December 17, 2013

Hello All,

Time flies by really fast. I come home in exactly 6 months from today. I can’t believe how fast these 18 months have been. We went to the temple today and it was great! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas with the extreme heat and humidity. I won’t be seeing much snow this year. It is very interesting having Christmas and it being this hot. It is sad that Australians don’t really know what a real Christmas looks like.

Anyway, this week was pretty good! We started teaching Christopher with his wife as well now. They are reading the Book of Mormon together and things are going well we are hoping to commit them to baptism this week before the Christmas season.

Most of our work lately has been working with the fewer inactives in the ward. Nephi is progressing really well. He has started reading the scriptures and praying on a regular basis and he is seeing the difference it makes in his life. He said, "It keeps me G'ed up with the spirit I feel on Sunday" So it makes him feel good and feel the spirit. He really wants his wife to believe, but right now she is an atheist, but we taught that if he continues to life righteously, she will see the difference the gospel makes in his life, and will want to make that change as well. It may take time, but it will happen. He is really good. Helping him come back to the church makes me feel just as good as baptizing someone because he is making a lot of the same changes a convert would in order to come into the church. It has definitely been a testimony builder!
The mission is having a mission Christmas party on Christmas Eve, and I am looking forward to it because I will get to see many missionaries I haven’t seen in a while. There will be about 240 missionaries there. About 20 missionaries will miss out since they are in Northern Queensland like I was last year, so this will be my first and last Christmas party as a missionary.
I can’t wait to talk to my family on Christmas. I love being a missionary and I hope you all have a great week!

Love

Elder Kyler Powelson

December 9, 2013

Hello All,

 This week was great! In the 2 months I have been in Kenmore we found our first solid investigator! It feels great! His name is Christopher and he is from Fiji. I found him last week when I was on a trade off with one of the zone leaders Elder Ladd, and we had just finished seeing a less active member and as we were walking back to the car I felt like going and talking to him. He told us to come back the following week and we did. I was with one of the YSA in the ward on splits and we taught him about the Restoration. He had many questions and he told us that no other religious person he had talked to had been able to answer his questions, and that we answered them all and he liked the answers we gave him. He told us he would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. We are going to meet with him again on Wednesday and I am really looking forward to it!

We did some finding and we were able to teach 15 lessons to less active members which is a lot. We are hoping that some of them will be wanting to come back to church here pretty soon!
Now for a funny story. I went on tradeoffs with another missionary in my district, Elder Farr. and we went to go teach one of their investigators who is on date for January. We had the lesson outside in their yard, and as we were about to start this man came into the yard and started talking to us. A lot of people in Australia drink a lot of Alcohol (Australia has the 2nd most Alcohol consumption in the world per capita) so we come across quite a few people who have been drinking especially on the weekends. So this guy who had some drinks came and talked to us. He grabbed Elder Farrs hand to shake it and held onto it for the whole conversation. He commented that Elder Farr looked nice and he guessed his age that he was 19, and he was right. He then looked at me and said "Well, You look like you are about...............Fat... and you have a lot of pimples. I have this cream that God gave me and you put it on like this.. (He is rubbing his hands all over his head in a very aggressive manner) Praise the Lord!!" Then he walks off. It was pretty funny. It’s kind of one of those things where you had to be there for it. The lesson was then very spiritual and I really enjoyed seeing the way other missionaries do things.

My week was great and I am really looking forward to this next week. I miss you all and I hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Kyler Powelson

December 3, 2013

Hello All,

This week was pretty good. We tracted and contacted a lot. We found some good potentials that I am really looking forward to following up with this week. Nephi is still doing great! We will hopefully have some new investigators this week! Our teaching pool wasn't really progressing, so we decided to start fresh, and find some new souls to teach that will progress in the gospel!

Yesterday I got to go tracting with the Mission President! It was an amazing experience. It was only for about 30 minutes, but I tried my best to work him hard. We met up with him and the AP's and my companion went with the AP's while I went with President. I made him run with me to the street we were tracting and we were sprinting from door to door talking to as many people as possible. President Henderson is big into staying fit. He has come up with a fitness program for us to use in the mornings and he calls it "Snap Gravity" because in the morning if we wake up and get a very effective exercise period in where we sweat, it sets the tone for our day. And it really does. It wakes you up and gives you way more motivation to work during the day. But with tracting it was great because even when people would say they were not interested he would make sure they felt the spirit and made sure that God sent us there to talk to them. He gave them the most solid chance to accept the gospel. Everyone we talked to felt the spirit and still rejected it. It is sad to see, but he was telling me that if we do our best and have the feel of the spirit, that is all we can do. It was a great experience and I hope that I can do it again someday. 

There are many challenges in my mission at this time, but they are definitely making me a way better person. Our mission president tells us that our missions are the MTC for the rest of our life. They are there to shape us and make us the best person possible. I have learned so much these last couple months. I have had experiences that I know will help me become a better person in the
future, and make me more like our Savior. Earlier this year Elder Pearson from the Area Presidency told us that the mission is here to save the rising generation. 

I miss you all and I hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Kyler Powelson

November 15, 2013

Hello All!

My week was pretty good! We tracted a lot. We are also working a lot with our less active members. Nephi came to church again and is having us meet his non-member wife, so hopefully we will be able to start to build trust with her. He is the best and he is really wanting to return to church which is a great thing! 

We did see a miracle this week as well! On Friday we were tracting for a really long time and we were really praying for a miracle. After finding no success tracting we decided to go see a less active that lived nearby. As we were about to knock on her door this man yelled down to us from another unit and told us that he really needed someone to talk to, so he let us up into his unit and we talked with him for quite a while. He had some terrible things happen to him and he said he was praying for God's help and then he noticed that we were the answer to his prayers. It is a great miracle that occurred because of we exercised our faith and hoped that something would happen. 

While tracting this week we went to the door of some persons house, and the a lizard the same size as the one in the picture was just chilling on the door. We thought it was fake because there was no way that a massive lizard would just be chilling on someones front door. My companion decided to touch it and lets just say it wasn't fake. It fell down and hit my companion with its tail and ran off. The picture of the lizard I am sending is actually a really small lizard compared to other ones I have seen. I also put a picture of me with my companion Elder Kumar from Fiji. 

I love being a missionary! I miss you all and I hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Kyler Powelson

 

                          Elder Kumar and Elder Powelson

 

November 19, 2013

Hello All,

This week was pretty uneventful as far as missionary work goes. Every lesson cancelled or they weren't home when we went by. It was the last week of the transfer, and I am going to be staying as the District Leader and I am going to stay with Elder Kumar. It should be good. I'm learning a lot, even though we have been going through some struggles. But the best new ever. The miracle I talked about last week with that guy named Nephi, He came to Church! It was great. He was talking about how he has been living the worldly life for too long and that it was time for him to come back to church and become active again after being away for over 10 years. He has a 5 year old daughter and his partner is not a member. She isn't too interested, but another family that has recently come back to church knows her, so we are going to have her work with them, and hopefully we can start working with him and his family! It was a great accomplishment after not having very much success at all. He is a great man, and I am looking forward to working with him some more!

We also had a Zone Conference which was awesome! President Henderson talked a lot about making the Book of Mormon the Keystone of our mission. He put a challenge out to read the whole book of Mormon in 2 transfers (3 months) and highlight in a fresh Book of Mormon any word, phrase or anything that talks about Jesus Christ. As I have been doing so I didn't realize how much the book of Mormon talks about our Savior. As it should because the True church of Jesus Christ should be centered around Jesus Christ! It was a really good day of training and I learned a lot of things. I also got to see Elder Grayson (the missionary I trained) He is doing really well, and it was great to see him because I miss him heaps.

I love being a missionary. There are struggles, but I love them because they will only make me stronger. I miss you all and I hope you all have a great week!

Love
Elder Kyler Powelson

November 11, 2013

Hello All,

My week was pretty good! We did a lot of finding, and we have been visiting a lot of less actives. The Lord keeps giving us less active miracles, so I have decided that we are going to focus a lot more on working with the less actives than finding. Because most the time there are non members behind the doors of less active members. I will share one really great less active miracle though.

On Saturday we went on splits with the YSA, and I was with this boy named Lance who got baptized in June. He is 18 and is looking to serve a mission next year. He is really good, and is the man! We went out tracting and we said a prayer. As we were walking down the street, we decided to turn left at this street, which was the direction we did not want to go it the first place, but we followed the prompting and went. About 30 seconds later a car turned back around and the man in the car said "Hey, my name is Nephi which is the church around here, I am a member who has been less active for over 10 years and I am looking to get back into it" He isn't on the records and he didn't know where the church was, so we got his information and we went back to his house on Sunday. We had a really good lesson with him, and he will be at church next Sunday. His partner is not a member, so we will try and build her trust as well! I am excited to work with them!

We are helping out lots of less actives. We taught about 15 less active lessons this week which is a lot, but we are hoping that we will be able to find investigators through the less active members! I miss you all and I hope you have a great week!
Love
Elder Kyler Powelson

November 6, 2013

Hello All,

We went to the temple this morning and it was great! I love going to the temple. So many of my prayers get answered. I received so much revelation! It was great! 

This week was pretty good! We were not able to meet with many of our investigators this week unfortunately, so we did heaps of finding! I never thought I could get such big calluses on my knuckles from knocking on doors. The ward isn't too keen on helping with missionary work, so we have had to do lots of finding. We still meet with Reza, but it is hard to teach him because he doesn't understand anything, so we decided to start teaching him a bit of English, and then when he can understand us, we will teach him a bit more.

Most of the success we have been having is from reactivating less active members. I don't know if I have talked about them before, but we have been working a lot with a couple named Vera and Sefo. They just started coming back to church and are planning on getting married in January. They are the best! They are also fellowshipping and finding more less active members for us to teach. Two doors down from where they live, they found a less active lady and her kids who weren't on the record, but want to come back to church. Her name is Jazz. We have been teaching her, and she will be coming back to church next week!

We have also been working with part-member families. We are just trying to build their trust, because a lot of the time you have to have their trust before the non member will listen to the message. A couple we are working with are Tania and Andrew. They have started coming back to church. Andrew has been taught by missionaries for 2 years, but has never committed to anything. So I decided to teach him a lesson about receiving an answer from the Holy Ghost. For 2 years no one ever taught him how to feel the holy ghost. We committed him to Read and Pray about the Book of Mormon. He said if he got an answer, then he would be baptized. Which is great! He has been busy with University study, but we are hoping to meet with him this week to set a date! 

I love being a missionary. I know that there is no better work than missionary work. You don't have to be a missionary to do missionary work. Member missionary work is the most effective type of missionary work. Members are the finders, and Missionaries are the teachers. That is the ideal situation anyway. If a non member is taught in a members home the conversion rate goes up to 80 percent. So I challenge you all to follow the counsel given to us by Apostles of God at this last General Conference, and pray for opportunities to share the gospel with you friends. It is time for the work of the Lord to Hasten.

I Love you all and I miss you and I hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Kyler Powelson