Hey

Hi everyone,

 

A few cool things:

 

- I totally ate cow tail the other day...and it was delicious. SO tender and scrumptious.

 

- ALL of our investigators are awesome! They´re all getting ready to be baptized and not just baptized, but strong members of the church! The biggest thing that we´ve been trying to do as missionaries is strengthen the ward, and it´s been working! We´ve been doing activities every two weeks and bringing lots of people to church. We didn´t have a lot of people this week because it rained, and aqui no Brasil, rain means laziness and no will to work. BUT, the Bishop is really excited and the rest of the ward too. We’re using the Progress Record the way that it should be used and helping lots of different members to do small and simple things to help the investigators (like bring them to church, go to a lesson with us to them, have a Family Night on a specific time and day, divisions, etc.). That´s completely turned the ward around, and we´re just getting started! We´re also having basically District Meeting with the newly-called Ward Missionaries and giving them opportunities to teach and progress.

 

I really have no time to write, but I just want to say that as members and missionaries work together with the Lord, miracles come in droves and people are brought to the knowledge of the truth. People will be blessed because of a little extra organization.

 

Elder Brown

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A really weird feeling.

Hello everyone, from Brasil!

 

This has been an excellent week, one of the best of my entire mission! We were able to teach a lot with the members and use them in almost all of our lessons! We are also putting a heavy focus on setting and attaining inspired goals (especially for each of the key indicators) - not just setting ridiculously-high goals that I´ll never be able to reach.

 

Actually, what I´ll do is give a list of what the key indicators are and what the mission standard is:

Batismos (4 / mês), Confirmações (4 / mês), Baptismal dates marked (4 per week for the next 4 weeks), Pesquisadores na Reunião Sacramental (8 / semana), Lições em Total (21/week), Lições ensinadas com um membro presente (15 / semana), Primeiras Lições (Restauração - 10 / semana), Novos pesquisadores e Famílias (12 e 3 / semana), e Contatos e Endereços (140/70 / semana/dupla). It´s pretty dang hard to get everything but we´ve been getting pretty close every week! Our goal is to live the standard and to help others do the same.

 

Many great things happened this week and we were able to feel that we´re fulfilling our missionary purpose, but I don´t really have time to write everything that happened, so I think I´ll just highlight some of the best things that happened:

- last night was one of the most stressful and crazy nights of my life (and no, we weren´t assaulted by Catwoman and her fiends, or anything of that nature). We had a ward missionary activity called "Noite do Bolo Macho" (Manly Cake Night). We spent a while making our delicous German Chocolate Cake (Elder Lott´s Mom´s recipe) and it was goood, and pretty. (the LAN house can´t / won´t read my memory card, so I can´t send pictures) We put a big bicep on it and it would make ya´ll proud, because we won! Anyway, the other activity we did was two weeks ago, and that was "Noite de Se Eu Fosse Você" (If I were you), and it was great. We kind of expected more from this activity, and actually there were more people there for this one than for the last one (over 70!), but some of the little things that we had forgotten to organize were left for the last minute. Recipe for insanity. There were 6 cakes, 10 judges, and 70 crazed brasilians wanting cake, going to the bathroom, screaming out what number their cake or their friend´s cake was, and just being crazy. We got home late and we were absolutely dead, but it all turned out ok in the end.

- we had a division with some other Elders and it was really great! I went with Elder Groom and we were both able to talk a lot and help each other out.

- one of the goals we established for this goal was to bring 12 people to church - and we did! It was so great! I´ve never seen so many people coming to church, and that means that we´re going to keep baptizing until the end!

- we taught English, a lot! On Saturdays we are now doing English conversation and yesterday we went to an English school and it was great

- etc., fun stories, drunk people hitting on us, crazy girls trying to follow us, etc.

The main thing I wanted to talk about was something that happened yesterday:

I felt very strongly, especially after knowing that Elder Brandon Langford, who I know was/is a powerful missionary, is home now, that I won´t be here forever. Let´s take this into the 11th gear! We´re gonig to kill each other of work and good times! We´ll strengthen the ward and baptize good people! Let´s do this, to the end!

 

Love you all. Preach the Gospel, be obedient and be happy. Or not (read Alma 42).

Elder Brown

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Mais um batismo!

Oi gente,

 

We baptized again! Diego was baptized and his baptismal service was just as good as the others - there were a lot of really great investigators there and the Spirit was strong.

 

This week has been a little different for a few reasons. First of all (and I´ll tell ya´ll in advance that there won´t be pictures today because of the darn LAN house that we´re using, oh well). But, as I was saying, a different week. For a good while we had been finding great people and new families to teach, and a lot of people were actually doing what we were inviting them to do, and getting baptized. That is, obviously, great! We want that to continue and never stop! As we worked through the weeks, however, our finding effort wasn´t quite as marvelous as it could´ve been and we started to recognize that if we don´t find a lot of new people, we´re going to have to start the whole process over again. We have had some great surprises in the work, though! We went nuts this week and started doing a lot more street contacts, knocking on people´s doors, praying to find a family, etc., and it´s been paying off. We´ve found more people in these last two days than we´ve found in a long time, and it´s exciting! We studied the First Lesson in PMG individually and in our companionship and practiced it, then we taught a lot of them and found some great new families. Some of them are really, really special.

We had a lesson that was a memorable one. As is already known, we are on the coast. It´s not exactly the "beach" yet, but there are islands and we can´t go there because we can´t ride boats, there´s a big bridge that leads to the main island, everyone on the island has a weird accent and there are a lot of cross-eyed and crazy-for-blondes people on there, etc. Anyway, we were looking for people to teach and visiting some addresses when all of the sudden we saw a reallly pretty view, right on the lake! We decided to knock and Maurício answered the door, jovially, and let us in. We met his cousin, Cleusa, and they were both smoking and having a grand ´ol time. We taught about the Book of Mormon (we were short on time) and it was powerful - they felt the Spirit. We then invited Cleusa to pray and she did, very well! As she prayed, she said that that morning, she had prayed to know God´s truth and what He wanted from her. She started to cry in the prayer and the Spirit was strong. She then, after ending the prayer, came over and KISSED ME on the cheek! AAAAHHHH!!!! I was NOT expecting that, and she was pretty forward, but it was ok. The next day, we came back and Maurício had read a LOT in the BOM!

 

So many great experiences, but we´ve gotta go. Love you all and I know that everything we teach is true.

Elder Brown

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The machine just keeps rolling.

Oi gente, tudo na paz? Sossegadão?

We´re doing great here in Paranaguá. We didn´t have a baptism this last week (everybody that was getting ready decided that they didn´t want to be ready), but some of those people will be baptized this week and some in the following weeks. This week, Eduardo and Fernando will be baptized! Eduardo was that 20 year-old kid who showed up at church 2 Sundays ago with his friend. God really likes him (and he really loves God), and because of that he´s been very blessed.

We climbed a hill in Matinhos - a really beautiful ocean-side city in the Zone. I got cut and it hurteth.

We brought 14 people to church this week!
We´re going to baptize! Every week!
I love being a missionary!
And that´s all I really have time for. Love yáll.

Most special moment: seeing simply how Heavenly Father takes care of us. Sunday morning was a little cold (actually not at all, but for here it was) and the investigators were all a little "moley" about going to church. We passed by a lot of people´s houses and a lot of people just didn´t want to go. We got pretty discouraged, but when we showed up at church, other investigators were there! Miracles are true! The ward is absolutely exploding with the work and the members are loving it! This is the best I´ve ever seen on my own mission, and we´re going to take full advantage of it!
Love you all. Here´s some more pictures.

The Church is true and He lives. Really.
Elder Brown

A Shout-out to my Sister, the rockinest girl of all! Happy Graduation!

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