January 16, 2012

Wazzup?! This might be a shorter email because I emailed some other peeps before, so my time is short. We found a little go kart thing at an investigators house and asked if we could ride it. I snapped a pic of Elder Speechly and it’s a total classic! Always just having fun, staying happy, dancing a lot, and everybody we talk to just laughs at - sorry, with - us. It’s been sweet, and people are loving the church because of it. I can't lie, we have been tearing it up the past couple of months, and it’s mostly because people just immediately want to join the church after they come to church once or sit down with us once. We have had like a dozen baptisms up to this point, and have an epic one planned for Elder Speechly's last weekend. We taught a guy yesterday for the first time who had been invited to church by a member, and we set a baptismal date because he was already calling himself a member of the church... it’s a sweet way to do missionary work haha. Elder Speechly put it well after we got done playing with the go kart he said that (and I quote) "I soften their hearts, and Elder Brown pierces them". Haha... forget shake and bake or thunder and lightning, SOFTEN AND PIERCE WOHO!!!!! Haha.. it’s so tight. A ton of sweet stuff happened this week - powerful new investigators, progressing investigators who are making big strides, recent converts continuing to progress. Maybe one taste of each category: sweet new investigator - Albert. He met the missionaries in Greece like 2 years ago, even went to church once, and we ran into him at an investigator’s house. He was totally stoked to meet us, and after the first lesson, wouldn't ya know it, wants to be baptized. So we are working with him, will teach him tonight. Progressing investigator: Gabriel. He is a bus driver who is super busy but absolutely loves the church - we pass him almost every night on the road when he is coming home from work (like around 9 pm) and he always flashes his lights and pulls the bus over so we can talk for a few minutes. He came to church on Sunday, and we will teach him again tomorrow. Recent convert progressing : Voca, watched the Joseph Smith movie with her and I made fufu for her family after. It was sweet, and must say, I did pretty well driving the fufu!!!!!! So anyway, life is good, mission is awesome, and my time is done today. I love you guys!!! Sorry the email is so short, but don't worry, next week will be totally dedicated to a nice long email :) Love you guys!!!!! -Elder Brown

January 9, 2012

Great to be able to read your guys' email again! I just got pick-pocketed in the Sunyani market... so lame! Elder Speechly was buying some cabbage, and I pulled something out of my pocket, and five cedis came out kind of half way, in a split second, I felt something brush my side, and it was gone! And the thing is, I totally saw the guy do it... but when i started to call him out, I just couldn't do it.... just wanted to avoid any contention... But oh well, it was only five cedis, hopefully he used it to feed his kids or something.... I'll just tell myself that’s what he did :) Haha, so anyway, the week was good. Zone Leader Council is always a cool thing, although it takes two whole days out for us. Woke up early Tuesday, and we were in Cape Coast by 3, we got there crazy fast. So, we just got to chill at the mission home with the Kumasi zone leaders for a while and had baked potatoes and chicken for dinner. Wow.... can't even describe how good it was. We had sour cream. Sour cream!!!! Haha, it’s funny all the little things we don't have here. But Sis. Shulz found it in Accra somewhere, so it was pretty sweet just to have that. The stuff we talked about at zl council was good, a lot of business stuff, but a lot of really important stuff too. Like I say after every one of these meetings, the mission is going in a great direction, Pres and Sis Shulz are awesome. Two of my MTs - Elder Fawole in Sekondi and Elder Bunker in Swedru - are zone leaders now too, so it was cool to see them. Elder Fawole (Nigeria) is the one who emailed me a few weeks before coming out on mission - he always says "Before I saw thee, I knew thee" when we meet up, haha. Got back to Sunyani at like 11 Wednesday night, and was back up and at ‘em at 6:30 on Thursday. We started back up pretty good, got a sweet new investigator who wants to be baptized - Atta. He is older, turns 70 this month. We met him a few weeks ago and he said he wanted to start learning from us after the new year. One of his best friends, Joseph, is a member, so he has a good connection to the church. He even came to church on Sunday. He is going to be a sweet dude!!! Friday was our recent convert day. Taught Hassan, Al-Sadat, Johnson, and Wilson, and had good discussions with all of them. I love our talks with Al-Sadat. He is SO smart. Like seriously a genius. He studies in his personal library for 9 HOURS a day!!!!! That’s crazy!!!!! He has read so much - his favorites are the writing of Plato. He bore his testimony about how much his study of the Doctrine and Covenants is helping him, so that was tight. Made a really cool contact as well later in the day. A guy named Martin, we sat and had a 30 minute chat with him about basically everything in the Gospel. He is a strong Christian, but has been confused by the great apostasy. Each time we brought in a new theme of the restored gospel he was like "hmmmm, that’s interesting...." and thought about it for a while. It was tight. Have an appointment with him tomorrow. Saturday was sweet, Alex came with us, so everything went great. Having members with you to teach makes such a difference. Taught Andrews, contacted a powerful family - Kwasi and Edna - and got a few referrals from Alex. It was a solid day. Also met with Richard for the first time since he travelled to Accra. Church on Sunday was great as well, bore my testimony in Twi small small so everybody liked that!!! And the other testimonies given were powerful. Taught Kwasi and Edna again, they seem to have serious potential - they have two little girls - they remind me a lot of Thomas and his family in Kwamo. Man... missionary work is just awesome. It’s weird saying that because it’s so hard... but it’s just so much fun. Every day I get up happy.... tired, but happy. All of the experiences I am having here are incredible, and Elder Speechly is really helping me remember the importance of having fun in everything.... I had forgotten that almost entirely. So we are getting work done, we are having fun, and life is great. Still a lot of things that make me go crazy, but it’s all gravy brah!!!! Love you guys, so so much!!!!! Dapen akyire.... -Elder Brown ps - I got the letter from my boys from BYU, always great to read those, seems like they are all doing great.

January 2, 2012

Morning morning!!!! Hope all is cool for you back in tejas! my keyboard is terrible, so i am not going to use the shift button, so sorry there is no capital letters. but oh well! anyway, another sweet week in ghana. things are crazy as usual and mission is something else, but its pretty awesome. monday night the christmas party went well. me and wilson played our songs and they were pretty sweet. it was kind of loud around so the recordings didn't come out well, but hopefully we can record them somewhere down the line so you can hear them. a few days later, wilson told me that someone’s friend had come to the party who was a ghanaian filmaker. he is having some film festival out in the jungle in western region and wanted me and wilson to come and be the music. i told wilson that’s probably not possible, but i will ask pres shulz to see if i can! that would be so tight haha... my first big music break happens in ghana. that would be something! the week continued well from there, preparing for wilson and jennifer's baptism. their baptism on saturday went off well, combined with the penkwase elders, they also baptized two people, daniel and prince. probably the funnest part about the week was that our branch mission leader, alex, came and proselyted with us all day saturday and sunday. he is soooo funny.... he is helping us out a lot and keeping us laughing along the way. went on splits with the other elder brown on friday for him to come to do our interviews, so it was funny proselyting with another elder brown. he is a way powerful missionary... he knows so much about the gospel its crazy. he is like 26 and has already graduated from university of cape coast . it was way sweet. he is ghanaian so he was able to speak twi fluently with all of the people we contacted, which they liked of course, he even taught one of our investigator's mom who doesn't speak english. so all in all it was a really good day with him. at the end of the day we went to go teach a recent convert family. the husband works as a driver for a government official so he is always gone. but he has been home for the holidays, so we took the opportunity to have a fhe with them. grandma h sent me a small book called "the story of christ'' for christmas which had taken scriptures from the bible, the book of mormon, and D&C to create a quick overview of the savior's life, so we read that with them and showed a bunch of pics from the gospel art book for the kids to stay entertained and it was a powerful lesson. they even had one of their neighbors who had just had a baby come to be a part of it. good lessons with a lot of powerful investigators this week.one is a way sweet guy. we contacted him a few weeks back, and he is progressing so fast. he came to church on sunday with his son. he was involved at church, asking and answering questions, contributing, it was sweet. he has a baptismal date for 21 january. he is up to 1 nephi 11 or so, so we had a sweet lesson with him on saturday about lehi's dream. all should go well with him! Another investigator (always wears the dwayne wade jersey) is doing well, didn't come to church, but seems to really be understanding things and is really really studying the book of mormon and thinking about it, and praying about it. wow... just remembered it is 2012. wow..... happy new year! anyway, everything else is cool. ZL council down in cape tomorrow, so another long two days of travel, but no wahala!!!! love you guys, you guys are the best and are so awesome! thanks for everything!!! -Elder Brown

December 26, 2011

Because we talked to Griffin yesterday, there wasn't a "real" email for today :)

December 19, 2011

As for the week, it was legit as usual, great experiences once again. The highlight was the baptism Saturday night, it was a way powerful baptism. The baptism was for Stavoca, as well as for Johnson. Stavoca has such a strong testimony, it is sweet. Every time we taught the days before the baptism, she was just so stoked for it. She has been telling all of her friends about the church, she is already calling it "her" church, it’s so tight. Then Johnson is just a stud young man who has a lot of potential. The baptism was really spiritual! We had it at 7 PM, so it was dark outside, and since we don't have an indoor font, we used our portable one outside. It is the Hamatan season right now - the season where sand from the Sahara blows down into the southern parts of West Africa, which makes it somehow cold at night. (Alright cold isn't very accurate, but let’s just say I don't sweat when I sleep!!!) So in the night it felt really good, probably in the 70s somewhere, and so when we all went outside for the baptism, it just felt so cool. Then, everyone was completely silent for the ordinances - usually there are babies crying or people whispering or whatever, but this one was completely quiet. So we had the stars overhead, and clear black night, and it was somehow cold, and the ordinances went off perfect! It was probably the most spiritual baptism I had. Walking back home after, Elder Speechly and I just had the biggest smiles on our faces and we just kept talking about how awesome everything is here. We both just couldn't stop talking about how much we love Africa... and it’s true, this place really is something. So that was the focus of the week, we were busy preparing them and making sure everything was ready the whole week, and then had a lot of good teaching in between as well. What else from the week.... everyone is travelling for Christmas... which stinks, but oh well. We will be super bust in January because all of our recent converts will come back. They have all either been gone or will be gone the next weeks, so January we will be busy working with them. I went on splits twice this week, Wednesday with Elder Robert (Nigeria) and Friday with Elder Iziegbeaya (Nigeria). I love splits because you get to know the other elders so much better. Obviously working with your companion is the most important, but being able to spend a whole day with them was great. They are both great missionaries. Both young on mission (Elder Robert 6 months, Elder Iziegbeaya 3) and they are both doing great. They both have great companions who are teaching them well. Had great days with both of them, taught a lot and found a lot of new people with them. Had 4 new investigators when Elder Iziegbeaya came - one of whom I contacted on Wednesday with Elder Robert, and he had read the entire Restoration pamphlet three times before we even came on Friday, and wanted a Book of Mormon the second we were there. It was a sweet lesson, have another appt with him on Tuesday, hopefully all goes well! Confirmations went great on Sunday, and everything is going along well. Oh yeah, had a sweet sweet meeting with Al-Sadat on Thursday. We are doing our best to meet all of the recent converts (all of the members! haha) every week to help continue to go strong, and so this week we had a good meeting with Al-Sadat. Anyway, all is sweet in Sunyani. We came to Kumasi today for a football match, it was at Kwamo. Got to see some of my old peeps. Elder Nathan is doing great. We are having our Christmas party on Friday, it’s gonna be sweet. Well my family, I love you and I can't wait to talk to you on Sunday. Its going to be a great Christmas season here, I hope you enjoy in NYC, love you guys! Merry Christmas! Afehyia paa!!!! -Elder Brown Merry Christmas from Elder Brown to everybody in Tejas!!!!

December 12, 2011

Ayeekooooo. Man weeks just fly so fast here.... seems like every day is Monday and I am starting a new week! This past week was pretty crazy, just with going to Cape really. Left early Tuesday morning, made it to Kumasi around 10. Then waited with the Kumasi zone leaders for the STC bus. Our group of zone leaders up here is so tight: Elder Briggs (UT) and Elder Hernandez (UT) are the Bantama zone leaders. They are both really cool. Elder Alba (UT) and Elder Hailermariam (Ethiopia) are the Dichemso ZLs. Me and Elder Alba have been around each other our whole mission so we are pretty tight, and Elder Hailermariam is so tight. He knew Pres and Sis Andrus in Ethiopia, said he got an email from them last week. Then of course me and Elder Speechly. So we had a fun ride down. We had a super nice bus with these big leather seats that reclined super far, so it was pretty comfortable! Got to the mission home pretty early, like 5, and just got to chill the rest of the night with the assistants and Pres and Sis Shulz. Then we had ZL council in the morning. Talked about a lot of stuff, how we are coming along on our goals, how our efforts to have more gospel conversations with new people are going, and several other things. Then, headed back up to Kumasi. It took us fo eva to get back too because we took a different way, went through a gold mining town called Obuasi and ran into traffic. Didn't get back to Kumasi until like 7 so we had to stay the night at Bantama apartment. Slept on the floor in their living room. Also stopped by the Zoll's apartment to drop some stuff, love da Zolls!!!!!! They had a huge baptism this week for some people out in a tiny mission branch way far from Kumasi that hasn't had missionaries in like a decade. Some members there have been teaching people and finally got the ok to baptize them, so Elder Zoll was in charge of getting like 30 people out there baptized last Saturday. Finally got back to Sunyani Thursday morning. We are preparing two people for baptism this Friday. They were supposed to be baptized on Christmas, but they are both travelling for Christmas and want to be baptized before they go. The first is Johnson who I told you about last week, the other is a sweet lady that Joseph referred to us. She has really started to love the Gospel. She came to church like 3 weeks ago, and we have been teaching her since. Her daughter asked us for a copy of the children's hymnbook because she likes Primary so much. She is super super shy but is the cutest little girl ever, we should baptize her with her mom on Saturday as well. Saturday we were able to bust out a solid day. Had a few new investigators, met with the ones being baptized, and made a lot of new contacts. That’s like my favorite thing now, finding new people. Just talking to anyone and everyone to be able to let them know who we are. I never really contacted a lot my whole mission because we had people to teach and I would just go from appointment to appointment, but now we are way more focused on trying to talk to more people, it makes everything more exciting and fun. You never know who you might find! In the morning we fixed up the Bennet's old place because Pres and Sis Shulz were coming up, so they needed a place to sleep. They were coming up to check on Sunyani, do some temple and priesthood interviews, have a training meeting with the Branch Presidencies, and a meeting with the missionaries, oh and interview all the missionaries. Talk about a busy man...... I can't believe how much he goes through…there are 150 missionaries in our mission. So Sunday was cool, a lot of craziness with President being around, all of the members were excited. Our meeting was really really good. As I’ve said before, President is a very inspired man. He gave a sweet instruction about how important our message is, going deep deep into the plan of Salvation, about what it really is we are helping people to know, and then went into how we had to be the best we can to help people learn about that plan. After that instruction, I finally got to have an interview with President. It was really good. The work is not easy in Sunyani....and so it was just nice to sit down and talk about whatever and just know that you are appreciated by someone. He placed a lot of emphasis on my family and education. It was a sweet interview. Played basketball this morning with Elder Adams before he and his new comp - Elder Hair (Illinois) headed back to Cape, and now just enjoying my last moments of P-Day. Mission is sweet and great things are happening. I have gotten a lot of packages, one from Greg and Mindy and the Christmas box from you guys, and two envelopes from Grandma H. Crazy how close Christmas is. Love you guys, -Elder Brown

December 5, 2011

Maaaakyioooooooooooo!!!! Mpaakyew wapumtesen?!! Mennin se bibiara bohkoh. Life is cool in Sunyani town.... Sunyani is so tight. It’s not big by any means. The town center is busy, but you can walk from one side to the other in like 15 minutes. Kumasi was just gigantic, so it’s cool to have this smaller scale place to serve in. Before I forget, Happy birf to H!!!!! That’s crazy..... wowzers. Things are moving along huh?! As for this week deea... it was sweet! We had FHE with a family and it was tight, talk about delicious fufu!!! We played gospel pictionary with them. Funny what little games like that do!!! Sweetest thing about the week: I have become a reggae artist. Remember the recent convert who joined the church after meeting a member on FaceBook? Well, he turns out to be an aspiring reggae musician. I mentioned that I wanted to do a musical number for the party at Christmas, and he was like yeah, I want to too. So we decided to have a jam sesh and it was so tight! He is seriously good! He has got soul, which is all that really matters, especially in Reggae! So he plays the little drum thingy - a gimbay? - and I play the guitar and we both sing. We had like 4 jam seshs last week. Haven't had a serious jam sesh fo eva!!!! So it’s tight to be able to do that and it actually be ok for a missionary to do! So far we have a sweet version of The First Noel down, as well as Joy to the World and Angels We have Heard on High. We have even started to make good friendships with some of his rasta buds because of it (he was super rasta before he was baptized). One of my favorite people right now is a recent convert named Joseph. He recently saw the missionaries, called out to them, and completely changed his life. Now he has such a strong testimony, is doing his best to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, and is referring people to us left and right. hmm..... what else. Went out to a place like an hour outside Sunyani, called Berekum. It was a pretty big place, untouched by missionaries. It is about half the size of Sunyani I would say. It would be cool to go open that place up! We have some solid investigators that are progressing, have a baptismal date for Christmas with a guy named Johnson!! We'll have a white Christmas in Sunyani!!!! So, can't really think of much else. Serving in Sunyani is as awesome as ever. Tomorrow we go down to Cape for ZL council. I'll see my boy Nzuki!!! I love that guy. Probably the biggest thing I learned this week was something I talked about in my farewell talk, but this week it just rang so true. I read that quote from Ezra Taft Benson again, the one about how Christ changes people from the inside out, while the world tries to fix problems from the outside in. It’s crazy.... every day I walk through some pretty big problems that are just unsolvable. Poverty, societal problems, corruption, politics, etc. Some people get mad at us that we are trying to change people before we try to help with all of these big big problems that are around us. But that’s the thing.... Christ didn't come to the earth to fix all of the problems with human society. He came to change people, one by one, which then allows the world to change. It’s not about fixing all of the huge problems around us, it’s about helping people, one person at a time, to find happiness and righteousness and charity. Then the world can change. My man Tom Delonge said something like "if you change the world around you, you can change the world itself." Being in some hospitals this week, seeing some other problems, and having people say some things to me made me realize that this work really is the greatest work in the world, even if other people can't see it. We might not be erecting highways and hospitals and destroying poverty. But we are helping people bring themselves to a better state of being, one by one. So, the problems will always be there, but the gospel is still true. Love you guys!!! -Elder Brown