Elder Kyler Powelson

August 27, 2012

Hello All,

This week has been a really busy week. We had a total of 7 baptisms this weekend breaking the mission record for the number of baptisms in a week by a companionship. We are going to have dinner with the mission president and his wife sometime in the next couple of weeks and our picture is going to be put on display at the mission office. It was a really good experience. I'm glad I have had some of the experiences I have had. I have attached some pictures of the baptisms we had this weekend. The Baptism we had on Saturday was Blake. Both his parents are less active members and he really wanted to get baptized when we tracted into him. So he was really excited to be baptized and his baptism went really well. Then on Sunday we had the baptism of Sandy and 5 of her kids. She has 3 more kids but they are under the age of 8. It was a really good experience. We tracted into Sandy and she said that the night before we knocked on her door she was praying for what she needed to do with her life. The next morning we tracted 3 houses and her house was the 3rd one that we tracted. She said we answered her prayers when two guys knocked on her door with smiling faces. So it was a good experience teacher her and all of her kids up to the point of being baptized. This is going to be a rememberable baptism for me. I baptized 2 of the kids and 2 other members in the ward who fellowshipped them baptized the others. The kids names are Tyrone, Liam, Tahlia, Melanie, and Jackson. So I baptized Tahlia, and Liam. I was really nervous doing this for the first time. I had to baptize Tahlia 4 times because her dress would not go under the water. She had to end up tying the dress in a knot so it wouldn't go to the top of the water. But eventually we got it worked out and she was baptized. The mission president and AP's came to the Baptisms and he said it was the biggest baptism he has had so far in the 2 years he has been mission president. There were 141+ people attending the baptism. Usually only about 20-30 people attend a baptism, but the whole ward wanted to support the great family. The ward said that they never have had a baptism that big. There were heaps of refreshments and the ward has a really good time. I will never forget this baptism or this family. The coolest part of being on a mission is that I will have a connection with this family forever. It was a really good experience. I will never forget it. So my whole week was spent preparing these people for their baptism. And this week we have no investigators with a baptism date, so we are going to try and set at least one more this week. Our teaching pool is once again low so this next week we are going to be doing lots of finding. I miss you all and I hope you all have a good week this week.

Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson

Elder Powelson Tyrone Liam Melanie Tahlia Jackson Elder Oto

Blake

August 20, 2012

Hello All

I had some more good experiences this week. We taught quite a bit of lessons this week. But the good experience for the week happened this Saturday. I was on a trade-off with the Zone Leaders on Saturday, so it was my first time in my area with someone who didnt know the area. So I had to lead every activity we did and get around. I did really well. I was surprised how well I knew the area. I never needed to get around on my own before. So I was with Elder Marshall who is another American from Arizona. In the morning we went to follow up on a potential who we had taught a lesson to and was really interested. We were planning on setting a Baptismal Date, but when we talked to her, she said she was not interested anymore and told us to go away. So we left. And as we were walking down the street a miracle happened. An older lady came running towards us saying "Stop! I have been praying and I think you two are the answer to my prayers." We were both really surprised and we went to her door step and taught her a 15 minute version on the Restoration. She said she had been praying for years to find a church to accept her, and she saw us walking and thought we were the answer to her prayers. The spirit was really strong as we taught her. She said she went from being in a really bad, negative mood into a very happy mood. She knew that God had answered her prayers. She said she never worked on her garden, but she felt like she needed to today. If she was not outside working on her garden, she would have never seen us walking down the street. It strengthens my testimony that missionaries are led to places and to people who are ready to hear the gospel. There is no way that it is a coincidence that she was working on her garden right at the time we were walking by. The Lord inspired all of us to be in that place at that time. She then went to church on Sunday and she also came to our baptism. She said it was all Amazing. We are going to try and set a baptismal date with her on Tuesday. It is true that God does inspire his servants. That was definitely a testimony builder. Her name is Kathy

So we had the baptism on Yaige Taito yesterday. His uncle baptized him and he is really excited for church and everything. This Saturday we have Blake's Baptism. Both his parents are less active members and he is really excited to be baptized. Then on Sunday we have the baptism of Sandy and 5 of her kids. They are all really excited and I am really excited! Well that is my week. I miss you all and I hope you all have a really good week.

Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson

Elder Powelson Yaige's Uncle Yaige Taito Elder Oto

August 14, 2012

Hello all,

This week has been pretty good. We have a baptism this Sunday which is really excited and then we have 7 more next week. I am really excited for them to happen. The one on Sunday is a 9 year old boy who is part of a part-member family who was never baptized. Then next week Sandy and all of her kids are getting baptized. It is really cool to see how much they have changed in the month that we have met with them. It is really cool having a miracle convert this early in my mission. If we were lazy missionaries and didn't tract, then we would have never found her and it would not have been as good of an experience. So hard work does pay off on the mission. Anyone who gets mission calls or has exciting news make sure to tell my mom so she can email it to me. We taught quite a bit of lessons this week. We have been doing lots of work to prepare everything for the baptisms we are having soon. The work is going well and Raceview is growing to become one of the better area in the mission. We had no one to teach when we got here, and now there are heaps of people to teach. We hope to keep finding more people and teaching more people so the work can keep getting better and better here. I am excited and I am having some of the most spiritual experience I have ever had in my life so far. We have a few potential investigators that are really interested, so we will see what happens this week. We have already had 2 lessons this week and we have 10 more planned for the rest of the week. That is really high for this mission, so we are definitely keeping busy. That is as far as the work goes.

Now for some good experiences that I have had. Last week I went to a Samoan birthday party. Since we were missionaries we were automatically guests of honor. So we sat at the big table and got served our food. The people kept coming and putting food on my plate. I don't have to worry about going hungry in this area. The members always make sure we have food. There was lots of people singing and dancing. It was all in the Samoan Language so I could not understand a thing, but the food was really good. Samoan food is really good.

So 5 years ago they took away all of the Samoan speaking wards and some people didn't like that because it is hard for them to understand English, so they decided to make a break off church of the LDS church. We call them the break-offs. Well we went and visited them and they started to realized that the spirit isn't in their meetings and that they didn't have the authority from god to do all the things they do, so some of them decided to come back to church even though it is in English. So that was a miracle for us to have people come back.

Well, that is about it for my week and I hope everyone else is doing well. I miss you all and I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Kyler Powelson

August 6, 2012

Hello all,

Not too much has been going on this week. Sandy and her kids came to church yesterday and are really excited about being baptized on the 26th. Blake who is a part of a part member family is also excited to be baptized on the 25th. We have been teaching them a lot this week to prepare them for baptism in a couple of weeks. It is really cool. But yesterday we had a surprise text. We talked to a member in our ward at church on Sunday and she said that she that her nephew wanted to start taking the missionary lessons. So we set up a time to meet with them on Wednesday. Later in the day on Sunday we got a text message saying that this boy wanted to get baptized as soon as possible and they set up the date on Aug 19th at 6pm. So it was really cool getting an unexpected text like that. Our zone is going to break the Ipswich Zone record this month. The record is only 10 baptisms in a month. and in our zone we have 17 baptismal dates set for the rest of August as a district. 8 of those are just from me and my companion. We also met with some other investigators that aren't progressing very fast. One of the biggest problems for people in Australia is that they live with their partners, but are not married. So one of our investigators named Navi really wanted to get baptized next month, but his partner doesn't want to get married for another year. Our investigator Rachel is still having problems with her family letting her be baptized. We found a couple of potential investigators this week. We have some lessons set up with them this week, so hopefully we will have some new investigators at the end of the week. That is about as far as the work is going. We are really busy and August is a really busy month for everyone one in the mission. I am privileged to start as a missionary in the zone I am in because people actually listen to us when we try to talk to them. There aren't very many rude people. I haven't learned much Samoan this week because we have been really busy with missionary work, but I have picked up on a few things. Who knows if I will ever be able to become fluent in it. But that doesn't matter as much as the work does at this time. The missionary work is keeping us busy. Even though all the Samoan people feed us a lot of food I have lost 6 kg's so far on my mission. I don't know how many pounds that is, but it is over 10 lbs. We are keeping really busy and I really like doing all the missionary work. One of my goals is to try and enjoy tracting as much as possible. the 7 of our baptisms were people we found by tracting. So even though everyone doesn't listen us there is that occasional person who will listen to us. Overall the missionary work is good and I am learning a lot. This is the last week of my first transfer (6 weeks) and so I only have 6 more weeks with my trainer. The mission president said I will probably be serving in Raceview until January. It has been getting down to 0 degrees Celsius in the mornings and so it has been pretty cold. The people who live here think the world is going to end at that point. But I have survived a lot colder. That is about it for this week. I will let you all know of my busy week next week. I miss you all.

Love,
Elder Kyler Powelson

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,

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