Jesus take the wheel

This week was pretty tough. But we had some good laughs that made it alright. People see how pink our faces get and ask "Sun hot?" I am trying to come up with something funny to say like "Yeah like 2 Million degrees hot! The scientists told me that on the tv." We had planned on working with tons of members this week but every single time they canceled on us! We had worked really hard and got 16 other lessons this week. That excludes the few member lessons we got and the less actives we visited. The people we teach don't keep any commitments they just like to listen to us talk. One lady we taught we tried using the analogy of the police man being the only one who can pull you over. We asked "Who can pull you over for driving to fast?" ".......Jesus?" She replied. "No it's a police man because he has that authority." As you can tell this week had been a little painful and dull. Also something I have noticed about Guyana that is real funny is that guys just walk down the street in underwear and have no problem with it. Sometimes they even randomly carry a live chicken. Guyana never ceases to amaze me. I got my birthday package a week early! I loved all of it! Sadly we were fasting that day so I ate some candy later at night when we broke our fast. The paper in the package said that it had 4 bags of jerky but I only got 2. Some lucky guy is celebrating my birthday with me by eating it I bet. Also I loved this Mario Pez dispenser I got! I remember in seminary we used that to explain what a dispensation is. Let's say Mario here is God (Trying not to be too blasphemous) Mario will dispense a prophet or a pez and he does it one by one. Just like dispensations. I will start using it for lessons but I will only give out one candy each lesson because I am selfish :)

So none of my investigators like I said are progressing. The one that we did have who was amazing and was sharing the gospel with everyone before we even had a chance to extend a baptism date, moved to Barbados! Come on!!!! She was the one who made this all worth it! We fasted on Saturday for ourselves being able to find some people who will commit to the things we share with them. Sunday we went tracting as usual because we have found all the people we teach and we met a guy named Brother Jeffries who was working in the interior like a lot of people do and he just got back. We will be making them Mexican food this week and have dinner for his 60th birthday! Also my birthday is on Sunday! On Duali the Indian holiday! There are tons of fireworks going off already and Sunday will be tons of parties. Sadly none for me. Also fail of the week. We have been showing the Restoration dvd to many people this week and lots of people have Spanish dvd players. The dvd goes to Spanish and it won't change for their tvs. So we would resort to the scriptures as a Plan B.

Well I am hoping for a better week this week and I look forward to eating lots of cake! Also I heard about this store that sells imported good so I am getting a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper for my birthday!

Hope everyone has a good week!

Love,

-Elder Brown

Flute playing buddy

New shirt!

Missing Mom

This week had been long but a great week nonetheless. I forgot to mention a story from Zone Conference last week that I loved. I will make it simple but I love the stories of Alma and King Limhi. Alma and his people had been humbled as soon as possible whereas King Limhi and his people were compelled to be humbled. What I learn from that is always make sure you are humble or the Lord will have to do it the hard way. I love comparing those two groups of people. This week I have met tons of crazy people. I meet them every week but this week seemed to have even more of them. This one guy always asks a member if we are around because we talked to him once. His name is a bit inappropriate but he goes by dog. He said that he goes to these dog food stands where people buy dog food (not sure why because dogs just walk everywhere) and he asks for pepper and ketchup with it. He is a little strange. Also this guy who I think was drunk ran up to us down the street and told us to follow him. It was 2 pm. He showed us Superman from a coloring book and pointed to another drunk man and told us that he stole Superman's powers. I told him that he needs to give his powers back because the 8th commandment says that we shouldn't steal. Another one we see all the time was messing with dogs and he showed us he had a gun in his pants (Sorry mom I should have told you that much later so you don't get worried). He likes us so he would never mess with us. We met this other guy just the other day who was high out of his mind on cocaine. He acted like a chicken saying he likes chicken curry and then we came back from getting lunch and he got in a fight with a neighbor and they just threw these big logs on the ground. The Guyanese are all talk and no action. He kept on running and kicking this guy's fence and then he threw this old rusty dull knife at the wood and would make it stick in there. If I was in that position I would have just hit him in the head with a baseball bat and knock him out. After arguing he smoked some more cocaine in the middle of the sidewalk and did some push ups. The whole neighborhood just watched and laughed. This week we got some pretty sweet food! Our Muslim neighbor celebrated a Muslim holiday and gave us lamb meat he sacrificed and we got crab curry from the branch president! I also went to Suriname again to renew my passport and we met this cool guy named Randy and gave him a ride all the way to Georgetown (It's a long long ride). He is just traveling the world and he had been to so many countries and places that are only recognized as countries by other countries. He has even been to North Korea. Yeah North Korea not South. They are so sheltered there he said. On the way back to Georgetown we saw Phoenix, Tempe, and Washington Guyana. Pretty original right? They have some funny village names. We shared the gospel with Randy and I guess his parents were members of the church a long long time ago. I hope he finds the gospel while he finds the world. He was a really cool guy so we gave him the Senior couple missionary address. That's about all for this week but I also got the 24 hour flu yesterday. I barfed on the way to church and just before church ended. We have sacrament meeting 3rd hour so I stuck it out for that long! Some investigators didn't come and gave us crappy excuses so I can't believe they wouldn't come. When you get sick and lay in bed all day it makes you miss your mom even more. I bet all missionaries can agree. Fortunately I feel a lot better today! Also I think I hit my 40 pounds lost now!

-Elder Brown

My new comp, Elder Egbert



Boat ride to Suriname

6 Months Mark!

Well I got my new companion this week! Elder Egbert is a pretty awesome guy! He is 18 and I am almost 20 so I feel really old. We have just been working hard and been working with referrals and people just right around us. We are getting a lot done even in a close range and haven't even scratched the surface of how big our area is. He has a girlfriend who is 5 years older than him which I think is kinda funny. He is such a cool guy and a hard worker. He has only been out for 3 months too! Anyways we had a tiny earthquake this week but you could barely feel it. Elder Egbert was kneeling down writing in his journal and I was in my hammock writing in mine so he felt it really really soft but I didn't. I missed out! Also this Hindu man prayed for us. He just kinda hummed a song. No words or anything. I found a funny thing to say while teaching to lighten the mood. I ask if they know any prophets and if they don't a ask if they know the guy who put 2 of every animal on the ark. James? Kevin? No uhhh..... It was no uh..... "Noah?" says the investigator. "Yeah him!" Anyways we have been working hard and already are extending baptism dates! We have a goal to baptize 5 people this transfer! Also I don't want to beg but my birthday is coming up and I would love letters from people who haven't mailed me yet :) I need addresses so I can write everyone. I am sending a letter a week now to one random person a week.

-Elder Brown

P.S. We had a great zone conference yesterday! We are excited to work hard!

Elder Watson & I at Zone Conference

Tough guys (Elder Fiame)

"Curry, Roti, Lucky!"

Lately here in my area in the ghetto part it has been weird. Like I said last week about the John the Baptist guy I met another Hebrew like him. This guy tried arguing with me a lot. He said some mean things like that I am going to Hell but he was weird because he tried explaining that our saviors name is not Jesus because the letter J was invented a lot later after the bible. Also a cool branch president I know served with Brother Claridge here when they were on missions. President McKenzie is his name and he used to live in Mesa, Arizona and he is the best! He is not in my branch though. I see him about once a week so I saw him at conference which was pretty good by the way! I really liked Richard G Scott's talk about being meek and that is something I am trying to work on. Also I liked having exclamation points like that one member of the 70 said. I want exclamation points in my mission! Sometimes I get grumpy because the sun is just so hot! Also something I have noticed lately is that it seems like they mention Le Mis every conference at least once. Here in Guyana we got a black out for almost every session but fortunately we have a back up generator so we missed only a minute of one talk. This week my companion Brother Augustine and I have been quoting Napoleon Dynamite which he has not seen! I quote the part where Napoleon sees Pedro's bike and says "Shocks, Pegs, Lucky!" but we got fed at conference and they had curry and roti which is my favorite! So the quote changed to "Curry, Roti, Lucky!" Not much happened this week and unfortunately we only had one investigator at conference but I get another new missionary named Elder Eggburt (Hope I spelled that right) and I should get him this upcoming week. He is from Idaho and has been out for about 3 months from what I hear. I look forward to this. Also I just hit my 6 month mark so I am burning a tie tonight! I accidentally ruined it when trying to wash it so I don't feel as bad anymore. Mission is going by pretty fast!

-Elder Brown

Pineapple

Simmons family

This week just feels good

The beginning of this last week was kinda scary. Our mission president came to Guyana and told us that we were doing a really great job with our work out here. Our mission wide fasts have been working! He told us that he wants us to memorize Doctrine and Covenants 121: 34-46. We have been working on it for a while but he also told us to memorize at least 10 verses from our favorite scripture story. I chose Abinidi telling the wicked priests and King Noah to repent because that is my favorite story. I am doing the first 10 verses of Mosiah 13. We have 2 weeks to memorize. Aside from that the week was kinda a bummer because everyone was out playing cricket and didn't want to help us teach. This week was hot too! If I was outside for more than 10 minutes I felt like I was going to die! We met some girls and started talking to them and they said "Oh yeah you are from that church.... The Latter Day Sinners right?" I told them it was Latter Day Saints but that no member of the church is perfect even myself so that is why we go to church. "Church is for sinners isn't it?" I asked them. Also this week I got an Old Testament story book. I have one for the Book of Mormon as well and I love them. I get the story so much better. I read the whole Old Testament story book and now I understand all these things better now. The Tribes of Israel and everything. Now I can connect with other people's beliefs too because I have mainly been focused on the Book of Mormon. I read about Ester and it made me miss being Haman in the roadshow we had a few years back. I had such a funny experience this week too! This lady we taught once has never been home when we teach or so we thought. Her daughter is a recent convert and she is less active but I can never get to her either and they live in the same house. The Zone Leaders called me to tell me I had a good week and we pulled over our bikes to see if she was home and I was on the phone and I see her in her front yard! BINGO! I waved at her and she saw me and just walked inside acting like nothing happened. We called inside her house for her (That is a Caribean thing) and she just would not answer! Now we know that we don't have bad timing but that she just doesn't want to see us. That's the sad thing here. People won't tell you straight up if they aren't interested. Another Elder and I have been quoting the Strangers movie a lot and we just laugh so hard. We made a joke about this lady I just mentioned who ignored us in her house. "Is... Tamera home?" is the original quote so we changed it to "Is.... Alexis home?" and then if they say no we pull the next line "Are you sure?" We say it in the same voice as the movie. We have had so many laughs about it this week. We also met a guy who is a little odd. He goes by the name of Elijah. I am glad I read the Old Testament story book this week so I could understand a lot better. He basically told us he will be one of the 144,000 saved because John the Baptist was our savior and was Elijah reincarnated. He said that Jesus was the Antichrist. I asked him why the Bible talks all about him and he said that was all lies. He was really strange. Also we visited Ras Chippy again as usual. I asked him to pray. He starts his prayer off as "Dear Rastafari...." It is interesting. Something else funny here is people always ask for money and get mad when you say no. My companion and I made a joke about this guy who asked for $100 for a drink and we told him no. They make this strange mouth sound when they get mad. He asked for money 7 times and I said no each time. "Give me some of your juice!" Still said no and someone else finally gave money to him. Also I showed the Plan of Salvation book to this little girl who's mom we are teaching. She saw the clothes we wore in the pre existence and asked if they were karate clothes. She is an interesting child. This week had been so hot but we were so blessed with rain on Sunday. It made it really nice for that day. Well I am looking forward to conference this week! We are letting people know that the prophet today is going to be talking to everyone! We are getting them excited! Also on Sunday the branch talked a lot about getting excited for missionary work! We are getting a lot of referrals for this week! This week should be good!

-Elder Brown