May 8, 2013

Hello All,
The reason I am emailing so late in the week  is because our P-day got switched to Wednesday so we could attend a temple session. And since the temple is only open Wed-Sat, they moved our P-day. We took the train to the city to go to the temple and then after we were done we take the train back to our areas to continue our P-day activities. The temple today was marvelous! It has been over 6 months since I have gone since I was 1100 kms away in my last area. It was great to go again and feel the special spirit of the temple. I loved it so much. 
This Saturday our investigator Valerie Powell is getting baptized which is really exciting. She is 75 years old and is progressing really well. You would think that it would be hard for her to learn everything since she is so old, but she is actually learning and remembering things a lot faster than most of the other people I have taught on my mission. Her testimony is really strong and she loves everything about the church and she said that it is one of the best decisions of her life. Her husband passed away a few years back, so we decided to talk about the temple and how she can be sealed for time and all eternity with her husband, and now she can't wait to go to the temple in a year! It is going to be really exciting. The baptism is going to be great. I am super excited especially since it has been 6 months since I've baptized someone, so I am really looking forward to it!!!
Another investigator we have is named Chrissy. We weren't able to teach her this week though because she is busy with University study all week. We are hoping to meet with her soon and help her to start to progress for her baptismal date in July. Her and her partner are really cool people, we are hoping that they will work together to progress towards baptism and make the choice to be married in order to be baptized. I am really looking forward to see how things go with them!
We went out tracting a street this week and it felt like it was the street we needed to tract. We were tracting this street for about 2 hours total and every door was getting slammed in our face. Australians sometimes are rude when people come knocking on their door. After this was happening we saw this guy cleaning out his car at the end of the street. So we went and talked to him. He asked us for a pamphlet and asked us if we could come back and teach him. That pretty much never happens. But it did! We went and taught him and we shared with him The Plan of Salvation, and after we were done he said that he believed everything we said and then he set the return appointment. We are going back to see him this Friday and we hope things go really well. He has a few problems with Word of Wisdom things, but we will work on that another time. We just want to build up his testimony, and when we bring up the word of wisdom he will hopefully have no problems giving those things up because of his testimony.
We have been working hard and I love working with Elder O'Connor. He is definitely my favorite companion so far. Time has been going so fast! We are already half way through the transfer. Things are going well with me, I love being a missionary and I hope you all have a great week!!!

Love
Elder Kyler Powelson