August 24, 2013


Hola Familia y Amigos,


Wow, what an awesome week. I will tell you more later. First... I love hearing from you all. Thank you so much for remembering me, even though I am sure that it takes a big effort to find time in the day to write me. I love you all so very much and thank you for all that you do for me. I am glad to hear that all is well. That is so crazy that Caiden is now a Junior and that he already started the school year. I didn't even realize that it was time for that. That blows me away. AS well, that Ryan Draper is married, ha wow, that is so crazy. It seems to me that almost all my friends are home now. I might be the last one standing, but I am going down swinging. That is so cool that Lacee is working up there in Heber keeping the team alive. As well, its always great to hear from the Peterson family and to see how big the boys are. It blows me away. Wade sounds like he is working a lot but that he is doing great. I appreciate every single one of you and I love you all so much.

Well, I was so hurried in writing you last week that I forgot to tell you some pretty big news... Elder Balbuena, me, Pres and Sister Rappleye headed down to Coyhaique, which is the second most southern zone in our mission, which also requires getting on a plane, and happened to be the only part of the mission that I did not know. Well we left Wednesday and we got back a few hours ago. Ha, try that one on for size. Who would have thought that I would fly so much in my mission. It was an awesome week there though. We went for the zone conference and we took advantage to do as many divisions as possible to get to know the missionaries and learn from them. I will tell you I learned a lot from a lot of great Elders. It was an awesome week of learning. E Balbuena and I tried to take advantage of traveling with Pres. Rappleye for a lot of hours to ask him a lot of questions and learn as much as we could from him. I tell you right now Pres. does not disappoint - he taught us so much in the last few days and hours that we were traveling together. While there in Coyhaique I had an experience that I have never had in the mission, haha, a bunch of kids threw rocks at me and Elder Hawkins while we were in divisions. It was pretty funny, luckily they only hit us with snow balls, haha. It was a good week though. I loved it so much. I learned so much and Coyhaique looks a lot like Utah, so that was really cool as well.

Before I wrap things up I will share just a few things of what I learned. Through out the time in the mission so far I have learned a lot about the importance of the spirit. Learning more about this, I have found myself always trying to verify whether I am following the spirit or not. Well, we were talking to Pres. Rappleye about this on the way to Coyhaique and he said something that really changed my way of thinking. It does not matter if we know whether we are following the spirit, it is important that we are always trying to follow him. Why do we have to know if the spirit guided us to do some thing? So we can get prideful that we know that the spirit guides us and end up losing that same spirit we were looking for? I learned that it does not matter whether we know if the spirit guided us to do something, but that we are always trying to follow impressions whether they come from the spirit or not. Go and do and don´t judge the outcomes. The spirit is so important and with out him we could do nothing, but searching for how much he guides us will do nothing. Always focusing on inviting him and following what we feel is the way to go. I hope that I can learn to focus on following the spirit more than focusing on whether he is guiding me or not. I love the Gospel, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I love the mission, there is nothing better in the world for young men and young women. There is much more to learn, much more to improve and that is what I am going to go try and do. I love you all.
Love,
Elder Brown
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