Halloween

Holy Cow... Man it's been a crazy and exhausting week with so many ups and downs! It sounds like you guys have had such an awesome week full of fun stuff and parties!
I can't believe that Valley View is finally letting everyone have a Halloween parade. Of course they let that happen long after i'm gone haha! Ben's costume sounded like it was so sweet! And of course I'm sure your scones and chili, and soup were amazing! Haha you're calling yourself Miss Kay now? Has Mama Brown given in and started watching Duck Dynasty? I don't believe it! And I'm pretty proud of you guys for doing all of the leaves! Actually i'm pretty shocked... but good job!

I was pretty bummed out that I was going to be missing everything so I decided that I'd do some of it on my own! We couldn't find a pumpkin to buy for less than $20 up here so we decided that maybe we wouldn't carve a pumpkin this year. We had a lot of fun! Since we had to go in early, at 7 and miss all of the parties, we decided that we'd throw a party of our own! 

The night before Halloween I followed the recipe and made all of the scone dough and it actually worked out pretty good! Milk only gets shipped in every Wednesday and so by the time P-Day comes around there's never any milk left. So getting buttermilk was a little difficult but I finally found some buttermilk paste that I guess is the same thing? The scones actually turned out really good so I'm pretty proud to say my cooking skills are improving! Right when we got back to the church Halloween night I started making our Halloween feast which consisted of Scones, Halloween Oreos, Taco soup and candy. Since I didn't know what "cream the eggs and sugar" or any of those other cooking terms were I ended up having to ask a bunch of the moms what in the world that meant. And none of these poor people had ever heard of a scones, so a couple of families came over and at scones with us! (Grandma, if that scone recipe was supposed to be a secret then I'm really sorry cause they all made copies of it).  

After we ate, and they all left we set up the traditional "doughnut on a string game" that we do every year at grandmas but we decided to make it a little bit harder by flying around on our Nimbus 2000s jumping at it. (When you're out in the bush and there's literally nothing to do you get really creative haha!) I'm sending you the flash drive so you'll have to watch the video of it when you get it.  At the very start when you hear a big crash that's when I was flying around the church on my broom and ate it... haha! After all of this we pulled all of the tables and chairs out from underneath the stage so that we could switch things up a bit and sleep in our "Halloween Cave" for the night! We brought a tv into our little cave and then fell asleep watching 17 miracles. It was a pretty good night.

So to answer some of your questions....

Well to be honest I'm not really sure how we find people to teach. We do a lot of everything. We do have a car to drive around in, but we spend a lot of time walking around. Compared to in Kenai when we had 700 names on our ward roster we don't have anywhere near that here. I guess the main way we spend most of our time trying to find people is by tracting and just walking around town OYM (open your mouth) and talking to people. Probably my favorite thing to do is go to the store Saturday night and talk to all of the drunks that hang out there. A few weeks ago we got 10 people to commit to come to church the next day! Haha of course none of them came but I just think it's pretty fun. 

To be honest things this past week have been pretty brutal. We had our main investigator who was ready for baptism move back to Alabama and then found out that a few of our investigators who we thought were golden aren't really very interested. It's been really frustrating. All the missionaries say that going out to Bethel either makes or breaks you. You really find out a lot about yourself out here. Last night when I was at the lowest low I've had yet, I started to read President Monson's talk from this last conference and he said something that really stuck out to me.

"Our Heavenly Father, who gives us so much to delight in, also knows that we learn and grow and become stronger as we face and survive the trials through which we must pass. We know that there are times when we will experience heartbreaking sorrow, when we will grieve, and when we may be tested to our limits. However, such difficulties allow us to change for the better, to rebuild our lives in the way our Heavenly Father teaches us, and to become something different from what we were—better than we were, more understanding than we were, more empathetic than we were, with stronger testimonies than we had before."

After that he recited a poem that I memorized and really have grown to love! It goes like this

"Good timber does not grow with ease,

The stronger wind, the stronger trees.

The further sky, the greater length.

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow."

As I read that it really reminded me of our family and everything that we've had to go through. Despite all of it, it's made us stronger and resilient to any trials that come our way. After reading this talk it made me look at everything that I've already been through in this life and laugh at what I'm now facing. It's nothing. I'm thankful for all of the trials I've been able to face and to overcome because I know that it's made and is making me into the person and missionary I know I can become.

Ok enough of that! Yea we did run out of water last week and then I went to do dishes last night and found out that we're out again! I guess someone left a sink on in the bathroom during church again... 3 more days of towel baths! haha! It's pretty fun to experience though. It really makes you grateful for things back home!

Well this is really long and my hands hurt so i'll talk to you guys next week!

Gingumgin!

-Elder Brown

P.S. Thank you so much for the Package! I especially liked all of the rugs (or my comp and I were thinking that they might be scarfs?) that you sent me!