Letter #23

Merry Christmas! Sorry i have like no time today! The holidays are pretty crazy, even while you're on the mish haha. Everything has been going good! We just cleared our board of all the investigators we were teaching cause nobody was really progressing at all so this week will be a nice fresh start!

 

Love you all!! And thank you all so much for your love and support! I dont know what i would do without you guys!!

 

Elder Brian

Letter #22

Hey! This week we had a sick training from Elder Callister from the Presidency of the 70 just this last friday. It was awesome and deffinately made me look at the mission a little differently. He talked about the Atonement and really went into depth on how it should be used. Its wierd, cause before my mission i never really thought about how important the Atonement of Jesus Christ really was. But now as a missionary the Atonement is really the center of the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is what this church is about!

Thanks for all the support!!

Love you all!

Letter #21

Crazy week! We had three baptisms yesterday tho which was pretty sick! Feliciano, Ray, and Jailine. I got to baptize Feliciano in the spanish ward, it was awesome! First baptism in spanish!

The week was pretty crazy with him cause we had to get him married AND baptized. Me and Elder Roylance got permission to pool in our money and help him buy the marriage license. So finally after getting everything all ready we drove over to his house and then followed him and his girlfriend to the court house downtown. While we were driving we passed a cop and Roylance makes a stupid (but pretty funny) joke and was like "That would really suck if Feliciano were to get pulled over right now and deported back to Mexico" and then we both started busting up laughing and no joke, 30 seconds later a cop races by us, flips on his lights, and pulls Feliciano over! Me and Roylance just sat there in shock as we watched the cop pull Feliciano out of the car and get all up in his face. We sat there for like 15 minutes waiting and praying that he wouldnt get sent back to Mexico. After the big whole talk Feliciano got, the cop starts walking away and Feliciano looks over at us sitting in our car and throws up a huge thumbs up and puts a huge smile on his face and runs back and hops in his car. Haha, it was so funny! The cop ended up letting him off the hook... kind of. He still got a 350 dollar ticket for not having insurance, and no license.

That was probably the highlight of the week on the funny side. It was really cool to see Red baptize his little brother Ray and little sister Jailine too. He did really good.

 

The work down here is great! Were having a conference on Friday up in McAllen with a seventy named Ted R. Callister so that will be pretty exciting.

 

Thanks for everything! Happy Holidays!

Letter #20

Thanksgiving was pretty sweet!! Ate so much food. Ive never felt so full in my life haha! We only had two meal appointments, but you know Mexicans. They will give you food until they have no more food to give you haha. 

 

We are having two baptisms this week! Its the little bro and sis of Red! We've been teaching them for a while now but we just barely got permission from Red's mom to baptize them. And whats even sicker is that Red is going to baptize them! We dont even have to get in the water! haha. Thats our goal as missionaries is to not get in the water. Its a lot better when you have members from the ward do it, cause we wont be here as long as they are haha.

 

We've been working a lot with a guy named Feliciano. I cant remember if i've talked about him or not but he's so ready to be baptized he just has to get married with his wife. And the only thing thats stopping them is that he doesnt have money to buy a license. So we've been praying for a miracle or something! A lady actually stopped us in the middle of the road a couple days ago and gave us 20 bucks. So we put that toward our Feliciano fund haha.

 

Too bad missionarys cant buy investigators licenses or anything or Feliciano wouldve been baptized like a month ago!

 

Transfers arent till the end of the year. I have a feeling this month is going to be super long. I know this might sound mean, but i cant wait to get a new comp! He's killin me right now! I swear we are always argueing and sometimes i just want to deck him in the face. But i guess thats just how it goes.

 

Happy Holidays!

Love you all! Thanks for everything!

 

Elder Brian

Letter #19

Its been pretty cold down here! Nothing compared to Utah but for South Texas...... ya its pretty cold. I didnt come prepared for this weather at all! Roylance and I had to go to the mall a couple days ago so i could buy some sweaters so i didnt freeze haha.

Other than that, I did my first confirmation this week! Which was pretty sweet. It was with Red. He's doing awesome. They just called him to be the Elders Quorum secretary. Pretty crazy. A month ago this guy didnt even know about this gospel and now he's helping lead the ward. I love it!

 

This week has been pretty slow. Im pretty sure the coming week is going to be even slower cause of the holidays. Nobody really wants to let us in cause they all have family over or they are all gone doing the holiday thing.

 

Have an awesome Thanksgiving!

Letter #18

We baptized Red! This week flew by! We had appointments after appointments and then just yesterday we baptized Red. It was awesome. And he ended up bringing his whole family and they all thought it was a cool experience. Now were just hoping that gives them the push to get baptized haha. Elder Roylance did the baptism this time. 

And transfers came through and me and Elder Roylance are staying here in Cameron Park! Which is a shock for Elder Roylance. This is going to be his 4th here in Cameron Park. So Ill be here for quite a while still. Which is good i guess. I like it here. The only bad thing is that i know and have talked to practically everyone in Cameron Park haha. 

Yesterday we had a pretty sweet experience. During the spanish ward, Elder Roylance and i had to run out to the car to grab something and as we were walking out we saw a hispanic dude in a tank top walk up and he asked us if church has already started. We told him yes but he was more than welcome to go in and listen. We talked for a little bit and he just flat out told us, he quit drinking and smoking and he wanted to be baptized and he felt like this was the right church to come to. And me and Roylance looked at each other and we were like WHAT?! It was so sick. And then we asked what area he was in and he said Cameron Park! It was so awesome! So we sat him down, had a quick little lesson, set a Baptismal Date for the 1st of December and set an appointment up for tomorrow. It was amazing to see how prepared this guy was and how ready he was to make a change in his life. His name is Feliciano.

For Thanksgiving the English ward is having a Turkey Bowl and we got permission to go and play next week. Im pretty excited for that. Red said he's gonna bring some friends and hopefully we can make some new investigators out of that.  Red and his family already asked us to come have a cookout at his house on Thanksgiving haha. We are pretty stoked about that too.

Gotta go. Were headed off to go buy 800lbs of ties!

The church is true!!! I love you guys! Heres Red and his wife Anna and kids

Letter #17

Whats up!! Yesterday the library was closed so we werent able to email. Sorry!

 

 This week we had threw a wedding for Red and Anna! It was sick! I cant really remember what ive told you guys about Red so far, so. Sorry if i repeat myself. Me and Elder Roylance had to plan everything and go and decorate the gym at the church. I never realized how hard it was to plan a wedding. If only we had some member help it wouldve have been a lot easier, hopefully we can get the members to actually start working with us soon. We've been working a lot with Red this week. He's been doing awesome. His real name is Geronimo Del Fierro. Everyone calls him Red tho because he used to be a boxer and when he got hit, his face would turn really red haha. Pretty cool i guess. He's been to church twice now and he wants to get baptized ASAP and he's more than ready to do it, so were hoping to have a baptism this Sunday! Im stoked.

Transfers are coming up! Im pretty sure ill be staying here in Brownsville, but who knows!

Not much else has happened. Were just trying to work with a lot of Red's family too. They are deffinately seeing the change that Red is going through. Its crazy how much he's grown and changed and Ive only known him for about a couple weeks!

 

Sorry the letters short. I got work to do, and its hard to concentrate when you have a raging headache. Ill make next weeks better.

Love you all!

Halloween in Brownsville

Letter #16

I easily had one of the best weeks out here on my mission so far. It was so sick!

 

Some kids were riding skateboards in the street and i stopped them and asked if i could ride haha. They said ya and looked at me all wierd cause i had my bike helmet on and i was in a shirt and tie haha. But then i showed them how to ollie and kickflip and they thought i was the next Tony Hawk or something! It was rad.  Halloween was alright, we had to be in at 6 and study for the rest of the night, it wasnt all that fun, but no biggie.

 

But we did find a new investigator named Red! He's so awesome. He's 24 years old and has 2 kids and lives with his girlfriend. He's got a gnarly tattoo on his forearm that says RED. haha.  We found him while we were walking to another investigators house and he stopped us in the road and we introduced ourselves and he asked us if we were the ones with the Book of Mormon. We said ya and he said he was interested in that book and told us to come back the next day. So we did. We had an amazing first lesson and he had a lot of questions about where we came from and why were here and he thought that aliens or something sent us here and this life was just a test. So i guess he got a little bit of it right haha. But what was really cool and blew my mind was how he heard about the Book of Mormon. He told us that he was watching t.v. the other night and some history channel came up about the Mormons and the Book of Mormon. He thought it was really interesting and wanted to know more. And then the next day, we showed up. He told us, he's like "Its not a coincidence that you guys showed up. Cause right when i wanted to know more about this book, you guys came" And that right then, it made me realize that God does send us to certain places for a reason. Im here in Texas for a reason. God wants me here, not anywhere else.

 

So we set a BD with him and he's doing super good. He's quit drinking and smoking, he came to church with his family and him and his wife are getting married this Saturday by the bishop. Im hoping this one actually goes through haha.

 

I have like no time to write more but Im loving the mission more day by day. We've got a big week ahead and im super stoked! Thanks for everything!!

Letter #15

This week was sweet! So yesterday me and Elder Roylance were on the bikes. I love bike days. So we were just messing around, i was jumping the curbs and trying to do weelies and stuff, pretty much just being stupid haha. So i was riding no hands and pedaling pretty fast and wasnt paying attention to anything and i totally lost control and ate it hard on the pavement haha! I slid across the concrete for a good 5 yards or so haha. Pants were ripped up, my bike handle is jacked, my arm is pretty scraped up haha! I guess thats what i get for being stupid. My companion just sat there and laughed at me! haha! It was funny.

 

Other than that, nothing too new with investigators. Were just working on finding people. I did get to carve a pumpkin at the ward party tho, so that was fun! Ive heard that we might have to be in early on Halloween night, but who knows. Hopefully we get to do something fun!! People are pretty crazy about Halloween down here. So many houses are decorated and stuff. Lots of party ads too.

 

Its hard to remember what went on, all the days kinda mix together.

 

Thanks for everything. Love you all!

 

Elder Brian

Letter #14

Hey!

 

Its been sort of an up and down kind of week i guess. So this week we've been working with the Ochoa family of 5. We taught them the first lesson and it was amazing. Me and my companion thought we would never find a more prepared family than this one. So as the week went by we taught them more and more and they kept progressing. And we invited them to come take a tour of the church and they did! They met some members, got a tour of the building and had an awesome restoration lesson, they said they've never felt so good in a church building! Man, it was so awesome. After that, we committed them to church and they said they were super excited to come! So come Sunday, we were waiting for them at the church building and about half an hour before church starts we get a text from the Ochoa family saying they dont want to take the missionary lessons anymore, they dont wanna change their religion, and they dont want anything to do with the LDS church anymore. And this hit me pretty dang hard. I was like what the freak!! What did i do wrong?! This family, so willing to let us in and share our message with them, and they shut us down and we didnt even see it coming.

So, im still yet to find out why this all happened, hopefully i find out soon. But i know God has a reason for everything.

 

Other than that, its just been a regular week, we did a lot of biking around our area. Our area is huge! We've got a lot of work to do.

Thanks for everything!

 

Love Elder Brian

 

 

Letter #13

Hey!

 

Pretty good first week of the new transfer. Its definately a lot different only living with one other elder. It really shows how much more i need to work on my patience and love. haha!

We were able to find 9 new investigators this week, so were looking forward to a jam packed week ahead. We also found a really awesome family we are working with. They are going to be our main focus i guess i can say. The Ochoa family. They are a family of 5. 2 younger boys and an 18 year old girl. We had an awesome first lesson with them and they said they wanted to hear more! So we're hoping all goes well with them.

Other than that, we've been working a lot with less actives and getting our new area organized, cause before it was all over the place!

Sorry its so short this week. Ill make next weeks better!

 

Love you all!

Letter #12

Hey!

 

Its been a pretty slow week down here in Brownsville. Conference was awesome! We watched it at the chapel along with a lot of the spanish ward and english ward. Transfer calls came through! And it turns out that they are shutting a couple areas down in my zone and me and Elder Roylance are taking over one of them! So we'll have a lot more people to work with now. And two elders are moving out of our appartment, so its just me and my companion in a 4 man appartment. We have so much room now its awesome!!

 

 Not too much success and we've had to drop a lot of our investigators since no one is wanting to progress. Nestor and Nidia were doing good, but they wont set a wedding date anymore, and without that, they cant get baptized. Elder Roylance and I were praying super hard that they would come to conference cause we knew it would answer their questions about marriage, but unfortunately they didnt show. It wouldve been so perfect cause Elder Ballard or someone in the first session on Saturday, i cant remember (whoops), gave an amazing talk on Chastity and Marriage and it wouldve definately helped changed their minds on that. So this week, were giving them one last lesson to see if they will progress, if they do then we'll keep teaching, if not, we have to let them go.

 

Other than that, nothing too big going on. Like i said, its been a bit of a slow week. Thanks for everything!

Letter #11

Hey Guys!!

 

This past week wasnt the best week, but it was still good i guess! We didnt have to much success finding anyone to teach and a couple of our investigators flaked out on lessons but i guess thats just what happens. Good news on Nestor and Nidia! They are doing awesome, we did find out that they arent married tho...... but we can always fix that. We asked them if they would wanna get married and they both said, "whatever God wants us to do, we'll do it!" It was awesome. So it looks like me and Elder Roylance are planning a wedding this week! Haha, that'll be interesting!

 

Chris was confirmed a member just yesterday, that was pretty sweet! He calls us everyday like 10 times asking when he's gonna become a mormon and be able to teach like us. haha! He's awesome. But the only bad thing was that me and Elder Roylance were late to church and didnt make it in time for his confirmation...whoops! So the bishop did it for us. Chris was super mad and disappointed that we didnt make it, ut we do have a pretty solid reason for being late. So before church, we went to our investigators house to go wake them up and get them ready for church and we went to this one guys house and knocked on his door. He came out and he was all beat up. We were like "What happened!" And he told us that last night he got mugged by the cartel. So we did all we could to help him out and then we lost track of time and thats why we were late to church. Pretty interesting right?! haha.

 

We did find a new investigator named Miguel this week. He's like 20 years old and he's a musician. He's really nice and has a pretty dang good voice im not gonna lie. Our first visit with him was like our own personal concert haha. He brought out his guitar and just started playing all these Christian hymns and we sang along, haha. It was pretty sick! He gets called all the time by all these churches to go play for them and stuff. He said he loves it. But we did set a baptisimal date with him and hopefully he progresses!

 

Transfers are next week, im pretty positve that me and my companion are staying in our area. But who knows! I let you know more about that next week.

Hope everythings going great!

 

Love Elder Brian

 

Letter #10

Hello Hello!!

 

Good news!! I was able to baptize Chris!! It was so awesome. It turns out, he did get released from probation and he only has to do some community service or something. Pretty sweet experience for my first baptism. I only messed up twice on the prayer haha!

Other than that, the week was pretty good. Nestor and Nidia are continuing to progress and they ended up coming to church yesterday too! Theyre so awesome. We did find a new investigator, i cant remember if ive already talked about Daniel or not. But hes awesome. We had some really good lessons this week with him, and it sounds like he is really interested and wants to progress. He has a wife and 2 kids. The wife isnt that interested at all, but hopefully we can get her interested this week or something.

On a different note, we went on exchanges this week, and I went with Elder Ferrel. Another Elder i live with. I was in charge of my area, which was pretty hard haha. I still am struggling to find my way around. So we were going by some people i knew and while we were walking, we hear blasting music, so we pass by and a bunch of guys are having a big cookout and drinking and stuff. As we passed by, they yelled at us and told us to come back and have some food and hangout. We shouldve kept walking, but i was hungry, so we went back and joined them haha. They were all totally wasted out of their minds, asking us all these weird questions and getting in our faces. It was hilarious. They all kept talking about how they wanted to become better people and stop drinking. Which was awesome, but i doubt they even knew what they were saying cause they were so drunk. They fed us Cameron, its like some shrimp food. It was alright. But, we did end up setting a return appointment with them, so hopefully we can catch up with them sometime this week when they arent totally drunk. Haha. So that was some funny experience that happened this week.

Everything is going great down here in Brownsville. Hope everythings good with everyyone at home. Thanks for everything!

Love you all!

Fiesta!

Brother and Sister Oliva

Sister Padron--she feeds them every week.

Letter #9

Hey Guys! This week has been good. Nothing too crazy or anything. The only bad thing is that Chris's baptism didnt go through. I was super bummed. We found out that Chris is on probabtion for something he did in the past. We all were pretty bummed, even Chris! His court date is this Friday, so if all goes well and he gets released or something then he can get baptizedthis Sunday! So were praying super hard that everything works out for him.

This week we found a really awesome couple named Nestor and Nidia. Me and Elder Roylance used to many miles on our car so we had to bike, and while we were biking, we passed a guy smoking a cig, so we decided to stop and talk. This guy was Nestor. He put out his cig and we sat down with him and had an amazing lesson and he accepted a baptismal date! It turns out that he had just gotten out of jail, and while he was in jail he started reading the bible and he knew that he needed to get his life in order. So he's accepting everything and is so eager to learn, its so awesome! Two days later, we went back to teach him another lesson and this time his wife was there, Nidia. We invited her to join in on our lesson, and she accepted a baptismal date too! They have 2 little kids, a little boy and a little girl. As of right now, theyre both doing amazing and want to learn more. The only problem in they are living on close to nothing, and Nestor walks about 10 miles to work everyday cause they have no car. So it might be a little tough to get them to church, but thats what members are for, right?!  

Thats a little bit of whats been going on this week. Thanks for everything! Love you guys!