The appointment itself was totally divine!

 

 

 

Hey mom!!

 

This week was pretty good hear are the main things that happend:

1) Veronique prayed

2) Launching Leaders Seminar

3) Splits with the Bishop

4) Service for Ray

 

So one of the biggest things that happened was we had dinner with the Stake Presidents family and after he was driving us home and we were like "actually one of our investigators lives right by you would you like to meet her?" he siad that he would so we went over and had this really good lesson. It was with Veronique. She is french and is Jewish. She has been taking the lessons for about 4 months and knows it all in her mind she says but she just doenst know in her heart that Jesus is the Christ. The temple visitor center was cancled so we are doing it this week. But at the end of the lesson Veronique gave a beautiful prayer and closed it in the name of Jesus Christ. What a huge step! She is progressing well. Then we had this awesome zone training with Elder and Sister Jim Ritchie. They are serving their 8th mission! They have done so much service and the training was awesome. there is a lot more to that training that I have in my notes but dont have time to talk about. he has written some books that are appartently really good so after the mission I will definitly get one. Then we also had these really really good splits this week with the ward. The bishop apparently in the past had a bad experience with the Elders so him actually taking us out was huge. We saw this less active lady. The appointment itself was totally divine. When we got there and talked and after she was like "I needed this so badly and It wasn't just a coincidence that you showed up, you were sent" It was really cool. After the Bishop was really nice and excited and the split went really well. 

 

On Saturday we did service for this man named Ray because the Temple visitor center appointment was changed. This guy is hysterical. We were helping him rebuild some canoe holders. He has like 8 canoes in his backyard. He used to be in the military and was telling us the funniest stories. He is not a member. He is agnostic and says some stuff that is sad to hear, as in its sad that someone would actually think that. But other than that we had a really good week. Elder Christensen and I are trying to learn how to teach together. Oh ya we taught this 7th day adventist and had our butts handed to us. Basically he knew his stuff and claimed that he read and prayed about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith and did not recieve and answer. What are we supposed to say? hahaha so we testified and he said thats good because we are mormons we should believe that. What a lesson hahaha. And we found Powell Rd so we tracted that! Also We had dinner with a family who was asking about the family and when I told them that Courtney and I were serving and that we were the only 2 kids the husband was like "Tell your mom Kudos. For a single parent to be able to get both out is huge" And I agree with that. Thank you mom :) 

 

Love You!!!

Elder Powell

Im really excited to be here!

Hey Mom,

 

Wow what a week. It started off on Monday night getting transfer calls. IM OUT! I finally was transfered. Now I do not mean that in a bad way its just that it is good that I will now have time to serve somewhere else. Literally half my mission so far has been in Haymarket hahaha. Now it wouldn't of been to hard to say goodbye but Becky started crying. She was saying stuff like "they can't take you powell! I wouldn't of been baptized if it wasn't for you, you know that right? and what am I going to do, at least I still have cannon" So ya that was pretty funny. We were just like Becky don'y worry I'll see you again. So after that I didn't really have time to say goodbye to anyone else but the Schmidts because Press was really busy on thursday so he moved transfers up to wednesday. At transfer he said that anyone that is sent to Woodbridge or Fredericksberg this transfer or the nexr is most likley going to the richmond mission. The split is happening on the 2nd or 3rd week of June. Im not going to lie. For the first couple of days I missed the ward and Elder Cannon pretty badly. But my new companion is freaking hysterical. I really hope you get to meet him one day. He is just like Jeff Kay, just like him! His name is Edler Christensen. My new area is the Wakefield ward in the Annandale stake. It is the stake that the mission office and home are in. Whats pretty cool is Jenny Oaks Baker, the grandaughter of Bruce R McConkie, and a man named Brother Lopez who played soccer for the team Real Madrid are all in the ward. We had dinner with the Bakers on Sunday and they had a neighbor over and we were able to briefly talk about the restoration. Then at church I was talking to Brother Lopez and the cool thing is that he played for Real Madrid for like 3 years and gave it up to go and serve a mission. So ya this ward has a lot of awesome people in it. They are all pretty nice and its a pretty good size ward. The biggest attendance rate of any of the wards I have served in. Our appartment on the other hand is not anywhere near great hahaha. It was a complete shock. In Haymarket the first week I was there we got a new appartment and we kept it really clean the whole time I was there. So to come to this appartment was a huge shock. But the area is the most City like area I have had so I already really like it. We have the college George Mason University in our area. Its the one that Kegan went to for a little bit but is like one of the most popular schools in Virginia outside of UVA and VATECH. It feels really good to be in an area where we have stuff going on constanly. There are always people out walking around so we can always find something to do. Im really excited to be here!

 

Love

 

Elder Powell

 

Stuff like that makes every single hard day you have worth it.

Hey Mom,

 

This week was a hard week. But Sunday was hands down the best day yet. Nothing was happening all week. We had no lessons, eveyone was not answering the door. In the afternoons though we are doing a lot of service now so that is fun. We had a really good dinner with a family from our ward and they invited Becky over because they all get along really well. The husband served his mission in LA and his wife is a huge Lakers fan so we had a good conversation. Really other than that the rest of the week was pretty slow. But Sunday was way awesome. Kegan was sustained to recieve the Aaronic Priesthood and he was given a calling. That felt way cool. I was able to see the progress that he has made since I first began teaching him in December up until know. It was a huge blessing of being able to see the rewards of missionary work. He then went up and bore his testimony and all the Woman in the ward were BAWLING. They were all saying how they didn't even know him and they all were crying. He talked about how after General Confernece he is for sure going on a mission and how he doesn't know a lot right now but he knows that in a year he will be ready to go and serve. It was incredible to hear all that. I don't think people ever get that oppurtunity in their mission. To teach somone, be there for the Baptism, and still be in the ward and see them be ordained and recieve a calling and announce they are going to serve a mission. It was way humbling. Stuff like that makes every single hard day you have worth it.

 

Then the 11 year old, Jack, was at church. We couldn't teach him this week because they had family visiting from out of town and they said that they were busy. But we have 2 lessons set up with him for this week. Then on Sunday night we had a pretty good lesson. We have been working with this one family for a while and they finally let us in. We were able to teach 2 of the kids, Chris and Lauren. Their older brother Adrian is a less active member. It was our first lesson with Lauren. She payed attention and asked some really good questions and responded well to the questions we asked. That was pretty much it for the week. It was a hard week but man it ended really well. Transfers were moved up a day so they are on Wednesday so we get the calls tonight. We shall see what happens!!!

 

Love

 

Elder Powell

Can you say the end is near?

Hey Mom,

 

This week was good yet slow. The greatest thing was we are teaching an 11 year old who is know on date for April 27th. His dad is not a member and sits in on all the lessons so we are praying that he will open up as we continue the teaching. The lesson was really funny though. This kid was asking the craziest questions such as "what is the churches stand point on gohsts?, does extraterrestial life exist?, where in this plan of salvation do the Neandrethals come in?, and what is the churches stand point on evolutionism?". At this point his mom explained how he reads college level science books hahaha. Plus we were on a time crunch because they had family coming over so we only had a small ammount of time and the Plan of Salvation is a lot to take in. It was just a really funny situation where my companion's mouth was shut evertime he asked one of those questions and I had to answer them. So the last question I said "You know Jack, some stuff we don't need to know because it has NOTHING to do with our salvation".

 

Then we had really cool miracle with finding our only new investigator this week. We had just finished splits with the priests that weren't that great because everything fell through. When that happens we are to go with the Priests to see their home teaching families and they all just sat there and only one could remember who one of there familes was and it was one of the other Priests families and they weren't home as well hahaha. So after that it was 8:45 so we went to a street that had like 3 former investigators on it. The first one we knocked was not the same person and was not interested, but the second door was golden! We knocked her door and after confirming who she was she let us in. Her name is Angie and she lives with her 2 sons, Casey (18) and Tim (14). She has a 19 year old at college. Tim was the only one home and he was a really nice kid. When we were talking with Angie she was explaining her religious background and it is crazy how prepared she is. She was looking up what the Bible had to say about a healthy diet when we knocked on the door. There was so much that the restored gospel could relate to her. We didn't get to talk for that long but we have a lesson set up with her for tomorrow but next Tuesday. We are really excited for her. Life lesson learned here. She had just made cookies for her son and gave us both one and they were hard as rocks. It took some time but we both ate them hahaha.

 

Then on another day we stopped by the referal we recieved last week, the lady who accepted the challenge to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. She told us she didnt read the BOM but she did read the Pamphlet we left and she said she prayed. She feels that Joseph Smith might of seen a light but nothing more. She thinks all you need to do is simply believe. She asked me if we believe we get to heaven through obedience and I wanted to say "DUH!" but instead I said "yes, hence the commandments, repentance, and baptism" Essentially the whole Gospel!!!! That was another night when we went home and found tons of scriptures that we were wishing we could of used. 

 

Then came conference week end!!! We watched both sessions on Saturday with Kegan at his house. Then on Sunday we had a Gospel Principels party at the Schmidts. Kegan, Becky, Eleanor, Sister Stotzer and 2 other recent converts were there. It was way fun. Conference was way good. It was funny beacuse what was a common topic in the Sunday afternoon? Obedience. Who would send us an email all about it and promised blessings hours later? Our legit mission pres. He is really such a great mission pres. His biggest thing is 100% obedience and so it was an email that once you saw what it was about you were saying in your mind "as expected". But it was a really good conference. The crazy numbers were we went from 53 to 63 thousand missionaries in 6 months and 20 thousand with there calls and 6 thousand working with their Bishops. Can you say the end is near? hahaha Things are slowy and I do mean slowly but surely picking up.

 

Love ya

 

Elder Powell

 

"Hold to the rod!"

Hey mom,

 

This week was a good but really slow week. Since our teaching pool dropped down after Kegan, Becky, and Eleanor were baptized and the whole time we were trying to find new investigators but the finding wasn't being productive so now we are in a tough little situation. A lot of the days there was nothing to do hahaha.

 

So that was hard but on one of the days we recieved a referal from Salt Lake for this lady who live allllll the way at the top of the "mountain" in our area. So the east coast mountains are tiny and everyone always makes fun of it. You rarely actually meet some one who is origianlly from the east coast when your this close to DC so you can joke around. But the natives get ticked its hysterical. So we made the journey up there and it was this older lady who had the belief that all you need to do is believe and that is it. Its incredible how many people believe that. Anyways we taught her the first lesson and it went pretty good and she accepted the challenge to read from the book of Mormon and ask God if it is true scripture or not. Then we taught a part member family that has been showing up to church out of the blue. The wife is the only member and the husband said for personal reasons he was choosing not to join. But they are allowing us to teach their 11 year old son Jack. He really wants to be baptized so thats awesome. But I would love to at least know what the Husband concern is. So i really hope that as we teach their son (they both sat in on the lesson) that he opens up.

 

Other than that we saw on Sunday another part member family that we have been working with for a couple of weeks. The thing is, the family is being lazy and not keeping any commitments so there isnt any real progress there. Then on Saturday we took what we were calling a Gospel Principles field trip to the Temple Visitors Center. The following went. Becky, Sister Stotzer (awesome lady who is recently becoming really active and working to go through the temple this year), her daughter who is like 24 and is not that active as well and then Kegan and us. It was a really good trip. We watched Gods Plan for Us (really good) and Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration (also really good). Becky and sister stotzer loved it. Kegan really liked it as well and afterwards he bought a necklace and one of the small iron rods and put it on the necklace and he has been saying all weekend "Hold to the rod!" when ever someone says something bad hahahaha. Then we had a really good Easter Sunday. Sister Stotzer got us an Easter Basket and so did he family we had dinner with on Easter. So we were even remembered hahaha. It was a great but slow week!!!

 

Love Eder Powell