Elder Jaren Brown: Assigned to Appomattox A Area First week in the field!

Last picture in the MTC with my district

The first week has been great so far, and I LOVE missionary work, I just get the biggest grin whenever I walk out of a good lesson feeling the spirit, I can just see so much potential in people! It's gonna break my heart if they stop progressing. I sent a picture of elder Larson my new companion and Trainer. He's pretty cool, he grew up in Idaho and is a good trainer. He is really refining me to become the best missionary ever. We are serving in Appomattox A, which is south of Richmond. Our area is mostly more in the country, it's a pretty big area, we cover pretty much all of the Appomattox area except Petersburg, which is where the B elders serve.

We arrived in Virginia last Monday and they fed us dinner, held a brief orientation, and then off to bed in the mission home. The mission president met individually with each of us. Wednesday morning, we were assigned our first area and missionary companion.

Mail may be sent directly to us at the following address: 3803 Brevard Court Colonial Heights, VA 23834.

I got into my area Wednesday and then we moved into a new apartment Friday. Being a missionary has given me a totally different perspective on life. We love to get as many meal appointments as possible and have really been trying to work with the members more. We have a thing going on called hastening the work, where we don't just go out and teach or ask for referrals, but rather we just try to work very closely with the members and have them introduce us to their friends, it works way better to have that initial relationship than to just knock on their door. I hope our ward is fired up about member missionary work, cuz it's awesome!

We have a sick new 2017 Toyota Corolla, and the ward is great, super friendly, so many black people. Black people are super great, I'm just not used to them. The humidity is different, but I don't really notice it much any more, it just makes it hotter. So I have been getting plenty of water. Also, I can not understand some people out here at all, the accent is just too thick. Some of them have a weird way of trailing off and then going again too, so it's kind of hard to tell when they are done talking. We have been teaching a few people, Gloria Mountford wants to be baptized and likely will this transfer, we met a couple new investigators that have some potential, like Devonte, he realized that weed doesn't fix stuff and wants to turn to God instead. We also met with some recent converts, the Hawkins, and they are great.