In The Short-Run, Failure Is an Option

Family,

I thought I had this missionary thing down! Apparently not. It seems like every time you get comfortable in one way or another, the Lord shows you that you aren't as cool as you thought you were.

I don't think He does it to "put us in our place" or make us remember that He is the alpha male or anything of that nature, just to help us keep progressing.

Let me explain. I wrote this earlier to Damon and Little Brooke:

Just yesterday my companion and I taught a terrible lesson. It was really disappointing because we reacted to the situation in a really poor way. Our investigator Zouzou, who has a baptismal date for the 14th of March with Jesse and Tanya, had a lot of complicated questions that we chose to answer rather than direct her to the Book of Mormon. We fielded them poorly, the Spirit wasn't very present, and the whole lesson was completely out of control. After the lesson, we visited about it and came to the conclusion that we handled it so so wrong and made plans to improve.

Last night in my personal prayer I pleaded for forgiveness. I felt really embarrassed because I have been out 21 months and my companion has been out for 23 months. How could we have made such a poor decision? We had both sat across from someone else with the exact same questions and felt the out-of-control parts of the lesson before. It was so difficult to face the Lord in prayer after the lesson and explain to Him what happened.

I feel as though the 'infinite' nature of the Atonement is for moments such as this. This mistake could be made at any time, but there is not a time limit on utilizing the Atonement. It will be available at 3 months, 21 months, and long after the finite mission of "Elder Brown" is over.

Use it often!

That's a bit of the spiritual thought for the day. I still am praying for an opportunity to help Zouzou refocus on the most important things. I plead that the Lord will give us another opportunity to correct this mistake.

Tanya is still smoke free! She is wonderful. In her pure and precious way, she related to us that when she gets resurrected, she wants to be an eagle. We quickly cleared up that misconception:) She will most definitely be a human. She now understands that. haha

Elder Leavitt goes home this week! Back to Las Vegas where he came from, then I'll get another companion here in Clinton. Good things are happening always!

I love you all!

Elder Brown

Picture: Zone P-day baby! Us posing as ninjas:)