#backflip

hola que tal como estan que dicen que cuenta como le va que hay. sup.

solid week. rouggghhhh week. good week.

-so last week on monday after internet we went to the beach. theres a giant Christ statue. we went and snapped some pics and then went down onto the beach. eñder paredes´s district met up with us. oh yeah i forgot to mention, hes in my zone again. haha so he rolls up and pulls a coconut out of his backpack that he had bought on the street. so, he got a rock and smashed it open. first time ive ever drank from a coconut. just kinda tasted like dirty water. then we ate coconut. not too great either haha but eh, it was cool. then, elder paredes brought up a challenge for me... do a backflip. funny thing. the last time i attempted one, i was on the beach with him. but back in puente piedra. so being almost a year, i was a little sketchy. we asked a sister if we shoud do it. she said it was a bad idea, but do it anyways. ok! he went first. never done one on the ground before haha. throws it, does like a hip hop head stand backwards and then his legs kinda gumbied over then landed in his knees. SUCCESS. he made me do it too. so i got in my stance, jumped, threw it, and almossttt made it all the way. got to my feet, but my hands hit first so today sister agle, who was a byu gymnast, is going to teach us how to perfect it.

-in other news, after talking with real live mexicans, i learned that cinco de mayo isnt even a real thing. dont know why we celebrate it and call it mexican haha apparently nothing happened on that day.

-hammock. there is a family we are teaching that has a hammock in their house. so. being me. i call dibs on it when we go. so i get the blessing of teaching the gospel in a hammock. the way things should be. 

-sooo saturday was a little rough. in my districts we had four baptisms planned. one of them from the sisters needs another interview so it will be this week with her son, the other is a little girl whose mom is a member but whose dad is kinda in idiot. he pulled a last-minute "i dont want you to be saved" thing and didnt let her get baptized. the fourth was our baptism. which, do to work and family problems, wasnt able to make it. no worries. Jose, and edith and Jonfrance will all be baptized this week on my birthdayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! as well as a lady in the zone leaders area.

sooo we had an awesome slash awful experience with a family this week. on monday we took a couple to the church and taught the first lesson. we took them into the sacrament room (is that what its called) to have them kneel down and ask if the church is true. well they both asked. after, we all sat there and waited. i was filled with one of the most powerful manifestations of the spirit that ive ever felt. it was awesome. we sat there for a longgg time. part because i wanted to make sure they felt it, the other part because i struggled to open my mouth. i looked over and my companion was sweating and put his hands on his knees to support himself. he later told me that he almost fainted right there. when we got back home, i fell on my bed and wanted to pass out haha now i understand better how lehi felt after he had his vision. awesome. BUT. we stopped by the family last night, and learned that satan has been working for a longggggggg time there. despite their answer they received, years of marital problems and pride was destroying them. after throwin down a little elder brown beat down, we gave them an invitation to try just one week to read and pray together, nothing more. they couldnt respond without calling out the other on the fact that they couldnt keep the commitment. the mom finally just said she wouldnt be able and the dad said he was already gonig to leave the next day. satan is working extereeeeemely hard on us and those we are teaching. the work is blowing up and satan is keep up with it. its good to see that we are making him angry enough by building gods kingdom so much, but its a roughhh fight. he plays dirty and hes a lot smarter and more experienced than we are,. BUT, we are on the Lords side, and because of that i know we arent going to lose.

-oh yeah. we have a pet mouse in my house. by a pet i mean an annoying creature that keeps me up at night and sneaks in and eats our stuff. i wanna kill it but i kinda have to find it first. this thing is a ninja. wish me luck.

-so yesterday after church i went straight to an interview in barranca branch for the zone leaders. Juana. shes getting baptized on my birthday as well. they told me she was struggling a bit and that an interview wold help.so we walk in and sit down and start with a prayer. after going through the first two questions casually so they didnt sound too interview, we got to repentance. she blew up on  all these problems and this, that, and the other, and because of all that she isnt getting baptized now and wants us to give her another month. luckily i was fasting so i was more spirit than body, i listened to what she had to say, and listened to what god wanted me to say,then i went for it. i made a huge arrayed connection from Moroni 8:25 to Alma 34:32-34 to john 3:5. after a long spirit bomb of explanation of repentance and baptism and her need to follow christ through the ordinances of the gospel, i left us in silence, she looked up and asked "friday right?" YES. friday haha. we finished out the interview and she walked out of there with a different attitude. it was awesome to see how the spirit was able to work through me. kinda felt like a bishop there. cool stuff.

welp. thats the week for yeah, for any missed tdetails, refer to journal 1 in march of 2015. haha so yeah ill see yeah this sunday! if skype is dumb again, ill probably just cal you at that time on the phone. it could be a bit after as well, bot sure. we have to corordinate with the pensions family because theyll be skyping their son that day as well, but NO OS TEMÉIS. itll all work out. love you" thanks for everything, ad ill talk to ya when im twenty!

elder brown 

oh yeah, and star wars day was yesterday. may the fourth be with you.

BARRANCA.

Sup.

so last tuesday i was transfered up north to a place called barranca, after being in callao for the whole first year of my mission. im still district leader and my companion is a boss. he is another peruvian named elder castillo. in my district i have the zone leaders, Elder Wheatley (who was with e back in puente piedra) and elder Dorado, who is from montevideo uruguay. aside from them i have two sisters, Sister Agle, from boston, and sister Leyva, from trujillo peru. she studied in byu for a few years so her english is way good. im stooooked. these sisters have baptized more than the grand majority of elders in the mission. they´re crazy powerful missionaries.

haha elder mcallister. well, he spent his first nine months in Prolima. then moved to Ventanilla for three months, which is right next to it. and was just transfered back to Prolima as Zone Leader. hes gonna spend a solid 15 months of his mission in the same zone. 

woahhh whats up with everyone getting engaged and married?? thats cool Jacob sorenson is engaged to megan. she was one of my good friends in high school. oof, i gotta keep up with them and with jessalyn and drew haha we´ll see eh?

so after changes last week. we went to the bus station, on our way there we went to a huge mall called plaza norte and i ate burger king. wasnt even that good, as i remembered, but it was still cool. we took a fatty charter bus up here which took about four hours and got here tuesday night. dropped off my bags and went straight to a lesson. doin work.

its been a longggg week of walking, riding moto taxis, knocking doors, and learning to work with a new companion. always kinda rough at first but things are going good. 

oh yeah, theres a store here called metro. its like tottus, in other words a lowgrde walmart. BUT- they have ROOT BEER. havent had root beer in a year. so yes i bought one this morning. anyways...

this weekend we had distrct conference (we arent quite a stake up here yet, so im working in a branch as well). president archibald came and spoke. after the conference a ton of people went for his autograph. never seen that before at a church meeting. on saturday night, just before the adult session, we had a lesson with a couple. the husband said he hasnt received his answer yet about the book of mormon. he is looking for people in white to appear to him in a dream. the lady said she still cant belive that there is two books, the bible is one and only one. after nice little session of destroyingt their doubts and inviting them agani to pray, we left. they came to the conference trhat night, where president archibald gave a talk and bore testimony of the book of mormon that was extremellyyy powerful. after the meeting we looked back, the lady was crying. we talked to them after and their attitude was compleeetley changed towards the book of mormon. it was awesome.

the book of mormon is true. try to make me think otherwise. i dare ya. 

peace!

elder brown

Gracias a Él...

Feliz Easters!

sawp.

its been a great week of miracles, blessings, and disappointments. love every one of them.

so last week we had a chill p day. we went to the airport and elder schagel and i feasted upon some subway footlongs. they were dang expensive and they only gave us one cookie instead of two, but it was worth it. we then went to tottus. nice.

tuesday morning i had a sweeet experience. we were walking to the bus stop to go to our district meeting. we were stopped on the street by a teenage girl. she told us her name was jenifer and thayt she had just moved here the week before from iquitos. she walked us over to her grandma who told us that jenifer had literally just been praying that she would find us. cool eh? we got her information and sent the young womans presidency over there and had them pick her up and take her to our baptism on saturday so she could know where the chapel was. god answers prayers and sends his servsnts where he needs them.

later that day i got my package! we were with the whole zone so i passed around the bags of jelly beans and cadbury eggs. within three days we had eaten the brownies and cookies and we finished off the boox of pancake mix with a big breakfast of banana pancakes, strawberry jam, and chocolate milk. whats up.

so in my studies im still going hard in the book of mormon. only one vers left to finish the first chapter. its taking a longggggggggggg time to read every footnote and write notes on em. but its awesome. it literally is going to take a few decades to do this but eh, i got time.  and im working on the new 15 minutes a day thing we got after conference. and im reading in spanish in the book of mormon. three separate studies of one book. well i mean its a good book so im fine with that.

the rest of the week was business as usual. working.

on saturday we had a baptism. a lady named Magaly was baptized with her two kids, viviana and Josue. The other elders in our ward had a baptism as well. they were all baptized saturday and confirmed sunday. our three were the bishops relatives so he baptized them. butttttt theres a little snag here. We went to eat lunch at the bishops house after church. after eating, we gave magaly a blessing, and when the bishops wife told us her name, we realized a slight problem. we baptized and confirmed her with an incorrect name. first, when we filled out her record, she told us it was just magaly. then at the baptism, she told the bishop it was rumualda magaly. then when we gave the blessing, she told us it was magaly rumalda. ahhhh. shes a verrrrryyyy shy person because of some issues that happened when she was younger, and didnt want to speak out and correct her name, so she just kinda went with the flow and soooo 200 Millas gonna have another baptism soon. we called the bishop this morning to have her confirm the name yup. here we go! but aside from that yesterday i had a solid sacrament meeting. we had the confirmations and everything and  afterwards i felt the spirit veryyy strong. Nothing like an easter sunday sacrament meeting eh? Because of Him i am out here, in the service of my Heavenly father, i am healthy, i am alive, i have the promise of eternal life with my family if i do His will, and i have everything i have.

it was rough yesterday thinking about leaving behind my families here. i love them and i love how the gospel has changed their lives, and am eternally grateful that God has given me this chance to help them on their way back to Him. Ill let ya know next week if im still here or where im at. thanks!

Elder Brown 

Email from Kendall. eh

Amada familia mia. wuddup.

-hmmmm i cant really remember what happened last week. lets see. On tuesday night, the ward showed 17 Miracles in the chapel. it was in english with Spanish subtitles so i enjoyed it. it was cool, i noticed for the first time that the beef jerkey angel is shown multiple times standing among the pioneers watching how things are going. yup.

-oh! yeah. so on tuesday i had one of the coolest lessons of my life. that morning, i based my district training off of the letter president sent out about the importance of the book of mormon. we practiced answering doubts and questions with the book of mormon. so in the afternoon we had a lesson with one of our less active guys. he had some of his buddies over, whom he wanted us to share the gospel with. one of them had some questions. Ask away! he laid out the typical anti-church stuff about joseph smith, the book of mormon, the bible being the only word of god, and all that stuff. so after giving him a nice summary of the restoration, he wasnt satisfied. he insisted with the bible. so we gave him the bible. DOUBLE KILL. then he still kept trying to shut down what we said. then we dropped the ultimate bomb. the book of mormon. the spirit was soooooo strong in that lesson. and if i, someone whose had plenty of chances to feel it, felt it strong enough to make my hands sweat and my heart beat, i can only imagine how he felt. at one point his leg cramped up, he was bouncing his legs, rubbing his hands nervously, and the spirit even confounded him, he told us he had more questions but they couldnt come to hid mind or out of his mouth. the next day he was at his friends house again and he sat down with us and actually read from the book of mormon with us. so sick.

- i did a visit on another elder in my ward. his area is nuts. its allll sand. not even nice hard earth. i felt like i was working on the moon. this kids a goob. hes from the jungle and his spanish is nuts haha it was fun. 

.it all came down to an awesome day yesterday. our awesome family Familia riscos all came to church with us. after sacrament the dad was asking me hat days we hold baptismal services.we also have another family with a single mom and two kids that live with the bishops family who are going to be baptized the week after conference. another family, Rafael, our ex-jehovahs witness is getting married this coming week and will be in the water as soon as possible. im so grateful to be here to see families enter into the only path that can take them to the presence of their heavenly father. the mission is awesome. im learning new things from the scriptures, people, and life like never before. its been the shortest longest year of my life and the best rollercoaster ive ever ridden. thanks for the love, prayers,and support. keep praying for the missionaries, we need it!

welp. conference. YES. mom. mail me down some crepes. thanks. SEE YA

elder brownnnn

sent from my iPhone.

ha. sike.

1 yr left. Dont cry Mom.

Que onda cuates?? ... thats for uncle Doug.

SUP.

what a week. so imma lay this down chronologically.

-last monday, we got back to my room after playing games with the zone. elder schagel and i ate cereal and watched the district while our comps took a nap. Hermano Rojas comes out of nowhere, throws the door open, yells ¨RATAAA¨ and threw a freaking cat into the our bedroom and closes the door. we got on our cat hunting game. elder schagel tried to catch it with a broom and it hissed at him. my comp gets up, reaches under the dresser, grabs the cat, and takes it out the window. #ecuador. cats have great landing capabilities.

-On tuesday night, we had correlation in the Laboratory. the Laboratory? yes. that is the name of my mission leader´s room. we had a strobe light, black light, and twirling disco light as we talked about upcoming mission activities in the ward and set goals for the ward. his sisters brought us rice chicken potatoes and soda. just throwin out idea for how to run meetings Mark. except our leader is a single 27 yr old rm who devotes too much time to playstation. we love Efrain.

-i did interview for one of the other areas in my district. one of the little girls they baptized has some pets. the names of her cat and two birds are Pedro Jorge Chumbe Estrada, Raquel Chumbe Estrada, and, Moises Chumbe Estrada, respectively. the other girl ui baptized, well we had a fun interview. elder morales told me to give her a hard time. so. after starting  out, i asked her the date Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith, she actually got the year and month correct haha. time to kick it up a notch. ¨what are the names of the 8 witnesses?¨she gave me a nervous look. i told her to go out and ask elder morales. she went out and said ¨hey, you never told me about the witnesses!!¨¨ he played along and said ¨sorry, we forgot!¨she came back in with the cook of mormon and sneakily peaked into the front of the book as she listed the names. hahaha it was awesome. we told her it was a joke afterwards, no worries. 

-so i tried something new this week.. squid. the first day i had it, it was good. it was called Pota. which is a big squid. then yesterday after church i walked into the pension and looked at my soup to find a baby octopus-looking thing floating in there. and there were alottt more in there. oof. it was nappy. was the lady was in the kitchen, every time we looked away, we tossed a baby squid into the other´s bowl. the grandson was there too and was struggggling to get out of eating it. squid- not too great. i was craving just a pb and j sandwich sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad. 

-about a month ago, elder laiche and i were teaching the brother of one of the members in our ward. they moved to another ward in our stake. i got a call from the elders the other day telling me that Jon Francis wanted me to baptize him. it was awesome! well his first choice was elder laiche.. but     he´s in Mexico... so i was the alternative choice.

so right now we have some solid families! we have been praying as a mission to find more families and its paying off. we have four families with baptisms. yes. si o si a mom and her two kids on the 12th. the rest (familia riscos, parents and an 8 yr old... familia astete, less active mom, with husband and 11 yr old son listening to us, and Rafael and his family. he is an ex jehovah witness who knows its true and is doing everything he can to get married as soon as he can to get baptized) all depends on them getting to church! its not a matter of if, but when,. they all want to but have surprise-work schedules. we are going to see some sweet baptisms the weekend after conference. AH. CONFERENCE. YES. mission superbowl.

we had a cool experience with an investigator last night. he asked us what drove us to look for the truth join this church. he wanted to know what gave us the desire and to find what we had. we shared our testimonies.

elder rivera told how is dad was worse than atheist and didnt want his family to have anything with the church. after having pulled him out of seminary, church, and kicked out the missionaries. the time came where elder rivera was instructed by missionaries to fast. he did so and as he closed his fast, he felt strongly that his dad would say yes. he KNEW it. the next day he talked to his dad, who gave him permission to be baptized. since then his dad has allowed him and his brother to go on missions, and their fourteen year old sister to get baptized. as for me, i told him how my family had been in the church for generations. but, my time came where i began to worry about my own testimony. i searched and searched and realized i had never received a solid answer so i could say I KNOW. but i told him how i remembered talking to my mom about that worry about not ¨knowing¨ and how she helped me realize that the spirit had always been telling me it was true every time i read. it wasnt till i got on my mission that i received a strong recognizable answer, but i know these things are true. when i was praying last night, i thanked God for my testimony, its MINE,.and i will have it forever. it took years of searching and really wanting it, but ive received the same witness multiple times. the same witness i received just after sharing my testimony with alexander, which testified to me that the things i had spoken are true. this gospel IS true. joseph smith WAS a prophet. the book of mormon IS true. 

love you all, thanks for everything!

elder brown

Ecuadorrrrrrrrrr

hey.

so yep i got a new comp and im still here in 200 Millas as dl. his name is elder rivera and he is awesooooooooooooome. he´s got six months in the mish. take josh stewart. paint him brown. k my companion. solidddd.

sooo eh, the weather is still kinda hot. it´ll start going down soon but i definitely still sleep with my fan on full blast. the people here think thats a death sentence. allong with drinking anything cold, or walking around the house barefoot. eh. im still alive.

so we´ve had some interesting moments this past week. the two funniest happened yesterday. first, after church we went to an appointment. we turned the corner and saw an old dude just walkin around. completely naked, talking jibberish to people that didnt exist. we walked very quickly past him and went to the house where we had the appointment. dude starts coming towards us at high speed. OPEN THE DOOR OPEN THE DOOR. he got too close and we had to bail, dodged around a stack of bricks, and went back over to the house and slipped insde. the grandpa informed us his son and daughter in law werent there. so we left. the crazy streaker was lke right outside the door. we bailed. ahhh, peru. later we went and had a nice chat with our friend pedro fiestas. hes a bipolar guy who loves talking to us. he told us he was depressed so we went to a park with him and sat down in the grass. i told him to sing a song. he did. i picked up some sticks and started directing him while my companion sat there and laughed haha.. then pedro had us pray for him and we were on our way.fine day sunday. 

so right now we have two families we are focusing in on. one is the astete family. the mom is an awesome lady who went inactive because of a dumb comment someone made years ago in the church. we are teaching her son and husband. we are planning to do a big FHE there. the other family is the risco family. mom and dad (that are married. crazy i know.) and their two kids. we contacted them in the park a while ago. we´ve had to struggle with getting in to see them because of their work but they´re a solidddd family. we´ve got  afew other investigators but its literally jsut a waiting game for them to get married. so, we spent a good amount of time contacting this past week. i haaated contacting. thanks to my comp i actually enjoy it now. the first one to see the family in the street gives their comp the challenge. "contact them and use the word spongebob". stuff like that. the other day we saw some people nailing together a wooden fence. we stopped and said hey we are here to help you build your fence. they reacted like anyone else would. ahh no its fine. we insisted and then picked up rocks and started hammering. the lady brought out another hammer. i smashed my thumb. seeing two kids in ties offering physical labor sparks some curiosity. without having to say anything on our part, the lady started asking us about the church. pretty cool!

so yeah right now we´re working to get things rollin once again in our area. 

oh yeah, they changed up the districts so im now elder schagel´s district leader. this is gona be good. kids a goob haa.

thanks for your love, prayers, and support. love you!

elder brown

                                                            Elder Brown and Elder Rivera

Elder Peredes and Elder Brown

                                                       Elder Schagel and Elder Brown

Fo mo en da watah.

( This is actually Kendall's email from last week, February 24, 2014. I had forgot to post it. Today's post comes after this this one)


So my keyboard is not a good one. for al the spelling errors, i apologize, i don feel like going back and fixing them all, buena suerte!

this week was awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwesome!

a quick week of alottttttt of work. baptismal interviews, lessons, sweating, and doin WORK.

on friday we had a baptism. Jesus Sarmiento (the one whose family has been inactive for a while got baptized. this family is aewsome. wanna knw how we found them? a longgg time ago we had NOTHING. we were walking around and i felkt like we should go to a family that werent even going to be there that day. we went anyways. nothing. we started to walk away, then i felt "go back!". aftrer fighting it for a while, we went back the other way. we knoked another door of a member and they werent there either. right then we look up and saw a dad walking with his kid. Melvin and Jesus. i know ive told this story before but its cool how just being right where we were led to teir son´s baptismand the parents getting back into the church. 

on saturday night and sunday we had stake conference. we had an area seventy Elder Calderon from Ecuador (he literally sounded like Robin Williams speaking spanish. even acted like him too, throwing his arms around and everything haha) come speak. he burrrrned us. it was exaaactly what was needed. he covered everything from punctuality (president packer says thirty minutes early for sacrament and all other meetings) to every aspect of family life. He talked alot about Alma 5. being spiritually born again. so many people get up and say how true they know the church is, that its christs church, but show up late to meetings, think its acceptable to raise their voice with loved ones, etc. i went back and studied some of those verses this morning. after reading, writing some similar questions and posting it over verse 14, i sat and thought about how im doing and then prayed to get where i need to be. ive got a loooooonnngggggg way to go. HOMEWORK FOR EVERYONE. alma 5. its a nice spiritual checklist.

yesterday we had the baptism of Noelina and her two kids Elver and Luis. the oldest son Daniel isnt feelin it. it was awesome. i got to baptize the 12 year old elver. they had alot of support from the ward and the bishopric at their baptism. at the end of their service, they all bore their testimonies. first, 9 yr old luis. he just kind of stood up there and smiled. i got up there to help him. "how did it feel to be baptized?" "good" "do you feel happy" "yeah" "really happy?" "yeah" "ok gracias luis well done!" then he went and sat down. then elver got up, chest pumped out, lookin like a champ. he said something like "when i went back into the water, alot of water went into my ear. but when i came back up, i felt really good" haha SOLID.

right now we´re seeing alot of blessings. we´ve been working hard and finally results are coming in. we have a few more baptisms lined up for march. one of them is Rafael. a kinda chubby balding guy with a mustache. he is completely white and i thought he was from the states when i first saw him. he was a jehovahs witness. he and his... pareja? are getting married soon and he´ll be in the water (we´re hoping) by the 15 of march.

we dont know whats goin on with Elder Laiche yet. apparently the offices have no idea when he´s going to mexico. anyyy day now.

so Jake Sorenson´s done eh?? tell him i say hi if you see him. and chelsea cloward. i saw her in the MTC. everyones finishing up! the mancave will open back up in like 5 months. crazy. and ill be home in 13 months. this is nutttts.

my camera died here at internet so i cant get pics of the baptisms till nexttt week. which seems like a five minute gap for me, but for normal human standard time, sorry for the wait!

well i love you all and im grateful for all the prayers and support and glad everyones doing ok!