Elder Tanner Brown: The Kingdom Grows! (November 18-24)

This week has been awesome!

Monday was my first Pday in Crystal and we went to Squad up with some other missionaries. We played a round of Villainous, but had to end it early because our dinner came up. We had dinner with the Bishop and his family, and he has a pretty cool job. He knows about all the technology that will be releasing in the next couple years. The inner tech nerd came out and there is some pretty cool things to come.

Tuesday we had Lunch with a guy named Rob Johnson and it ended up being a dope contact! He is a hight school teacher and he wants us to teach his class for an hour, and talk about why we are serving our missions, the start of the church, and the persecution of the church when it started compared to right now. I have a really good feeling about this! After we met a recent convert at a golf place and took a walk with him. We had an awesome talk about the plan of Salvation and how the atonement is central to us fulfilling God's plan for us. We had Dinner with a single member and we were supposed to have a Joint teaching thing with him, but we already had something going on with the Zone Leaders in there area. Kinda unfortunate because I hate turning down Joint teachers. The lesson we had was super cool though. He has a brain injury but he has some awesome Spiritual gifts, and feels the spirit really well! Unfortunately for him with that he feels opposition at a greater level too.

Wednesday morning we went to Feed My Starving Children and that was super dope! We had so many missionaries with us that we opened a second station. Elder Hardwick and I decided to go with the smaller group because no one else was so, we hung out with the sisters. We went to Chick-fil-a for lunch and we had a good time with our server Mark! After lunch we did our weekly Planning. We had dinner with a member that was not very pleasant, but I am glad that they were at least willing to feed us. Nothing wrong with them, they just don't clean the dishes... so yeah... We had Mutual after and they had this super dope Mini golf night that they set up, and we got to play with some of the youth! Good times

Thursday, we had nothing in our plans, so we contacted every nonmember and recent convert, that we had Phone numbers for (a lot of people). We got in contact with a few people that we made plans to see later this week. We had a service called PRISM that we go to, and it is a food shelf. I didn't enjoy it to much because there was really nothing for us to do there. After a long day of stop bys we got to finish the night on a good note. We played churchball. Work Hard, Ball harder.

Friday we had Zone Conference, and it was really long... I was just so tired by the end. The beginning is always really good, because our Mission Leaders give their trainings in the morning, but the afternoon we had car safety, and a winter depression training, and it was soooooo boring. After our Zone Conference we had a lesson with William again! He is so prepared for the gospel! He said he is willing to live any commandment, because he knows that heavenly father will bless him. He has so much faith! After our lesson about commandments with him, we went and saw someone named Marlon. It was a miracle finding him! So there was a Guy named Mark, and he had referred himself to the Elders a couple months ago. He was visited by the Elders, but he wasn't really interested in the gospel, he kinda just wanted a handout. Well, on Thursday when we were contacting everyone, we texted Mark to see if he wanted have a short lesson with us. We got a response but it wasn't Mark, it was Marlon. Mark sold his phone to Marlon, and Marlon said he was very interested in us coming by to Pray with him, and to talk about Jesus. We had an awesome lesson about the Book of Mormon with him, and he said he already thinks that Moroni's promise is true! He wants to meet once a week now!

Saturday we went to a members kid getting baptized. We showed up an hour early by accident, but it ended up being fine, because there was a children's choir practicing in the chapel, so we just got to listen in to that. After the baptism we went to lunch all together, which is always a good time. After lunch ch we did a lot of stob bys for possible interested people in the downtown area. We had a lesson in downtown that we went to for a returning member, and we ended up talking about temples for an hour with him. We then had dinner with a member at a really great Mexican place called Teresa's! After we ordered they had our food ready in 5 minutes it was crazy fast for the sit down style that they were. Then we went to the church and crashed a Single Adult activity. They were doing a little Thanksgiving dinner for all the singles. Well apparently they were doing a game night after in the primary room, but we didn't know that. Elder Hardwick was telling a funny story to me and the Sisters in the primary room, and all the sudden people came in a few minutes at a time. So we ended taking over and turning the whole thing into a comedy club night!

It was super funny because all of the people there are super awkward (hence why they are single) and most of them had "different" senses of humor... it was super funny to watch it all go down hill, and then we left to play ball with the nonmembers that showed up later for Basketball. I was dying cause the whole thing was super awkward to be a part of, and then we left

Sunday, after church we had a lesson that we taught with the Sisters, Sister Elkins, and Sister Sellers. We went in thinking we would be teaching a blind member, but he had someone there who was a nonmember and he wanted to learn more! We gave him a book of Mormon and he accepted it and we also taught him about it for half an hour. So awesome! After that lesson it was like 3:30 and we still hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we ate a little bit. It was kinda weird because dinner was at 5, but we were super hungry. Anyways than we had our dinner and after we made Pass along cards and set up all of our supplies so we could be ready for the rest of the week.

Love you all!

-Elder Brown