Dec 10 Update - Exchanges Every Day, First Snow!

Hi Everyone!  This week was crazy busy and pretty legendary!  We literally had some kind of exchange every day this week!  We just feel really good right now.  We feel a sense of faith and peace about the mission goal of 280 converts, and our teaching pool has picked up, and it seems all the elders in the zone are doing ok.  There are always troubles and hiccups and things that need to be addressed, but that's just the nature of the work.  It's called missionary WORK for a reason.  Other than the usual though, things are going well here.  Let me give you a few highlights:

        We played a super fun game (sort of like signs) with the branch at FHE on Monday, and it helped bring everyone together!

        We were with the Fall HIll (Spanish) Elders in our area on Tuesday, and Elder Knight and I had a great time!  We got several meaningful contacts that morning on UMW, and then this afternoon we knocked on a door where a guy answered and said he was on the porcelain throne!  That was unexpected.  We left him a card.  We also found a hispanic that night in some apartments that they were pretty sure didn't have any hispanics.  The second little miracle of that night was Ariel!  We knocked into her, and she works with some members at staples and wants to come to church!  She's not very religious, and was really glad we came and talked to her!

        Wednesday was work days and interviews here.  Unfortunately, President got caught up in interviews and couldn't come out, but it was still a great success!  I went with the Culpeper Spanish Elders into the hermana's area, and found a couple potential referrals for them.  Working with Elder Bonner is always a great time!  We also had a good lesson with Valerie, and President Smith got to talk to her for a bit, which was really good for her!  We have started working with a hilarious guy named Travis, who has a very colorful background.  He is pretty funny, but unfortunately doesn't seem to be progressing much right now, so we might have to adjust his teaching schedule.  We will see what happens there.

        Thursday was a great day!  We were on exchanges with the Stafford Elders, and went tabling on UMW together, which was a great success!  We continue to learn how to do it more effectively.  I was with Elder Katoa, and he is a great man!  He is already a super good teacher, and teaches very simply and clearly.  He said he learned a lot from me, which was good to hear.  I'm really not a great role model, but I'm glad to have helped him.  We taught Amani and passed her off to them.  We also popped into institute for a bit after dinner with Lydia at panda express!  We taught Travis again after we left institute.

        We met a couple new people to start teaching on Friday.  We taught Justin, who is a freshman at UMW and very shy but interested!  He actually came to church on Sunday!  He seemed to enjoy it.  We also taught Liam, who is pretty interesting.  She believes in God and likes religion, despite having same-sex attraction.  She is really neat, and we see a lot of potential in her!  We also started an exchange with the Fredericksburg Elders that night.

         We had an interesting exchange on Saturday, it just kinda felt weird.  We had a good day though overall.  We had breakfast coordination with Bishop Meppen, and his wife is an excellent cook!  We also found a couple neat people.  We had the Branch Christmas Party that night, and it was a blast!  We are well-liked among the branch, and it went really well.

        Sunday was super interesting!  Church went well, and we had Justin and Amani there, and it started snowing!  We got a few inches over the course of the day, and the cars were grounded, so we walked!  It was a blast, we walked over to Travis and taught him and then shoveled snow for Brother Bowler and his neighbors.  We also video chatted with Chris and Valerie to read the Book of Mormon together, and (former) Elder Noorda and (former) Elder Pennington joined in!  It's been a great week.

Plus, I got to go to a member chiropractor for free to get adjusted!  It was sweet!

Have a good one!

Elder Brown

Fall Hill exchange

Tabling

It Snowed

legendary polaroid 

Some members stole our phone

Dec 3 Update - 18 month mark, #lighttheworld miracles!

Hi Everyone!

This week was amazing!  There are so many miracles happening in the mission right now!  Also in the zone and our area!  Side note: I hit my 18 month mark on Friday.  We did nothing special for it.  Let me tell you about a few miracles we saw!

The first is David.  He is super cool, and came out of nowhere!  Some sisters up in Alexandria contacted him and referred him to the Freddy A sisters.  He decided to come to church, and it turns out he is YSA, so they came to our branch with him and passed him off!  He is super humble and prepared.  We set him on date during Elders Quorum!  In part of the lesson, we divided into small groups and each studied a different gospel topic essay, so we studied the apostasy with him and one thing led to another.  We essentially taught the restoration in the 15 minute study break we had, and it was sweet!  He is super excited to work toward the 29th, and absolutely loved church!

The second is Terry.  We only had about an hour on Saturday to find people to teach, and we have a standard of excellence in the mission to make meaningful contact with 10 new people every day.  So we petitioned the lord to help us and went downtown.  We decided to share the new light the world videos with people, and they are so powerful!  Everyone we showed it to agreed to help us light the world, and we got more than 10 meaningful contacts in that hour!  The first of which was Terry.  We were there to contact him specifically.  He was the one we were there for!  He is a less active member from Stafford who has been thinking about going back to church recently.  He was in tears by the end.  Powerful.

The third is Megan and Travis.  I was on exchanges with Elder Replogle, and had planned to tract some apartments we were working through, but didn't feel super confident about it, so we prayed and were directed to some other apartments across the street.  We found Megan in the first building we knocked, and Elder Replogle had contacted her on a previous exchange!  We had a powerful lesson with her, and even got her boyfriend Travis (who seems a little rough and didn't want to talk) to open up a ton!  By the end, he told us we had to come back and talk again.  Always follow spiritual promptings.  

The fourth is Valerie.  We were on exchanges with the Culpeper Spanish Elders for this one and followed yet another spiritual prompting to video chat Valerie (a recent convert who is struggling a bit).  We had a powerful lesson with her and the next day she came to 3 lessons and testified!  She's back!

The fourth is Lamar.  We haven't had a lesson with him in almost a month, so we stopped by on Sunday and were going to stop teaching him if he wasn't there, but he was!  We had a great conversation, and work is going better for him, so he said he would start coming to church again!  We were beyond excited about that.

In other notes:

We were on exchanges with the Chancellor Elders on Tuesday, and wrestled.  It didn't end well, but was really fun!  We found out on Wednesday that Chandler received some crazy revelation and is now engaged to the girl he just started dating.  We also started teaching an interesting guy named Dylan who really wants to hang out with us, and called Elder Larson "lord larson" until we corrected him.  He came to church!

Anyway, it was a great week here, and the Lord is in His vineyard with us!  I know He will help us acheive our goal of 280 convert baptisms this year, and that this is the most important work to be done! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!

Elder Brown

Legendary Exchange Pics (Chancellor and Culpeper Spanish [Trio])

(Chancellor and Culpeper Spanish [Trio])

A nasty black widow