My Last words as a full time Missionary!

My Last words as a missionary are to go serve a mission. They are the best experiences you could ever have!

For those who are not members of the church, get baptized, don't wait. There is no greater decision you could ever make in this life than that. Become a member of the church, and begin to enjoy the blessings of being part of God's Kingdom. No more excuses, no more doubts, no more procrastination, just do it.

I sure love you all. See you soon.
Elder Brown

The Lord is Pleased with what we have accomplished!

We had a great week, but I can't remember most of it because it went by so fast. 

Wimbledon tennis, and all of the tube strikes, etc has been crazy, but it hasn't affected us too much, we just had to adjust our routes and things in advance. 

This week is going to be a busy in regards to zone leader responsibilities. We have two district meetings and two exchanges, a training meeting for the ward mission leaders and bishops in the stake, as well as interviews for all the missionaries in the zone with president Gubler.

President Gubler is really cool. He will do great things for this mission, in fact he already has. Our mission leadership council was epic, and our zone leadership council was really good as well because we followed the same pattern.

During accounting last night, Elder Bos (one of the AP's) asked us how we felt, and that moment was one of the few where I had the distinct feeling that the Lord was pleased with what had been accomplished, not just by us in our area, but by the zone as well. It was just one of those moments where you really just have to stop for a second and listen, and it just felt so good. To think it has taken me this long
to get that feeling, it was really nice.

Here are some pictures of a lady in Peckham who finally got baptized after myself and a bunch of other missionaries tried to get her there. Missionaries have been teaching her for a long time, and she has been coming to church, but refused to be baptized, because she had already been
baptised four times in other churches. This picture is literally the result of ceaseless prayers and much fasting, by missionaries and her family for a number of years. I was there for the invitation to her baptismal date, and was lucky enough to attend part of her baptism as well!

I arrive at the glacier international airport in Kalispell at 10:10 on July 22nd, as that is pretty late, I don't think I will be able to walk home, I will be too tired, is there anyway you can arrange a ride for me? Lol

Love you all,
Elder Brown

Faithful unto Life Eternal

New Mission President Gubler!

This week was pretty good, we dropped 4 of our dates, but we got 3 more as well, so hopefully they will be a bit more solid. We are really working hard to get these people to come to church, but no success thus far. We had a baptism in the zone, one of the guys I knew in Peckham, he is really cool. Great guy from Jamaica. 

We met our new mission president, and he is really cool. He is revolutionizing the mission when it comes to technology. He gave the AP's smartphones, and is most likely going to
get them for zone leaders within a few transfers. He already ordered a new projector. This guy likes his gadgets. He was an electrical engineer. He is super motivating, and a lot of fun.

President Millar will be missed for sure, but the mantle has definitely passed, and president Gubler is definitely the right guy for the job now.

We had a fun zone preparation day today.  We went to an African restaurant with the whole zone and the AP's, the same one we went to after exchange with the AP's when I was with elder Harris. 

I love you all, have a great week.
Faithful unto Life Eternal
 

People asking to be baptized!

My week was pretty good.The zone is at 22 baptismal dates right now, we have 8 in our own area. We have seen a lot of success as we have increased our faith.

We had a few really cool miracles as well. One guy approached us on the street and said that he wanted to learn, because he had a friend that taught him a bit in the past. We didn't have time to meet with him then, but we set an appointment, and then we extended a baptismal date
a few days later, and he was all for it. 

We have seen similar miracles throughout the zone. Missionaries have received referrals of those who literally ask to be baptized. We met a lady outside the chapel who
after we said hello, immediately asked us what time the church starts. When we said 10 on Sundays, she said "I am thinking of joining this church." Needless to say, things are going great.

Faithful unto Life Eternal

5 Baptisms scheduled!

Everything is going great. Our new area isn't as African, but there is still a decent number of them.

We had a mission conference with elder Holland which was super good! And so was his visit to our ward on Sunday. Elder Holland and Elder cook were companions for a while as the assistants to the president. They served right here in central London. 

We Received some proper revelation on how to hasten the work in the zone.  Elder Holland just invited us to be more astonishing and bold with people, and the revelation for our zone goals is already bringing amazing fruit! Every single key indicator except other lessons went up this week! We are super excited for this transfer, needles to say. 

Our new flat is soooooooo nice! We have heated floors! And
our new area is going pretty well. The hardest thing is getting members to be present. We are working on it though. 

We have five baptismal dates already! We extended one last night to a Jehovah Witness and he accepted!

The new mission president takes over on June 30th.

I love you all, have a great week!

Elder Brown

Faithful unto Life Eternal

We are here to help others! 5/25/2015

The reason we are really here isn't just to learn and grown ourselves, but to help others to do so. Our efforts simply result in a side effect of our own growth. 

This week was really good. I don't know what did it, but I was just sooooooo happy after accounting on Sunday. Recently I have been relatively stressed, not too much, but I just wasn't as happy as I had been before, it was like I was just going on, not struggling, but not excited or really joyful. But I am, so happy to have that feeling back. 

This work really is the best thing anyone could ever do. We changed our way of accounting for other lessons back to the way it was when I first came out. We now count 2 principles, a commitment, and a prayer as a lesson again. We really felt as leaders that this needs to come back. We learned a lot as a mission from the changes we made 9 months ago, and we feel now that the missionaries are ready to go back to the old way which will become much more effective, because we all have learned not to worry about the numbers, but about the people, but many of us still need the push to get out more and be more diligent in speaking with everyone. 

We gave a really good presentation on sacred street lessons in our zone conference, and we have seen great miracles already from the change back. Missionaries in our zone are more excited for the work, I think all of this may have helped result in my happiness, because a lot of my joy is based upon the success I hear and see from those I have been able to help. 

We got a new baptismal date. He was referred online by his brother, and is agnostic, but he said that he feels like now is the time for him to find God, and when we spoke about baptism as a new start, he said that is exactly what I need, so he is preparing for baptism for the 21st of June! He is proper prepared!

Elder Holland came to our ward!

This week was hectic, but it went by fast, and was still enjoyable. We had a lot of planning and a small amount
of finding in an area we don't know anything about (I never even came on exchange here) but we had a lot of success, and we are building a decent teaching pool so far. Lots of miracles are happening.

Elder Holland is a beast, we had the mission conference on Friday which was epic, and then we saw him again on Sunday as he attended our new ward. I got to shake his hand for the second time on Friday which was cool. Very brief getting to speak to him though. 

He said over the pulpit that he shook our hands so that he could have a personal interview with us by looking into our eyes. I am sure he can discover a lot that way. He is
a spiritual guy. He is extremely humorous as well. He told loads of old stories. He served his mission here so of course he had the memories coming back.

 It has been pretty warm around here as well, but not near as hot as over there.  So the area that closed is Peckham Zone (my area), but obviously the zone leaders still exist, so we now just work the Wandsworth area. So now it is Wandsworth Zone area. We are in the Wandsworth ward, and Peckham no longer has 6 missionaries. They only have four. It's a bit hard to describe without making it confusing

I love you all, and hope you have a great week. 

Here is a picture of my new companion.  He is a machine, beast worker, and good teacher. We are hoping to baptize more than one person this transfer, but who knows.

Companion watches for £5 each, pretty cool.

Moving to Wandsworth Flat!

This week was crazy and went by soooooooooo fast. We had a really spiritual Family Home Evening with a less active member from South Africa. Her friend came in at the very end and was surprised to have a spiritual experience. She enjoyed it a lot and I hope that she will want to investigate the church because of it. 

The rest of the week was crazy, we had to pass on all of our investigators to the other Peckham elders because we are moving to the Wandsworth flat. They are closing an area, but not a flat, so we are moving to that area to fill the flat instead of being in the tiny four man flat that we are in now. Moveing is so crazy this time around. I don't even know where to
start! 

Me and my new companion, Elder Camadeco will be whitewashing into the Wandsworth area which means that both elders are new to the area.

Elder Ribeiro has only been in the mission for a month. He will become a trainer and a district leader at the same time, because of a couple of things going on. A Mexican elder is coming into the mission in need of a trainer and Kennington
needs Spanish speakers. Normally training takes twelve weeks, but Elder Ribeiro only got 4 weeks! 

Many of the district boundaries are changing in the zone, which makes things crazy right now. I don't even know, but this transfer is going to be a good one because I am going to make it a good one.

This Sunday we had a stake conference broadcast for all stakes in the UK, Ireland and Nordic areas. Elder Holland presided at the meeting, and gave the most epic talk and testimony of the Book of Mormon and the last days. It was
sooooooooo good!

Here are a few pictures 

 Second to last Dinner Appointment with Elder Harris, might be the last time I see elder Mannucci, and the last Dinner Apointment with sister Audio, aka mama fufu. 

Elder Brown, Sister Audio, Elder Harris

 Elder Harris, Andrea Manucci, Elder Brown

My own homemade fufu and chocolate soup.

 I Americanised the African food!

 Elder Harris and fufu

      Elder Brown Wearing his new beaded tie from Ghana,   
                     I got it from a member in Peckham.

 Birthday for elder Wessman

Lots of cool People!

The man we had set up for baptism this weekend isn't ready yet, we haven't seen him hardly at all this week. He is still interested, but he is just struggling with other things. We had a pretty good week though. We taught one lady who was an online referral. On the information it just said she wanted a Book of Mormon and was willing to be baptized! So we called her up, met her a few days later and extended a baptismal date for the June 27. She is soooooo cool.
Wonderful African lady. 

We met a lot of other cool people as well, and one guy who lost his partner (wife, but not married) the day before we
met him, and he was really thankful for our visit, and kept saying we are a light in this area. It was pretty sad, but cool to see that we were led to him when he needed us.

Faithful unto Life Eternal

Just a few swaggular photos for you.

  Elder Brown and Elder Harris

Answers to Prayer

I had a pretty good week.  M_ was meant to be baptized on this Saturday but that didn't happen because we haven't seen him in the last few weeks. His mom is very busy, and every time we try to get an appointment with her she has an excuse. 

We prayed on Wednesday morning to meet someone that
day who we could baptize this transfer, and we met a guy from Jamaica named y_. He accepted a baptismal date for the sixth of June which is elder Harris' last Saturday before going home.

Y_ said that he normally wouldn't have walked the way he did, but that the spirit guided him and he walked up to us and we just sat down and taught him right there with our Ward Mission Leader who was with us to teach someone else who
didn't show up. 

Then we met with him again on Friday and extended the invite to baptism and he said, "if the spirit directs, I must obey" and then he committed to pray about it. We are seeing him tonight as well. 

We got 5 New Investigators this week, and we started working with a really cool less active who knows all of her neighbors and wants to invite them all to an Family Home Evening next week. Pretty cool!

Anyway, have a great week. Love you all.

Faithful unto Life Eternal

Here are some pictures for you.

A good friend who happens to live in my ward boundaries now. (This is Andrea Manucci my first companion and trainer)

 Just some African food

 

My Companion Elder Harris

 

Myself Elder Brown

The whole mission all in one place for iPad Training.

We Got IPads!

 It was good to Skype with you. J__,The person who called while we were skyping, came to church on Sunday. She stayed for all three hours and then spoke to bishop afterwards. She is still living on the streets right now. She keeps trying to get out of investigating the church, but we just keep reminding her how she felt the first time she spoke to us. She didn't want to meet with us, but she is going to read the Book of Mormon for at least 15 minutes a day.  Hopefully she will be ok.

This week has been pretty good. We had a lot of organisation to do for the zone, but because we did a lot of it early, we won't have to worry about it too much for the rest of the transfer. 

Next week should be pretty good when it comes to working our own area. Right now we are working on building our teaching pool, but we have a lot of different appointments with new people for this week, so we are really excited to see how it all goes. 

Using an iPad is super nice when it comes to studing! We haven't had a chance to use them teaching much yet, but so far so good. There is a really good app called LDS Pamphlets that has each of the pamphlets in a really cool format with loads of crazy stuff. 

The zone did really good this week. A lot of the new missionaries are really solid, and all of the missionaries are excited for the work right now, so we should see a lot of really good success this week.

All of our appointments on Sunday were good. They were all meetings though. Church, Young Single Adults correlation for the stake, and ward council.

 I have had fish and chips! I had it in the MTC, and in my first three areas. I haven't had any since I came to live in Africa though. Lol!

I hope you have a great week! Sorry no pictures today, our internet wasn't working great, so this is being sent from my iPad. Love you all.

Faithful unto Life Eternal

New companion Elder Harris!

We work with our ward mission leader quite often, which is really good. He is a Return missionary from Gana, Africa. He is super cool! We do our best to get members on teaches with us, but we need to do better, so we are hoping to work more closely with them this transfer.

I will have my ipad by next Sunday,so that will be cool.

Our ward mission leader over hear does street dance for his job. It is basically the dubstep style dance that we watched on youtube ages ago. I haven't gotten to see him actually dance yet, but I hear he is really good!

My new companion is Elder Harris.  I have no pictures of him yet, but I will get you some soon. Central London was a blast! I am waiting on some pictures to be sent to me from others, but I have attached the ones from my camera.

 Elder Brown next to a telephone booth

 with Big Ben in the background

 

Selfie with elder Wagoman and elder Wessman as we walked through Central London, 

Elder Brown next to a guard with a horse.

Elder Brown in front of Buckingham palace.

Elder Brown in front of the prince of wales theater with the Book of Mormon play advertisement.

A random chicken bone in the street (classic Peckham) everyone eats fried chicken here.

Pictures of Cambodian ties that I finally got from Elder Kroch (saw him at the iPad training)

Fufu and peanut soup for dinner after doing painting for Sister Aidou (I think she is from Gana)

I feel like I'm in Africa!

By the Thames River

London is totally different!!!!! It is like serving in Africa, but with really good public transportation and a few British people. Our ward is like 90% black, which is sooo much fun!

I know how to say hello and other greetings in like 4 African languages, I love foo-foo (an African food, kinda like mashed potatoes, but totally different at the same time, served with soup usually) and Jalaf rice (African deliciousness). 

I can say hello or how are you in Polish, Russian, Bengali (Bangladesh), whatever language they use in Zimbabwe, Kincongo (Congo), Mandrin Chinese, Bulgarian, Swahili, Tri (Ghana), the language of Seira leone, Jamaican, and in languages from two tribes in Nigeria. I don't think I missed any, but I might have. Either way you can see the cultural diversity!

I love this place! It is sooo much fun as a missionary. If you speak African to an African they go crazy and love you and ask you if you have been there, and you say no, we just have a lot of friends from there in our church, and every time, virtually every single time, they ask, "Where's your church!?" And then you teach them and every African who overheard you talking to them comes up to you afterwards and asks if you have been to Africa, and you do it again!!!! It is soo fun. 

This will definitely be my last area. President pretty much told me that. My departure date is currently July 22.

We didn't get to see the new investigators this week, but we will keep trying to contact them. We have a bunch of new people to see soon as well. M__is doing well, they weren't at church though because it was stake conference and they didn't make the effort to go that far, just like the rest of our investigators. It was a good week overall, and I am having tons of fun! 

We are going into central London today, so I will have tons of touristy pictures for you next week!

Here is a picture by the Thames River

 This is a Car accident we saw while Elder Hare

 was taking a driving lesson

The next three pictures are a crazy experience in Peckham

We found a bathtub next to our flat buildings rubbish bins, and so we carried it up and because we live with two other elders we pranked them by putting it in elder Ocando's bed with his blankets and everything. They got home before us though, and when we got back we caught them red-handed as they were moving it into my bed! We caught them on video and everything. Because we got back late I didn't have much time to sort it all out, and so I just slept in the bathtub on top of the bunk-bed. It was super uncomfortable, but I got some funny pictures out of it!

4 new investigators!

We had a really good week. We got 4 new investigators, 3 of them are from one family who we found and taught in about 45 minutes. We basically stopped her in the street and talked with her and then felt that we should teach her then and there. (This means start with a prayer, teach a lesson, extend a commitment, invite, and end with a prayer). So we invited her to sit with us and she said, "why don't we just go in my flat and talk with my family? I live right here." We were like, " Yeah, we can do that!" It was really cool. The other investigator was found virtually the same way. Super cool! 

We shared this miracle with some missionaries in our zone and the next day they had a flogged appointment, and said to themselves, "we can't get discouraged, if the zone leaders can do it, we can do it". They ended up teaching one guy in their chapel, just pulled him off the street and gave him a chapel tour and got a return appointment. also they called a potential, met with him the same day and he has a baptismal date. They were so excited to share it with us. It is great to see people follow your example and increase their faith!

M__ Baptismal date is the 16 of May right now, but it may come up sooner if all goes well with his mom. He was christened in the catholic church, so his mum seems to think that is all he needed, but we helped her understand. I don't think she was paying much attention when she was first taught, and I think that she was baptized because of fellowship more than having a testimony. We have to work with her on that, but she has come to church twice in a row without us coming to get them, so that is good.

As for our goals, I don't think we accomplished them every day, but we have tons of phone numbers for people and had loads more return appointments than before. Setting goals like this really changes the way you work and helps you achieve much more.

I already know the day I am going to leave to come home. It will be the 27th of July. I lose about a week of my 2 year mission, but that isn't too bad a lot of missionaries lose a transfer because of visa issues.

Only rich people in England have dishwashers and dryers (for clothes). It is super weird. They all think that it uses to much energy and stuff like that. So I have only had one area with a dishwasher, so I have gotten used to washing by hand. It really isn't bad when you don't have many living with you.

Hope you have a great week!

Elder Brown

Elder Brown with his giant pancakes  

An Epic playground