July 30, 2012

Hello all,

The reason why I am writing on a Wednesday instead of a Monday is because once every 6 weeks one of our P-Days is on a Wednesday so we can go to the temple. So today was my first day going to a temple outside of the United States. It was a good experience and I have some pictures attached. The pictures are of me at the temple and one of the is me standing at the bridge with the City of Brisbane behind me. We spent some time looking around the city too. It is about a 1.5 hour train ride to the city to go to the temple from Ipswich. It was fun. This week was a miracle week. We have tracted into lots of people interested in the gospel and we have scheduled 7 people to be baptized in August. One of our investigators that we found tracting is named Sandy. She is a single mother and has 8 kids, and 5 of her kids are over 9 years old. She was a miracle. We tracted 3 houses the day that we found her and after teaching her twice she shared an experience with us which is really cool. She said the day before we knocked on her door she was praying and wondering what she needed to do with her life. She said we were an answer to her prayers when we knocked on her door with smiling faces and excited to share the gospel with her. She said the gospel is just what she needs in her life right now. So we were sharing the Plan of Salvation with her and when we got to the Celestial Kingdom part we said the only way to live with her family, Heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ in the Celestial Kingdom was to be baptized. After saying that she said "I want to be baptized and I want all my kids to be baptized too. It was a really good experience and the spirit was really strong in our lesson. The coolest part of being a missionary is sharing the simple messages of the gospel and seeing how it touches the lives of people. So we are going to continue teaching her and her family until the end of August when they are going to get baptized. Its really excited to have an investigator commit to baptism and see the gospel touch their life. The 1 other baptism we scheduled was also somebody we tracted into. We knocked on their door and the lady who answered the door said that her and her husband we both baptized when they were 8 years old but don't remember the last time they went to church. So they have a 10 year old son named Blake, and he wants to get baptized, so we are going to baptize him in August also. His parents are also going to start coming back to church. Which is good. Those are the really good experiences I had this week. We also did lots of tracting as always, and we are going to be teaching a lot of people within the next week. So I am pretty excited. The missionary work is going well. I am used to the Australian culture by now. I can now talk a little bit in the Samoan language. The members here are really great and I get along with all of them really well. All is well with me and I am having lots of good experiences here in Australia and I hope everyone is doing well back at home.
 

Love,

Elder Kyler Powelson

July 25, 2012

Hello all,

The reason why I am writing on a Wednesday instead of a Monday is because once every 6 weeks one of our P-Days is on a Wednesday so we can go to the temple. So today was my first day going to a temple outside of the United States. It was a good experience and I have some pictures attached. The pictures are of me at the temple and one of the is me standing at the bridge with the City of Brisbane behind me. We spent some time looking around the city too. It is about a 1.5 hour train ride to the city to go to the temple from Ipswich. It was fun. This week was a miracle week. We have tracted into lots of people interested in the gospel and we have scheduled 7 people to be baptized in August. One of our investigators that we found tracting is named Sandy. She is a single mother and has 8 kids, and 5 of her kids are over 9 years old. She was a miracle. We tracted 3 houses the day that we found her and after teaching her twice she shared an experience with us which is really cool. She said the day before we knocked on her door she was praying and wondering what she needed to do with her life. She said we were an answer to her prayers when we knocked on her door with smiling faces and excited to share the gospel with her. She said the gospel is just what she needs in her life right now. So we were sharing the Plan of Salvation with her and when we got to the Celestial Kingdom part we said the only way to live with her family, Heavenly Father, and Jesus Christ in the Celestial Kingdom was to be baptized. After saying that she said "I want to be baptized and I want all my kids to be baptized too. It was a really good experience and the spirit was really strong in our lesson. The coolest part of being a missionary is sharing the simple messages of the gospel and seeing how it touches the lives of people. So we are going to continue teaching her and her family until the end of August when they are going to get baptized. Its really excited to have an investigator commit to baptism and see the gospel touch their life. The 1 other baptism we scheduled was also somebody we tracted into. We knocked on their door and the lady who answered the door said that her and her husband we both baptized when they were 8 years old but don't remember the last time they went to church. So they have a 10 year old son named Blake, and he wants to get baptized, so we are going to baptize him in August also. His parents are also going to start coming back to church. Which is good. Those are the really good experiences I had this week. We also did lots of tracting as always, and we are going to be teaching a lot of people within the next week. So I am pretty excited. The missionary work is going well. I am used to the Australian culture by now. I can now talk a little bit in the Samoan language. The members here are really great and I get along with all of them really well. All is well with me and I am having lots of good experiences here in Australia and I hope everyone is doing well back at home.
 

Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson

 

 

July 16, 2011

Hello all,

This week has been pretty good. I have learned a little bit of my Samoan. It is not necessary to learn, but I want to learn it because all the missionaries here talk to each other in Samoan. and when we visit a lot of the members they speak Samoan with my companion and I just sit there, so I really want to learn it. I have been doing good. They all take care of me in this ward. I am in the Raceview area. but it isn't on a map. so if you want to see where I am on a map look for Ipswich. The Samoan people feed us all really well. For my brothers and sisters, I talked with my mission president and it is OK for you to email me with the updates in your lives. I might not be able to respond to all of them personally because we only get an hour in the computer lab at the library. Last Monday was my first P-day. We did our email shopping and all that fun stuff. I learned how to play some new sports. They call it Touch Rugby. It not like any sports they have in America, but it is pretty fun. Kind of like football. The rest of the week we did a lot of tracting. The area here has not had a baptism since March, so me and my companion are putting a lot of efforts in finding people to teach. So far we have found 15 potential investigators tracting that we are going to try and contact this week. And We also got one new investigator that I tracted into. Her name is Deb. When we went up to talk to her she was sitting on her porch with her little annoying dog. At first we were going to skip the house because the dog would be really disruptive trying to talk to here, but we still decided to go up and talk to her. She was interested in what we told her about the Plan of Salvation at the doorstep, so we went back an taught here the Plan of Salvation lesson. It was a really good lesson and the spirit was strong as we taught here. We are going back to teach her some more later this week. There were a couple of investigators that were here when I got here. Their names are Rachel and Kayla. Kayla is the girlfriend of someone in our ward and we are going through teacher her all of the lessons. Then Rachel is a girl who is friends with someone in the ward. She has a really strong testimony of what we have been teaching her. She really wants to get baptized, but she doesn't have the approval from the Aunts that she lives with. We have faith that her aunts will approve her decision to be baptized. It is just really cool to see someone who had no faith in God and Jesus Christ and in just 2 months have great faith and know that this is the gospel that brings true happiness and peace. She will probably be getting baptized sometime in the next month. So far my mission experience has been really good. We found a lot of people tracting who wanted us to come back. I did a ton of tracting in this last week. They put me and my companion in an area that hasn't had a baptism since March, so we have put a lot of effort into finding people to teach. We found 15 people who were kind of interested and wanted us to come back and teach them more. So hopefully we can get some new investigators this week. The member support is really good. We have had 100% member present lessons so far. The YSA's here preparing for missions are really good at coming out with us when we go to teach. It is really easy just to call one of them to have a member with us all the time. Our meal roster for dinners is completely full, so I am having lots of good dinners by the Samoan people. I have never eaten so much in my life. When we get to their houses for dinner, the table just has a ton of food on it. They put lots of food on our plates and make sure that we are eating a lot. The fill us up on all the food they give us. We tell them that we are really full and that the food was really good, so they bring our dessert. I try my hardest to eat it because they would think that it is really rude if we don't eat it, and they wouldn't like us. So I have put more food into my stomach this week then I thought was even possible. Driving on the left side of the road has also been going really well. It was a lot easier to adjust then I thought it would be. Driving here has become really easy for me. Now it would seem weird to drive on the right side of the road and be on the left side of the car. Being on the right side of the car driving has become really easy for me. Driving here is weird though because everyone follows the speed limit and is really courteous when they drive unlike it is in America where no one follows the speed limit and there are a lot of rude drivers. So that aspect of driving has been pretty nice. Anyways that is basically all that has been going on with my life and I am hoping for a really good week this week with missionary work. I will make sure to let you all know how it is. I miss you all and hope that you all have a really good week.
 

Love,

Elder Kyler Powelson

July 9, 2012

Hello All!

Attached to this email are some pictures of my MTC stay and the first few days of me on my mission. I got here safely and I am officially a missionary here for 5 days. I have hit quite a couple challenges but I have faith that I will be good. I am the only white missionary in my zone, the rest of them are Samoan. On top of that 95% of the people in the ward I am in are Samoan and lots of them don't know much English. My companions name is Elder Oto he is Samoan. Most of the people in the ward speak English but are very hard to understand. So you know when I said that I'm glad I didn't have to learn a language.. well i guess I got jinxed because my companion is now teaching me Samoan. He says I will probably be able to speak fluently in 12 weeks. I am serving in a town called Raceview. If it is not on the map it is by the town named Ipswitch. The ward is good. The area has not very many progressing investigators, so basically all I have been doing so far is tracting. We have run into a few potential investigators, So we are going to be visiting them all this week. My companion doesn't have a drivers lisence, and we have a car starting today. So my next challenge will be driving a car on the left side of the road and sitting on the right side of the car. So it will be an interesting experience. Not very missionaries drive right away when the get into the mission. Since I am in an area near Brisbane, we get to go to the temple later in the month. I will let you all know of that experience. I haven't had too many experiences yet. Hopefully we get to teach more this week. The Brisbane mission is one of the highest baptizing missions in the world. There have already been almost 300 baptisms in the mission so far this year, which is almost unheard of in most missions. My trainer in his last are has 12 baptisms in 3 months. He is feeling optimistic about this area and we are hoping to have at least 5-6 in the next 11 weeks. We haven't taught much. We are going to be teaching more this week which I am looking forward to. I have a lot to learn in just 11 weeks, but I have faith that I can do it. So basically I need to learn Samoan, I need to learn how to drive on the left side of the road. And I have not even seen a kangaroo yet. They say that is one of the biggest stereotypes ever. Most missionaries go at least 6-8 months on their mission without seeing a single kangaroo. So hopefully I will see one soon. I have more trainings this week, but not much has happened so far. I will hopefully have some better experiences to talk about next week. The culture is a lot different here. I was told that I am already starting to lose my American Accent. That will happen when I'm never surrounded by any other Americans. There are less than 20 American in the whole mission. They have missionaries here from all over the world. There are about 200 missionaries in the whole mission. I have a lot to learn and I am excited to do missionary work. My companion says that it is so rewarding to call your recent converts after 6 months and finding out that they still go to church. I know that I am going to have some good experiences and I am excited to get started this week. I keep you all in my prayers and I hope all of you pray about me. I'm just really nervous about driving on the left side of the road. I miss you all.

Love, 

Elder Kyler Powelson

 

   Sister Langeland Elder Powelson Elder Oto President Langeland

            Sister Langeland Elder Powelson President Langeland