I'm Staying Here

Hi Mom!

Just thought I'd send ya a quick note to let you know I'm not coming
home anymore and that I'm just going to stay up here!

Haha oh man time goes by so fast. Right now I'm on a plane flying down to Juneau for a few days with President and Sister Robinson for interviews and so that we can go on exchanges
with some of the Elders down there. It also so happens to be P-Day and the salmon are running so right when we land we're going to go hit the river and try and catch some salmon! Should be a pretty good start to the week :)

Most of this last week was spent with Brother Hemmingway going on
exchanges with him, planning for MLC (Missionary Leadership Council),
and then traveling around to various Zone Meetings! I can't believe
how fast it flew by!

Exchanges with Brother Hemmingway was amazing! It was super stressful
but I learned so much. He is just like a fountain of knowledge and I
was just like a sponge soaking it all up. Teaching with him was a
little bit intimidating but it worked out alright! Luckily that day it
was 90 degrees and we were in suits so we were able to blame all of
our sweat on the heat and not that we were so nervous! He took us out
to dinner that night and we had a chance to ask him questions and talk
about the mission and all that great stuff. While at dinner he asked
me a question and then said something that blew my mind. He asked me
how many people I wanted to find that ended up getting baptized before
the end of my mission. I told him that if I found a family I would be
really happy. He then asked me "Well have you asked the Lord where
they live?" That really threw me off for a while. It was so simple but
my entire mission I had never even thought about doing it. He talked
to us for a while about how this is the Lords work and He'll be
involved in it however much we'll allow him to be. That night he came
to our apartment to plan with us. In our plans from 3:30-5:30 we
decided that we were going to go tracting to find a family. In our
prayer he told us to tell the Lord that from 3:30-5:30 we were going
to go tracting and that we need him to tell us where a family lives
that we can baptize. After we had done so he said " now don't be late"
Well the next morning during comp study we pulled out a map and felt
prompted that at 3:30 we needed to go tract Bluebell drive and at 4:30
we needed to tract in Bear Valley. So we prayed and told the Lord that
was where we were going to be and asked him to place in our path a
family to baptized. Well 3:30 came around and we were running late so
we didn't actually start tracting till around 3:50. Everyone was nice
but no one was interested. We figured since we were late for the first
time we had better be on time for the 2nd one. Well we went over to
Bear Valley and to make a long story short we ended up finding 3
families to teach! The amazing thing was that we caught two of them
right as they were walking out the door and had we been there 30
seconds later we would have completely missed them. It really built my
testimony that the Lord will be in charge if we let him and that we
need to make our prayers specific and not general and then miracles
can happen!

Yesterday was Summer Solstice which is a pretty big deal around here!
It didn't get dark till around 1:00AM and then it started getting
light around 3:30!
Love you guys!

Elder Brown