On the road again, it's Transfer time!! YIPPEE :D (Received-05-21-2012)

Hiya! :D

So... I got transferred last week... to....... FAIRVIEW!  Good work Pops!  You get the extra piece of cheesecake! :D  I'm in the Batasan Hills 2nd ward which means that there are LOTS of BIG hills and.... A mountain! :D  It's close by where I can see it, but far away enough that we don't go to it.  Pretty sweet :)

Yup, it kinda feels like starting all over again and I'm SUPER excited to have a new beginning and start having fun and doing great things from the beginning :)  The people here are super cool and fun and I'm way excited to start working with them and helping people come closer to Christ.

Transfer day is lots of fun.  All of the Elders that are transferring go to a chapel in the middle of the mission with their companions.  There we have a meeting with the Mission President, his wife, and all the office missionaries.  After they give talks the AP's announce who is being assigned where by Zone.  It's really exciting and I always get butterflies in my stomach haha :)  After you find out where you're going you take your bags out of the jeepney you came in, stick them in the one going to your new home and take off with your new companion and Zone mates.

My companion is.... A Filipino! :D  His name is Edger Compao from Bacolod City.  He said that Mitch Wade had his 2nd to last area in his ward.  Elder Compao played basketball and worked with him all the time haha.  Small world and cool beans! :)  He's in his 3rd transfer and just finished his Training which means I'm a Follow-up trainer.... Cool :)  He's super nice, fun and likes playing basketball even though he's 5 feet tall haha :)  He's pretty good too!

So Elder Compao has been in this ward for 3 months so he knows the area and people pretty well.  His companion was a BIIIIIG Tongan guy from California named Elder Vea.  E.V. was here for 6 months so the people miss him but have warmed up to me pretty quick.  I'm trying to make a good first impression on everybody because it seems like that's a LOT easier than trying to change people's opinions of you :)  Just having fun, being happy, and messing around with everyone we've met so far.  At times I feel a little uncomfortable or out of place with it but it's been a lot of fun :)  Elder Vea and Elder Compao didn't have a lot of people to teach but those that they did focus on have made big progress.  In the last 5 days we gave out 3 Baptismal Dates to people during June and it seems like they'll keep em! :D  Pretty excited about working here :)

The house and neighborhood we live in are super nice!  There are 4 missionaries in our house which is a first for me.  Our housemates are Elder Cresswell (My Zone Leader for the last 2 transfers) and Elder Hoyo-A (A brand new missionary or ang anak ni Elder Cresswell:).  They're both fun and Elder Cresswell's super hard working.  He's going home in August so he'll die in this area :)

If you wanna find out where I am you can look up Batasan Hills, Quezon City on Google or look up Batasan Hills 2nd Ward on LDS.org.  It's almost as far away as I can get from from my first 2 areas and is a BIG city area.  Pretty cool though, it's nice and clean and our subdivision we live in is quiet.  We actually live a couple minutes away from the House of Representatives of the Philippines.  Pretty cool :)

So Elder Montemayor ended up staying in Meycauayan which'll be great.  The people love him there haha.  Guess who his new companion is?  Elder Calinog!!  My comp from the MTC!  Haha, they're both awesome and SUPER funny.  They're gonna do great work and have a BLAST in that ward :)

Holy freaking tawale our family is full of Sports Stars!!!!  That's SOO cool that Kylee won the game in 2OT, (softball), and that Hunter scored FIVE?! goals in one game! (soccer) I'm kinda sorta jealous that he gets to play ball with Big T at age 9 haha.  Sounds like that is a good basketball group for him to stick with ;)

Haha, sounds like that Fingerprinting job is a BLAST! :)  Are you still enjoying it as much as you were?  It sounds like you're having fun meeting all types of new people and seeing familiar faces.  Tell those you see I say hi :)

Wow, it sounds like your a computer genius now!  Labeling pics??  Haha, good work! :)  I'll try and label em when I have time.  And I'll try and figure out if I can fix those other ones.  We'll see what happens :)

SOOO stoked for Elder Russel M. Nelson! :)  I'll let ya know how it goes :)

MAHAL KITA!!!  Sorry if I left questions unanswered, let me know about any new ones next week.

Elder Powell :)

P.S.-The computer doesn't have a program to send you pics.... LAME!  Sorry, next week :)