Broken Toilets, A Hungry Snake, and a Missionary Farewell/Homecoming!

Hi Everyone!

What a week!  We started working with a member who recently moved into the ward and is in a bit of a faith crisis right now.  He opened up the floodgates to us in the first lesson, and wow!  We have a lot of work to do!  However, we have met with him twice more since then, and it seems he is starting to do better.  He has noticed small blessings in his life since he began meeting with us, and we are really helping him to have meaningful studies. (Preach My Gospel ch 2 was great for that) and sooner or later that will lead to him having a spiritual witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  Once that happens, he can begin to build on that foundation and find the answers to his other questions, many of which are extremely complex and very significant!  

We knocked into a  Jehovah Witness on Tuesday, and he was super nice!  He let us in, gave us some water, and had a legitimate conversation with us!  He is not particularly interested, but we were able to have a civilized conversation in which both parties learned more about why we believe the way we do.  We saw him again today at the store! 

We had a pretty sweet exchange on Wednesday with the Spanish Elders, and I spent some time with both Elder Kuhn and Elder Ibarra!  They are both great!  We saw a cool little miracle, we found 2 solid people in one hour in the middle of a weekday afternoon, that doesn't usually happen! 

We also had a good bit of service this week, we helped a new member move in on Thursday morning, and also dug some holes for someone else.  Then we helped a couple people from Charlottesville move a whole truckload of furniture into a storage unit.  They gave us gift cards as thanks, I was pretty happy!

Elder Ibarra broke our toilet on exchanges, so we had to call in maintenance.  That was pretty eventful, but it was nice too, because they also fixed a leak under our sink!  

We had dinner with the Vreelands, and got to watch their snake kill a live rat and swallow it whole.  It was pretty fascinating!  I should have gotten a time lapse video.  

We had 4 member meals in 2 days, so that was fun! 

Lastly, sacrament meeting was great!  Mariah gave her farewell talk, and Ruben gave his homecoming talk!  Both were very spiritual, but you could definitely tell the difference between the one who was about to serve a mission, and the one that just got home. You spiritually mature so much on a mission! 

Anyway, hope y'all have a great week!

Elder Brown

Another Busy week, exchanges, zone conference!

Hi Everyone!

Last Monday seems like ages ago, we had so much going on this week!

On Tuesday, we were up in Harrisonburg on exchanges, and we had a great time!  We got some great donuts from a Food truck and them experienced The Virginia slice at Benny's pizza!  I was with Elder Miller, and we just had a grand old time!  We did a lot of tracting, and had some really great conversations!  I love working with the Young Single Adults!  They are so much easier to relate to!  We also had a great lesson with a recent convert, and dinner with their new ward mission leader!  They sent us home with ice cream, yum!

On Wednesday, we headed to Charlottesville for Zone Conference, and it was amazing!  Zone Conference is always so spiritual, and this one was no different!  We focused on being better at the "Becoming a Book of Mormon/Preach my gospel missionary". We went over the changes to Preach My Gospel, and emphasizing the power of the Book of Mormon.  We had our weekly coordination meeting that night, and the Electricity was flickering!  We had kind of a mini flash flood, it was just pouring down, causing the power to flicker, and the roads to flood!

Thursday was pretty busy as well!  We helped with "The Disciples Kitchen" again, and had our hands pretty full!  There were less helpers than usual, and a fight almost broke out!  We also made some promising contacts and had a lesson with a member who is struggling a lot with his testimony.  We are trying to help him as best we can.

Friday was super good!  We had a really good lesson with Sydney, and she is bringing a friend to church!  Everything was great, and she didn't have any big questions or concerns for us.  She was even going to fast this weekend about it!

Saturday was interesting.  We had our usual lesson with a less active member, and he is close to making the next step of progression!  We visited an elderly lady in the Ward who I have come to love dearly, and I gave her a blessing.  I wanted to tell her she would be healed, but the words didn't flow until I changed to promising peace with the will of God as he calls her home.  I was pretty sad after that.  We also went on splits with a convert of about three years.  He's pretty cool!

Sunday was definitely the toughest day of the week.  Church was great as always, and Sydney brought her friend as promised, and they seemed to enjoy the meetings, and then out of the blue she told us she wants to get baptized, but is not sure this is the church she wants to be baptized in.  What a bombshell!  We are doing a lot of praying, and we have a lesson on Wednesday with her to talk about it.  We also had a tough day after church.  We got caught in the rain while tracting, so we decided to grab our jackets, after which we got laughed off a porch.  At that point, we left the neighborhood and sought inspiration from the Lord.  He led us through those trials to direct us where he wanted us, because right after that, we found someone to teach!

The night is always darkest just before the dawn.  The Lord likes effort, and when we push through those hard times, the blessings are so worth it!  As we become more like him and align our wills with his, pretty soon we start to like effort too!  I hope y'all have a great week!

Elder Brown

Cook Out shake (one of the best)

Only in the south do you see bible verses on fast food cups!

Benny's Virginia slice!

Happy 4th, nostalgic yet excellent week!

Hi Everyone!

This week was kinda crazy, so much stuff happened!  It feels like it's been ages since transfers, yet they were only on Wednesday!  We stayed together, so it felt like any other week for us.  

We had some super good authentic tacos with a member on Monday, and had sort of a sketchy contact that night.  Something just felt off about the situation.  The apartment looked suspicious, the people were acting weird, and it just had an overall weird vibe.  They set an appointment, but we didn't feel good about going back, so we didn't.

On Tuesday, we had tacos again!  We also were able to finalize a full list of the less actives, and our area book now has many more notes and tasks relating to them.  The tacos were with another member, and they wanted to give the spiritual thought at dinner!  I thought that was pretty neat, they did a good job too!  We also gave them a map of our area and asked them where they thought we should tract.  They seemed thrilled by that!

Wednesday was a great 4th of July!  Also the last 4th of July of my mission, that's super weird to think about.  It was super hot and humid, but we made some good contacts, and enjoyed the ward breakfast and dinner with the Bagleys who had a good southern cook out.  Overall, the day turned my thoughts to home a bit, but don't worry.  I didn't get too trunky.  I haven't been out long enough for that.

Thursday was amazing!  We got Sydney on date for baptism after meeting with missionaries for 2 years!  It was very exciting.  We also had a great visit with a less active, and an Returned Missionary who got home on Monday!

Friday was also good, we had another good lesson with Linda on the plan of salvation and she really enjoyed it!  She is definitely warming up to the idea of coming to church and taking things more seriously.  We also had dinner with some members who created a great family mission plan!  We were so excited about what they chose to commit to, and we will be working with them more.

We had district leader training on Saturday, and talked to a surprising amount of Hispanics while tracting the street the Miller's gave us.  My Spanish is super broken, but must have been good enough to generate some interest, because we sent off a couple referrals to the Spanish elders!  I also came up with the great idea of marking houses for sale in the area book so that missionaries can talk to the new people who move in!

Sunday was absolutely crazy!  We had a lot of people to talk to at church, had to go straight to lunch with a member after, and then meet up with another member for some visits shortly after that.  Then, as we were planning our other activities after dinner, we went out with another member to give someone the sacrament!  We were running around like a chicken with its head cut off! 

Driving around in the cornfields out in Stuart's draft today gave me crazy Deja vu and nostalgia for my first area!  I should have taken some pics, but it would probably look the same as the many others I have already taken on my mission.

Anyway, talk to y'all next week!

Elder Brown

Frontier culture museum (an older picture)

Interesting doorbell at one of the houses we tracted!

 Little man statue we found when tracting! 

Exchanges

Transfers

We are the Gung-ho Elite, A Week of Miracles!

Hi Everyone!

      This week was great!  And we had some super great miracles!

      We had a decent Monday night, refound an interested person's apartment number after forgetting to write it down when we found her!

      Tuesday was kind of a crazy day.  We had our usual district meeting, and then an hour long Skype meeting between the districts to discuss the changes that came down from the brethren in the missionary department.  Lots of good stuff, all focused on increasing our consecration, thus bringing down more of the Lord's blessings!  Some will be difficult for those who are not already on the Lord's side, but I am committed.  I used to enjoy some of the things we have been asked to stop doing, but I know the blessings will be rich!  We then exchanged, and I brought Elder Little to work in Waynesboro with me.  We helped some older members put up some new fencing, and they were very grateful.  Also, the Martins took us out to outback steakhouse, and none of us got a steak!  Those chicken tenders sounded too good.  We went all the way up to the northern border of our area looking for less actives with the Ward Mission Leader that evening, and found success in updating some of our records.

      We finished our exchange on Wednesday, and tried some street contacting in the park.  There weren't a ton of people walking around, but I'm sure we will get some good contacts if we keep trying.  We also had a good correlation meeting Wednesday night with representatives from the relief society and elders quorum, and the bishopric!  The ward is super on fire right now, and they absolutely love us!  We also had dinner with a new family in the ward, the Princes.  They are super cool, a young couple who just moved up from SVU.

 Thursday was hilarious, pretty much the title day!  After weekly planning and lunch, we visited a less active who we visit frequently, and he was having some doubts and questions again, so we directed him to the basics of the gospel that we know will always work.  Prayer, reading the scriptures, specifically the book of Mormon, and meaningfully partaking of the sacrament.  To that, he unexpectedly responded hilariously!  He said "Y'all are the gung-ho elite of the church.  I can't be gung-ho like yall!"  After which he gets a tough guy look and says in a tough guy voice "More book of Mormon!  More prayer!  More church!  I don't need food!" (One of his concerns was 3 hours of church with no food provided)  We just about died laughing after that lesson.  We had a great miracle-filled night as well, finding 3 new people to teach in 2 hours!  

      Friday was even better!  Not only did we find 3 more new people to teach, but we also committed them to a baptismal date!  We also got a big update to the area book, which significantly changed the layout and the terms we use.  This falls in line with the update we got to Preach My Gospel as well.  We no longer use the term investigator, as there is more focus on people vs statistics.  There were other changes as well, but I haven't looked through the whole update yet.

      Saturday was great, and we saw yet another miracle!  We blitzed Staunton's area with them, focusing on people who have previously been taught.  I was with Elder Burdette, and we hadn't seen a ton of success, but I trusted in exchange miracles, and with 2 minutes left before we planned to head back, a man stopped us on the street!  He has had a ton of trials in his life and has mostly lost his faith.  Today was his first day walking in 2 years, and he is only in his 20s!  He asked for a book of Mormon and was so excited to read it!  He said he will lean on it for strength.  I know it has plenty to give.  He also committed to come to church!  Transfer calls happened while we were exchanged too, and we didnt get a call!  I was super expecting to leave, but I guess the Lord is keeping me in Waynesboro for another 6 weeks!

      Sunday was pretty good.  Sydney came to church again, and we were finally able to get an appointment with her on Thursday after 2 months of very little contact.  Unfortunately, the man we talked to yesterday didn't show up, but I'm sure it's not because he didnt want to.  He probably couldn't find a ride.

      Anyway, sorry for the long letter again, but things are popping off here in the 'boro!

Elder Brown

Zone conference with Elder Ringwood a few weeks ago (we had lunch with him!)

One of the people we are teaching has a great view from his house!

Bunnies