Letter #67

What a week! The weather has been really nice down here lately, its actually starting to feel a bit like Fall. That is, its dropped down to the 80's, I don't know if you guys back home would call that Fall weather, but I do here in Laredo.

We had a really good experience last night with one of our investigators, his name is Kurt. He came to church just yesterday and loved it. It was cool cause he just kept saying "I keep getting this warm, peaceful feeling." I love how the spirit works and through those feelings we can come to know if what we are doing is right. Later that night, we stopped by his house and had a really powerful lesson with his whole family. His wife, 16 year old son and 9 year old daughter. We taught about the atonement and what it is that Jesus Christ did for each and every one of us and what we can do to be able to show to Him that we accept that and applied it to baptism and committed them as a family to be baptized on the 16th of November and they accepted! Throughout my whole mission, its been hard to work with a whole, complete family all together. A lot of times we teach broken families, single parents, young kids and I love it, but I'm really excited to be able to work with Kurt and his complete family and watch them progress as a family and support each other through that process.

I don't know if any of you guys have heard about this, but I want you guys to go onto Youtube or online somewhere and look up "Missionary Work and The Atonement" its bits and pieces of talks by Elder Eyring and Elder Holland put together focusing on missionary work and the atonement and the importance of them both. Every time I listen to it it just makes me want to do better! So I invite you all to listen to that this week! 

Life's good! Keep on keeping on!

Love

Elder Brian

Letter #66

I'm staying in Laredo!! Almost our whole zone is staying except for 2 elders and 1 sister. I'm excited to stay here just a little bit longer. Maybe I'll hit one whole year in the city of Laredo?! That would be pretty sweet.

Besides the fact that I'm excited to stay, we just had 5 investigators at church yesterday! It was a huge miracle and I'm stoked to start/continue to work with all of them this upcoming transfer. Erica was able to make it to church and she is doing really well! We also had some more of Jonathan's family come and they loved it. So we are gonna work with them a lot these upcoming weeks and a less-active came to church and brought her non-member friend who now wants to start taking the lessons! I can see the Lord continuing to hasten his work day by day, especially here in Del Mar!

This week we did some service for a couple we are teaching. Their names are Kurt and Grace. They are really cool. They had one jungle of a backyard, not the worst I've seen on the mission but, it was fun.

Mom, I'm so sorry I have no photos! I'll work on that. I made a goal this week to take at least a photo a day! So by next week you will have some!

Love you guys!

Elder Brian

Letter #65

I feel like the days and weeks just go faster and faster. Especially on the mission when you have so little time to work. This week we went up to Corpus Chrsti and we watched Meet The Mormons. It was an awesome movie and I definitely recommend you guys going to see it! And telling your friends about it too of course.

 

We are coming up on the end of another transfer. Its been really good working in Laredo! I could stay another, I could leave, but thats up to the Lord. I'll let you guys know next week.

 

To tell you guys just a little about how much we really get fed down here. Its ridicoulus. Missionaries do anything and everything to keep the weight off haha. Last week we took the advice from our leaders and went by and set up appointments with every member we could so that we could get to know them a little better and we ended up having 4 meal appoinments in one day. One at 3:00, another at 5:30, then 6:30 and last at 7:30. I dont know how I packed down that much food but it was a miracle that i did.

 

We are working with some awesome people right now. I feel like i kinda go through fazes of what kind of people i teach. A couple months ago it was a lot of young people and a couple months before that it was a lot of old people and now we are going through the faze of teaching a lot of single women with kids! I dont know what it is but, hopefully everything goes well and they make it to church this week! One of our investigators names is Erika. We brought over all the missionaries in the district and she cut our hair. It was cool. She's awesome and has a baptismal date for the 9th of November. If you could keep her in your prayers that would be great!

 

Have a great week! Love you all!

 

Elder Brian

Letter #64

Talk about an awesome General Conference weekend! I know you guys can probably already guess what my favorite talk was, cause I'm sure it was every full time missionaries favorite, Elder Ballard's talk. I love how right from the get go he focused his talk and directed it to non-members of the church. It was powerful. Even though it wasn't directed to me as a member it still hit me hard and helped me remember my purpose as a missionary and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

 

This week we didn't have a lot of time to hit the streets and talk to a bunch of people, which makes me think we didn't do that much work. But I think I need to get over the fact that you can still be very effective in your work without hitting the streets. We did a lot of service this week. We helped the ward mission leader Brother Bryand roof his house. It was pretty fun! Just Elder Davis, him and I. I've never really done roofing before, but it was a sweet experience. I'm glad we got to it before the heat did.

 

This week I've been working a lot on knowledge of the scriptures. I love it when you're in a lesson teaching and someone brings up a doubt and right then a scripture will come to your mind and you can teach right to the doubt using the scriptures. Its the best. Its weird to think and see that no matter what doubt a person may give, you can in someway tie their need into the scriptures. I have a really strong testimony that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that if we read it and study it we will grow closer to Him and gain more of a knowledge of the plan He has for us. Going along with scripture study, I received something in the mail the other day, from someone I don't know and it was filled with like 6 or so CD's of teaching to the doubts of people from the bible and the Book of Mormon. Its called Mr. Mormon. I have no clue where they came from or who sent them, but thanks if it was you cause they're pretty sweet!!

 

Que tengan exito y disfrutan la vida!

 

Elder Brian

Jonathan's baptism