Hi!

Holy Smokes!

Time is just flying by. I feels like yesterday I wrote to you guys.

So here's what's been going on lately in La Esperanza...

My companion and I had a baptism last week. He is a 17 year old guy named Jayro but everyone calls him Kendall. He is a pretty cool kid. He works on cars for a living. He doesn't live with his parents, since they live in the States. He went to church last week in a white shirt and tie for his confirmation. I baptized and confirmed him. It was the second time in my life that I have confirmed someone.

I sent a family that we are teaching half way across Honduras to take out papers for thier wedding. They should be back tomorrow with everything that they need.

Right now my Zone is not doing too well. Looks like we are only going to end the month with 4 or 5 baptisms. Right now we are the zone with the least amount of baptisms in the mission. I have been pretty stressed trying to get things going here. The biggest challenge that the Zone is having is that we aren't finding families to teach. Each companionship should find 3 new families to teach weekly, but the Zone isn't doing that. There are elders and hermanas who get super down when the people they have for baptism fall through and they don't baptize for weeks. Its like this: There are elevators and escalators. Zones that work like elevators aren't successful, and that's what I'm trying to change. I don't want 20 baptisms every two months.  I'd prefer to have 4 or 5 weekly. Baptisms keep the missionaries animated and working well. We keep things working like an escalator when we are constantly finding new people to teach.

I absolutley love my area. Me and my companion have 2 families that we are teaching with baptismal dates. They are the familia Garcia and the familia Mendoza.

The branch president is such a great guy. I really don't know if I have met someone like him before. He gets on his knees and prays and asks the Lord for guidance before every choice he makes in the branch. The guy is just great. He fears God more than he fears anything.

I had my normal 3 month interview with my mission president and he helped out A LOT. He taught me something that I hope I never forget. He talked to me a lot about my Zone and things we can do to change things around. He also taught me that missionaries who understand their calling, are missionaries who baptize. He told me that I need to teach my Zone about obedience, the calling to be a missionary, and to teach my Zone to fear nothing except God. He said that if my missionaries understand this, they will have much more success.

Being secretary is kinda cool. I have learned a lot about the church and its organization. It's just so perfect. Everything lines up like it should. I am putting tithings into the system, looking for old reciets, depositing at the bank. Its pretty cool. MLS gave me bit of a headache, but we got over a couple of problems.

So yeah, thats what's new with me.

Love you guys,

Elder Brown

Jayro's Baptism