Letter #28

Well, i got some good news and bad news. Bad news is I lost my SD card so all my photos from the first 6 months of my mission are gone. I guess i have to start over on that haha. Good news is that it was a pretty good week besides that.

 

It kinda feels like i just sat down to email you guys! But that was last week! I dont know what to say haha, all the days are meshing together, i cant really remember what happened this week or if that was like a month ago. It was colder this week. We had a little cold front come in, but it wasnt too bad. The area is doing good. We have some good people we are teaching. Our investigator Blanca is doing really well. She is still set with her Baptism date which is awesome.

 

This past week was Stake Conference. Elder Martino from the 70 came down. It was cool to here him talk. It was all about Missionary work. Which was the sickest part haha. Hopefully it hit the members pretty hard and now they will all start working with us ;) The only bad thing about Stake Conference is that its harder to get investigators to church because the conference was up in Harlingen. (Like 30 minutes away) So we didnt get anyone to come.

 

Transfers are in a couple weeks! And I shouldnt be assuming things already but I am so.. if you send any letters or anything just send it to the mission office from now on. That way it wont get lost in the mail haha.

 

Thanks! Have a awesome week! Remember who you are and who you represent ;) Love you guys! 

 

200 W. La Vista Ave.

McAllen, TX 78501

Letter #27

Well, i hit my 6 month mark this past week!! Its pretty crazy! Mom, i took this pic just for you haha. I hope you like it ;) When missionaries here hit their six month mark they burn a tie. So that is what I was doing at the time haha.

 

The weeks just keeping getting faster and faster i swear. My comps are awesome! We've been having a good time here in the hood of Cameron Park. What people say "A happy missionary is a baptizing missionary" haha. But i guess thats not really the case right now cause we arent having too much success. We are working with a younger girl right now named Blanca. Shes 19 and she is like one of the most humble people ive ever met. Its kinda hard to teach someone like that cause they dont really have a need. They are too humble to ask for anything or want anything.  And for missionaries that is what we feed off. The needs of people is like really how the lesson is based haha. But she is doing awesome! We just set a Baptisimal date for the 16th of February, but were secretly gonna try to get her to get baptized on the 9th if she comes to church.

 

Sorry its so short this week but i gotta go! Love you guys!

 

Con Amor

Elder Brian

Letter #26

This week was pretty sweet! Time has been flying by since this transfer has started. We are already three weeks in! We're not having too much success with any of our investigators lately. A lot of them have been bailing on appointments and other tricky stuff thats hard to work with. (Cops and the law incuded) :(

 

We've been teaching a Mom and her daughter. Malinda and Jennifer. They were pretty sweet. Malinda is in her 50's or something and Jennifer is 21. They are really awesome people. Really willing to sit down and hear us out. So we've had about 3 or so lessons and they still haven't accepted a baptismal date! So we went over to the house the other day to do sort of like a drop lesson. Like if you dont make signs of progression, we have to stop coming by. So as we were walking to the door, me and my comps could just feel something wasnt right. So we knocked and Malinda answers all puffy eyed and tells us to come in. We come in and find out that Jennifer had been picked up and taken to jail. It threw us off big time. We were super shocked. It turns out that Jennifer's husband had been doing something against the law, who knows. And because Jennifer was with him, she got sucked into it. So there's a good lesson learned. Dont hang with the wrong people ;) Anyways to turn matters around, a little scripture story came to my mind as we were praying and i was able to share that with her and she said she could just feel a big rush of peace. It was awesome! The spirit was so strong in there! It was really cool to see that my studies paid off that morning :) So thats kinda where we are with them right now. We will have a couple lessons with Malinda this week and just kinda play it by ear or (the spirit) to see if she progresses or not.

 

Yesterday when we were in Cameron Park, we passed by a school and a bunch of guys were playing Futsal out in the school parking lot so we went and played with them! It was sick! Even though im not Mexican, i can still keep up with all these kids haha. It was sweet. We made good friends with a lot of the guys and hopefully we will be stopping by them and teaching some of them this week.  It started raining too, which was pretty fun. You can never pass up a good soccer game in the rain haha. But the only bad thing was that i put the phone down to play, and i didnt cover it with anything so when we went to pick it up it was soaking wet and now our phone is kinda broken. Whoops! Haha. Hopefully the couple missionaries that are in charge of that dont get too mad at me. ;)

 

Thats about it for this week! Thank you guys so much! The love and support gets me through. I know that this church is true and Im so glad i could be out here serving and sharing this Gospel that blesses our lives so much.

 

Con Amor

Elder Brian

Letter #25

What up everyone?! This week was pretty sweet! I have 2 new comps now! Elder Hatch and Arredondo. They are pretty rad. They are both from Utah. Elder Hatch is from South Jordan and he's 21. This is his second area here in Brownsville and he's had like 5 other comps already haha. Arredondo is from Logan and he's 19. He's been out in the field as long as me but he only went to the MTC for two weeks. This is his second area too and he's had a different companion every transfer. Its weird cause ive only had 1 comp my whole mission. Our companionship is super young. Hatch has been out for only about 8 months and Arredondo has only been out for as long as i have. I've taken over the area, which is awesome! I get to lead around and show them where to go for the first couple weeks. I can already tell this transfer is going to be totally different than my first 3 transfers. Roylance was a super fast pased Elder, worried about getting to everything on time and trying to be 50 places at once, which is good i guess. It definately got me into the "work hard" ethic that i needed. But now its taken kind of a twist and calmed down a little bit with my new comps. Maybe i can enjoy the mission a little more in a different way but still be doing my job haha. Our President, President Maluenda always says "Disfrutan su mision" I think thats what my focus is going to be this next transfer and the whole rest of my mission haha.

 

For New Years we had to be in early. So our zone met at the church around 6 and all the Elders balled and then everyone got together and we watched Mulan!! It was pretty sweet. It felt kinda weird. I havent sat down to watch a movie in a while hah.

 

As of now, we are working with like 5 investigators, but none of them really have Baptisimal dates set or anything so we dont really have anyone too solid we are working with. We've been working with Ana, Red's wife, she's been really hard to work with. She just pulls up random excuses and stuff just to not progress to baptism. Like yesterday we found out that she is all of a sudden Catholic, when 3 days ago she wasnt. haha. We'll keep working with her. She's came to church for like 2 months straight now, so she could get baptized any time. She's an awesome girl though. Im hoping she'll come around soon.

 

Thank you guys! Love you all!

 

Elder Brian