I Love My Mission

Yet another week's flown by. Half of it we weren't even here. Monday tuesday wednesday we were between tijuana (for the visas) and mexicali (for district meeting). Friday we were in Mexicali again for a meeting with the president. In other words, we worked 2 hours wednesday, half the day thursday, and all of saturday. Sunday we were both sick from a watermelon we ate for breakfast. JOY. :)

 Somehow we managed to get the majority of a week's work shoved into a half-weeks timeframe, but it still managed to show a lot of oranges: 0, 0, 0, 0. Actually, It's been a really big blessing being here, even though our work isn't showing much fruit. I LLOOOVVVVEE San Felipe.

For example:

There's one investigator who came to church only to bring his rebellious member friend back to God. The investigator got stuck too. :) For the efforts of this one man, who has PLENTY of trials in his own life, 10 other people came to church yesterday. His friend is now in the process of becoming worthy of the sacrament, P*, our recent convert who has been too sick to do anything and too prideful to accept help, accepted that he take her and her four children to church. He is now taking charge of the kids' attendance to the other activities during the week. Even more, He introduced us to his sister, S*, who came with her three kids. That's 11 more people (R* inclusive) who came yesterday and will continue coming for his efforts.

S*, the owner of the pig, after three lessons and a church attendance already says that one day she wants to be a teacher of something like that. both her and ramon want to get baptized. Those two are heroes to me.

After learning about the Word of Wisdom, R* told me he remembers wanting to buy nachos one night, and he heard, "they'll hurt your stumach afterward". He told us he did it anyway, and that little voice in his head was right. Not saying nachos are against the word of wisdom, but i am saying that if we pay attention, our body is very willing to tell us beforehand if it keeps in line with the commandment or if it will break it. Also, it proves this point my mom told me: Pride gets in the way of our safety for we often overlook the warning signs thinking we know how to handle a situation

Elder Neal a anderson said faith and fear cannot coexist in his talk of october 2015.

My Mom sent me this:

One story that really stuck out to me at conference was about the many people who lost their lives after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan a few years ago. Japan is very used to earthquakes and their buildings are very secure. The earthquake that cause that large tsunami was quite powerful, however it didn't do damage to the buildings and the people were safe. They had about 30 minutes between the time the earthquake finished and the tsunami hit that they could have escaped to higher ground and to safety. However, they DID NOT heed the warning signs and leave. They were complacent and under the mindset that because their buildings were not damaged and they were used to earthquakes, they didn't need to leave. However, 150,000 people lost their lives because of the tsunami. This really drove home to me how complacent and prideful we can all get in our daily lives. Let us ever be more diligent in knowing and heeding the warning signs!

It reminded me of what happens with investigators. Their conscience (and ours) tells us what is the right thing and what is the wrong thing. It's suuuuper simple!! Sometimes we think it's "over the top" or something like that, but it's what's necesary in such dangerous situations. sometimes, after a week or two of success, we start to get comfortable, and leave the essencials a little to the side. We know who's going to fall If we know who's comfortable. :)

Amos 3:7 says that god will do nothing ecxept it be through a prophet, or one chosen and assigned with the keys of God. Our church leaders have the keys, then THEY are the ones that open heaven's blessings, not us.  How do we sustain the prophet? How do we sustain his representatives in our stakes, wards, and quorums?

Love,
Elder Brown