Wednesday, June 26, 2013

June 16th: Acceptance of baptism

Family!

   First of all, Dad, you have to be the best father on the planet. I honestly cannot express how much I love you and Mom. Love for our family seems to burst out of me whenever I think of all of us being together forever. Can I promise you something? I will never, ever give up on doing the right thing. I may make mistakes, but I will ALWAYS say that I'm sorry. I love you so much. I want to be a strength in our family. I know it may be difficult with me being away during this time, but I promise you that there is a prayer in my heart at every second of every day. I know that the Lord has carried our family. In fact, I know that He has sent angels specifically charged to lift each one of us off of our knees each morning and support us during each day. 

   Secondly, I want to tell you a super neat story, and then a funny one to close it off. So there is an investigator whose grandparents are members(though they are less active) who we play disc golf with on p days. His name is *alton, and he's 15. He has a little brother who's 14 and an older sister who is probably 25. As we played disc golf with him last Wednesday, we met his older sister, *ella, and her boyfriend, *avid. They have a 18 month old girl who is so funny! As we played with them, I just felt like they needed the gospel so badly, but try as I might, I could NOT bring up the gospel! haha. So we finished our game and said goodbye.

   That night, as we got back into proselyting clothes and ate dinner, I knew that we needed to stop by their house and set up an appointment. Now, these people are pretty rough! It looked like they had lived kinda crazy lives, but obviously God has a plan for them, cause the Spirit wouldn't leave me alone... I asked Elder *damson if he knew where they lived, and sure enough, he did! So we stopped by. We asked Dalton when he came to the door if there was a time we could meet when *ella and *avid would be home. Tuesday, we met them, and the Spirit testified so strongly as we spoke of the Plan of Salvation. Saturday we had another lesson, and this time *ylan, the 14 year old, asked if he could come! We stayed there for 2 hours because they kept pegging us with questions. Oh man... It was amazing! The Spirit was so strong. They have such a desire to learn. We asked them to be baptized on July 20 and they accepted. Our Heavenly Father really does love them!

   I wish I could make more sense while I write... haha
   One of the things that I've learned is that most people, at first, will not keep their commitments. That's probably the hardest part about missionary work. Agency kinda stinks sometimes.

   One more quickie. We had an appointment set up in Montrose, a town in our area directly across from the Nauvoo Temple(where I took the picture from). Just as we pulled up to the house, a young family pulled up in front of their own house and started to get out of the car. We got out of our car and walked over to them, inviting them to the Nauvoo pageant, then went our merry way and thought nothing of it!

   So, when we knocked on the door of our actual appointment, the family decided that they were too busy and couldn't meet with us, which was kind of an awkward situation in the first place. See, now we were a 20- minute drive from our main area and we had a long time until our next appointment. Elder *damson had some potential investigators to go see, so we got back in our car and started to drive away, but as we did, the thought came, "you need to stop back at that young family's house and set up an appointment. They need the gospel!" So I turned to Elder *damson and said, "Hey, we need to stop back at that young family's house and set up an appointment. They need the Gospel!" He didn't even say anything back to me. He just turned the car around and started driving back. 

   When we knocked on the door, the mom came back up to the door and looked at us, a little surprised to see us again. I said, "I know we just talked to you... but as I looked at your little family, it made me think about our message. Our message is about how your family can be together forever. Could we stop by sometime and share that with your family?" She nodded. She gave us her phone number and name. She set up an appointment with us! Miracles. Every day.

   Family, I dare you to expect miracles. I dare you. 

   I love you all. Keep up the good work. I'm working hard!
Love, Elder Brown

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