On the 13th of December I hit my 6 month mark on the mission. I have made it far!! So I burned an ugly tie that I found in my apartment to celebrate the 6 month milestone on my mission! Pictures are attached. I have a video of it as well, but I cant email that one. My companion was saying that I am a pyro when it comes to burning things. oh well. It was lots of fun! We made sure we were safe and we had a bucket of water next to us. I have made it pretty far! I love being a missionary! It has been a great 6 months.
On Saturday I received a new companion. Elder Kay has been up here for 7.5 months, so it was his time to go back down to Brisbane. My new companion is Elder Sio. He was a missionary in my district in Ipswich, so now we are companions. He is a really good guy. He is a Samoan Australian, he was born and raised in Sydney. He speak fluent Samoan, so I might be able to start learning the language again! He is great. We have been together for 2 days now. He is my 4th companion and all my companions have been from different countries. Elder Oto was from Samoa, Elder Paia'aua was from New Zealand, Elder Kay is from England and Elder Sio is from Sydney. I wonder if my next companion will be from a different country. Who knows.
The work has been starting to move really slow because everyone is going away for the Christmas holidays. Most people leave Townsville for Christmas, so it is going to be a pretty bare place. Except for a few people.
We were able to teach the African girl again this week. Her name is Mire and her mum Marie sat in on the lesson. they said that they were going to come to church next week. So I hope it works out. They thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses til the 2nd lesson, so after that things started to work out better. We will hopefully be able to go see them sometime this week.
We also went around to lots of less active members and we decided to make Christmas card and drop them off to as many less active members as we could. It was hard since the branch list has 600 names on it with only 150 active members. A lot of the work we are going to be focusing on is getting those less actives back to church. I am sure there is at least one family that is ready to come back to church.
We also tracted into a less active member who was baptized in Townsville 16 years ago. We talked with her for about an hour and set a return appointment. She said that she will think about coming back to church, which is exciting news! Her name is Cassandra. It is exciting to run into people like this when you tract for ages trying to find people. My work is going really well up here and I am excited to see things to start taking off once the new year starts! I miss you all and I hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson
