Awesome week

The sister that made me a cake!

Roasting hot dogs

Elder Yaques (my trainor) is my Zone Leader and Elder Walker (an Elder I trained) are in my Zone! The generations!

The member´s here are awesome!! This week, two sister´s in the branch made me dessert´s, something that´s never happened even once before in my mission. One sister made a cake and the other just called it "postre" (dessert). It was awesome!!

Sick story (got a lot of them but not very much time). On Saturday, I woke up feeling pretty sick, and just wanted to call the mission nurse and complain and stay in all day. What made it worse, we had no set plans that day (we had recently dropped ALL our investigators because nobody was progressing and had been meeting with the missionaries for a long time). But, I asked Elder Sousa for a blessing, and he said (in the blessing) "According to your faith, be healed." And I felt great afterward! It was pretty cool, and we had a great day saturday. Miracales are real.

At 8:50 pm (still saturday), on the way back to the pensh, I felt like we should contact a certain building. This building is super rich looking and I didn´t think we would have any luck if we have to ring more than 1 doorbells. So, we looked at the various doorbells, and rang one. "Hola?" the guy said. "Hola! We´re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ..." and before I said anything else he said "Hold on a sec", and him and his wife came downstairs, opened the door, and we had a great contact. Turns out, his brother is a recent convert and they invited us to come back! We are headed back tonight (with his brother that´s a member, of course).

Lot´s more good stuff happened this week, but, I´m outta time. ¡Que estén bien todos!

Elder Brown

Isaiah 55:8-9

A baptism the first week is a pretty good start

A baptism the first week in an area is always a fantastic way to start. I wish it would happen to me. The sisters have been teaching a Brazilian guy named Douglas (I too was surprised to meet an Argentine from Brazil named Douglas). And he got baptized on Saturday. One of the sisters is brand new to the mission, got here on Wednesday, and on Saturday, she got a baptism. Elder Sousa baptized him. I think that Douglas chose him because Elder Sousa is Brazilian and they always talk in Portugues (I´m not sure if that´s how it´s spelled in English). So she got a pretty dang good start.

Ate asado twice last week. The Sister´s in the Branch weren´t too sure what to make without lactose or gluten, so, we got asado twice. Unfortunately, I didn´t have my camera with me either time.

We got a few sick investigators. One in particular is Freddy (Federico but goes by Freddy). He´s a 23 year-old student who reads the Book of Mormon like crazy. He met the missionaries like two weeks ago and has already read 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, and Jacob. The challenge with him will be getting him to church. He studies here in Venado Tuerto, and lives in a little town about 2 hours away by bus. He lives here during the week, and goes home on weekends to visit his family. There is only one bus that goes there, and it leaves every day at 12. So, he leaves Saturday at noon and comes home Sunday night. This´ll be really tricky trying to get him to go to church. He´s a capo.

Found a less active lady last night who went less active lady who went less active when her 28 day-old baby died two years ago. I say found because she got baptized elsewhere and moved, and we contacted her house last night. It was almost 9, it was time to start heading home. But, we contacted it. She cracked the door open to see if we were robbers. She recognized us and came out. She told us her story and we shared parts of Moroni 8 and Alma 40. We´re heading back tomorrow.

Have a great week!

Elder Brown

One-Eyed Deer

This week flew by. Lot´s of stuff happened.

We had divisions with our District Leader. It was pretty sweet. Got to go to the river to visit some people that live over there on the banks. That place is what I imagined all of South America to be. Kinda poorer area. Lots of houses made out of bricks and sheet metal. The river was really pretty though. I would have taken pics, but, had I brought my camera there, I would have gotten robbed for sure.

This week we had transfers, and, Elder Sanchez... stays in Empalme! Elder Brown... does not stay in Empalme! 😢 I shall miss that place. I learned a TON. Worked really hard. Made a lot of friends. That place shall forever be in my heart. I loved it. It was tough, but, I loved it.

We had a sick lesson with César. He´s gonna get baptized next week! I´ll send the pic when Elder Sanchez sends it to me. I´m so excited for him!!

In church on Sunday, I got asked to speak about tithing. I got asked at 8:58, and was to give the talk during sacrament, which started at 11:00. Luckily, I was the last speaker and the other two speakers took up the first 50 min of the meeting. And I had to leave a little bit of time there at the end for the closing hymn, so, I didn´t have to talk for too long.

My new area is Centro 2 C, in the Venado Tuerto Zone ("Venado Tuerto" means "One-Eyed Deer"). I am in the city of Venado Tuerto. In the Center. So our area has all the shops and stuff and there´s are tons of people out all the time. Contacting will be much easier here than it was in Empalme.

My new comp is Elder Sousa. He is from Brazil. From a place called Fortaleza. He´s 19. He´s a really cool guy. We get along pretty well. This transfer is about to be a blast!

Love you all, hope you have a great week!

Elder Brown

Sick Week!

Some taco pizza (tasted like the meatball marinara from Subway),

mashed potatoes and an omelet

Had a pretty sick week! In both senses of the word.

Got "farangitis", no clue what that is in English, it´s not in my Spanish-English dictionary nor in Google Translate. Nothing serious, just a little annoying. The doctor gave me some pills that taste and look like those bottle cap candies. So, I can´t really complain.

But, a lot of "sick" things happened.

Firstly, we had a rather humorous (idk if that´s spelled right, I don´t have English spellcheck) contact last night. We contacted a 50 year old man. We asked him if he believes in God. This was his response, "Yes I do. I´ve seen him. I saw the Saint of Death, Jesus, and the devil. I saw all three of them when I got shot. The Saint of Death was excited to see me. Jesus was wearing a white robe with a yellow belt and yellow sandals. The devil told me to shoot back at the guy, and Jesus told me not to. So I didn´t." His breath reeked of alcohol. He was from Rosario so we passed his address and phone number to the Rosario Zone Leader´s. The Elder´s over there are gonna have a fun time trying to teach about the Restoration and the First Vision.

On Saturday night, I felt like if I were to get transferred this week, I would like to speak in sacrament meeting before I left. After I thought that, I totally forgot about it. Yesterday was fast and testimony meeting. I still had forgotten about it. Then an Elder got up to bear his testimony, and I remembered what I had thought the night before, and remembered what I felt like I had to share. So, I got up and shared it, and felt the spirit testify through me, and I felt really peaceful about my time in Empalme. I really wanna baptize here, but, I felt like if I go next week, it´ll be fine, cuz I´ll have given my all for the time I was here, even if I don´t baptize. I would definitely prefer baptizing to leaving next week, but, I feel tranquilo.

Found a bunch of new investigators this last week, and 3 of them accepted a baptismal date. So, we are hoping to have at least 1 baptism this month. It will be the first in two years here in Empalme. Pretty excited and hopeful!

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Brown

Doctrine and Covenants 18:15-16