Hello All!
My week this week went well! We were able to set
another baptismal date for the
16th of
March! Last week we set the date with Brian Piper and now we set a date
with his foster brother for the same day. Brian is 11 and Tyler is 16. They
are both going really well and are getting excited for their baptisms. I am
glad good things are happening. It has taken a lot of hard work and
determination to get this far. Transfers are in 2 weeks so hopefully I don't get
transferred before they get baptized. It has been a really good experience
teaching them so far. The spirit is strong in all the lessons and their mom
Dorothy Piper has gained her vision back all the way! It is very exciting
news! They are going really well. They are growing spiritually and we found
them just by being prompted to visit a name on the less active list. We picked
that name instead of the 500 other people on the list and it was successful.
Its kind of crazy how many in active members are in Townsville. only about 150
people come to church, but we have over 600 names on the list. The senior
couple missionaries in Townsville (The Miles) are working very hard to locate
all the lost members. Lots of them still live in Townsville but their records
were never updated to where they live. We have a strong effort in trying to
reactivate some of these people in the area.
A couple of weeks
ago a man came up to us while we were at the ATM and told us to come by to his
house for a visit sometime. So we were able to finally catch him at home and
share a couple of messages with him. When we went on
Saturday again. The Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the door
in the middle of our lesson. So I guess it looks like we have a little bit of
competition with him. We hope he chooses us over them eventually, but he said that
he needed to explore his options and see what religion fit him best. So
hopefully we can help him understand that we have what he needs. His name is
Simon and he is about 40 years old. He is really receptive and we hope that we
can do some good things with him.
Now for a funny experience. We
went to visit a less active member that we had on our list. He took us into his
house. Talked for about 1.5 hours about Old Testament History and then we had
to leave. He did not let us have any words in. He just talked about the Old
Testament for ages. My companion had a cold that day and decided to go up to
him and give some sort of blessing. With no authority he put his hands around
the neck of my companion and started speaking in some sort of gibberish. And
after he finished with him, he decided to come up to me. He put both hands onto
my neck and started to give me some sort of blessing in a gibberish language. I
could not help but laughing. I was laughing pretty dang hard and he didn't even
realize it because he had his whole power and soul in tune with the Holy Spirit
to give me this blessing. Just imagine some old guy putting his hands around
you neck, speaking gibberish like some crazy guy moving around and yelling
thinking that he has the authority to give a blessing. It was pretty
hilarious. Its hard to explain how funny it was. But it was pretty crazy.
We did heaps of tracting. Like always. We were able to teach a
few people at their door steps and we are hoping to come back sometime this
week! Things are going really well with me. I miss you all and I hope you all
have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson