Merry Christmas!

Hey!
We are loosing a lot of missionaries in the next few transfers  This transfer we lost 30 missionaries. They are the first group of 18 year old's to come to our mission.  The Las Vegas Zone, which I'm in, and the Bonanza Zone will be combining into one zone this gtransfer because we're loosing so many missionaries.  It will be the Las Vegas Zone.   There will be 3 districts in a zone of 26 missionaries.  The average zone size is around 1-20 missionaries so this will be a pretty large zone.

We had a great baptism a couple of weeks ago.  A dad and his son.  It was probably my favorite one so far.  I am so happy for them.  Now in a year they can go to the temple and be sealed.  Hopefully I will be able to come back to Vegas and go to the temple with them.

My ward mission leader and his family are doing the 12 days of Christmas to us  It's awesome!  Ties, TONs of popcorn, cereal chips, candy, etc.

We had another baptism on Saturday.  It went really well.  I said the opening prayer and ran the program while my companion and the young man were changing.  I was really nervous at first (to be conducting) but it turned out to be really good.

You would think and hope that people would have their hearts and minds towards Christ but most of the time it's not that way.  The work is pretty slow during the holidays because everyone is too busy shopping  and they have other things that are "more important."

You probably have heard of the #sharethegift.  All missionaries pass out cards that advertise it.  You might have seen them.  They are mormon.org card size.  We have a quota of 10 cards a day.  We are doing it the whole month of December.  It is going pretty good.

Merry Christmas!

Love,
Elder Michael Brown

All of us "together" on Christmas Day!

Doesn't he look great?!

Sept. 11 = Half-Way Through Mission

Hi!
It's hard to believe that I'm almost "one year old". Time has flown by so fast. I've learned a lot, made a lot of good memories, and I have had a lot of fun. It's just too bad that you only get two years to do this though. I wish it was longer.

I have noticed positive changes from being obedient. One is that I have the Spirit with me more. Especially when I teach. Example: Last week we were teaching an investigator and she started telling us about all the hard things that she is going through. And she was going through a lot of hard stuff. During the closing prayer the Spirit told me to give her a specific promise. After the prayer ended I said, "Tamber, the Spirit has told me to tell you something."  I promised her that she would be blessed above anything that she could possibly comprehend. I promised her that she would be blessed more than she could imagine if she would endure and go through this trial that she is having. I then explained that just how we are given weaknesses to make us strong we are also given trials to make us strong. After I had made that promise she told me, "Thank you. You don't know how much I needed to hear that. That means a lot. Thank you." It was a great moment for me.

Love your favorite Elder,

Elder Brown

September 1st

It's crazy that It's already September! You know what that means? In 10 day on September 11th I'll hit my 1 year mark!!

Sounds Like everything is going great!! That's awesome! I do live with the Bishop. But I live in a caseda which is different. I've been in a caseda before but never lived in one. It's really different. I lived with members in my first area but we lived in the house not a caseda. 

My area is not as ghetto as I was hoping :(. It's not very dangerous. You have to go to the President and letter streets to get to the real ghetto and dangerous part of Vegas. Fremont is also very bad but that's out of mission. It's in the Las Vegas Mission. There are a lot of houses with bars on there windows. I was expecting to see that.

Love,

Elder Michael Brown

Transfer time!

Hey!

So I will be getting transferred today. I will be heading south to the Las Vegas Zone in the West Cliff Ward!! And my new companion will be Elder D. He came out April or May of last year. It is more of a ghetto area which is good because I have wanted to go to the ghetto! For my whole mission so far I've been in areas where people aren't poor. They've been more of rich areas. In my new area it's about half ghetto and half not. I'm really excited!

Nothing really crazy happened this week. But I did take a package of Pop-Its, opened all the pop-its and emptied all the rocks into some toilet paper. I then wrapped the toilet paper up and make a huge Pop-It!!! When I threw it on the ground the noise was really loud. Take the noise of 1 pop-it and times that by 50. Then add the echo that it had and thats how loud it was. It was way cool.

We've had dinner appointments every day the past few weeks. That's really nice.

Most of the times I put my hand out to kids for a low/high five or have them bump fists. But the best is when they come to you and want you to do it to them. And whats better is when they come to you and want to give you a hug. I love that so much.

Love,

Elder Brown

11 months!

HI!

Today is my 11th month mark!!!!!!! Crazy! I am going to celebrate by having a huge coke float! 

It's been plenty hot here. But it's dry and not humid which I love. The hottest that I have seen so far is 115*!!! If it was 115* with humidity like in Georgia. I would cry. hahaha

We had 3 investigators a church. Ed, Jean, and Andrew. Ed and Jean are progressing really well. We taught them last last week on Monday, last two days ago on Saturday, we'll teach them tonight, and have a lesson lined up for this Wednesday. I'm really excited. Last Saturday we taught part of the Plan of Salvation and tonight we are teaching them the rest. We are also planning on setting them with a date for the end of this month. John Hull has been extremely flaky the past few weeks. He doesn't answer our calls or call back when we leave a message, we text him and he doesn't reply. We also go by his house to talk with him and he doesn't even answer his door. It is extremely frustrating. We are planning on dropping him. But we aren't allowed to drop people without meeting them and telling them that we are dropping them. So I have gotten very frustrated at him because we can't set up a time to meet with him.

Love,

Elder Brown

Last week of July!

Hi!

My week was pretty good. We had a couple lessons. Got a new investigator. And we had 5 investigators come to church!!! Ed and Jean are progressing really well. We taught them last week. They will be out of town till next this Saturday or Sunday so we won't be able to meet with them for a while. Kane is doing good. His real name is Dartazion. Kane is is rapper name. It's hard to meet with him because he flakes out a lot. But he's come to church the past 3 weeks. He hates that church is 3 hours. Dee Dee came as well as Andrew.

The worst part of the week is when we got food poisoning. It was Friday that I got sick.  It was bad. It started around 5:00 am when my stomach hurt really bad. the first time I threw up I didn't get to the toilet in time. Then the rest of my miserable day went from there. That was the second time that I have had food poisoning on my mission. Being sick on your mission is worse than getting sick at home because you can't do any thing besides rest. What I mean is that at home you have people to talk to, if you are feeling good then you can possibly watch tv. But as a missionary you can't do any thing. 

We were on bike for a few days after the sister crashed their car. But now we are back in a car. But instead of our Malibu we have a 2012 Ford Fusion. It's cool. The AC isn't as good which sucks. But at least we have a car.

Love,

Elder Brown

Hello!

Hello!

All is going good here in Las Vegas Nevada. It's getting much hotter the past two weeks. The highest it's gotten is 115* that I know of. That was last Sunday the 13th. We are on bike now. The Sister Missionaries in our zone crashed their car so we had to give our up to them. :( It will be good though. Except the fact that it is now summer. And biking in this weather will be terrible. I hope it's not for too long. Our Zone Leaders said that the repair will take 2-6 weeks. But it will probably take longer than that.

Last Friday we were able to go up to Mt. Charleston and stay the evening with the ward for the ward camp out. I wish we could of stayed the night. It was a lot of fun anyways. I also got a few good pictures of a sunset.

Oh!! A crazy thing happened last week. We were playing morning sports and I got a black eye! It wasn't to bad. But still, a black eye?!? Crazy. I got hit in the face a few times with a soccer ball, then hit in the face by someones arm. I think the arm is what gave me the black eye.

We got two new investigators last week. Their names are Ed and Jean. They are an older couple. They are soooo golden. When we went to contact them for the first time a crazy thing happened. before we could say anything after they opened the door they said, "Come on in we've been waiting for you!" We were so happy. They had a lot of questions. So we did a Q&A lesson the first night. Then we set up a lesson for two days later!! And for that lesson we taught the Restoration. They always have a lot of questions so we were at their place for almost two hours!! They are awesome!

On Wednesday we had dinner with the Rawson's. Brother Rawson collects swords so we were able to hold a few of them. It was awesome. But the best part was that two of them were replicas from Lord Of The Rings!!! I was so happy!

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Brown