Baptisms and Blessings

My wonderful family and friends,

Time keeps going by faster and faster. Especially this week! Wow, it was such a great and rewarding week! This work truly is so amazing. The miracles and seeing people's lives change completely is hard to comprehend. The gospel works wonders with people.

Well, we have been teaming up with the sisters in teaching Jeyuri’s family, and this past Saturday his mom and sister got baptized!! It was such a great service. A man named Nordic, that the other Elders teach, also got baptized on the same day and that guy is a legit stud muffin. He knows the Book of Mormon more than all the missionaries combined, and it was a sweet experience to finally see him get baptized. Nani (Jeyuri’s mom) had a problem with word of wisdom and that was something that was really holding her back from being baptized. Well, we were able to give her a blessing to resist temptation and she was able to get baptized! I want to share a little something that has meant a lot to me on my mission. In my patriarchal blessing it says that priesthood blessings will play a big part in my life. Blessing have been a huge part of my mission. The first blessing I gave on my mission was to a man in our ward that was really sick. I didn't speak much Spanish, and to sum it up, basically all I said was "te bendigo que estarás bien" or " I bless you that you will be ok". The next day we received notice that he had passed away shortly after the blessing. That was a burden to me for awhile, but as I have been able to give blessings throughout the past almost 2 years I have seen the power of God work miracles: from helping Rigoberto to stop drinking coffee and Nani to stop drinking beer, or to a companion that is struggling. The priesthood truly is the power of God here on earth. And it's manifested through struggling humans like us. It's amazing!

Francisco is doing so good!! He is going to be baptized in the end of May, and we are super excited for him! He is such a cute little old man! Haha, he thinks he is still strong though, and it's so funny. He just picked up this weight thing he had at his house and with the sneakiest skill he said that he could lift it 50 times! Haha, I love that man!

There is this guy named Milton and he is a classic Dominican man. He feeds us some amazing Dominican food and this past week he gave us some la bandera. If you don't know what kind of food that entails then go look it up! Anyways, the next morning I woke up throwing everything up and it was just a rough day. Haha, there should always be a caution warning when eating Dominican food! He is super cool though and there is always a lot of high hopes for him!

Love y'all so much! Thanks for your support and love!

Con amor,

Elder Brown

The recent baptism

Baptism

The man Milton, and maybe that's the La Bandera that made Caiden so sick!