Elder Jaren Brown: Double Weekly, Double Exchange!

Hi Everyone!

This was a good week, and I will include more details from last week too!

Week May 28-June 4

Last week was pretty good, but definitely had its ups and downs. We had a Zone Leader Conference (meeting with the district leaders, sister training leaders, and zone leaders in this zone) on Monday night where we discussed our zone goal for this transfer. We will have every area baptize or have someone very close to baptism this transfer.

Then on Tuesday, we got into a bash, which was no fun! We weren't trying to bash, but they didn't accept any of our answers and were not willing to even pray about it. Pretty ridiculous. It also made us late for dinner! Needless to say, I will try to be quick to observe so we don't get into another bash. We also taught Justin.

On Wednesday, we visited sister Kelley and Rick and Rebecca with a fellow shipper, and it was super bomb! Good member fellow shippers are key! They are able to explain things in a way we just can't.

Thursday was definitely the highlight of the week! We had zone conference in Charlottesville with Elder and Sister Ringwood, who is the daughter of President Nelson! I was also invited to attend an Mission Leader Conference they held beforehand with Elder Ringwood. We received some awesome instruction regarding our generational impact, the doctrines of 2 Nephi 2, member work, ministering and revelation, as well as teaching with the spirit unto astonishment. Super good! Also, Elder & Sister Ringwood chose to sit at our table during lunch, so we were able to ask more questions!

We headed up to Harrisonburg with the zone leaders after zone conference for an exchange and it was a lot of fun! There has been a lot of flooding lately, especially in Charlottesville and Harrisonburg. We were at a members house for dinner that night, and their backyard was becoming a pond, the spillway couldn't hold all the water!

I was with Elder Nichols on Thursday, which was a lot of fun, and then I went with Elder Miller on Friday, and we did a bunch of street contacting in downtown and on JMU! We found a couple new 'gators (investigators) on Saturday, and then we had a great Sabbath on Sunday! Although, let's be honest, every Sunday on the mission is awesome! It was fast Sunday, and we had dinner with the Swinson's, who are super cool! They also made really good food, and I had to get the recipe for it (Korean beef bowls)!

Week of June 4-11

This week was also really good! We found a new investigator on Monday night, and then had my first district meeting as a district leader on Tuesday afternoon after a blitz with Staunton. I was with elder little for the blitz. The Martin's gave an excellent training on baptism! Look for 8 covenants and 4 promises in Mosiah 18:8-10!

We also had dinner at the Hoys tonight, and there were like 20 people there! There will be 35 this week. On Wednesday, we did an exchange, and I was with elder Burdette this time. It was a good exchange. We found another new investigator on Thursday, and we were able to send some Spanish referrals on Friday. We helped a member move in on Saturday morning and then cooled off with sonic slushies! That was delicious, as was dinner with the Wayts. They made bacon wrapped barbecue meatloaf! Super good! Sunday was good as usual, and we were fasting again, this time for the zone goal. We also had to miss gospel principles, which was apparently super good this week! Sydney was on fire spiritually and came the closest she has ever been to picking a baptismal date! We are setting up an appointment to talk about it.

Anyway, sorry for the super long letter this week! Also, I bought the Oregon trail card game today, which is pretty fun. Until next week,

Elder Brown