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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