Amazing families!

Mis queridos! (My Dear Ones!)

This week went by like crazy fast! I can't believe it is already time to write again. Everything this week has kind of been a blur, so sorry if this letter doesn't have much solid material in it! I have also been legit terrible at writing in my journal (please don't kill me mom, I promise to be better), so I can't really look back at that to see what has gone down. But obviously, like every week it was amazing!! It's so insane that it is 2017! I am so excited to be able to start another year and to accomplish goals! It sounds like y’all had a really amazing and busy time over the holiday. On New Year’s Eve we had to be in by 8 o’clock but we did spend a little bit of the night before hand with our Honduran family! They are soooo funny!! Haha, I love them. That's the family we put the tree and presents for on Christmas! There is 6 of them - Mayra and Aldo (mom and dad), Mariana and Bayron (niece and nephew of Mayra), and Genesis and Kenneth are the kids!  They are like my family away from home and it has been amazing being able to get to know them. They aren't married yet, so that will have to be a process until they get baptized, but we are working towards it and someday it will happen! We ate some dinner with them and shared a message with them on New Year’s Eve and then we had to head home for the night. A really great new year! 

So, a while back me and Elder Hinckley met this guy on the street who stopped us and told us that he used to be a member in a Dominican Republic. He said we could come visit him and his family and so he gave us his address. Well, we had tried forever to get a hold of this guy but we never could. We decided we were going to look him up one last time. We went and rang this doorbell to the apartment building where he lived and a guy comes down. It wasn’t him. Rewind a week. So, like a week before Julian Valencia, our Elder’s quorum president, said he has this Friend named Abel that was going to go on a mission but got caught up in bad things and just slowly fell away from the church. He wanted us to go visit him, but didn't know his address. Okay, now back to the guy at the door. We asked for the member named Mario and he said he didn't have any clue who that was, and then he said, "where you guys from? Utah I am guessing?" And we said of course! How did you know?  He began to tell us he is a member and he said his name was Abel! Me and Elder Hinckley just died laughing! Now this was a straight up miracle!! Legit, like 3 days before Julian had told us about Abel and we had just randomly knocked on his door. Well, we taught him that day, but we hadn't been able to get with him since. Then this past week we were taking Julian to a member present lesson and it had fallen through. He called Abel to see if we could come over and we had a great lesson with him! His wife isn't a member and so we are going to start working with the whole family.

Keep praying this week for Noemi and her baptism this Sunday! She wants to do it so bad, but there is a lot of things Satan is using against her at this crucial point in her life. So please pray that everything will fall into place!

The whole last transfer was filled with service and we had like no time to find anybody and so we are super stoked for some freed-up time to be able to work with the members and go out and find some amazing people! I really do know that the gospel is meant for everybody. Doesn't matter who it is, but that the Spirit of the Lord brings about change in others. I pray that with this new year we become more Christ like and that we strive to help others do the same! I love everything and more about the Lord's mission. I really do!

Con amor,

Elder Brown

Some less actives they are working with

These last 2 photos are from MLC last week