. All. It says it in the scriptures but I never really tested it out. Its true though :) You should test it too.

So yeah! The mission is still the greatest! And still hardest thing ever! I love it.

Love, Elder Powell

 P.S. Today we went inside a castle! It was pretty amazing!

Junio!

Hi family! So transfers were yesterday and I am still in malaga and I´m Still training. But now I am also district leader! I have a feeling the mission isn´t ever going to get easy :P But it will always be satisfying! I´m kind of excited but also nervous. It´s going to be great though. If the Lord calls me i know I can do it. :) It makes things alot easier when you realize who is the one making the callings.

 

This week has been very interesting. So first, one of our investigators went to jail. That was not good. She was there for one day because she resisted the police. Anyway we decided to drop her. I think it was a good choice. :) Right now we literally have one investigator. I don´t know what happened either. We had 14 as of two weeks ago and now we have one. All of our zone is like that. I don´t know what the lord is trying to teach us but we have been humbled. It is going to be a good week as we once again start over with a clean slate and start harvesting :)

 

Crazy story time: So we are teaching this recent convert and His wife is an investigator. So we are there teaching her when Alberto the recent convert says he is feeling sick. (Hes about 60) So he walks out of the room and I get this bad feeling. We hear him start shuffling really fast and then we hear a knock and a thud. We all jump up and there he is passed out in the hallway and his two 30ish year old sons trying to help him up. I thought he was dead. Which honestly i wasn´t too worried about since we know about the whole plan of salvation thing. Anyway they lift him up when he passes out again. Now this is where chaos breaks loose. Conchi goes hysteric and runs into her room screaming. The one son who catches him looks like he is having his final moments with his father. I don´t know what was going through his head. The other brother was yelling for someone to call 061 emergency when he had the phone in his hand and the member who was with us got all of her stuff and left. Then there was me and elder buckway standing quite calmly as we watched everything happen haha :) Everything turned out fine and he was just low on sugar. But it was a strange experience to see the reactions of his family who weren´t members of the church. If he was dead that was it for them. They would never see him again. I really am glad to know about this gospel.

 

Oh elder buckway got offered drugs. We left that area pretty fast after that :D

 

This weekend we had stake conference in Granada. That was really cool. A member of the seventy over the europe are came and spoke to us. It was great because they talked about the role of the priesthood in the family which was perfect for our one investigator who was there. Also they talked about the process of a seed  and faith growing. I always forget how basic the gospel is. If we feel like we don´t have faith or we don´t know how to grow faith, well Alma 32-34 is perfect. I am going work on strengthening my faith. The scriptures are the best! They have answers to literally everything!

 

I love you all! The mission is the greatest!

 

Love Elder Powell

Trial of My Faith

Don´t Ever Pray for hard things to happen!! God will give you trials if you ask them. So don´t do it. Ever!!!

 

Hello mom, dad, jared and tori, rachel, rebecca, tanner, adam and any other person reading this :) This week was fantastically hard! You know how I was talking about prayer in one of my other emails and how the lord answers prayers? Yeah, so I was pretty much praying and telling the lord how easy it has been to find prepared people who will just get baptized after the first lesson, bad idea. (Of course we find these people after hours of tireless work contacting and asking for references and teaching) 

I then prayed that I wanted to find people who weren´t so prepared and that I would actually have to work to get them baptized. Soo the lord answered my prayer this past week..... No investigators came to church. We only found one new investigator and we had to drop like three other investigators! One lady that we set a baptismal date with has suddenly become uninterested. And to top it off Our miracle investigator we found last week dropped us, through text, during church. By that point it seemed like a huge joke :P

I learned alot about the lords will, and the response of a loving father to a faithful son. I was humbled and I know how to find new people to teach now. I will always work hard and I will always trust in the lord like I have been doing..... I just won´t be praying for challenges any time in the near future :P i have decided that I am going to ask the lord for miracles and blessings instead.

I´ve been doing a lot of praying since then. :) We got our miracle investigator back and we have received a few references since then.

 

Another side story. I don´t think spaniards like american culture. So last P-day we rented out a soccer field for an hour to play some softball. We set up all the bases and we got about ten minutes into the game when the manager came out and said we couldn´t play baseball. So we changed to kickball and barely even allowed that! It was really funny though because none of the spanish missionaries knew any of the rules! After we went and had a barbecue in front of the senior couples piso and the cops got called on us for the barbecue smoke bothering someone! they were given a ticket and we were asked to leave :/ Haha it makes a great story though!

The mission is the greatest! The lord is helping us each day and I know he is watching over us. Have a great week!

 

Love Elder Powell

PS We have begun to create lightsabers (wha....wha..... WOOOO)