Come Thou Fount

April 23, 2012

Hey fam!

Thanks for the emails mom and dad :) it sounds like you've all had a pretty good week! Besides mom at least. Do you know how you herniated a disk in your back mom? It's probably leftover damage from that car accident you had a while ago. Hopefully you get it figured out... :/ I'm calling a member chiropractor today in a neighboring ward to get my back checked out this week. It's definitely not as bad as yours! But I've been getting headaches that I'm pretty sure are related to my neck as well. We'll see though.

It's been fun to get out and do some yard work. We did some weeding for an older lady in the ward and I also assembled a glider bench that she'd ordered online. There were like no instructions and a ton of stuff to put together, but I had fun figuring it out. haha.

 

We had a pretty quiet week. We're working on following up with a lot of potential investigators. We had some lessons with some other investigators (people who have been taught for a long time but aren't really progressing) and have really emphasized that they need to study it out and pray and find out for themselves if what they've been taught it true. We'll follow up to see if they've done that and hopefully they'll be some more progression.
It was, however, a week of several accomplishments and good personal revelation from Elder Ballard. I finished the Book of Mormon on Saturday! I got a lot out of reading through the whole thing thoroughly. Read it in 68 days. haha. Also, guess what? I've written in my journal EVERY DAY for the past 2 weeks straight! That's the first time I've done that... ever. haha. I know I'll be glad to have it when my mission is over.

One of the days was spent working on our bikes... me fixing up mine and Elder Wadsworth... packing his up. haha. I didn't realize that's what he was doing until he was almost done. My odometer cord had broken when the missionaries put my bike together so I spliced the wires back together and it works now. Glad I have enough know-how to do that!

So the meeting with Elder Ballard was phenomenal. Really really great. It's so funny to listen to an apostle when he's off script... they're so hilarious! He focused a lot on obedience and how we need to stirve to be 100% obedient to have the spirit working through us. I wrote down something President Godwin said at the end that I really liked. He said "the most important thing is not the numbers nor the obvious visual success; it is the process of the Holy Spirit working through you successfully." Seems to go along with some of the things you said :)

We had a pretty cool experience at church yesterday... Elder Wadsworth and I sang "Come thou fount" in Sacrament meeting. It was funny to see everyone's faces change from "oh no the missionaries are singing" to "wow. that sounds good!" There were several sets of teary eyes and the Spirit was really strong. Sister Jorgenson said she knew Linda (grandma) was there and was proud. It was a very neat experience. And I feel bad that you had to miss out! I got to do some of the arranging of parts between the two of us so that was fun. I had my companion sing tenor and me on the melody the first verse, unison the 2nd, and him on the melody and myself on the bass the 3rd verse. I really enjoyed it and I'm glad that I have a companion that shares my talent and love of music and song.

That was pretty much our week. We're going to try and work harder before Elder Wadsworth goes home. 2 questions though... are my insoles that we bought before my mission in my room? I remember buying 2 or 3 pairs I think. But. I forgot to take them with me haha. My insoles are all still good right now, but I'll need those in the not-too-distant future. Also, do you have recipes you could send me for homemade syrup? I absolutely love homemade maple syrup. I remember you saying it's not too complicated, and if that's the case, I'd like to make some haha. Same thing with a caramel syrup recipe. If it's a disaster I won't try again but I'd like to try at least once. haha

Well. Thanks for all your love and support! I'll need info so that I can skype with you on the 13th :) I'll try and figure out a time and place by the 7th so I can let you know but I might not be able to figure it out until a few days before. Hopefully it will be sometime in the afternoon! Let me know your planned Sunday schedule and I'll try and work into that.

Also, just a note, it takes at least 6 days for me to get mail. Sometimes 7 or 8 because of the Weekend. That doesn't really matter... but I calculated it out and thought I'd let you know. haha

I love you guys! :)

Elder Browning