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
