Letter #101

Well, I don't really know what to say. If I was in a room by myself, I'd probably be shedding some tears right now but I am sitting next to like 4 elders and in a public library so I'll hold them back the best I can.

I feel like I've said it all. I've loved my mission with all of my heart. I don't regret one thing. I know I've made my fair share of mistakes of course but those have been the biggest learning experiences. I am so grateful for the wonderful loving mission president, President Maluenda. I am so thankful for his service and his worthiness to guide this mission and helping me have a life changing experience out here. He is a great example of a servant of the Lord. I am so grateful to my family, especially a loving Mom and Dad who were willing to give me up for two years for the benefit of me and of the people of south Texas. I am thankful for all the extended family, Grandmas and Grandpas, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends who were so willing to write me and give me that support that I needed to get me through the hard times. I know I probably wasn't the best at writing you back, but I really did appreciate the love and support and couldn't have done it without you.

This will be the last full letter I write to you guys as a full time missionary and I hope it hits home ;)

I just want to end by bearing my testimony, I know my Savior Jesus Christ lives. His atonement is real. This is His church and I love being His servant. I love this Gospel with all my heart. I am so thankful for His sacrifice. A perfect human being, feeling the pain of every single one of ours sins all because of the love He has for us. I hope to be able to reflect the love He has for us to those people around me always. The mission life is the good life.

Love you guys and I will see you all next week!! ;)

Elder Brian

Letter #100

This week was great!

The young men's president asked us to give the class yesterday in Priesthood on missionary work and the blessings that come from serving. It was awesome. It gave me a good opportunity to look back on all my missionary experiences and the effects that it has had on my life. I almost started to tear up just thinking about the great time I have had out here serving and how I will never again have the same opportunity that I have had and still am having now. Looking back on my mission, I am so grateful for the good and bad times. Now that I've gotten to this point, its hard to see a lot of the bad, I can mostly just remember the good haha. I guess that's what journals are for right? The people of South Texas are the greatest! When I was first starting to prepare for my mission I thought I would miss out on so much back at home and be behind on life when I get back but it is totally opposite. God has given me so much out here and really the mission is like taking a little short cut to jump ahead in life. Plus, I would say its a lot better than normal life too ;) I know my Savior lives. He does nothing that isn't for the benefit of us as His children. I am so thankful for the relationship I have with Him. I know that the atonement is real. I use it everyday. I have changed so much out here and am grateful for that. The thing that scares me the most is going back home and falling back to the same old Finn Brian that i was before. I hope to be able to go home and continue to become more like our Savior Jesus Christ. I am grateful for my family and especially for the knowledge that we will be able to live together for the eternities. I love you guys!

Elder Brian

Letter #99

Whats up guys!

Holy cow, I think there is one thing that I wont really miss about South Texas and that is the heat! Its not even deep into the summer yet and it is already killer. Yesterday we talked to this lady outside, she let us in and we had a quick little lesson. There was no AC in the house and about half way through the lesson I see sweat just dripping off my elbow and down my arms. Pretty ridiculous. It was like we were teaching a lesson in a dry sauna or something gnarly like that.

This week, the teaching pool for our area isn't the best but the zone is doing great! This month we have a goal of 5 and we are looking and feeling pretty confident that we'll hit it. This week in the zone we will be baptizing 3 and the other 2 should come closer to the end of the month. Elder Solis and I have been traveling a lot to help out the other areas in the zone and we haven't had a ton of time to work in our area but still that isn't a good excuse to not have any solid investigators in our area so we're gonna have to step it up a lot this week. 

This upcoming week is going to be interesting. President Maluenda asks all the dying missionaries on the start of the last 3 weeks to study and make plans for 15 minutes a day to get married and go to school and to get back into life. Yikes.

Sorry, my camera is kinda busting but I'll try and get some pics next week. Love you guys! Have a killer week!

Elder Brian

Letter #98

Happy Birthday Montana!

This week was great! It was the last week of the month, so those weeks are always a little bit more stressful than normal. We did hit our zone goal of 7 and our mission goal was 68 and we hit 74! So the mission and our zone are pretty fired up right now going into the new month of June.

This week my companion actually got to go to the San Antonio temple! I was pretty jealous. His recent convert from about a year ago went to do her endowments and President Maluenda gave him permission to go with her. He said it was such a sweet experience. So I just stayed here in Robstown and worked with the Elders that we live with. I got to ride a bike again!

Our investigators aren't doing the best right now. We are on the verge of dropping them all and starting over. We won't have a lot of time to work in our area this week because of a McAllen trip for a couple days and a trip up to a little town called George West to visit some elders up there for a couple days, so it'll be an interesting week but were hoping we can get some new people to teach by the end of it.

The weather's been really nice lately, its starting to get pretty hot down here. Not as hot as the summers in Laredo but its getting there haha. Presidente Maluenda gave my companion and I permission to go to the gym for the last transfer, so we've been hitting up that every morning, I love it! Man, time is flying too fast.

You guys are the best. Love you!

Elder Brian

Letter #97

Hey y'all ;)

What a way to kick off the new transfer! Time is flying faster than ever.

My new comp's name is Elder Solis. He's great! Even shorter than my last comp haha. He's a little Latino from South Carolina. Elder Solis and I actually go home at the same time, so we are killing each other! I didn't see that coming at all. I'm kinda wondering if they'll throw in a 3rd companion up here with us so our zone doesn't get white washed but with President Maluenda anything could happen!

This week was great. A lot of running around, dropping off lost stuff to zone members from transfers and helping some missionaries white wash an area. It kept us busy which is good! I love being a busy missionary. Its a lot easier to stay focused when you have things to do.

Funny experience, so Wednesday night around 940ish we get a call from one of our District leaders and he tells us that some of the elders in his district won't answer for follow ups and he had tried to call them about 10 times already. So we told him we would try and to keep trying and let us know by 10:00 if they don't pick up. So 10:00 rolls around and the District leader calls and still, they haven't picked up, so we told them to call some members in the other elders ward to see if they can swing by the house and make sure they were alright and safe. So they did, but none of the members picked up and the Elders lived like 40 minutes away from them and so did we. So by now its like 10:25 and we were pretty worried about them and there wasn't anything else we could do so we had to go find them. I felt like Liam Neeson in Taken, going to find a kidnapped family member, it was pretty intense. So we get in our car and start heading out to Alice and 10 minutes later we get a call from the Alice elders and they were like, sorry elders our phone was on silent and we haven't checked it all night. Elder Solis and I were pretty frustrated, but things happen, what can you do?! Haha

There hasn't been too much finding in our area. We are teaching a less-active and her boyfriend. Their names are Linda and Albert. They stopped us in the street walking the other day. We had a great little lesson by their car and the less active bore a great testimony and wants to come back to church! It was a great little miracle.

Have a great week!

Elder Brian

Letter #96

Hey Fam!

What a week!

I don't really even know where to start, so many great things happened this past week, it was crazy!

So the teaching process with Meranda was awesome! She accepted everything that the gospel had to offer. The only big struggle we had with her was getting permission from her Mom to be baptized. So we had a great lesson on fasting and we set up a time and date to fast for it, us the Cavazos family and Meranda. So we fasted and after a couple days nothing really happened, but while we were in McAllen at 3 day training we get a text from her saying her Mom told her that she could do what she wanted with religion and it was her choice. It was a huge miracle!! So her mom signed the record. I gained a great testimony of fasting that week. So the baptism happened yesterday. It was awesome! Its been a while since I've had a baptism, it feels good to see it again. On top of that we had 5 other baptisms in the zone, which is huge for the Sinton zone! We are looking really good to hit our monthly goal of 7 in the zone. 

3 day training was awesome! We went down Monday night and I was paired up with Elder Shumway and Elder Johnson. We pretty much just traveled around the mission and worked wherever haha. We were driving the AP van so we had no mile limit! It was rad. One night we worked in a little town called La Joya, another night we worked in Donna, McAllen and another night we worked in Edinburg. I spent my nights at the AP's house with a bunch of other dead missionaries. Man, was that ariot! At the end of the 3 day training, I left having the nickname of Steezus. I don't really know why but I am now known as Steezus and not Elder Brian. 

Presidente Maluenda gave some great trainings on faith and finding and for like 2 hours he went off on how important it is to read books, scriptures especially but other books too. He said you should always be reading a book of some sort other than the scriptures. He said that's where he got almost all of his knowledge and why he is so successful. I definitely want to do that when I get back. 

So Elder Green is gone! His exit interview was last night, so he will be down there until he leaves so I am just left here to do transfers all alone! I can't really believe that I have only 6 more weeks left of my mission. It has gone by too fast. I love my mission so much and am so grateful for everything I've learned and still will learn. I'm slowly getting excited to apply everything here to life back at home. I love being a missionary and have really come to learn and know my Savior personally. Words can't express my gratitude for His sacrifice for me. I know He lives. I've learned how important it is to have a good positive attitude through trials and hard times. If you have to go through them, you might as well go through them happy right? I love this gospel and I know its true. I know Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet to restore the same church Jesus Christ himself established. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and we will get closer to our Savior if we read and follow its teachings. The mission is the good life.

Thanks for the support! I love you guys!

Elder Brian

Probably broke the Word of Wisdom on that one.... Ooops! Pretty good though.

The sweetest, most humble family ever.

Elder Steezus and Elder Casteez

Elder Christianson

Lunch at Godfather's Pizza.

*I'm only like 2 feet taller than them both. No biggie.

Letter #93

Heyyoooo

Best week here in Banquete!

This week our planning paid off and we found some great new investigators who are progressing towards baptism. It was pretty cool how we found them. So i was on an exchange in my area, which I knew almost nothing about at the time haha and i was with Elder Hutchinson, one of the Dl's in the zone. We were going to visit some of the few people I knew and a former that i had never met before, anyways somehow, i end up getting super lost and we find this house that we decide to ask and see if this was the house of the former. Turns out it wasnt at all, she had no clue who that was but that she would love to listen. We set up a return appointment and go back a couple days later. As we were going back Elder Green asked how in the world i made it to this part of our area, he had never even heard or been over there, but we sat down with the lady and her daughter and they accepted everything very easily and are "fixin" to be baptized on the 24th of May! It was a huge miracle. The spirit definitely led us, cause I have no clue how i ended up there!

This week we also had interviews with President Maluenda. They went great! I love that man. He's been a great influence to me out here in the mission field. He gave me some really good insight and he tells me to read to book of Jarom a lot. That book is full of leadership skills. I guess i still have a lot to learn from it.

We also found and are teaching some other new investigators that we have, they were all sweet stories of how we found them and I wish i had the time to explain them all but unfortunately I dont. Their names are Corey, Steven and Valentin. So now we are back up to a good decent teaching pool!

The weather down here this past week was pretty gnarly. It rained really hard for a couple days. It was so crazy that i thought about paddle boarding to visit a member haha. Water in the streets was up to the truck door. The elders on the bikes, it went up to their knees. If you wanted to get to the gas station you had to literally take a swim to get to the front door. It was legit! I wish I had my camera cord to send some pics. Next week ;)

Love you guys! Talk soon

Elder Brian

Letter #84

Hey guys!

Sorry, but we still don't have any news on what is going to happen here in the Rio Grande District! All I really know for sure is that Elder Iman and I wont be companions anymore. For his last transfer President called him to be a district leader!

This week went by really fast. The 3 days worth of trainings was awesome! President Maluenda continues to blow my mind everytime we have a meeting with him. The 4 and a half hour training on pre-ordination was awesome. We talked a lot about the premortal life and really how blessed and how great we were in the pre existence. I've never really come to realize how important this life is and every little decision we make in this life. Every decision and step we take here can either benefit us in our progression to become more like Christ or it will knock us down. There is no middle ground. This life is so important! And sometimes we take that for granted, well at least i know i have. For everyone who is here on earth has made it and passed the first estate, great job! Now pass the second! God has so much in store for us and all he asks us to do is live this Gospel!

Because of the pretty crazy week its been, we havent had to much contact with any of our investigators. Amanda isnt doing to hot right now, she kinda lost a lot of desire to be baptized and Yenny and Teresa have just gone missing, we dont really know where they are. I'm stoked for the next transfer, I know the Lord has some big things in store for us!

Love you guys!

Elder Brian

*Ill send pics next week!

Letter #79

Transfer news! I'm staying here in Roma! I'm not too surprised at all but I'm stoked to be here again. My new companion is Elder Iman. He's pretty cool. He goes home in about 2 months. So... that'll be interesting. I've never had a comp that has been so close to going home. Hopefully he holds together well haha.

This past week we had interviews with President Maluenda. It was great! Its always good learning from that spiritual giant. Cool fun fact, President Maluenda has actually lost like 45 lbs in the last couple months! He took all of the general conference talks pretty seriously, especially the one by Elder Jorg Klebignat and the part about taking care of yourself physically. He really is a great example of a leader, of one who leads by example.

This week we are focusing on pure member work! I kinda figured out that we are struggling so much because we are finding all these investigators off the streets and they have no connection to members whatsoever! So when we show up to second lessons, they bail out and we never see them again. Now I'm not saying that you cant find prepared people off the streets, because trust me, I've found and baptized my fair share, but it is so much easier and more reliable when you find investigators through members, that way they have that support right from the start and they are actually willing to come and feel comfortable at church. Elder Iman and I made some super deep plans this morning on what we are going to do and how we are going to do it to get this plan up and running and I cant wait to start seeing these miracles!

This weekend we are having another huge mission tour and Elder Oaks will be coming to speak to us! Its going to be awesome. Then on Sunday, we have our stake conference and Elder Oaks and Elder Robinson of the 70 will be speaking. This weekend is going to be pretty gnarly.  I'm pretty stoked.

My view across the border into Mexico.

Downtown Roma

Elder Iman

Laredo North Zone

Letter #70

What's up guys!

This week was great! The only bummer is that Kurt didn't show up on Sunday for the confirmation so we will have to figure out what happened and get him back on board. But other than that it was great!

This week I've been studying really hard a lot of chapters that Presidente Maluenda gave me in my last interview. I've read a lot about fasting and I set some good plans to improve my fasting skills. Were you guys able to read about the article that the church put out about Joseph Smith? I haven't yet but I will this week. Its been kind of a struggle, especially for a lot of the recent converts seeing the article, but I know it was put out for a reason and Im thankful for the strong testimony that I have of Joseph Smith and God's church here on the earth today.

Sorry I have like no time. But I love you guys!

Elder Brian

Letter #69

This week was awesome!

 

It was a bit unexpected but still a huge miracle, Kurt got baptized! He was progressing really well, so we had a lesson with him, told him, why procrastinate the day of your baptism? Then committed him to be baptized a week early and it went great! He's loving the church and his wife was able to come too. She's doing really well and is looking to be baptized at the end of this month. I love being able to meet with them, they are such a great family and I love seeing them grow in this gospel. On my mission I've definitely been able to see why the family is so central to God's plan here on earth.

 

This week we also were able to have interviews with President Maluenda. I know I might say this every time I talk about him but words cannot express how spiritually in tune that man is. Every time we are able to receive training from him I know and can feel that he is a true representative of Jesus Christ and this is His work. I know that the leaders of this church are called of God and that if we follow our leaders we will be blessed. Having President Maluenda as my mission president has been a major blessing in my life.

 

So we were leaving Kurt's house one night around 8:30 and we get in the car and as we are driving away all of a sudden the sky lights up and the biggest shooting star/asteroid comes falling down and streams across the sky for like 2 seconds and it disappears. No joke, I thought the world was ending for a second that's how cool it was. And the cool thing was it wasn't just me, some other Elders across town saw it too!

 

Here's some pics from Downtown Laredo!

 

I love the mission and you guys!

 

Elder Brian

Letter #62

What's up guys!

 

The weekend was awesome! Jonathan was baptized! It was sweet. Many of the members were there to support him and he feels really comfortable with his new family the 3rd branch.

 

We had zone conference last week. I love zone conference. I always leave wanting to improve and do better. Presidente Maluenda put a big stress on using Preach My Gospel and teaching people not lessons. I've seen a lot in my mission where we sit down to teach a person and the main goal is to set a baptismal date so we can hit our goals for the month and get out of there as quick as we can. But that shouldn't be the case. We should be sitting down with people with the main goal of blessing their lives and having an impact on them for the better.

 

The other day we were walking some streets and a crazy guy waved us down. He was carrying a 7 ft. tall walking stick and we talked to him for a little bit, then he decided to show us how it was that he expresses his love for God and started doing some squats and yelling "The Lords Prayer" at the top of his lungs. It was pretty entertaining :) Some people have some very interesting ways of expressing love for God.

 

Letter #58

So, Mom and Dad, thanks for the little discipline and getting after me about writing longer letters. I'm sorry ok! I will try! Its just so hard when so much is going on at once that I cant even remember what happened two days ago! But I can honestly say I do love my mission and I am trying my best to save all the memories I can.

So I am going to back track a little bit and cover some stuff that I'm not so sure if i covered yet. Right now we are teaching a man named Achilles. He's awesome. Very humble man willing to do anything it takes to change. We've been teaching him for about a week and a half now and he's doing great. We started teaching him through one of our members, Brother Bryand. Its one of his best friends and Achilles was going through some rough stuff and went to Brother Bryand for help and that's when we came in. He's an ex-cartel member and he has some crazy stories! Anyway, we went through some rough patches in the teaching process, a lot of anti stuff that he heard and we thought we lost him but through fasting and lots of prayer we made it through and he's looking great for baptism this Sunday! He will have his interview tonight! 

That is our main focus right now in Del Mar. Actually, Achilles, being the great man that he is brought a friend to church yesterday and he loved it! His name is Jonathan. He accepted to be taught and we will work with him this week!

Transfers are coming up next week! We'll receive news this Sunday. This transfer is only a five week transfer because Presidente Maluenda will be going to Salt Lake City for a mission president conference so that means that next transfer will be a seven week transfer.

My comp is doing great! He's still kinda green but its alright, we're on the mission to learn right? We have a good time and i love him. The only thing that is hard is that I'm like 3 years younger than him and I can tell that he does NOT like being told what to do or receiving advise from a 19 year old kid! Haha.

Love

Elder Brian

Letter #53

Hey hey!!

Just last week we had interviews with Presidente Maluenda! He is so rad! I don't think I've ever talked to a more "in tune with the spirit" kind of guy in my life. He just knows whats up in life and I think that is awesome. He definitely picked me up off my feet and got me going again and ready to work hard. 

Every other day we play morning soccer at the cancha at 530 for like an hour and a halfish and this morning we played. It was sweet. Everytime we leave, its literally like we just stepped out of a steam room, just soaked. My pants and shirt arent even the same color. Just to give you a little picture of how humid and hot it is down here, we set the phone down on the bleachers and when we came back to leave, the phone was soaked and now its... broken. Haha. We didnt even set it in a puddle or anything, just the humidity killed it i guess. It wont turn on. Thats the second phone that has broken on me! And they both happened while I was playing soccer! Ni modo. 

Transfers are coming up again! Time is flying by. I'll find out this Sunday if I'm staying or going and I'll let you guys know next week! I love the mission. It makes me pretty sad just thinking how much time has gone by and how much time I have left. Live it up while you can.

Love you

Elder Brian

1. Homies at What-A-Burger

2. Zone Blitz in Zapata

President & Sister Maluenda