Elder Lawrence Brown's Blog: December 15th

Did he foreal?! Thats awesome!! There's a Samoan Elder From LA named Elder Lesatele who has a scholarship to BYU to play outside backer. I met him today. Im so proud of Pookie. Let me know more! That's good for Mariota i had no doubt he was gonna take it this year. He's solid. They sell it i just use the wipes. My roommates go with the good ol bar of soap. haha.

Answers to your questions Mom:

1) Need toilet paper? Yes please.

2) Need lotions? Nope i wont need it till im done with my mission. Theres no need for it with the humidity here.

3) Are you losing weight? Eh probably. I wish feasting on the words of christ helped me gain weight

4) Need a smaller belt? yeah. Im gonna buy these cool belts that everyone has out here. It's made from carabou horn (water buffalo)

5) Need goodies? Only m&ms, snickers, skittles and oreos from what ive seen. Yes i'd love some cause Im "the candy man" aka santa clause. The kids get so excited when I pass them out. Its priceless and always makes me feel good seeing the joy on their faces from one little piece of candy. Dont worry I only drink at the apartment so im good or from the store.

I dont know where to start with this week. Mostly cause i have a bad memory. The bagyo was nothing really.

In lessons it's still difficult cause I have so much to say but dont know how to say some or most of it. I will say this though. Im very grateful for papa and when he shared with me about his professor Gordon Thomas and how he helped him with his english. I also remembered that he put that in his book. I read over it and it was just what I needed. I thought about how papa now has such an intricate, convoluted, and complex language. He had nothing to fear and nothing to lose with his fob talk. Send him my love and appreciation for his vicarious help. Same with any new thing we do in life. We've never had much experience with it so why not be fearless? Forget about the opinion of others. I've applied it to myself and i feel a lot more open and comfortable and my nerves go away because I chose this day to be fearless. If you fail just make sure you fail forward.

A lot of the time when we go out our investigators or less actives arent home. We taught 17 lessons this week. We teach a lot of the plan of salvation and faith in christ. Luckily I can say a lot about that with my beginner's tagalog. Im still very consistent with my Book of Mormon reading. Only a couple more pages and Im done.

It's a really neat thing seeing investigators and less actives come closer to Christ. We have this one investigator, tatay Leonidas, and he's a great man. He's about in his 60s and he's very dilligent in reading the Book of Mormon. He has a notebook filled with notes. We always invite him to church and we've invited him to be baptized but he says once he knows its true, The Book of Mormon, then he will. I know with the way he studies and searches the scriptures he will one day.

Something I wanna do when I get home is buy a bunch of handout Book of Mormons. David A Bednar talked about how he has a book shelf filled with book of mormons that contain certain words or phrases marked. So each book is classified in this way. Ive started to do that in my notebook and it really helps me come closer to understand the underlying messages in the Book of Mormon. I challenge you all to do that. It will help you read more earnestly as Ive experienced.

I hope your days get better and better each day. I hope you stop to think about Christ and his atoning sacrifice each day of your life. "Inasmuch ye shall keep His commandments ye shall prosper in the land" I love you all and Im excited for our Christmas conference this Wednesday. Its the only time we all gather as missionaries in the Legazpi mission!

Mahal Kita at Ingat po

Elder Brown

Ps...Oh and something we did on sunday was do a lot of what goes into providing a meeting house for members that live far away. In January a lot of our less actives should have a meeting house thats being rented.

Picture below: Left to right: Elder Simmons, Elder Nibarger, me, Bro. Spencer Calder (mtc teacher, was in the same mission as Pila Vea). Two at the bottom right to left: Sis. Hayden, served in Manila and got back 8 months ago, Sis. Quinn (formerly Sis. Flory) served in Cauayan mission same one where Elder Kaloni's (the older brother) brother served.