Winter Wonderland Returns

Feb 21, 2011


Hey family,

The last couple of days have been crazy, a combination of a new companion, weather storm, and these new missionary trainings. I'm here writing you today in a lovely winter storm at this minute, credit goes to mother nature, Minnesota!

My new companion is Elder Filby. (fill-b) Great missionary! We're having a good time with lots of laughs to go along it! We have similar personalities so it has really been fun. We met each other thursday the day after transfers. He's quite a guy, humble and hard working and really funny! Just a well balanced missionary. I've been blessed to have good companions for the last couple of months! (knock on wood)

Alright so about these new trainings. As you know, our mission has been picked to pilot these new trainings for brand new missionaries. The goal and idea is for a brand new missionary to be able to train within 12 weeks. We've received guide books that have a step by step program on materials (scriptures and preach my gospel) we study each week. All i can say so far it has amazing potential to go world wide. I'm learning so much! The trick to this new system really is focusing on the essentials and tailoring your studies to your investigators needs. No more deep doctrine studies! Our whole study is about role plays and revelation for our investigators. We witnessed this for the first time when Brother Graham came and observed our companionship study. Man there was some big pressure! There were a couple of them that came straight from salt lake city. Boy he knew his stuff, and he explained how versatile preach my gospel is. He was with us for about 2 hours. I can tell when we focus out entire study for our investigators, we will learn more plus our investigators will benefit more.

Jimmy came to church, We just need to push to get him and Sia to be married so Jimmy can be baptized. We're thinking March.

Today was a huge struggle to go shop/email. Basically from 10-1 we pushed and helped people out of our death of a pit parking lot because of the 16 inches we received. We sure helped people out, but they didn't return the favor for us. Finally we prayed for guidance. After things settled down, a guy named Ty came and talked to us. Ty was also helping us push cars out of the snow. He has some crazy views on religion, but we got talking and discussed about the restoration. I don't know if it will go far, but i know the Lord wanted us to wait and talk to him. After going inside, 5 minutes later the snow plow came through and we were able to leave. The Lord wanted us to stay and help.

We also received 3 new investigators this week. Matt is super solid. He's in his 30's, and he's going through a divorce and wants some spiritual help. Boy do we have a message for that! The Lord works in mysterious ways. Actually 2 weeks ago, there was a young member family (Ellis family) who i really felt like there was a investigator waiting for us, and the connection was the Ellis family. We ate dinner at their house, and they told us to tract their street, we did so. We then came back to check on the potential investigators from the previous night and well there was a guy walking his dog. We were just about to leave when the spirit said to go talk with him. It was Matt, and he let us in. We talked and he's interested in investigating our church. Its cool how the spirit can guide you to people who are waiting. But oh, how silent the holy ghost can be sometimes. D&C 9 is amazing for direction.

Well family i'm pretty tired from pushing helpless cars out of the parking lot. Sorry if this email is short with minor details. The weather was wonderful but took a 180 degree turn! Wish us luck this next week.

Love,

Elder Browning