This Moohair has a name!

Hey Mom,

This week was awesome. First things first. I'm training....again! Its insane! We had a recent convert fireside last night and at it Pres Riggs came up to Elder Cannon and I and told us we were training and when to be at the Transfer meeting. We have 2 cars so we asked him about that he said that we can drive separately but stay right behind the other. So we are really excited about that hahahaha.

On Wednesday we had splits with some Priests in our ward and we had a great time. I went with one of the Nieman’s boys and we went tracting in the Fairfax area. Nothing really happened but we got rejected a couple of times so it was good experience for him. Then on Wednesday we had 2 lessons that were pretty interesting. One was with Scott (the Jew). he is almost done with the book of Mosiah. He is starting to become more interested in the Book of Mormon. He had once again a ton of deep questions. The funny part was the member that came with us is from Korea and is like 70 and can barely speak English. Earlier that day we also had a lesson with a Hindu named Mr Soni. He is 85 and rambles on like crazy! He has the HEAVIEST accent which its always hard to not laugh during the lesson. We went over the Plan of Salvation and it took a long time but we were able to teach it and he was able to ask some questions. His neighbors are members so we had the lesson at their house and they did a great job at explaining things.

We also had another lesson with Melissa. She said that when she came to church that she felt that she really missed her church and didn't feel like she received an answer. But we committed her to come to church and to fast for an answer to her prayers. So I will have an update next week on how it went. She was at church and she did fast and stayed for all 3 hours so that's a good sign. The 4th of July was awesome. We had a pancake breakfast for the Fairfax ward. We have this man that isn't investigating but he lets us do service and he will take us out to lunch. He is really patriotic and served in the military for 2 years, so he called us up on Tuesday to see if the Church was doing anything for the 4th of July so we invited him to the Breakfast. He came and really enjoyed it. While we were talking with other families he had a 45 minute talk with the Fairfax Bishop about the Atonement. He has basically been talking with his neighbors for many years about Christian theology and none of them are Mormon (probably) all different religions. So he was really confused and said that he didn't agree with the fact that we could essentially cheat on the test of life and do whatever and then at Judgment turn around and receive the grace of Jesus Christ and be forgiven and all is well. Bishop Howell told him that's not we agree with either. So that was a cool situation. We had the lesson with Melissa after that. Then around the late afternoon we went and saw a lot of people. It was a perfect time to get let in to see less active members. We were able to see the Sanchez family that we met at the Hospital and had a great visit with them. Then our ward mission leader had Veronique and her son, a new family that moved in to the ward, and Scott and his son over at their house to celebrate. We stopped by and had a great visit and it was a great opportunity to see that the people from the ward genuinely cares about him and isn't focused on just getting a Baptism as a number. He really enjoyed it so that was great. Then we went to the Guzmans. They are a family that speak Spanish and sometimes attend the Spanish ward but have recently been attending the English ward. They have been feeding us with the Spanish elders a lot. It was supposed to just be us 4 missionaries but there was also an additional set of Elders and Hermans so a total of 8. It was really fun. We had a water balloon fight. One of the Spanish Elders is a greenie and he was really pissed because his comp drenched him with water and then we told the Guzmans littlest daughter to get him with a balloon and then the Hermanas did as well and at the end he went and got a bucket of water to poor on the Hermanas and all us Elders were like "dont do that there girls" and he did so ya that was pretty funny how pissed he got hahaha. But we also played soccer and then watched the family set off Fireworks. We were taking pictures and we gave our cameras to 2 of the older daughters to take our pictures as a group and they weren't paying attention and so i yelled "Moohair! Take the pictures please!" The mom start laughing like crazy and then the daughter was laughing but said "This Moohair has a name!" hahaha. I had told them last dinner that Courtney taught me how to say “ woman” so they all knew it was joke. Then I gave like 4 baptismal interviews this week. 3 of them were these kids of a part member family and they were so nervous! When the oldest was done I told her that was it and she looks up in such shock and was like "Really??" It was so dang funny. Then we had the normal like 7 hours of church plus a fireside so ya it will be great to go back to our perspective wards.  It has been a great week!!!!

Love Elder Powell