Hooray for A!

Hi mom and dad :) .  

Thanks for the pictures, I like them.  It's good to see my family.  Dad has to be in the next one, though!  Thanks for putting together a package for me, I know I don't make it easy.  I just don't know what to ask for.  You know how limited I am here with things.  I also know it's quite expensive for you, so thank you so much for it.  It means a lot to me.  Your words mean the most, though; I love hearing from you.

This week went really well with teaching and finding people to teach.  Somehow we've been able to street contact a bunch of people I've never met before who live in Darnall while walking along Staniforth.  It's weird because I've been walking up and down that street every day virtually the whole time when we travel since I was with Elder Frahm.  One of our biggest miracles this week was in a lesson with Aa, the daughter of Z and A.  We were over at the house to help A prepare her first Relief Society lesson (which she did fantastic on--I generally translate for Relief Society, and I was so happy for her) and Z prepare his talk for sacrament meeting.  A was pretty nervous about things, but we were helping her to understand what to do, and Aa was actually helping as well . She's very smart as to gospel principles and has been regularly coming to church and staying in the lessons for several weeks now, and the only barrier has been a reluctance to be baptized.  As we talked, we mentioned that Aa would make a good teacher, and she clarified if it would have to be after she was baptized.  We confirmed that and she then told us she had been praying about being baptized and had recieved an answer that she should.  She isn't sure about a day yet, but it should be coming in not too long, so we're pretty excited about it.  A's lesson ended up going really well; two member women from Bratislava visited the branch, and one of them told me that the humble and powerful testimony and faithfulness of our devoted women in this branch was just what she had needed that day.  Hooray for A! 

J's baptism is also coming up very soon here, which will be great :) .  He's a very prepared and sincere man--after we'd taught the principle of tithing he was ready to pay it the very next day at church!  That's a lot of faith.  We let him know that it was something that he would do after baptism, but we were quite amazed by his willingness to give to God.  He's also still steadfastedly reading the Book of Mormon in spite of a busy work schedule and heart problems, which he could easily use as excuses not to read.  I'm always impresses when I see people who don't make excuses to get out of doing good things, and he's one of those kind of people.

That's a bit of my week's highlights this time around, so I'll write next week as well and let you know how it goes this time around.  I love you all very much, and my prayers are with you every day.

Love,

Elder Brown