June 30, 2009

Dear Family and Friends, Hey it is good to hear from everyone. I received a few dear elder letters this week and sounds like everything is going well. However, I did not receive the package. Please do not resend another right away. Give it another week or two. I hope Elder Ludwig starts feeling better. I want to write to him and keep in touch but by the time the letter gets there he will probably be in Argentina so I am thinking I will wait till he gets here. But tell him to keep working hard. There are a lot of challenges in the mission and the best thing to do at times is just smile and laugh about it. Everyday there are new challenges. Right now it seems to work when I just smile and laugh about it, why not. Due to the cold weather, there are many that are sick and the work has been slow in our area. We do not have any investigators that are really progressing. Right now we are focusing on the ward, many are inactive. Those members that work, work all day so it's hard to meet with them. When things are hard, you just have to work harder. One day this past week we spent just about the whole day walking. We left our apartment at 10:30 taught two short lessons in the street and had lunch from 1-2. We had a few return appointments but none went through. We do stay pretty warm though. However we do not really wear gloves because most of the houses are fenced, so instead of knocking or ringing a door bell we have to clap in front of the house. It would have been easy to just get frustrated but I choose to just laugh and smie about it. I also kept a prayer in my heart that we could at least find someone to teach. The Lord answered that prayer in our last hour of the day. I suggested that we clap in front of a house where an inactive member lived, who just the other day, wasn’t at home. My companion was not too excited about stopping by but he didn’t refuse. We went and clapped. She was there and let us come in. It was a blessing to sit down for the first time since lunch. We had a great lesson and they asked when we could stop by again. I also have to tell you about yesterday. We got some rain which meant the streets were going to be interesting. All the streets were muddy and there was no way to get around it. But with a few jumps here and there we were able to avoid the big puddles. But later that night we were teaching a family and the power went out in the area. It was so dark I couldn't even see my companion, who was sitting right next to me. Someone found a candle and lit it and we were able to finish the lesson. We then had to leave to our next appointment and there was still no light anywhere. There was no way to avoid the big mud puddles and our shoes became covered in mud as we tried to find our way around. It was hilarious. Hope you have a great week thanks for the letters and support. Take care love Elder Brooks.