Hey family!
We had a bit of a slower week, but a lot of that was due to the fact that we were preparing our lesson for Sunday. The whole time we were preparing our 5th Sunday lesson I kept thinking about the size of the Wrightwood ward and not the size of the Barstow ward. Barstow used to be two wards and is now just one big ward. So for our lesson we wound up using the projector and almost filling the stake center sized chapel. I was fairly nervous mostly because elder grill knew what he wanted to say but I had done more of the technological prep stuff. Video clips, quotes, an interactive study section, etc. But it worked out pretty well in the end. I'm good at winging stuff and we both had plenty to say. We taught the ward about missionary work and how they can be better missionaries. One young mother talked to us afterwards and tearfully expressed how she's going through a trial that has to do with missionary work and that we were inspired to say some of the things we said. So that was pretty awesome.
I was on an exchange on Wednesday with Elder Patch. He's pretty cool. We taught like 5 lessons that day and it was awesome. At our last appointment, we were teaching a woman named Andrea the Plan of Salvation and her boyfriend Ray showed up. We had just talked about Adam and Eve and he had some questions about that. I don't remember specifically what he asked but Elder Patch and I answered him and he didn't seem satisfied. He rephrased his question and we rephrased our answers but... still didn't work. I felt prompted to go to the scriptures and I read a few verses in Moses. When I looked up, Ray has this incredulous look on his face and said "wow... that makes so much sense. I need to read this. I gotta... I gotta read this book." He then randomly brought up the idea of becoming like Gods and I went to the Bible (2 Cor 7 I think) where it says we will be joint heirs with Christ. He thought that was way cool too and that it supported what he believed. He committed to be baptized and we gave him a blessing too since he had thrown out his back. He was tearful after the blessing and it was just an awesome experience. It's so cool and I am so grateful when the Spirit is present and influences me as a missionary.
I think I'm going to sandwich the bad news in my email. So. Bad news: my camera (Jeren's camera) is dying! I think it has a short in the circuitry. When I turn it on, it turns itself off within like 3 seconds. No lense error or anything, it just shuts down. If I hold down the power button when I turn it on I can use it normally to navigate or take pictures still but as soon as I let go of that button it turns itself off again. So it works, but it doesn't. I'll keep using it when I really need/want to take pictures but it's going to be quite a hassle. I might try and take it apart to see if I can fix it. Who knows. But I guess you can cancel pretty much all my birthday requests or move them to Christmas and send me a new camera instead. Or vice versa. haha. I guess I'll just add to that general "want" list and you can use your discretion :) I wouldn't mind some protein mix. My district mates are muscle heads and I might start P90x soon.
Vera is continually progressing. She's so awesome! She continually eats up everything we teach her. She spends most of her free time studying the scriptures. Like she'll even spend 3 or 4 hours in a day if she doesn't have too much homework. Crazy. Besides one or two more lessons she's ready to be baptized. She often talks about how other churches didn't understand her and didn't seem to understand some scriptures in the way that they're written and how everything we've been teaching her just makes so much sense. She loved the Plan of Salvation. She talked about how she had been thirsty for more, that something was missing in the scriptures and in her church. It's so COOL to see her light up more and more each time we visit with her. Did I already tell you she wants to serve a mission? Crazy! :)
So with things like who gets the last cookie or something like that, I'll sometimes jokingly say "I'll fight you for it," especially with my companion. I don't say it often but Elder Grill has decided to adopt it as his defensive phrase after he does something dorky. haha. He says something like "okay I'm going to stop now since I value my life." It makes me laugh because we really haven't gotten mad at each other much or anything. A few nights ago he said something similar and I said "you don't even know that I could beat you up" and he said "yes I do. You're bigger than me." And I looked at him and back at me and back at him and raised an eyebrow at him and he said, patting his stomach, "well. I'm bigger this way, but you have more muscle than me!" And I looked back at me and back at him and said "Grill, you weigh 50 pounds more than me." And he's like "so?!" So I was like alright lets go arm wrestle. And I uh... almost threw him out of his chair. haha. Poor guy. We did a stick pull too since he said he was a LOT better at that and he barely beat me after like a solid 6 or 7 seconds. We're going to do best 2 out of 3 though.
Umm what else. I got Paul Cardall's "New Life" cd. It's freaking AWESOME. I've grown to love beautiful, modern, classical-style music; strings, piano, maybe slight percussion and guitar... It's so good! I might make a copy and send the original home so that you can enjoy it too.
Anyways. That's what's up. It's October now but the highs are 100 for the next 3 days. Bah. Oh well. Only 1 or 2 more weeks of heat and then it'll just be warm and you can all be jealous when you get snow on Halloween :) haha.
Love, Peace... and preferably not war,
Elder Browning
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