Selamat Natal

Hello everyone! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Selamat Natal :)

Wow it is Christmas today! Yay!!!!! Merry Christmas everyone!! I hope you all have banyak salju (much snow) and banyak semangat natal (much Christmas spirit)! WOW I love Christmas! I love the story of Christ's birth. It is so wonderful that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. and He didn't send Him to a life of ease and comfort but to be born in a stable, and to be rejected of men. Because He loves us :) and that is incredible! I know He truly was born over 2000 years ago. I know He is God's son and He is the Savior of the World. And He loves us :) If you haven't, go watch "He is the Gift" video, one of my favorite Christmas videos. Makes me so grateful for my life and my Savior.

I hope everyone is feeling the wonderful joy that I always feel at Christmas time!!

We had a great week!! I love being back with Elder Johnson! He is such a stud! Such a great missionary! We have been SO blessed with miracles this week. Seriously, I've had more people call us and ask to meet than I have had my whole mission haha. WOW! it has been so great! And it has also been great to joke and laugh with Elder Johnson and learn so much from him. One cool miracle to share - we were going somewhere on the bus, and i was distracted, so we went one stop too far. So we jumped out and hopped on the one going the opposite way, which is only like three minutes away and i talked to the boy next to me and hanhded him a card (in the process missing our stop again going the other way) so we jumped out again and rode one more time to the right stop. The next day, that boy called us and we met and he totally wants to learn and he came to Church on Sunday. Totally strengthened my testimony of how the Lord will lead us to those whom he has prepared and how important it is to talk to everyone!

Also our investigator, J was baptized and that was wonderful.

We also had a Christmas party put o, by the missionaries and it was almost a disaster but turned out really well. We almost had more investigators there than active members! Crazy!

anyway great week! love you all!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Go give someone else the best gift of a wonderful Christmas!

So excited to Skype my fam later tonight! :)

 

Love

Elder Brown

Merry Christmas

How are you?? How is everything? I LOVE hearing the news from home.

I feel bad - the weeks seem to be flying by and I never know what to tell you about anymore. Transfers are this coming Tuesday and last week was intense trying to figure everything out. As a result, we spent more time in the office than we would have liked... but that's okay - we are still helping the Lord's work even if just in a different way. So for transfers, I am staying here in Jakarta, but my companion Elder Sutadi is not, which is a bummer because I really love working with him. He's a stud! But my new companion will be ... ELDER JOHNSON. I'm stoked - I love that guy. So that's exciting :)

We had a pretty great week though! We met this one really cool family -The dad is a media referral which means that he contacted the church through the website and asked us to come visit him. We were looking for his house and walked a pretty long way along this road and we finally got to the end. We started at number 1 and went to 200 or so without seeing his house and so we called him and we were like "Yeah we're at the end of this road in front of this warnet (internet cafe)" and he responded "Oh I own that warnet; I'm there now." It was a little miracle for us becasue we were pretty tired and our other appointments had fallen through. Just little things like that help me know that the Lord truly is leading us. They have adorable kids. They didn't make it to church, but we are hoping next week.

We had a great lesson with Brother J and he's totally ready to be baptised next week, so that's exciting. We invited him to eat with us, intending to buy him dinner and then he paid for us, which was so nice of him. He's a great guy!

Our new members are still doing good. Brother H walked into church today with a fresh haircut in a suit and tie and he looked so good! He looked so clean and awesome. It has been amazing to see the changes in him as he has learned and been baptized. He is an stud.

We got to watch the Christmas Devotional in church which was great. I love Christmas SO much. It makes me so happy and filled with Christ's love for those around me. We sang Christmas songs and half caroled on Sunday when we visited a part-member family. That was great. Christmas is still awesome even without snow! Though I do miss snow. Mom, I put up the nativity you sent me last year and it makes me so happy - thank you! :)

I hope everyone is remembering Christmas and the reason for the season. I hope everyone is loving the snow and making snowmen and snowballs. I hope everyone is taking time to make that extra effort to bless someone else's day and to bring the Christmas Spirit to those around you! The  Christmas season really is an incredible time. I hope you all know that I love you so much and miss you a lot, especially at this wonderful Christmas time!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Love

Elder Brown

He was born in Bethlehem

Hello just an update on my week!!!!

This week was pretty crazy! We had MLC and Zone Conference and it could be pretty stressful because we had to make sure all the zone conferences went smoothly, but for the Jawa Tengah and Jawa Timor ones, we had to do so from afar in Jakarta> But everything went great and it was really a great experience to be with Elder Funk and learn from him. Drew, He said he remembered you and how kind it was for you to go and help the Cambodian Saints last summer.

One highlight of the week was - Brother K was baptized! Sorry there's only one picture... but Elder Sutadi baptized him. He is so great! So this is the one where his son was baptized two weeks ago. Sadly the wife is not ready yet. She could use all your prayers. It was such a great day though. Prana gave a great testimony and we had quite a few investigators there. What's really cool is that we have an investigator and his girlfriend(a member) came up and whispered, "hey J wants to be baptized." and I was like "Whaaa...?" When P and H were baptized, he felt the Spirit and decided that he wanted to make that commitment as well. So that's pretty cool! Hopefully he can prepare to be baptized in a coulpe weeks or so. He's a stud. We also have another young man - from the island of Nias. He is great and is just really prepared to receive the restored gospel! We're excited for him. Just recently, the Lord has been really blessing us to see the fruits of our labors, but there are also just so many other people out there that need this gospel!

We also went to the ward activity on Friday - so fun!! We had a lot of members and investigators there. We went down to a garden thingy place and just had a great time. It was very enjoyable to rest a little and just enjoy time with the members and investigators there!

Can I just say, I love Christmas so much!! The #LighttheWorld campaign is so awesome!! I got to teach yesterday at church about Service and man it just made me all the more love the Savior Jesus Christ and follow His example of lighting the world through service!!! I wish everyone would discover the joy in serving others - the world would truly become a place full of light and happiness!! The Christmas Spirit is so amazing - even in Indonesia where Christmas is barely celebrated at all (and with no snow- I miss snow so much haha). But you can really just feel the love of Christ in this wonderful season. I hope that everyone can feel that great love and Spirit of Christ this season. I hope that you all find a way everyday to serve someone else. Go check the "Light the World" movement - I know it is inspired of God through His living Prophet and Apostles.

I know that Jesus Christ truly lives. He was born in Bethlehem all those years ago and he still lives today. This is a time of year to always remember Him. Please help bring His light to others today, this week, this month!!

I love you all so much!

Elder Brown