Jan 7 Update - 🎶Out in the desert they wander....🎶

This was a decent week, but also another tough one for the teaching pool.  We have had a lot of good days and a lot of cool contacts and little miracles, but it's been difficult to get things to stick.  We have one more week before campus opens up, and I am super ready!  I'm sure this will be a great week, and if not, next week will be jam-packed, so it's all good!  

It was decently cold this week, but we had a great time!  We had a blast on exchanges with the Fall Hill Spanish Elders.  I was with Elder Young, and we got Super Rico (a Peruvian chicken place) for lunch and made pupusas for dinner!  Now I feel like a true Hispanic.  

We also had some funny contacts.  We had a black baptist lady that the Fredericksburg sisters are teaching, approach us, and she was hilarious!  It felt good to support other missionaries by helping their people.  We also knocked into a super great Hispanic guy at about 7:30 who had some clarification questions, but once he understood it, he was on board!  His mom on the other hand, was not.  Keep in mind, I have developed passable Spanish, but I am by no means anywhere close to fluent.  She goes off with a bunch of concerns (many of which were repeated) about Joseph Smith not being in the bible and reading only the bible, and the importance of staying centered on Jesus Christ, and talks at us for over a half hour, and I am understanding none of it.  Elder Young has only been out for 3 months, so his understanding isn't great either, and so we just can't really get anywhere with her.  But we were still able to testify of our message, and her son was totally down with it, so Elder Young will go back to teach him when Elder Knight (who has been out about 9 months and has decent Spanish) can help with the abuelita's concerns. 

We also had a lot of really neat visits with some less active members, and one of them has a parrot named bandit!  You don't see that every day.  We also had an exchange with the Chancellor Elders, and Elder Johnson is a fantastic missionary!  He was really fun to work with, and we had some funny contacts too.  We talked to a jolly old chap named Malcolm who was super proud of all the pins on his hat.  He was walking with a great Jehovah's Witness named Anita, so we couldn't teach much, but they knocked into him later this week, and he let them in!  So that was pretty neat.  

We also talked to about the nicest ex-member of the church I have ever met.  She is not interested in coming back, and has some weird beliefs now, but doesn't have much against the church and invited us to stop by anytime we are in the neighborhood for some water or another conversation.  Then on Sunday, we had a munch and mingle (it's da best!) and it was basically the Chippenham crew, as there were a few members from Chippenham up here on winter break, so that was fun.  Anyway, it's been a blast!  
Y'all have a great week!

Elder Brown

        Cool member visiting from Chippenham named Kasi

Me with bandit the parrot