Elder Jacob Brown- Top row, second from right! 3 months left...August 31 release date

One of the best weeks of the mission!

Hey everyone,

We baptized Mateus and Daniel this week! Daniel wants to serve a mission (he´s 19) and Mateus is going to help his nieces and sister and other family members get baptized. We sure do love the miracles that God is putting in our path.

Some Português:
Esta semana foi uma das melhores da minha missão inteira!
Nossa área está explodindo! Trouxemos mais pessoas à Igreja semana passada que qualquer outro Domingo em minha missão! Não há nada de diferente que estamos fazendo para conseguirmos nossas metas em nossa área e na Zona. Só trabalho, organização e usando os membros. Está dando certo e temos batismos certos para esta semana, semana que vem, e a outra, e a outra. Estamos achando muitas famílias, embora não termos achado 6 todos os dias. Temos que nos arrepender nisto, mas estamos nos esforçando.
Vários milagres aconteceram esta semana, quero compartilhar um: estávamos buscando pesquisadores no Domingo de manhã e chegamos na Igreja com um pesquisador. Os outros falaram que iam vir depois, então decidimos ter esperança e só convidá-los para assistirem. Chegamos na Capela e percebemos dois rapazes que estavam vestidos de terno e camisa boa, mas não os reconhecemos. Sentamos ao lado deles e começamos fazer uma amizade. Eles - Eduardo e Guilherme (18 e 20 anos, respeitivamente) - disseram que já pesquisaram a Igreja muito no internet e que finalmente fizeram uma visita para conhecer. Eles fizeram uma amizade grande com tudo mundo e marcamos passar na casa deles na segunda-feira. Mais tarde, na segunda-feira, fui com um rapaz (Nei) para ensinar e conhecê-los. Demorou muito para achar a casa certa, pois não conhecia o lugar da área. Quando chegamos, eles estavam nos esperando juntos com mais 2 amigos deles, Thomas e Bruno. Ensinamos a primeira lição e ficamos assombrados em discobrir quanto que souberam da Igreja - o anjo Morôni, o Livro de Mórmon, a Igreja restaurada, etc. Quando estávamos prontos para marcar uma data batismal com eles, senti mais fortemente em minha missão para convidá-los pensar em servir missões (os 4), mostrei-os uma foto de eu e meus 3 amigos (que nem eles), e convidei Eduardo e Guilherme para orar a Deus, perguntando se deveriam se batizar neste Domingo (29/5/2011). Deu para sentir o Espírito quase numa maneira física. Todos aceitaram orar, ler e ir a Igreja. Saímos da lição com a boca arrastando no chão de tão eleitos que são aqueles rapazes. Ontém, Eduardo nos encontrou na rua e falou que quando todos oraram (até um dos rapazes que estava menos interessado que os outros), foi o momento mais especial da vida dele. Eles serão batizados nesta semana e na semana que vem! Estamos ensinando agora mais que 10 homens, TODOS com desejo para ser batizados!!! Iremos dividir a ala, ou qualquer coisa que o Senhor quer.
Tenho / temos aprendido que a missão não é sobre sua posição (finalmente estamos aprendendo isso), nem quantas coisas que faz ou fez, mas no desejo e obras que fez para trazar almas a Deus.
Sei que Deus vive. Só Ele poderia nos dar bênçãos assim, e sem Ele não teríamos estas bênçãos.

Portuguese to English translation

Some Portuguese:
This week was one of the best of my entire mission!
Our area is booming! We brought more people into the church last week than any other Sunday in my mission! There is nothing unusual we are doing to achieve our goals in our area and zone. All work, organization and using the members. Is it working and have some baptisms for this week, next week, and another and another. We're finding a lot of families, although we did not find all six days. We must repent of it, but we are struggling.
Several miracles happened this week, I share one: researchers were searching on Sunday morning and arrived at the church with a researcher. Others said that would come later, so we decided to have hope and just invite them to attend. We arrived at the chapel and noticed two guys who were dressed in suit and shirt good, but not recognize them. We sat beside them and started to make a friendship. They - and William Edward (18 and 20, respectfully) - said they had searched the Internet and the very Church that finally made an appointment to meet. They did a great friendship with everything happening in the world and set up their home on Monday. Later on Monday, I went with a guy (Nei) to teach and meet them. Take long to find the right house, because the place did not know the area. When we arrived, they were waiting together with 2 more of their friends, Thomas and Bruno. We teach the first lesson and we discovered it in amazement as they heard of the Church - the angel Moroni, the Book of Mormon, the church restored, etc.. When we were ready to mark a baptismal date with them, I felt stronger in my mission to invite them to think about serving missions (4), I showed them a picture of me and my three friends (or them), and invited Edward William and pray to God, asking whether they should be baptized this Sunday (29/05/2011). I could feel the Spirit in an almost physical way. All agreed to pray and read and go to church. We left the lesson with his mouth dragging on the ground so those boys who are elected. Yesterday, Eduardo met us on the street and said he prayed when all (up to one of the boys who were less interested than the others) was the most special moment in his life. They will be baptized this week and next week! We are now teaching more than 10 men, all desire to be baptized! We will divide the ward, or whatever the Lord wants.
I / we have learned that the mission is not about your position (we're finally learning it), nor how many things you do or did, but the desire and works that he has to bring souls to God.
I know that God lives. Only he could give us blessings so, and without him we would not have these blessings.

We also have a new bishop, we´ve got around 20 people that all want to be baptized, our teaching is improving every day, we´re trying to become Brasilian (we played Americans against some native Brasilian kids in futebol today, and we TIED. That´s right!), and we´re loving our missions. I´ve never felt so great on the mission! WE decide how we want our days and results to be.

One challenge: bring someone to church this month. If you really believe that you can, do what you can and pray for help, God will make it happen. Just do what you can, nothing else. Try a little harder - it´ll happen.
I love my comp and I hope you all know that in THIS transfer, I have learned how to be a missionary. Finally! It took us long enough! But it´s going really well and we´re excited for everything that has happened until now.

Something really weird has started to happen - I have started to realize how little time 2 years is and it´s weird. It´s a good thing and it has to happen, but there´s a lot to be done before that time. We have a lot of goals that need to be achieved beforehand!

Love you all! We´re going to baptize Guilherme and Eduardo this week (the two young men that will SERVE MISSIONS!!!), and Fernando. We´ve got a family of 6 for next week, and other people in the coming weeks. Let´s baptize them all!

Elder Brown

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I know how/want to be a missionary now!

I learned how to be a missionary!

First, you work really hard until you can´t work harder. Then, after having done everything, you pray like crazy. Then, God gives you miracles. EVERY SINGLE TIME that we have prayed this week (as in 5 or 6 separate occasions) we have found a new family to teach, found someone who was waiting for us and being prepared by the Lord, or we have taught someone and felt the SPirit. It´s amazing. We´ve been in a constant state of shock the past 2 days after having had SO much success with this! We´ve found 3 new families in 3 days! ALL have agreed to be baptized! It´s amazing!
WE have had so many things happen this week and I want to write about all of it, but there isn´t any time. Monday was ridiculous: we went to the chapel to use the bathroom and replan some things after having had everything fall on its face. As we left, there was a man waiting in his car who came out and starting talking to us. He said that he´s always wanted to meet the church and learn how to speak english too - we marked a day to visit him (the next day - when we went there, we left the first lesson in English with him and his family - they want to be baptized! They live one street from the chapel!). So THAT was cool, but that wasn´t even the best that Heavenly Father had for us. Later that night, at about 20:00, we were looking for an address that we had got from someone on the street. Nothing was working, so we decided to use the magic prayer. Earlier that night (only about 15 minutes beforehand) we had passed an orange, richer house on a corner that caught our attention, but we shrugged it off as nothing and continued looking for the beforementioned address. Right after we prayed, I felt what would best be described as a punch in the face from the Spirit. It said "orange house". We walked with determination to the house, and as we approached the door the woman was already outside her house. We asked if we could come in , because we felt that God was preparing them to hear us ( we said that), and she let us in. We taught her, her daughter and her daughter´s husband and their 2 kids, and another man that had been a street bum until he found a Bible on the street. The lesson wasn´t the best taught that we had ever had, but we prayed like crazy to help them accept a baptismal date. And.......THEY ACCEPTED! THey literally live 3 HOUSES FROM THE CHAPEL!!! Miracles are happening, and those are only 2 of them!
Basically the only thing I´d like to get at for this week as far as advice is this (and it will sound familiar, but bear with me): work with everything until you have nothing left, and then pray like the nothing you are for the righteous something you want. God will give you anything you desire, if you deserve it.
I know that prayer is a miracle-worker. It helps souls get baptized. We will baptize 4 people this week, 5 the next week, and around 7-9 the next! Keep on the train!
Elder Brown

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Baptize the Beach Bums!

Hey ya´ll,

 

To start out, I´ll do something that I should probably do every week - a brief description of the area and stuff that happened. My new area (Paranaguá) is literally right on the ocean. It´s not the "beach" (like sand and stuff), but the coast is here and it feels just like Hawaii. Every day (for the first time in my mission) I´m using sunscreen and it´s been easy to think about when we were in Hawaii, putting on sunscreen. Anyway, there is a legend here about the "snakes" (tie-grabbers, missionary-stalkers, etc.). Basically, Americans are severe eye-candy here and, seeing as how Elder Lott and I are both blondish Americans, it´s been pretty interesting. Every hour or so we walk by different groups of 1. school girls, 2. young adult women or 3. the rare, crazy married woman and they cat-call us to death. Stuff like "vai lá em casa" (go to my house!), "me ensina, Élder" (teach me, Elder!), and the like. It´s kind of weird, but we´re doing our best to avoid them. There´s a good mixture of rich and poor here - we work in several bairros (sections of the city) on the mainland, and there´s also a big Island called Ilha das Valadares that you have to take a bridge to get to, and it´s all our area. The richer parts have a lot of Palm trees and look a LOT like certain parts of California. The others look more like Brasil, but it´s a great area. Everyone seems to have a really, really slow attitude maaaaaaaan. Just slooooooow doooooooownnnn. And there´s weed all over the place, which helps the illusion.

 

This week has been very different but very awesome. Elder Lott and I have been deciding to make our area into the Celestial area (that it already is) and help all the other missionaries to understand how it´s done. Our focus has been one that´s very simple: we want miracles. We need miracles in order for this work to get going. They can be big or small, but they just have to happen. To be able to receive these miracles, we need to do three things: 1. Ask, 2. Deserve, and 3. Thank for the miracles when we receive them. Until now in this current week, we´ve seen several miracles that have really been amazing.

First, yesterday we have several miracles. First was Diego: all our appointments had fallen through and we were looking for someone else to visit. We said a quick prayer to ask for someone to teach and kept going. We walked by this 25 year-old guy who was playing guitar in his living room and something said "teach him". We almost passed him, but we turned around and went to talk to him and he was already coming to the door to let us in. He´s from the Baptist church and plays the drums there. As we came in he asked if we could speak English with him and we said sure, can we leave a message with you in English, and he said yes! He understood really well, and it actually was probably a big blessing because he wasn´t able to understand everything nor interject with doctrines that his church teaches. It was a really spiritual lesson and we were praying like crazy that we would understand and want to follow. After the first vision (which practically blew his socks off), Elder Lott asked what he would do to know that the message was true. He thought for a minute then said that he was feeling like he should pray and do what Joseph Smith did - ask to know the truth. We stared at him in awe and complimented him for his courage to follow the answer. We invited him to be baptized and he´ll pray about that too. He´s awesome! It was really cool to be able to practice in English and to feel the simplicity of our teaching and power of our testimonies.

Next, on that same day, there was Maria and her family. We were, once again, hunting for people to teach and we visited a house that we had contacted a few days before - the contact was this crazy old lady and we were half-hoping that she wasn´t there. Well, we were informed that she had moved. Go figure. So the 13 year-old boy let us in to teach his family...of 7! 6 of them can be baptized! They´re legally married and really, really want to be baptized! Woo!

We´re also teaching several young couples, another huge family (of 6 - Aliete and her family) and several singles. We could seriously baptize 20 people this month! It´s all about families! Let´s do this!

 

I love being a missionary. Let´s baptize.  

Another thing: on Sunday we will be able to call for 45 minutes for Mother´s Day! yay! You can use the regular international code that you used last time (country-area code-number = 55-41-3422-3176 ). We´ll probably have to call later just to check and make sure everything´s ok. Organize your thoughts, questions and words so that we can use the time efficiently, please. Thanks!

 

Love you all. Be missionaries! Preach His restored Gospel!

 

Elder Brown

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Transfers

Forgive my lateness!

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jacob Alexander Brown [mailto:jabrown@myldsmail.net]
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 10:34 AM
To: Brown Family
Subject: Transfers

 

Hey everyone,

P-day was changed to today because of a crazy Mission President meeting in São Paulo, and it has been a really long week. We worked like nuts and I have had more experiences that will be difficult to forget. This transfer, I can safely say that I have felt more alone and more pathetic than in any other time in my life, as well as very comforted. It is a very hard thing to be doing your supposed "best" and still having doubts as to the sucess of your efforts. Oil doesn´t mix with water, but if we churn it really hard and long and fast, it seems to come together. That was basically the theme.

This transfer will be interesting for a few reasons: yesterday, as we prepared a few houses for new Elders to move in (we´re receiving 22 new missionaries in the mission! For the first time in months we´re receiving more than we´re losing), and we got the transfer call. Both my companion and I were transferred! It was really strange - Elder Melo (who was my comp. a few months ago) will return to the area and baptize all the people we prepared. I will be going to the city of Paranaguá, no litoral (the beach!) with my first companion on the mission, Elder LOTT!!!! It´ll be so awesome to serve together and we´ve got a lot of plans for this new month.

It has really been strange how quickly the mission goes by. Serving in my current position for some time now, it´s easy to get tired and sometimes discouraged, but I´m starting to learn about what it really means to "magnify your calling" - it means looking beyond, searching for even more revelation, following the Spirit more, and running faster than before. If you´re tired, you need to keep going. If you´re worried about yourself and your own desires, the work won´t go forward and you will feel alone. My advice to all that read this email, even though I´m just one more missionary - normal and sinful - is to not think about your own interests, especially in the Lord´s work. It´s not worth it. I´ve learned that this transfer - when we COMPLETELY give ourselves to the Lord and do His will, because we want to, we wil be blessed with all that we need.

Love you all. Let´s pray for a huge wave in Paranaguá to baptize the whole city. That´s figurative, of course - don´t pray for that, please.

Elder Brown

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