Hi mom and dad :) .
Thanks for the email and pictures, I love seeing you :) . I can't believe I've lost another relative while I've been out here. It's all happened within these two years (well, really the past few months). My prayers are with you and the family. So...I prayed for you to have some huge apples this year, and look what you get...HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! Ha just kidding, but that would be pretty funny. Hooray for another missionary friend! I'm excited, she'll do way good. My companion's uncle opened up the stake she's going to, fun fact from Elder Moreira.
This week was pretty awesome in a lot of ways. We ended up finding and scheduling 3 new people for baptism, one of whom we haven't even taught yet. What happened was that we were teaching a lesson about the Restoration with the brother of member (who was there in the lesson and actually referred us to him in the first place), and also in the lesson was another one of our scheduled investigators. After we asked the brother (somewhere in his 50s) if he would be baptized and he agreed, we were talking about a day to do that. Then the already-scheduled guy (the member's 27-year-old son) tells us to wait a second, goes out the door and calls someone to come over. A guy I'd street contacted a couple days ago comes in, and is told to sit down by the son who called him in. The son then asks him when he's going to get baptized. We scheduled him then and there before even having a lesson because of another member's work that was going on. This man recently arrived from Slovakia to live with his brother-in-law, who happens to be our Elder's quorum president, who then started telling him about the church. They were reading the Book of Mormon together when something from it came up in discussion and led to this man's decision to be baptized. Essentially he'd decided to get baptized before we'd taught him anything as missionaries because a member was talking about what he knew to be true. That's epic. Another cool lesson was taught in Doncaster outside on the sidewalk in front of a lady's door. We couldn't go in becuase there was no man in the house, so we set up a couple chairs outside while she sat in her doorway, and we went from there. It was one of the most interesting lessons I've taught for sure, because the whole street is basically full of Slovaks, and they kept wandering by to listen. One man stayed in the lesson for most of it, agreeing with everything we taught and vocalizing it. Another man came out of his house a couple doors down, sitting in his own doorstep to unobtrusively and discreetly listen in. One of the most miraculous moments was when I was about to tell the Joseph Smith story. At that moment, the noisy street was rather suddenly clear of people, and we were able to teach and testify about it in an environment where the Spirit could be present in earnest. Coincidence? No way. I call that a miracle. Our church attendence was a small bit better than last week, so progress is being made. We're still working hard on that one.
I can't wait to hear more from you, so I'll look forward to your letters. Love you lots and talk to you later :) .
Love,
Elder Brown
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