Elder Trevor Brown in Jakarta

Elder Trevor Brown: I'm still learning a lot about how to work in a public transport area -We contact a lot on busses, I try really hard and the Spirit helps! Yesterday, twice in a row, I was sitting next to someone and I was way tired and I knew I should contact them. Both times, I held back but then listened to promptings of the spirit and turns out both times they were Christian and they wanted to listen and were both interested!

Hardwork = 5 Hours on the Bus in Hot, Humid Jakarta

So I am here! The holy land (not).

But it is the center of the mission - we're close to the mission home and to President and the Assistants - it's a lot of fun!

This place is SO different than any other place I've been - Malang and Magelang are two of the smallest cities in the mission and relatively cool - Jakarta is GINORMOUS and not relatively cool haha!

And the work is WAY different here! Because we don't have bikes it takes a LONG time to get anywhere - so macet (traffic)! Wow! And that's also how we contact in general we just ride busses around - you pay 3.5 thousand to get on(about 25 cents) and then you can ride for as long as you want to wherever you want without paying as long as you stay in the system - it's really  cool! But it can also get really tiring and hard! A lot of the time you have to stand and sometimes its so crowded you can barely move! My first day here all of our appointments fell through and we rode on buses contacting for about 5 hours straight! Wooh!! So it can be hard but it is also way fun!!

My companion Elder Subagio is awesome - he is so cool and funny!!! Man he's a great guy - he's from Bogor hes my age and he goes home in September! It was also super fun because we got new missionaries and so we're in a threesome with Elder Nordwald fro Missouri until he gets his papers and stuff- he visa waited in my cousin Alex's mission in Logan Utah and now he's going to be trained by Elder Ostermiller!! He's way cool!!

Tomorrow we have MLC (Mission Leadership Council) with all the Zone Leaders and President and the Assistants! I'm way excited to see all the things that I will learn and I also get to see my Surabaya Zone Leaders and some other friends! Sweet!!

Life he is good! We cover the English ward and it was way weird to have church in English and then with Indonesian makes for a lot of church! Also it means that we take all English investigators (well us and the other missionaries that live with us) so yesterday we went to Bogor to teach someone who is a refugee from Afghanistan! It was WAY hard to teach in English but way fun!!

Life is good! I'm happy and I'm pumped to share the gospel!!! I just know that it is the truth and I know the truth truly does set us free... and make us happy and bring us peace and bring us closer to the source of ALL truth - our Father in Heaven!!! ANd I know that this Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is lead in truth by Jesus Christ through a living prophet!!

I love you all and hope you have an AWESOME WEEK!!!!

Elder Brown

Jakarta Bound Elder Brown

Ya we're changing a lot - Sister Xiao and I are going to Jakarta and Elder Hansen to Manado!

Elder OStermiller will become district leader and train!! Wahoooo!!

I'm going to Jakarta to be a Zone Leader there which is really scary because I still don't know how to be a good missionary and definitely not a good district leader and now I'm called to be a Zone leader - I'll just have to rely on the Lord more than ever!!

Jakarta is definitely a LOT bigger city than Malang and Magelang! And a lot hotter!! But I'm way excited!!! The only things I'm not stoked about are in Jakarta 

1. You don;t ride bikes and 

2. the food is expensive :( But at least that will help me not get fat!!!

But really - I''m way stoked!! My new companion will be Elder Subagio from the city of Bogor - I've only met him once, but everyone in the Bogor squad is awesome!! I leave tomorrow morning but not too early - that's nice!

And yes for the record - we got your message through President Rowley - he thought it was hilarious and we did not eat any snails - but now they all live outside our front wall haha!

Bummer for the Zags but 2nd is great!

General Conference was awesome - I did love Elder Palmer's talk! We had a mission goal for every companionship to bring at least one investigator to conference and my District reached that goal!! Our investigator came, she's awesome!!!

We rode our bikes SO far this week - twice!! One wasa media referral from Salt lake! We show up to the university which was like 8 kilos farther away then we thought haha and it was a muslim university which was stranger becasue we were two missionaries invited to go there! Way fun though and the gate just opened directly for us - we didn't even have to slow down haha!

 

I'll tell you all about the exciting Jakarta adventures! I'm stoked for the new opportunities to become better and to leave behind my old weaknessses!!

I love you all!!! I hope everyone has an awesome week!! I loved conference this week and I know that those men were truly called and inspired of God! I know that Thomas S.Monson is a prophet!!! I know that Jesus Christ leads this church through him!!!

Everyone have an awesome joyfilled week!!!!!

Love

Elder BRown

Escape of the Snails

Hello Everyone

Just want to tell you a bit about the week! It wasn't a ton that happened!

Two funny stories - we planned our food very well this week for fast sunday! (In our church, every first Sunday of the month we fast for 24 hours to bring ourselves closer to God and we also don't buy food on the Sabbath day) - so we have to plan well on Saturday. We love eating ice cream cones from macdonalds here beacuse they dip it in flavorings that harden on the top and there is this REALLY delicious new flavor - sea salt caramel. So Elder O says - hey let's go to the mall, buy cones, and try to ride back as fast as we can and put them in the freezer before they melt so we can eat them on Sunday when we break our fast - to which I said "sounds like the best idea ever" so thus we did. But there were two problems 

1. My bike was in the shop so I'm riding a way not-nice bike to ride. 

2. the road from the mall to our house is sketchy. 

Long story short - we cross this kind of sketchy bridge and my ice cream is melting all over my hand - but I need to switch the gear - with my ice cream hand. oh no. So I try, lose my balance and fall toward the side of the bridge (which has a small wall to stop people from falling to their death - so in an effort to not die - I put my arm out and stopped myself - so my arm stopped and my body stopped but that delicious ice cream did not. It just popped right off the cone and sailed away into oblivion. Hopefully landed in some kids mouth. Elder O thought it was SOO funny. I thought it was sad haha as I had another ice creamless sunday.

Another - we found some snails. Elder O was like "Wow - we could eat these" (he's a bit crazy!) and so he contracted a bunch of little kids and they gather like 40 huge snails. We stopped by the house to leave them there but left to go to another appointment and we come back and boom they had all climbed (or slimed) ut of the bag and onto the bike - it was so funny! ANd Elder Wijaya and Elder Hansen were SO confused why the bike was covered with snails. I'll update later if we actually do cook them.

We also did a lot of missionary work - good week! Nothing really big happened!! But I do know and testify that this is the Work of God! It just amazes me that he actually trusts us to to help him in it!!!

I love you all so much!!!

Elder Brown

MOTHERS NOTE:  Two heart attacks this week.  1.  Elder Brown almost falling to his death, due to salted caramel covered ice cream.  2. The thought of Elder Brown putting one of those snails in his mouth.  I contacted the mission president to ask him to please tell Elder Brown NOT to EAT the snails.  Thankfully, Pres. Rowley called him right away, and emailed back to say they would NOT eat the snails.