Hard Rocky Week

May 14, 2012 

Hey Family,   

What a special treat it was talking with everyone. I'm so grateful that my family is safe and healthy, what a blessing that is. Everyone looked great. Not too many changes in looks, other than Juju. =)    

This week was a big downer. I forgot to tell you i was sick for 3 days, Tuesday-Thursday. I was able to give a training for district meeting half sick, and go on a exchange with Elder Holmes in Minneapolis. But when i woke up Wednesday morning I was feeling terrible. I had a high fever with congestion, coughing and the chills and I wasn't able to work at all Wednesday. I lay sick on my bed the whole entire day, it was a super long day not doing anything. This was my first time being sick on the mission. Thursday was a bit of an improvement, my fever went away and my headache was manageable. I was able to work in the afternoon Thursday and in the evening. I've noticed my allergies have kicked in, and i remember this was the exact time last year when my nose clogged up. Whatever plant blooms at this time of the year, it gives me a hard time breathing. Elder White is letting me try some of his clairiten tablets. The weather has been beautiful though, too bad i can't smell the new flowers with my nose. =P .  

Anti Mormon material came at us hard while i was on the exchange with Elder Holmes in Minneapolis. Their investigator had a lot of material prepared for us. He had us watch a 6 minute clip of an Eagle Rock Pastor on his lecture. It was about how Mormons are not Christians. It was really bad. This pastor interviewed a bishop from the Oakdale ward and made him look like a fool over this clip. After the anti, and going through the questions, we asked him how he felt. We asked him if he felt peace, and if it helped him come closer to Christ. He said no. We were able to wrap it back to praying to God and receiving our own spiritual witness. He had so much crap about Joseph Smith i wanted to puke right then and there. We told him, "You and I haven't met Joseph Smith personally, so we can go off mans carnal mind and thoughts, or ask God."  He agreed to investigate without the anti material and decided to read and ponder about our message and ask God. This experience strengthened my testimony of the restoration.    

Our numbers suffered because of my sickness,with the help of appointments dropping and people being flaky. We did horrible this week. Sadly zero investigators showed up. I'm not sure what happened there, but it was a very sad experience sitting alone at church with no investigators. We are worried about them, especially our date sets. Hopefully I'll have better news about them next week. We had a couple of investigators drop us for whatever reason. However, we did pick up 3 new investigators.    

Well family i love you and wish me luck this week giving the training with President Clements present! This will be my first district meeting with my mission president attending.   

Well i love you all and have a great week!   

Elder B Browning