Unlawfully high speed bumps, take your bible pill!

Hi Everyone!

As you may have guessed from the title, this week was an interesting one.  It was full of appointments that fell through, little finding success, and other stressful things.  But it also had a lot of small miracles and interesting mission stories!  We did service for some members this week, helping with home improvement, and it helped to build a lot of trust. 

We also had ward council this week, which was really good.  We were taught exactly what is expected of us for ward council in mission conference last week, so we were well prepared!  Now that we have built member trust, we have a lot of exciting opportunities in store!  The members here are doing great with missionary work and starting to roll forward. We have a lot of potential member referrals on the way, and we are teaching 2 this week!  We also had some interesting days.  

We went up to Crimora on Tuesday (one of the boonier parts of our area) and I don't want to got back there again!  We found little success, and one of the trailer parks we were in had unlawfully high speed bumps! For those that don't know, we have a little box in our cars that monitor our driving and report violations.  This box is called tiwi.  We love tiwi, but sometimes it yells at us.  Tuesday was one of those days.  As we were trying to gently move over these speed bumps, we scraped the bottom of the car on a couple and got 2 aggressive drivings.  Needless to say, I wasn't very happy.  I actually started driving around them where possible, and as I was doing so, Elder Berger looked at the speed bump and saw chunks taken out of it and pieces of car undercarriage strewn about.  I don't think we will go back to that particular trailer park.

We visited an older lady in the ward on Sunday, and she is a 3-time hole-in-oner!  She has a lot of cool stories, and is generally a wonderful lady.  We really enjoyed that visit.  We also visited a less active lady who had a lot of cool nick knacks.  She let us borrow a couple, and one is called an evange-cube.  It basically tells the story of why we need Christ through pictures as you unfold it.  It was very fascinating.  She also told us her conversion story, which was pretty cool.  Like many others, she had some word of wisdom problems prior to converting, and at the end of the visit, she said "don't forget to take your pills!"  We were a little concerned until we found out they were neat little "bible pills", essentially inspirational bible verses inside gel capsules to be read in time of need.  

Enjoy general conference and Easter this weekend!

Elder Brown

Our visit with a 3-time hole-in-oner!

Mar 19 Update - Crazy Busy Week, Hearing from Elder Renlund!

Hi Everyone! This week was pretty busy here in Waynesboro and we saw a lot of success!  We have now gotten in  contact with just about all of our previous investigators, and were able to get some inside information from the previous missionaries about who else to visit, so it's been awesome!  We Also had some cool miracles this week from planning with Faith and following the spirit!  One of  them was on Tuesday.  We decided to depart from our plans significantly and tract some apartments,  and found 2 new investigators at the 4th door!  We also found a couple new investigators in some other apartments, and those apartments are literally a gold mine!  We set seven appointments in 2 hours and  met several other people who may be interested!  We also talked to 2 kids there who were pretty funny  and really excited to learn more about Jesus Christ!  So we went back the next day and set an  appointment with one of their parents, who is also interested in learning more! The Easter video and  questions of the soul are such good finding tools!  We also were able to reestablish contact with 2 other investigators that aren't usually home by following  a prompting.  So cool!  Following spiritual promptings is definitely the most effective way to do missionary  work!   We had an all mission conference on Saturday, which was super good!  We were going to hear from Bishop Waddell, but his flight was delayed, so that was disappointing, but it was still really good!  Instead,  we had a panel of stake Presidents come and talked about working with members.  Then, we had stake conference with Elder and sister Renlund and Elder and Sister Dudley, who is the area seventy.  It was  great, and Sister Renlund is hilarious!  Love y'all, and keep working hard!  Who's excited for conference!?!  I am! Elder Brown Doing service at the "Disciples kitchen" My New companion Elder Berger We are at a member dinner with sister Johnson Saint Patrick's day ties!

Jam Packed Week, plus snow in march!

Hi everyone!

This week was great!  We had zone conference on Tuesday, which was awesome!  The subject matter was on planning with Faith, and having the attitude to maintain a high spiritual altitude.  It was great!  Also, I love President Snow!  He emphasized praying with a pencil, and since he was sitting right behind me, he pounded on my shoulders for emphasis.  I literally had it pounded into me! 

Then we had an exchange with our zone leaders, and we saw a lot of miracles!  We found 3 Spanish referrals for the Hermanas, and 4 new investigators for us!  We also met some more of our investigators and had an awesome meeting with the bishop on Sunday regarding missionary work in the ward.  

We had a lot of awesome member dinners, one of which was super good!  We got like 8 referrals from them, and they posted on Facebook afterward about how much they loved the spirit we brought into their home!

Today is zone preparation day and we had snow!  In March!  Kind of reminded me of home... but it was great!  I guess it snows up here in the mountains! (more like hills)  I wish you all the best!

Elder Brown

It snowed in March! And I'm Loving it.

Zone Conference

Zone Preparation Day

Elder Wilkinson being nutty as usual

I'm in Waynesboro, lots of planning!

Hi Everyone!

This was a crazy week!  I have left Brandermill, and I am now in Waynesboro!  This is a good area and a good ward.  It is on the west end of the mission, South of Harrisonburg and west of Charlottesville (if you know where those are).  We are right in the middle of the blue ridge mountains here.  It's pretty sweet, though they are literally hills in comparison to the Rockies!  But hey, it's enough elevation change to make my ears pop!  

Also, president must have a sense of humor because I went from Elder White and Elder Brown to Brown Berger.  Yup, that's right!  My new companion is elder Berger!  He has been out 3 months, and he's a pretty cool guy!  I actually met him out here, because he didn't go to transfer meeting, so I rode back with the Harrisonburg elders!  

When we got into the area, we found that we have two large whiteboards in the apartment, so we met with the Ward mission leader, brother Arp, who is super cool, and then had a 4 hour weekly planning session!  That's right!  We filled up those whiteboards with everything we knew about the area, and that helped us a ton to see what needs to be done, and what direction to go.  We also have a senior couple here, the Martins, who are a blast!

I hope you are all enjoying your weeks as much as I am, love ya!

Elder Brown

Elder Brown holding a members pet snake!

The End of the trio Elder White, Elder Brown, Elder Swan

The Blue Ridge Mountains