Ok, So this week was really cool for almost half of this week I was down in concepcion doing a capacitation with the mission president. It was so fun!! I learned so much. The crazy thing is, when we were in the mtc they taught us something new. Like teaching wise. It was a new way that they started to teach and want the missionaries to teach from now on... BUT, when we got out here, they taught us a brand new way of teaching again. haha So it is definitely cool haha we are really having to learn alot. They call it the 8 simplified lessons and it is so cool and works really well. We ask for them to comit to baptism the first time that we meet them haha well most of the time. Unless we feel like we shouldnt we always ask. Definitely bold and definitely new and different. But so far it has been working. I have been surprised at how well it has worked actually haha So though it has been working and though we have been doing all that we can, the work is really slow and tough in our sector. We have investigators and all, but they just are not progressing really fast. they are having a really hard time and it is very discouraging at times. I know though that everything will turn out ok. I am not sad or anything... well I am because I want our people to get baptized so bad but I know that in time it will happen. I am not worried about that. So I just have to be patient and realize that the lord works on a time zone of his own and there is nothing I can do about it. haha it sucks but I am able to learn more from this. haha
This week as I was in conce I was going out doing contacts in this place called, Chiguayante. This place is, well interesting. It was nuts during the quake. That is all I have to say. but when I was there I got paired up with elder teske. He is also a very new missionary. we both have only a month here. But we go out and start talking to people. We teach a lesson to the first lady we meet. Right there infront of her store. Really cool. Then we go in this little compound thing, start knocking going door to door. And door after door was slammend in our face. They just didnt want anything to do with us. Then the last door before we had to go meet up with our comps for the week was when something interesting happened. We knocked on this door and this older lady opened it and was really nice actually. We explained who we were and she said she had talked with missionaries before and when we asked her if we could talk to her she was all but willing to let us in. We go in and started talking and teaching her the ¨vision¨ which simply is explaining the atonement and jesus and then invite to baptism. As we did this we found out that she was catholic. When we started talking about baptism she told us that she was already baptised in our church. Now, we hear this alot. So most of the time we ask questions that if they really havent been baptized they wouldnt know. She without us even asking was like yeah, I was baptized by immersion like jesus and had hands laid upon my head to receive the holy ghost. I know about joseph smith and all of that and I believe it, but I just dont go to your church anymore 1 because my husband dont like it.(great for us :) we can convert him) and 2 I think she said something like it is to far away. Which is always a big concern for chileans because they are so lazy haha but we started then saying hermana you need to go back to church. You know you made convenants and all that whenyou got baptized. She understood but was being stuborn like shut up I am not going to listen to you because I dont have to. Kinda a whatever attitude. We reached the point to if we kept talking it would be not good so I said hermana we need to leave but can we go with a pray kneeling down? She said yes and I said I want you to pray for us hermana. She looked at me a little confused but agreed to say it. I bowed my head, but right before she started I had a feeling to say something. I stopped her and looked her straight in the eyes and said, ¨hermana, during this prayer I want you to ask god, your heavenly father, what you need to do. What you need to do about your life and about the church you choose and form of worship.¨ She was a little taken back at this time but said ok I will. As she started to pray I and I am sure elder teske too was praying for a miracle. She started it and got a little bit in and then paused for a second. I was like YES!!!, she continued and right as she was asking our loving heavenly father what it is she needs to do she busted out in tears. She started crying and the spirit was SO strong! I knew what happened. Now listen, I love it when people cry because that is when we can work with them. That is when the real teaching began. She finally got control enough to ask and finish the prayer. When she ended we looked up at each other and with tears in her eyes she said she knew what she needed to do and she wanted us to come back as soon as possible. It was an amazing experience. Her name which sadly I forgot to tell you at the begining is margarita. she was so amazing. That was my amazing moment of the week though.
Ok I dont have very much time so I am just going to say that I love you all!!! I miss each of you very much! I will respond to your emails next week. Sorry today has been nuts! I love you. I will talk to you soon.
Love,
Elder Brown
The Final Strect
My Official Mission Home Picture
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
HALO!!
¡¡HALO!!
Hey hey everyone! How are all of you doing? I figured that this would be alot easier to do than to write each of you individually. I have written letters for each of you but I cant send them all at once because that is going to be alot haha it is like 500 peso each so I will send them over time and I have to write other people too. BUT I have written them. I was wondering why I hadnt heard from all of you for a while I was actually really sad as well. But hey, YOU CAN EMAIL ME TOO! I think what I am going to do I write a big email with my week in it and them section it off for each of you ok?¿ cool beans! ;) haha and then you can write me back or whatever you wanna do. Ok? Oh and if you have something you dont want to talk about with everyone and you just want it between us I will send you a seperate email. haha I am just a nice guy like that sometimes. ;) just kidding.
MY WEEK,
Well in the land of Chile this week I had a lot of interesting experiences. Tuesday- well tuesday was a very interesting day to say the least haha we did a mini cambio. Elder pulver went to a different area named piduco. He went with an elder by the name of elder kaykandul haha he is the trainer of elder teske who came to my sector. Wow!! Two brand new gringo´s going out into the world of chile. We were like two little infants. Our parents abandoned us for the day and just said go and have fun. I WAS SO SCARED!! I understood about half of what was going on. haha The crazy thing is, is we had TONS to do that day too. It was a really critical day here in the life of a missionary. first what we had to do was go and visit one of our investigators and teach her about the word of wisdom again and invite her to leave smoking. It was interesting but she said she would do it and has been trying so that was fun. Then we went out and did some street contacting. It was hard and we didnt really get into any houses but we got a few references, so that was good. After we did that we went to a lesson Elder Pulver had set up the week previous. I was really nervous for this one because I didnt know these people and they didnt know really anything about the church and we had to tell them about the vision and baptism and invite them to be baptized. The crappy thing though was we went there and talked to the lady and she didnt want to talk because she said she had verguenza which is like shame or embarrasment because her house is messy but that is just chilean for I am to lazy right now so I dont wanna talk. It was dumb. So we left her house and went to a menos activo. I dont really know how else to say that. Like an inactive member I guess. yeah haha that is it. But her name is Marina and she loves us(missionaries) she calls us her angels haha but we talked with her and she wanted to have a noche de hogar with us which is a famliy home evening so we set that up and then after we shared a brief message we left to go to our next appointment. This was with this lady call Ines. She was an investigator but doesnt want to follow some of the commandments so, yeah. haha but we went by her and wanted to share a message but she got up and started getting ready for something and I thought she said she was making us once. which is like the dinner here but she wasnt. haha so we sat there and waited and then she left and we didnt even get to teach!! ¡¡Que Fome!! But anyways after her we went to luis and loreto´s house and had to teach them about the law of chastity and let them know that they cannot get baptized the 14 because they are not married. It sucked because the day before we had a bomb noche de hogar with them. Oh and what made it worse was when we got there they were all like we consider you guys family. Oh it sucked. But we talked about family and why it is important to god and why we need to keep it specail and that stuff. They understood it but Loreto started to cry and Luis was almost there too! I felt horrible, but I had to let them know and the thing that makes me sad is that they want baptism SO badly. They are willing to do anything and everything to get it. But they dont wanna rush their marraige because it is a big thing and luis wants it to be big and way good! So yeah, I will talk more about that latter :) after them we left and went to Marcia´s. At her house we put on the movie finding faith in christ. we watched that and by the time it was over we were late to get home. So we bore our testimonies on the movie and left. WHAT A DAY!!! Oh and that whole day we invited everyone to church and the noche de hogar with the ward.
Wednesday- So this day I got my comp back and we started the day by going to this man named alberto but he wasnt home and, well pretty much no one was home. untill like seven. It was insane!! So at seven we went to see how veronica was and share with her. After that at 8:00 we went to Luis and Loreto´s house. I was so nervouse. When we got there they let us in and we started talking. We talked a little bit about the law of chastity and their concerns with what they had to do before baptism. You could tell they understood but were frustrated about it. We learned some new things and then we left. we went to Marcia´s next and just talked with her. She it seems like she is not making anymore progress and it really bites.
Thursday- ok This day was kinda just a regular day so I am not going to bore you with to many details but it was effective to say the least.
Friday- This day rocked!!! What we did was our weekly planning in the morning and that went untill lunch which is always at 1:30 so after lunch and our siesta we went out into the world I cannot understand completely. It was fun. haha we went and visited some members and new converts and also the people in our boom boom room. Who are our progressing investigators. Then some other people and did some contacts as well. It was good and then at 8:00 we had our Noche De Hogar with the ward. We showed up a little early to set up and we waited. Around 8:15 we had maybe 8 people. Haha then around 8:30 we had maybe 15 and we were a little upset so we just started and shared a little about the book of mormon and then around 8:45 like 10- 12 people showed up.(just like a chilean, lets arive late to everything.) Stupid. haha but it was really fun. We played some really fun games and had a blast. Everyone loved it. I have pictures and video I will send you one day so be excited.
Saturday- ok this day was cool. After lunch and all of that we are going out to go see Veronica and we had previously decided we wanted to talk about the word of wisdom. As we were walking over there elder pulver looks and me and says ¨elder brown, Do you think we should talk about the atonement today with veronica?¨ I looked at him and was like sure why not. We get in there and talk about it. It went well and found out that she doesnt really have the desire to smoke. It seems also like she is lacking faith and doesnt believe she can. So that was good. After them we headed for loreto and luis. On the way over we both looked and each other and said we should share the atonement with them too. I cant tell you how badly they needed it.!!! I was amazed at how much it helped ease there concerns and troubles. but of course the savior is the only one who can do that! It was cool and as we were talking loreto brought up something we had never heard before. She says, ¨I havent told you or even luis this but a few nights after you came and talked to us and told us we needed to be married I had a dream that I was talking to my family and out of no where came a voice that said I didnt need a big wedding.¨ HA!!! Is what I said. She didnt know if it was an answer or what it was really. She asked us and elder pulver didnt want to be like well duh! Haha so he said it in a way that is pretty obvious that is was an answer and then we gave them lehi´s dream to read and hopefully that works and she realizes hey yeah it was haha. We are going by there today so we will see what happens. :)
Sunday- Ok the only things that was different about sunday was that I saw my first Passed out, Drunk, Chilean, on the side of the road under a tree hahahahahahaha. SO FUNNY!!! I wanted a picture but elder pulver said hey he wont be your last so take one when not as many people are around. Oh and the funny thing was, is later that day I saw another one!! Haha it was cool! But this one was even better because he had a bad bladder. If you understand. But the spiritual thing is that we had 4 investigators show up to church! SO COOL!!!!! I was really happy. So yeah that was my week. A pretty ordinary week but always way fun. :)
Hey hey everyone! How are all of you doing? I figured that this would be alot easier to do than to write each of you individually. I have written letters for each of you but I cant send them all at once because that is going to be alot haha it is like 500 peso each so I will send them over time and I have to write other people too. BUT I have written them. I was wondering why I hadnt heard from all of you for a while I was actually really sad as well. But hey, YOU CAN EMAIL ME TOO! I think what I am going to do I write a big email with my week in it and them section it off for each of you ok?¿ cool beans! ;) haha and then you can write me back or whatever you wanna do. Ok? Oh and if you have something you dont want to talk about with everyone and you just want it between us I will send you a seperate email. haha I am just a nice guy like that sometimes. ;) just kidding.
MY WEEK,
Well in the land of Chile this week I had a lot of interesting experiences. Tuesday- well tuesday was a very interesting day to say the least haha we did a mini cambio. Elder pulver went to a different area named piduco. He went with an elder by the name of elder kaykandul haha he is the trainer of elder teske who came to my sector. Wow!! Two brand new gringo´s going out into the world of chile. We were like two little infants. Our parents abandoned us for the day and just said go and have fun. I WAS SO SCARED!! I understood about half of what was going on. haha The crazy thing is, is we had TONS to do that day too. It was a really critical day here in the life of a missionary. first what we had to do was go and visit one of our investigators and teach her about the word of wisdom again and invite her to leave smoking. It was interesting but she said she would do it and has been trying so that was fun. Then we went out and did some street contacting. It was hard and we didnt really get into any houses but we got a few references, so that was good. After we did that we went to a lesson Elder Pulver had set up the week previous. I was really nervous for this one because I didnt know these people and they didnt know really anything about the church and we had to tell them about the vision and baptism and invite them to be baptized. The crappy thing though was we went there and talked to the lady and she didnt want to talk because she said she had verguenza which is like shame or embarrasment because her house is messy but that is just chilean for I am to lazy right now so I dont wanna talk. It was dumb. So we left her house and went to a menos activo. I dont really know how else to say that. Like an inactive member I guess. yeah haha that is it. But her name is Marina and she loves us(missionaries) she calls us her angels haha but we talked with her and she wanted to have a noche de hogar with us which is a famliy home evening so we set that up and then after we shared a brief message we left to go to our next appointment. This was with this lady call Ines. She was an investigator but doesnt want to follow some of the commandments so, yeah. haha but we went by her and wanted to share a message but she got up and started getting ready for something and I thought she said she was making us once. which is like the dinner here but she wasnt. haha so we sat there and waited and then she left and we didnt even get to teach!! ¡¡Que Fome!! But anyways after her we went to luis and loreto´s house and had to teach them about the law of chastity and let them know that they cannot get baptized the 14 because they are not married. It sucked because the day before we had a bomb noche de hogar with them. Oh and what made it worse was when we got there they were all like we consider you guys family. Oh it sucked. But we talked about family and why it is important to god and why we need to keep it specail and that stuff. They understood it but Loreto started to cry and Luis was almost there too! I felt horrible, but I had to let them know and the thing that makes me sad is that they want baptism SO badly. They are willing to do anything and everything to get it. But they dont wanna rush their marraige because it is a big thing and luis wants it to be big and way good! So yeah, I will talk more about that latter :) after them we left and went to Marcia´s. At her house we put on the movie finding faith in christ. we watched that and by the time it was over we were late to get home. So we bore our testimonies on the movie and left. WHAT A DAY!!! Oh and that whole day we invited everyone to church and the noche de hogar with the ward.
Wednesday- So this day I got my comp back and we started the day by going to this man named alberto but he wasnt home and, well pretty much no one was home. untill like seven. It was insane!! So at seven we went to see how veronica was and share with her. After that at 8:00 we went to Luis and Loreto´s house. I was so nervouse. When we got there they let us in and we started talking. We talked a little bit about the law of chastity and their concerns with what they had to do before baptism. You could tell they understood but were frustrated about it. We learned some new things and then we left. we went to Marcia´s next and just talked with her. She it seems like she is not making anymore progress and it really bites.
Thursday- ok This day was kinda just a regular day so I am not going to bore you with to many details but it was effective to say the least.
Friday- This day rocked!!! What we did was our weekly planning in the morning and that went untill lunch which is always at 1:30 so after lunch and our siesta we went out into the world I cannot understand completely. It was fun. haha we went and visited some members and new converts and also the people in our boom boom room. Who are our progressing investigators. Then some other people and did some contacts as well. It was good and then at 8:00 we had our Noche De Hogar with the ward. We showed up a little early to set up and we waited. Around 8:15 we had maybe 8 people. Haha then around 8:30 we had maybe 15 and we were a little upset so we just started and shared a little about the book of mormon and then around 8:45 like 10- 12 people showed up.(just like a chilean, lets arive late to everything.) Stupid. haha but it was really fun. We played some really fun games and had a blast. Everyone loved it. I have pictures and video I will send you one day so be excited.
Saturday- ok this day was cool. After lunch and all of that we are going out to go see Veronica and we had previously decided we wanted to talk about the word of wisdom. As we were walking over there elder pulver looks and me and says ¨elder brown, Do you think we should talk about the atonement today with veronica?¨ I looked at him and was like sure why not. We get in there and talk about it. It went well and found out that she doesnt really have the desire to smoke. It seems also like she is lacking faith and doesnt believe she can. So that was good. After them we headed for loreto and luis. On the way over we both looked and each other and said we should share the atonement with them too. I cant tell you how badly they needed it.!!! I was amazed at how much it helped ease there concerns and troubles. but of course the savior is the only one who can do that! It was cool and as we were talking loreto brought up something we had never heard before. She says, ¨I havent told you or even luis this but a few nights after you came and talked to us and told us we needed to be married I had a dream that I was talking to my family and out of no where came a voice that said I didnt need a big wedding.¨ HA!!! Is what I said. She didnt know if it was an answer or what it was really. She asked us and elder pulver didnt want to be like well duh! Haha so he said it in a way that is pretty obvious that is was an answer and then we gave them lehi´s dream to read and hopefully that works and she realizes hey yeah it was haha. We are going by there today so we will see what happens. :)
Sunday- Ok the only things that was different about sunday was that I saw my first Passed out, Drunk, Chilean, on the side of the road under a tree hahahahahahaha. SO FUNNY!!! I wanted a picture but elder pulver said hey he wont be your last so take one when not as many people are around. Oh and the funny thing was, is later that day I saw another one!! Haha it was cool! But this one was even better because he had a bad bladder. If you understand. But the spiritual thing is that we had 4 investigators show up to church! SO COOL!!!!! I was really happy. So yeah that was my week. A pretty ordinary week but always way fun. :)
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