Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Island Life

First off, internet is deathly slow here. I'm in Santa Cruz right now (different santa cruz.. the one on marinduque) because we had a service thing this morning. We basically just carried a bunch of hollow blocks over a depressed river so that a member could build a house over there. Saturday last week we finally got home from Zone Conference in Lucena and went right to work in Gasan. Work is good! We found four souls that are so ready to be baptized. One is Sherly. She is the mother of a recent convert here, and had been kinda-sorta listening in on the discussions for what sounded like forever but might just be over a year. She told us she likes what she hears, but being born in a different church she wanted to know for sure that the Church of Jesus Christ is true before she attends a service or makes any big decisions. She had been reading from the Book of Mormon. We showed up looking for her daughter to check up on her after baptism and started teaching. After a good discussion about obtaining knowledge through the Holy Ghost, we invited her to come to church for the first time, and she accepted! So that was super cool. The other three people came to church as well.. that never ever happens that all the people we meet in a week come to church. I'm super grateful for the instant success that we have been given here in Gasan.



It's kinda sinking in that I'm a little bit responsible for what goes on here out on the island. A little terrifying, but nothing I can't handle. Our zone is super cool, and we're looking to see improvements in our work on the island. It's been famed throughout the mission for being the most difficult zone.. I don't see that yet and I don't plan on seeing it. We're here to harvest! And reclaim.



Anyways I'm excited for Christmas! I planned on sending a package home for the last few months... but somehow actually sending it has escaped me. So... family, y'alls will get letters and stuff but not till after Christmas. Sorry! We will talk next week. I don't know what the Skype situation is out here.. but I plan on being on the computer no later than 10 AM my time.. 6 PM your time. Maybe I could even get there an hour early. Anyways just plan on around then.. if skype is too slow I might need y'alls to load up a Skype account and use it to call our mission cell phone. President says that's cool if we can't get good internet. But I wanna see all your faces so pray Skype works!!! We've been asked to keep it under an hour.. just a warning.. so write down questions or things you wanna share and I am looking forward to the only Christmas call of my mission! ha. Cool.



No pictures this week because it took me over 5 minutes just to log into email here! I can't imagine trying so send 4MB of pictures through this tiny straw of bandwidth. I was going to SpeedTest it to get a real number.. but the site wouldn't even load. Ha. Love you all so much and thank you for the Christmas loveee!!!



Elder Brown



PS I love my mom!