New Responsibilities, New Blessings!

Hi Everyone, this week has been good, but there has also been a lot of changes!  This was transfer week, and my companion Elder Berger left, and is now in the Swift Creek ward down in Colonial Heights, VA.  My new companion is Elder Carman!  He is from Golden, CO, and had been out for 5 months.  He is pretty cool, and very dedicated to the work.  He just came from the Chickahominy ward (east of Richmond) and was companions with Elder Rustand!  Needless to say I am pretty excited to have him as my companion. 

I am now the District Leader here in Waynesboro, and that comes with a whole host of new responsibilities.  I am assigned to preside over my district, relay information from the mission, report key indicators, conduct district meetings and exchanges, and a whole host of other things.  I have already seen the stress that adjusting to this new position brings, but it is a sign of spiritual growth, and this responsibility is not without its perks.  I am definitely closer to the spirit and receive random promptings about the District, which is neat, and also come to better understand the saviors way of teaching, administering and ministering.  I am excited to serve in this capacity this transfer, and see this district flourish!

This was a pretty good week overall, and we nearly met our goals.  Unfortunately, some people choose not to act on our invitations, and there is not much we can do about that.  We simply work as hard as we can, let the lord do his part, and allow people to exercise their agency. We have gone to bed early and very tired most nights this week, and Elder Carman is already on his feet here. 

We saw some really cool miracles, and I am excited to work with some of our newest investigators more!  Rick is continually feeling better and better about baptism and we are hoping to set him solidly on date tonight at dinner!  

This week should be pretty good, as I settle into my new responsibilities and continue to work in unity with Elder Carman.  We have zone conference on Thursday this week and Elder and Sister Ringwood (who is President Nelson's daughter) will be doing a mission tour.  I get to attend an mission leadership conference prior to zone conference with Elder Ringwood!  So needless to say, I am pretty excited for this week, and I'm sure it will be a great success!  Sorry, I have no pictures this week, next week will be better.  

Everyone have a great week!

Elder Brown

Service, Storms, and Transfers!

Hi Everyone!

The title this week is not super representative of this week, because there was so much that happened!  I don't even know where to start!  

We saw miracles with Rick this week, we taught him the best lesson yet on Monday, and then he called us on Wednesday and wanted us to come by!  We mostly listened that night, both to them and the spirit, and now they are praying about baptism!  

We had interviews with President Smith on Tuesday, and those were super great too!  I received some great counsel for working with the ward, and becoming the best I can be with spiritual gifts and studying my patriarchal blessing.  President gave the sweetest prayer at the end too!  Made me feel all warm inside.  

We had a bomb lesson with our newest investigator, Jean, with Brother Crnich, and he was great!  He said exactly what needed to be said.  Members are key to missionary work!  

We had a crazy storm on Monday night, and it was super rainy this whole week!  We did a lot of planning and organizing on Thursday, which also carried over to a couple other days.  We also had our last district meeting with Elder Noorda!  He will be missed.  

We had a pizza lunch with the Martins and brother Campbell, and dinner with the bishop!  We were able to successfully see a few less actives on the way out to his house, and actually found a new investigator!  Although we might have to drop him because his mom is not super on board.  We have been doing family mission plans at dinners, and it has been working great, especially with the bishop!  We also took Michael Ball, one of the priests, to a lesson with sister Kelley that evening.  He is graduating today, and his whole family went to Chick-Fil-A to celebrate, and they invited us as well, and made us order lunch and dinner on them.  They are the best. 

We did a bunch of service this weekend, helping pack boxes at the food bank, and helping fill orders at the Bishop's storehouse.  We had a lesson on Saturday with an excommunicated member who is trying to return.  We want him to succeed so much!  

We went through our entire list of potentials in the area book and made a list of all the ones we felt really good about, then organized that into routes by geographical area, and will work on visiting them this week.  

Transfer calls came on Saturday night, and Elder Berger will be leaving me unfortunately.  He will also be greatly missed, we got along great, and did some great work together.  

Sunday was good too, we only had one investigator at church this week, we were expecting more, but the others didn't show up!  Lots of less actives showed up though, and some got rides from members!  The talks were super great too, and we taught the priesthood lesson!  

We did some tracting in a rich neighborhood yesterday, but did not find much success.  They are too comfortable with what they already have.  We did have a successful visit with a less active though, and he gave us some rubber ducks! (He collects them)  Object lessons, here we come!  

Sunday night, we got a call from President Smith, and he called me to be a district leader!  I am honored, and just hope I can do it half as well as elder Noorda did.  He was great!  Anyway, sorry for the long email this week, but it was a crazy one!  Have a great week!

Elder Brown

Cool Storm!

Cool Nature Hike

Zone Picture in front of Lamanite Hut

Elder Brown and Elder Berger with the Ward Mission Leader Brother and Sister Are,

District 

Elder Brown and Elder Berger with two of our favorite relief society members

Spider season! Can you see them on the mirror?

Starting Member Splits, Exchanges, Zone P Day!

Hi Everyone!

This week was pretty great!  We taught Rick and Rebecca on Monday, which didn't go too well.  We will see if they keep their commitments this week.  

We finally got the oil change done on Tuesday, and we did companion study at the library while we were waiting.  We had to sneak into a far corner so we could do it quietly without disturbing anyone!  

We started our member splits on Wednesday, and have a member coming out with us every day until at least the end of June!  We visited some less actives and investigators with Brother Arp, and then went out with Brother Holmes on Thursday and brother Bradshaw on Friday!  We have also been doing more family mission plans and follow up. 

We had 2 service projects this week.  The first was on Thursday, helping with disciples kitchen.  They had bomb tacos!  We also helped sort donations at the post office on Saturday for the food bank's stamp out hunger event.  That was a lot of fun, even if it was 90 degrees and 99% humidity.

I was in Staunton for exchanges on Friday, and Mau Baldwin university has the best mascot I have ever seen: the fighting squirrels!  That was a long day of finding. 

We taught Bill on Saturday and then comes mother's day!  Sydney came to church, and we dropped off flowers to one of our investigators with Brother Arp after an impromptu dinner.  She has had a rough week. I got to call home yesterday, which was great! I love my family, and I wasn't even trunky after! 

Today was zone preparation day, and we went to the frontier culture museum, which was pretty cool.  We basically saw a lot of the immigrant cultures that influenced the American frontier, like German, Irish, and English farms from the 1700's and a forge, and early American settlements.

Hope you all have a great week!

Best mascot ever (fighting squirrels)

Kool-Aid drawers (yes we are toddlers)

District Meeting!

District meeting!

Elder Brown holding Hyrum Smith's knife

Feeding a Duck.

700s Irish forge

Feeding a donkey

Selfie with ham!

 Petting bacon!

Selfie in a Lamanite hut!

Elder Berger and I in 1700's Africa!

Elder Berger feeding a goat!

Working with Members!

Hi Everyone!  
This has been a good week, and this upcoming week is looking really good as well. 
Monday, we got a call from a member asking us to present a lesson in Family Home Evening, and their daughter had a friend over!  They were key in helping it go smoothly, and it went well!  Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we learned later that the friend feels kind of awkward about it, but our member is working on him! 

We have also started working with someone who used to be a member, but is no longer one.  He wants to come back, but struggles with a few things, but we have faith in him!  

We met with Rick and Rebecca Wednesday, and it was a good lesson, but also kind of weird.  Rick didn't like my tie or my collar, and thought I was being too formal (he likes just casual conversation, we are working on it).  But he was still very nice, and ended up giving me a tie with golfers on it!  We never quite know what to expect when we go over there.  Rebecca is coming along, and they came so close to coming to church this week! 

We met with Doug again this week, and he is super close to full repentance!  We are really excited for him to take this big step. 

Sunday was great!  We got some large print copies of the book of Mormon from the ward to give to a couple people who requested them, and the members are really starting to trust us!  We had a lesson on missionary work in priesthood meeting, and brother Denning shared an experience from dinner last Sunday.  He had given us the names of two less actives to visit, and we visited them both right after dinner and reported back.  That really impressed him, and showed the rest of the elders quorum that we really are serious about referrals.  We should have referrals pouring in now!  


We have also started a split schedule, and we have a member coming out with us every day from the 9th until at least the end of June!  We are so excited!  All of our investigators are doing really well too.  I hope all of you have seen similar success, and if not, it will come!  Through diligence, obedience, lots of effort, and lots of faith and prayer, you can do anything!

Elder Brown

A cool metal skeleton thing we saw while tracting

Zone P Day, So Many Miracles!

Hi Everyone

This week was super good!  We saw miracles left & right, and I was on cloud 9, maybe even cloud 10 last night, reviewing the week!  

On Monday, we had another lesson with Rick and his girlfriend, and they were doing much better this week.  The tension was gone, they really like us, and we were able to teach some.  They accepted a baptismal commitment, and have been reading the Book of Mormon.  

Then we had Zone Conference on Tuesday, and we got smartphones!  They come with a 5 gb data plan, which is super nice.  Having WiFi all the time through data is super convenient, and helps us to be significantly more effective.  We also had an exchange with the Zone Leaders afterward, and saw an amazing exchange miracle!  Elder Berger and Elder Ibarra taught Sydney who is sort of like an eternigator. She has been taught for a long time, and has been very hesitant about baptism.  I went with Elder Bench and got some great tips and training about effective daily contact and use of Facebook, and when we met back up, I discovered they basically put her on date for baptism!  She is praying about a date in May or June this week.  

We had a great day on Wednesday too.  We did some service for some members, helping them plant some Forsythias, and they fed us really good pizza! 

We also had some great member dinners this week!  We have been setting up Family Mission Plans with everyone, and it is going great!  A big focus of ours this transfer is on working with members and increasing accountability and follow up.  So we spent a lot of time during weekly planning making plans for that.  

We also met with a lot of less actives this week, and are making a lot of progress with some of them.  We saw major miracles while tracting on Thursday!  We knocked on a door, and a guy named Bill answered, and before we could even say anything, he said "it's funny, I was just talking to some missionaries down in Georgia!"  This was not a coincidence, the lord led us there for him!  

We also helped someone move on Saturday, and Sydney came to church on Sunday. They played her favorite hymn in sacrament meeting!  So many things happened at church that were meant specifically for her.  The Lord definitely guides this work!

Until next week,

Elder Brown

Exchange picture

Side walk chalk