May 25, 2015

Dear Mom, 
It has been a great week here. It is so strange how fast each week goes by, but the individual days are so long! It is always great to have another week over. I am glad to hear that everyone is safe and happy! I am a bit jealous you are in New Port! I am sure you are having fun, and I hope you are enjoying the company of the family. I remember it was always exciting to be in a bigger city when we would go on vacation and things. I am now a bit sick of the busyness, and just being surrounded by people. I guess I am used to it, but I am looking forward to being in little old Cedar again. I miss just open space, and the mountains! I also just can't wait for vacations again. I miss being with you guys when you are on vacations. I just miss relaxing, and taking time off! My week has been good though. I am doing great with Elder Asay. He is a super fun guy! He is super easy to get a long with. We have a lot of fun together. We joke and laugh together a lot. He is a good people person too, so he does a lot of talking too. With some of my companions I am the one doing all the talking, and so it is really nice to have a companion that also can talk and socialize. We are working hard together, and doing well with our obedience. We are really helping each other to be better. I enjoyed the pictures you put on dropbox! It is always fun to see pictures. I got some good pictures this last week, but I am having trouble uploading them, so I might have to try again next week.   Tell Calvin he is wearing a nice hat! 
The week was really good. It is weird because it felt like a really good productive week, but we didn't teach a lot. I guess that isn't the level of productivity though. We did a lot of good. Monday we went to the Sterkfontein caves. They were really cool. You will have to Google them. It was really cool. We had like a 30 minute tour down inside the cave. They found like some ape/human fossil in there back in like the 90's, so they had a weird like evolution twist. We were in a tour group with some Chinese guys! The coolest thing was the lake inside the cave. It isn't a huge lake, but apparently it is super deep. They had a dive team exploring it, and they only got to 60 meters deep, and it still went deeper. One of the guys got lost, or had complications. He died in the cave, and was found in a dry pocket. We also found a random hill to climb to take pictures. It was a lot bigger than we thought. We just pulled over on the side of the road and climbed it. We took some good pictures. There were some huge ant hills that looked like termite mounds. It was super fun. We were just out in the bush, so it was nice to get out of busy Jo-burg. Every other day was pretty normal. We didn't see Jackie this week because she was really busy. We did see Abibi and Smart once, then they went out of town. They are progressing well. They came to church last week, but they are not reading the Book of Mormon like we would like. They are probably our best investigators. We only taught about 6 investigator lessons this week. We also have a new lady named Anna, and her friend Jerry. She got on the church website, and requested a Book of Mormon. We then got her contacts though our office, and went and gave her a book of Mormon. We are now teaching her and her friend. We have only seen them 2 times, but it has been good. We have some great members here. On Wednesday we met with the Van Schalkwyk family(try to say that). They are an older couple, like in there early 60's. They lived in the states for a while, and so they are citizens. They were a lot of fun. Brother Van Schalkwyk does photography, and makes videos. He kind of inspired me to want to get into photography. I guess that is a hobby i will have to take up. We also met with the Randall's, a great family in the ward. They have like a room they rent out on the back of their house. They two tenants that are staying there they invited them over for dinner when we were there. We shared with them, and it was great. We are going to go back and see these new investigators that are the Randall’s tenants this week. Welhemina and Esther are still doing well, and we are still just reviewing the lessons with them. The biggest challenge with new members is just getting them integrated into the ward. On Friday morning we did a soup kitchen type of thing with Sister Malpage who is our bishops wife. She cooked a ton of soup, and got bread and stuff. We loaded it all in her car, then we drove into the nearest township which is Alexandra. We just set up on the side of the road, and we were serving people that really looked like they needed food. We were discouraging people that could feed themselves, or had work. It was a great service, and it was a really cool thing that Sister Malpage thought of. She is going to try and do it weekly, so we might be helping her with it this upcoming Friday. More cool members we saw were the Steyn's. They are a cool young couple. They have two little kids. He has been working for a long time up in the DRC. He now is moved back here working. he is really into hunting and stuff, and so he showed us his man cave with all his trophies, and his reloading station, and his guns. It was super sweet. The white people here love there guns just as much as American's! I can't wait to come home and do some good shooting! I got to go singing two times this week with the old geezer's! We went to two different homes. They are both owned by the same member. It is a lot of fun singing with them, and the best part is we always get fed after haha!! On Saturday we did some good service for some members. There is actually a missionary that was my zone leader back when I was in Secunda that is now returned living in my ward with his wife. They live at her parents house. It is still weird to see him here, because I want to call him Elder Louw, but his name is now Brother Louw. We helped them rip out a bunch of tree's, and a bunch of tangles vines. It was some good manual labor! I enjoy doing service because it is just different than what I am normally doing! To keep busy we are hunting down less actives, and passing out pass a long cards at stop lights. We just walk between the cars and give people cards. It is nice because we have had a great response! Normally contacting on the streets in town noone will take our cards, only the black people. But with the cars we have a lot of white people rollilng their windows down to take our cards. We have even got a few calls from it. I am sorry to hear about Shasta. That must be really hard. I know it is always hard to loose a dog, they really do become part of the family. I hope that you are doing alright with her loss. I am glad you still have Lucy and Russen. I hope they will keep you good company. I guess that pretty much sums up the week! 
 I guess I am not too picky about where I fly in. I guess it would be nice to come straight home, but either way. Flying to St George would be a lot less driving, so that would probably be the easiest!  It is crazy to think that there are already plans for me to be flying home! I am down to only 10 weeks left, I can't believe it!!  I hope that you guys enjoy your fun in the sun, and try not to get too sunburned! I love you and miss you.Love 
Your son
Elder Brown