Smoldering (with) Pumpkins!!

Wow! I hate how these weeks are just flying by! I wish I could just take it all in! It's hard to find time to just think to yourself, “wow, I am really on a mission - like this is it - I have only got 9 months left - too sad.” But, always super excited that I’VE GOT 9 MONTHS LEFT TO GIVE IT ALL I GOT! That's what I'm gonna do!

So, this week was awesome, and of course as always, we saw a lot of miracles! Sunday was legit insane! The church building was packed! And of course, as a missionary you always love to see that! 20 non-members showed up to church in our little ward and it was such a blessing. Cool story behind one of those 20 souls - so as we were greeting everyone to come into church a man that we didn't know walked in, didn't say anything, just walked in and sat down. We weren't able to go and sit by him or talk to him or anything like that because things were super hectic. But of course, our amazing elder’s quorum president named Julian, (he is the legit coolest person, he just got back from his mission in Italy) sat by the guy, welcomed him and all that good stuff. Turns out he only spoke Portuguese, but he went on the Internet and looked up the address to the church and just came because he wanted to! Haha, he is golden! So we have started teaching him. It's a little difficult because we don't speak Portuguese nor does he speak Spanish, but we work it out! Haha, it really is cool though to see these people with a real desire to change their lives and then ACT ON THAT DESIRE! We are what we make out of ourselves. His name is also Joao and he is amazing!

That Sunday night wasn't as good as church was though - all of our appointments fell through and we got discouraged pretty fast. Haha, so as we were trying to contact in a park at like 8 o'clock at night everyone was just like bluhhh... and that brings up a good point... something I have seen so clearly on my mission is that when we are happy as the missionary and we have a good attitude, then the people that we talk to are more receptive and nicer. The amount of niceness we give reflects the amount of niceness we get in return. If we are like, bluhhh, then the people are going to be like, bluhhh. So let's not be bluhhh, haha. But anyways continuing with the story, things just weren't great. So we sat down on a park bench and said a very simple prayer. Just help us find somebody. Also, a little more background: So this whole week we had been so busy that we never had any opportunities to go out and find someone and so we had set a goal Saturday night that we were going to find a new person on Sunday. So we prayed to find that person. Well, after the prayer we did some more contacting and just no luck. Well, we felt the prompting to look up the closest former investigator to where we were standing right then. We looked him up and he was so cool. He had just lost his father and his whole view on everything had changed and he was so open to the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was just cool to be able to hit our goal and to find another soul to help come closer to Christ!

Today Elder Hinckley and another missionary that we live with named Elder Henrie got to go visit the Statue of Liberty because they are going home. It's like a tradition for the leaving missionaries. So today I am on a split with Elder Olsen, and we got to carve pumpkins with some members and it was so much fun! It reminded me of the coolest pumpkins that I used to make at home! ;)

I really do appreciate your prayers on my behalf! Little old Elder Brown needs em! Haha, y’all are the best and just know I pray for you always! STAY STRONGGG!

Elder Brown

Haha, posing with Pumkin. Yes, I still do the smolder, haha!!

On splits with Elder Olsen, carving pumpkins