Happy Thanksgiving

Hey guys hope yall had a great thanksgiving! It is different celebrating thanksgiving here because, well... it doesnt exist :(

However, it was good. I bought a pizza for Elder Arrieta and on Thursday explained to him the purpose of this holliday (and I jokingly tried to convince him that it is a mormon tradition to make up for all the 12 fast sundays of the year in one day- he didnt buy it). It was a good opportunity for me to take a little more time in my prayers and really thank the Lord for everything he has given me. I would try to make a list but I am so blessed it would take all day and I only have one hour to type. One of the things I am most grateful for though is you guys. Thank you for all the support you have given me. Though we are half a world away I feel your love and your prayers while I am out here. 

This has been a very crazy week, it flew by. On tuesday we had leadership training, a great opportunity to look around and once again realize I the youngest zone leader here, at least in terms of time in the mission. However, it isnt important, the Lord cares not for age or experience. To name just three examples we have the boy prophet Samuel, the nephite commander Mormon, and of course Joseph Smith. All of whom were young and inexperienced. However, they were all able to be shaped by Christ into who they were made to be. As a missionary they are my examples, I know my weaknesses, I know I fall short in so many areas, I know I am inexperienced, and I know I make more mistakes in a day than I can count. But, I know the Lord will shape me into who I am meant to be.

Until Next Week, Love Elder Brown

P.S. Elder Brown told us while chatting that his new pensionista makes him mountains of food and he is gaining some weight back! Just in case any of you were concerned!

Hola

Alright I dont have much time but I will include pictures. Just know the life of a zone leader is the coolest and most stressful thing for me right now. I love it but man we only get 7 hours of sleep at night if we are lucky. I love my new area and the members here are awesome. We didnt have many lessons this last week because the area is struggling but hey we can change that. Love You!!!

Elder Brown

Ok nevermind with the photos, I just got a virus and it erased all my photos from the last four months.... Crap

Eating with the district

NEW AREA AND SURPRISE

(here is the cafe elder brown emailed us from!)

Yep thats right, I am no longer in the beautiful town of Ayacucho. But I do have an amazing new área and an amazing new companion. Elder Arrieta and I will be working in the zone Villa Maria and our área is Las Jardines (the gardens). The craziest thing though is I have been assigned by President McGinn to be a zone leader here in Villa Maria. I am pretty nervous because I dont have any experience as a district leader much less a zone leader but I am eager and ready to learn.

I dont have much time here in Lima but I already love it, our pension is awesome and the food here is a Little cheaper so maybe I will stop losing weight. Also fun fact, wanna lose 40 pounds, serve a misión. I am excited to work here and next week I will know a lot more about this new área.

Alright a Little more about Ayacucho. In the end of this last transfer Elder Gimenez and I had two baptisms. I dont have my camera so I will dend more potos next week but the baptisms were Epifanio and Lucero (no relation whatsoever between them). Epifanio was a investigator that three weeks ago asked us to baptize him, so on saturday I did. Seeing the growth of this man, who is so dear to my heart, has changed me.

Secon, Lucero. I havent written about her because this is a crazy story. Lucero is a 15 year old girl who I though was a member because she has been coming to church every week the whole time I was in Ayacucho. Turns out she isnt a member but she has been coming to church everyweek for 6 months. She approached us on sunday the 6th and asked us to baptize her. When my companion and I met with her we tried to figure out what she has learned from her experience with the church. Turns out she has a testimony in every thing we teach as missionaries. So after briefly going over the lessons with her we baptized her the next saturday. Its a rule in our misión that investigators need to go to church three times and have all the lessons to be baptized but because she was going to church so long before Elder Gimenez and I now have one of the fastest conversions in the misión, one week.

Alright guys, crazy stuff, no time, people to teach, yall know the drift.

Gotta Go, love Elder Brown

Don't have much time but I love ya.

Hey guys I dont have much time today to do a proper group email but I can explain why I am emailing at 8 in the night instead of normal time in the morning. This sunday my companion and I were fasting, here in Peru because lunch it the biggest meal of the day we start fasting saturday after lunch and end in sunday after church which starts at 9 am. During the sacrament my companion and I were standing in the doorway looking to see which of our investigators made it to church when he passed out, fell over, and slammed his head against the wall. This gave him a minor but irratating concusion. Turns out he is hypoglychimic or whatever so when he was fasting (and this was his first attempt at a 24 hour fast) he lost all energy. Because of his concussion we have been confined to our apartment, for the last two days!! It is terrible because we just have to sit in the dark in absolute silence and while he needs to be sleeping, I had to sit up all day and most of the night waking him up every so often and making sure he wasnt having memory loss. Its terrible, hes being a bit of a poop because he wont sleep, can't blame him he has slept 16 of the last 24 hours. I meanwhile and beat, I only have 6.

This last week has been very interesting, we have been working but it is hard as plans fall apart. We have 4 investigators with dates in this moment all of which could have been prepared to be baptized this upcoming week but 3 of them will be waiting a bit longer. I discovered I needed to put aside my pride because at least in part I know I was pushing them for an earlier date because I wanted to be here for their baptism and with transfers this upcoming week I know there is a possibility that I will be leaving ayacucho. I have been pondering and praying a lot about this and although I would love to have more time here in ayacucho with the people I love and to see the investigators enter the waters of baptism, I know missionary work isnt about numbers. They will be baptized, that is what is important, and whether I am here to see it or not isnt important. What is important is to serve, with all out hearts might mind and strength and no matter where I will be this next transfer I am ready to continue in the work.

Love, Elder Brown

Happy Halloween

Alright guys I dont have too much time for my group email this week but I will make up for it with photos.

First off I want to talk to you guys about Satan. Here in our mission, President McGinn is constantly telling us "off to the battle." Here in the mission it is awesome to be serving the Lord but as such you need to be prepared that the devil will send his forces to counter your work. Every investigator will experience this battle between good and evil, God and the Devil, if they are to be converted. Conversion is not an easy process, the more we strive to follow Christ the harder the devil is going to try to tear down our faith.

Why am I sharing this? Because this week in the war against the Devil Elder Giménez and I have lost a battle. Franko called us on tuesday and said that he doesnt want us visiting him anymore. My heart broke as he said this. When we passed by to visit him he said that he has been praying and praying to know if our message is true and he just hasnt recieved and answer, he said because of this he thinks its best if he just continues as before with reading the bible. Elder Giménez and I bore him our testimonies and told him that he can always count on us to be there as his friends if he doesnt want us to teach him. I have been pooring out my heart in prayer for him all week that he might regain the faith in our message that I saw he had but it is a painful reminder that Even though Christ will triumph over Satan, not every war will be won. If there is anything new with this situation in the future I will of course write about it.

Ok now a little happier news. This week Elder Giménez and I rescued two less active members and they are now once again fully active, latter day saints. One of these rescues, Ruben, baptized his eight year old daughter this last Friday and we had to opportunity to go to the baptism. It was awesome not only to see the joy on this young girls face but also the joy in her father as he had the opportunity to bring her into this church in which he has now regained his faith.

We also have three investigators who are going to be baptized in the following weeks, two on the 12th of November and one on the 25th. Nellie, Epifalto, and Betsabe are all amazing and I am so glad for the opportunity to teach them.

Also I want to share with you guys one of our new investigators we found this week. His name is Fritz and he is about 24 years old. Fritz has astounding faith in God but he doesnt believe in the churches because of an experience he had. He shared with us that once as he was pondering and thinking about god he had a dream and from what he described it was an out of body experience where his soul left his body and he was looking down from above. He said in this experience he learned that there is a god and also that this life is not the end. When he shared this experience with a catholic priest the priest said he was posessed and that is was of the Devil. Fritz told us this is why he doesnt go to a church but as we testified to him that unlike other churches we believe God still gives us personal revelation in these days I saw our message touch his heart. Crazy!

Ok more next week but this is all I have time for now.

Much love, Elder Brown

The Chosen Ones

Should I even bother to tell you all that this has been another amazing week. As impossible as it seems every week just gets better and better. Yeah there are hard times but the miracles I have seen have changed my life forever.

To start, remember last week how I told y´all that there was an investigator in church who asked us to baptize him after just one day in church, well I have a lot to share about him. His name is Epifaldo and at this point he is engaged to a member who lives in a different ward. He has strong desires to obtain the blessings of an eternal marriage and to be united with the church. We had set up a plan to meet him on Monday and because he couldn't´t remember his address we only had his cell phone number. When we were preparing to call him monday to comfirm the appointment we realized that as we wrote down his cell phone number we forgot to write one diget. In this point I realized that in order to figure out not only what is the missing number but also where it is, we would either have to try nearly 100 different combinations, or rely on God. I prayed for the spirit to guide me and at the end of my prayer I had the impression that maybe I didnt include one of the numbers because it was two of the same number in a row and maybe, just maybe, I thought he was just repeating himself. I decided to try a few numbers and I can't tell you that my prayer was answered on my first attempt. No my prayer was answered, this is true, but it was answered in the manner that Moroni declared in Ether 12:6 - after the trial of my faith. I tried all 8 of the 9 possible combiniations that could work according to the prompting I felt after my prayer. After 8 failed attempts I started to have thoughts such as - this is impossible, I am wasting my time, maybe that wasnt the spirit. However, truly after my faith was starting to fail, on the last possible number, Epifaldo picked up the phone.

I know that this story might be hard to understand, but if that made even the slightest bit of sense I want you to know that this experience, and many others over the last few months, have created a deep, firm testimony in my heart for the power of prayer. So often we feel are prayers go unanwered, we expect to hear a voice shouting out an answer in our heads the second we conclude in the sacred name of our saviour. It is true that God is a God of Miracles. And he works miracles, in times of old, today, and forever. However, more often then not our anwers are recieved in ways that may take time, patience, and most inportantly faith. Cry unto God in your prayers having the faith that you will recieve anwers in Gods own time and I promise, as well as many prophets today and in olden times, that God is bound to give you an answer.

Ok continuing with Epifaldo, he is amazing, he is chosen to recieve this gospel. We have met with him three times this week and the only reason it wasnt more is because he had to go to Lima. The plan for him is to be baptized on 5 of November and I know he will continue to prepare for this day.

Another of the CHOSEN ONES that we found this week is Betsabe, she is a reference from the central office and I am astounded by her faith, there is more I want to say about her but it will have to wait for next week. Just know she is awesome and she will be baptized on 12 of November.

Alright Guys, YOSSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yosser Piñeda Quispe, a man I have grown to love over these last few weeks was baptized and confirmed a member of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints this last week. Seeing the joy as he was baptized and hearing his testimony brought more joy into my heart that words can describe. I love this man and am so grateful that God has given me the opportunity to be a part in his conversion. Pictures to follow!

Guys I dont have more time which is a bit frustrating because there is so much I want to say but for now all I have time for is to tell you I love you all and cant wait to write you and hear from you this next week.

With love, Elder Brown