Bush Whacking!

Spiritual thought:

How Can I Replace Fear With Faith?

Exercise Faith in Jesus Christ

When times are tough remember to pray, read and obey. 
The Lord will replace fear with faith as we turn to Him in prayer,
search the scriptures, and keep the commandments. By doing
these things your faith in Jesus Christ will grow.

D&C 6:36 - "Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not."

My Companion is Canadian! His name is Elder Fisher. He seems like a pretty good guy. He is in the same MTC group as me. He doesn't know much about the area here, as he has only been here for one transfer and apparently his last companion didn't tell him anything. I have a feeling that his last companion just lead the area, doing most, if not all of the planing on his own. I don't think he really involve him in any of the area information. i.e. the area book, contacting members and investigators, etc. I feel like I have whitewashed into an area where the area book has virtually no information in it. It hasn't been updated in a few months. We have no investigators, we are working with 1 recent convert, and Elder Fisher knows like 2 less active members, and very few members. The only form of transportation we have is trains, so we walk nearly everywhere, and no one is in the streets except in the busier places.  When we travel we use up a lot of time, and there is nothing we can do! Hopefully we can get this area going. Elder Fisher and I have fixed up the area book a bit. (the former's were in the wrong places, nothing was in order, some teaching records were just floating around the flat, etc) We have set a goal to never go a day without updating the area book! Thankfully our ward mission leader is pretty good, and he has set up a bunch of activities, so that's a plus. We just need to find people before we can really do anything. They were teaching about 9 or 10 lessons total a week in the past, and when I came in on Wednesday they had 1 lesson for the week, by the end of the week we had 10, and that is with all of the time taken up by fixing the area book, going through loads of teaching records, and we did a lot of service that took up a lot of time. I think we can teach a lot more in this area, so hopefully we can do that, and as we do everything else will follow suit! Elder Fisher just needs to see some success so that he gets more excited. When we start teaching people he will start to pick up, and I think we can do some serious work together!  

On a happier note, this area looks a lot like home, I attached a few photos for you!  We walked through a forest path to go to service the other day, and it was really nice to be able to do a bit of hiking again. I felt a bit like I was at home, it was really weird!

On Mothers Day I will call home again. We get the choice for English mothers day (Which is this coming Sunday), or American mothers day, so I will do it on American mothers day, because it makes more sense for you guys! I don't know if I will skype this time, or if I will only be able to call, but I will let you know when I figure it out!

I haven't met anyone in the zone yet. We are having a Zone training on Wednesday  though, so I'll be able to meet everyone. I only got to meet the sister missionaries in our ward. Our district consists of two wards, so I haven't even met the district leader or his companion yet. Sister Brittain was in my MTC district, and she is in this ward, so it's cool to see her a again. Her companion is Sister Anderson. She is danish, but because of american TV she sounds more american than I do! She has only been out 6 months, so this ward now has some very new missionaries. 3 in the same group at 7.5 months, and one from the group after at 6 months!

The flat I am in is really nice. It is huge, and well kept. It is relatively new as well. We live right above a small shop, so anytime we need a few things, we can just stop by before we head upstairs. Got to do a lot of service this week, so that was good.

My companion Elder Fisher makes funny faces pretty much anytime you look at him! I attached a photo of him for ya. 

All the pictures were taken on the way to service for a member. We walked there and took a shortcut route through a hiking trail, It reminded me a bunch of home! I knew that mom would want a good picture of me so I sent this one!

No funny experiences really, we just got lost in the middle of nowhere, while trying to take a shortcut to a service project with a member, and we ended up being a half hour late! We ended up bushwhacking it for the last ten minutes, so that we could make it back to civilization!

Keep up the missionary efforts back home. Invite your friends to be taught, give the missionaries referrals. They will love you! When I think back, I realize that II could have probably gotten half of my friends to be taught by the missionaries, and they probably would have enjoyed it. They asked me a lot of questions, and I had so many opportunities. Don't make the same mistake as me! Pray for opportunities and take them! I wish I had.

I love you guys, and hope you have a wonderful week! Cheerio!

Elder Brown