Transfers

Well I hardly have any time at all today, because its transfer day! Sadly, I have to say good bye to Sister Campos tonight and I don't think I'm quite ready to do that. She has been such a tender mercy in
my life and I don't want her to leave me! But she has served a wonderful 18 month mission in Vegas and was a wonderful servant of the Lord in all she did, so I know she will continue to be amazing back home in the Philippines. But man I will miss her so much.

The Lord has entrusted me with something that humbles me very much. I have been called be a trainer. Today we picked up a sister that flew from the MTC just early this morning. Her name is Sister LeDoux. (Ley-doo) her
name is French, but she grew up on Utah and lived a couple years in Virginia before she came out. She's 21 and I already can tell that she's an amazing missionary! She's beautiful and outgoing and so ready to be a missionary. I am sure she will teach me so much and I can't wait to see what! I am so humbled at this assignment and I know I will have to completely rely on the Lord to help Sister LeDoux become the missionary that the Lord wants her to be. But I am so thrilled that I get to stay in my area!! My greenie area is wonderful and there are so many wonderful people and I can't wait to see what the Lord wants Sister LeDoux and I to complete in this amazing area!

This week was great. On Tuesday we had the restoration lesson with Vanessa and she accepted the baptism date for October 29th!! She believes in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and can not wait to get baptized, so we can not wait to continue to teach her! This is the same women as the one we helped get school supplies to and also help tutor her first grader. She finally asked us what we could do for her after we helped her so much, so we asked if we could teach her and now she's getting baptized! We're super excited.

On Friday I was privileged to attend the temple with Sister Campos for her departing temple trip! Because she's the only sister going home, I was lucky and got to go with her so she wouldn't be alone. It was such a wonderful experience and I am SO happy President asked me to join them!

Ok I have to give a shout out, because I love this girl so much, and I don't have time to write a personal email. THANK YOU SO MUCH LEXEY!!!!! She sent me a birthday package full of WONDERFUL goodies and love and I cried because I miss you so much. Lexey you're amazing. I'll write you next week :)

On Saturday Tamir and Kade came to a baptism!! They missed the actual ordinance, but they stayed for the talks and the convert's testimonies and then we showed them the font afterwords and they met President
Walker and he talked to them :) it was super great!

Saturday night the Women's conference was WONDERFUL! I loved President Uchtdorf's talk on faith and having faith in Gods love. Because if you know that God loves you, you know that anything and everything that
happens to you, good or bad, is because God loves you and it's happening for a reason.

I love you all, and I hope you have a great week! I'm sorry I didn't get to write any of you, but I'll definitely have more time next week and I can tell you all about the wonderful Sister LeDoux!

Sister Brown :)

Birthday Surprises never get old!  : )

Las Vegas temple with the lovely Sis. Campos

Birthday Week

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! It was really a great day and the whole week turned out to be a great as well :)

Vegas weather is beginning to be BEAUTIFUL. It's beginning to cool down and a wind is blowing and we aren't dying of heat any more. It's fantastic. I survived the summer! Crazy to think huh?

On Tuesday we had a Zone Training meeting that basically reiterated the fact that we need to be talking to everyone. Well, it's really a lot harder than you think. RM's always said that missions are hard. I always asked them what was so hard about its, and I never really got a definitive answer from anyone. Well, this is my reason why they're hard. Because as a member of the church, you have a desire to share the gospel with your friends and maybe eventually everyone, but you can stick with just sharing it with your friends every now and then.
As a missionary, you want to share the gospel with EVERYONE in sight because you have a love for all of them and want them all to have what you have. So you have a desire to share it with everyone, but it's really hard. I'm a talkative, relatively outgoing person, right? At least that's what I think. So when people told me I needed to go outside of my comfort zone for a mission, I didn't think it would be too much outside of my comfort zone. But man was I wrong. It's so hard for me to approach someone while they are doing something to tell them about the gospel. It doesn't seem like it would be hard, but man is it hard for me. When we talk about it, I'm like "yeah! Of course! Let's go and share it with everyone! No man left behind!" But then when we get to it I'm like, "uhhhh you're turn Sister Campos! You can do it! I'm gunna stand over here and watch, kay?" Or I just awkwardly try to start walking up and then second guess myself and walk away. It's. Hard.

But of course, later that day, we see two boys playing basket ball in the street. We pass them and maybe wave. But we have to go back that way, and Sister Campos gets out her scriptures because she's going to talk to them. As we approach, I sadly almost pass them and I have "uh I don't know her! I have nothing to do with her! I can't believe she's just approaching you like that!" Kind of look of my face. If that makes sense. But then they stop playing and start talking to her and I join in and we have a great conversation with these two boys! They
named off their Mormon friends from school and we asked them questions about if they knew what we believe in and one of them, his name is Daven, totally gave us his information and said we could come by and teach him about what we believe! Like, woah!! So, I'm good at the talking part, but not so good at the approaching part. Which is the part that's most important, because how are you going to talk to them if you don't approach them! But if Sister Campos didn't first talk to those boys and interrupt them playing basket ball, we wouldn't have found Daven. So,  lesson learned. When they say talk with everyone, they mean, talk with everyone. What a concept!

This week we had a lesson with Tamir and Kade Cohen again and it was awesome! We've been inviting young men from the Ward to join us in the lessons and it's been super great. We talked about the plan of
salvation and they remembered a lot from what missionaries in the past have taught them, so we just sorta discussed it and then asked if they both have ever thought about baptism. They said yes, but they don't
think their dad would give them permission. But we asked if they thought setting a goal would be good and we can do everything we can to help them get permission and soften their dad's heart before that goal date. They thought it was a good idea and they both agreed on October 22nd! That was super exciting and I know that if they both truly believe that the 22nd is possible and if they have that desire, then it will happen. Then we told them the story of Macy and her battle to get permission from her dad and how she got baptized a
couple weeks ago. I'm so excited for them because they are both such wonderful boys and I can't wait to see what comes of their efforts!

Then that brings me to my birthday. It was great! The members in the area are fantastic and a family made me a cake and we had members feed us every meal which was great. We also had a couple lessons that day!
We went over and talked with Chuck and Tommie, Genet, and had a lesson with Melvin. I was blessed with a great day spending time serving the Lord and that's the best I could ask for. We were able to have lessons
scheduled and have fun while doing so, especially knowing that we were doing the Lord's work. So yeah. It was great :)

And Chuck came to church yesterday! While talking with members after sacrament meeting he was telling the, that he would be back and that someday he'd be one of them, meaning a member of the church. And that
was all in his own! So we are excited to see him this week and to see if he's up to coming to church again next week, even with all his health problems. He's a trooper :)
about. The members here are fantastic and the investigators that God has entrusted me with are all wonderful people and I am blessed to be
able to serve here with such amazing people. I love you all and thanks for all the love that you give me!


Sister Brown : )

Sis. Browns companion will be heading home next week.  Happy sad!

I'm done with subjects. Not feeling clever

Hello all!

This week was great! The bikes were wonderful and so fun, but now we have a car. I'm driving a Dodge Grand Caravan! Missionaries in a mini van. So great :) It's a lot more to clean, but we could fit bikes in it if we wanted to! It really tests my ability to park lol

But we got the car on Thursday, so Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday were the only real days we bikes. But those days we saw miracles! Things happened that would not have if we were in a car, so we are debating on still using them :)

So we were tracting one day, and then randomly my nose starts bleeding., we frantically knock on doors, waiting for someone to answer to see if we could get a tissue or something. No one was
opening, so we sped walked down to where a member lived and she was thankfully home and helped me out. Then we left with some referrals she gave us! So we were able to talk to a lady that she said was super nice and she let us in and talked for a while. If my nose didn't randomly start bleeding, we would have never known she knew the members and she probably wouldn't have let us in! So even though we would have tracted into her anyways, it was good to get some background info first. Everything happens for a reason!

Vanessa, the grandma who adopted her grandkids who we gave school supplies to, is really great. We stop by every once in awhile and now we've started to help Vito, the 7 year old, with his homework because Vanessa isn't really educated and can't help him. She said she was so grateful and asked if she could do anything for us, and we just said that she could let us teach her, and she gladly accepted. So hopefully we'll be able to teach her the restoration next time and she will see how this wonderful gospel can help her and her family!

We had a lesson with Tamir and Cade Cohen this week about the Book of Mormon and it was awesome! Claudia, their less active mother shared her testimony about the Book of Mormon and the blessings she's received from it and she came to church yesterday! It's so wonderful to watch people grow and learn to love the gospel more and more. Tamir and Cade, 15 and 13, both go to their dads house on the weekends, but both of them love us coming over and we can really see their
testimonies grow in learning more of the gospel!

We had exchanges this week and I got to stay in my area and my STL, sister training leader, sister price, exchanged with sister campos. I learned so much and was able to see more clearly ways I can improve and make my efforts magnify in this wonderful area. I'm so grateful for sister price! She knew what to do in every situation and just gave me a huge example on what kind of missionary I want to be. She's so patient and depends on the Lord for everything she does and says and is truly and instrument in the hand of the Lord.

On Saturday we had Jesse's baptism! His family from St George came down and it was so wonderful to see the little boy that we taught glow and beam from excitement to make those covenants with God. I am so blessed that I was able to help him and be with their family on this very special day :)

Love,

Sis. Brown

They have Marcos Pizza in Vegas!  (Sis. Brown worked at a Marcos for 2 yrs before her mission)

Thank goodness it's cooling down...

Because this week Sister Campos and I are on bikes!! It's actually super fun and I enjoy it :) it has cooled down a little, I have survived my first summer, and now I get to enjoy it by being outside
all the time! It's really a blessing though.

So this week has been exciting! We had zone conference on Wednesday and it was so great. We focused on serving selflessly and what to do if things don't go as you expect. Sister Campos gave her departing testimony and it was so sad! I love her so much and I can see that the mission has affected her so much. It just makes me so greatful that I have 15 months left! I will definitely use those 15 months to the best of my ability and make sure I use them in a way that I will have no regrets about the way I spent my mission :) I already have grown so much and learned so much! I feel so blessed that I still have 15 months left of helping people come closer to Christ, 15 months of seeing how God loves everyone of his children and sends them miracles, 15 months of the best experiences I will ever have. I'm so blessed!

So at Zone conference, they check all the cars. How they're working, how clean they are, and so forth. Well the Senior Elder in charge of vehicles, Elder Logan, asked us to take our car to the Chevrolet dealership the next day, not knowing at all what was wrong with it... So we did and they said we'd have it back later that day. Well we called them that night and they said it wouldn't be ready till the next day, and then Elder Logan took it and told us we wouldn't get it back until the end of next week. So, fun! The first couple of days we walked around everywhere and tracted a lot, and now we have bikes!

We have seen so many miracles since being on bikes, it is absolutely incredible! The first miracle was the miracle of planning. So last week in planning, for this Friday we had put down a specific street to
tract instead of just "Tracting." So when we got dropped off in our area to tract, we asked to be dropped off where the street was that we had planned. No big deal. Almost everyone opened their doors, but no one really interested. The big miracle comes in when we were done tracting that street and decided to tract a street in the same neighborhood and a member lived on that street. So we stopped by for some water. Well, just before we stopped by, we got the phone call telling us we wouldn't have a car for a while. So we got water from the member and made some phone calls to try and get some bikes and then the member spoke up and she volunteered hers! She had two girls
that have bikes and they were perfect. Sister Campos is short, and one of them was made perfect for her! It just so happened that they had two girl bikes that were perfect for us and they are letting us
borrow. We could have been anywhere that day. But because that street was on our planner for that day, we were able to be right by a member who had just what we needed, before we even knew what we needed. God knew we needed bikes, and I know we were inspired to put that certain road down when we were planning a full week before that event even occurred!! God is so awesome.

So yeah. Miracles. And we've been able to talk to a whole lot more people brocade we're on bikes. I love it! I love being a missionary! I love seeing the miracles that God places in my life and the lives of others! I will never get tired of this!

I love you all and I hope you have a wonderful Labor Day :)

Sister Brown :)