A new word & a hashtag--- Colorado week 3

Wow. What a week!

I'm excited to give you an update on all of the exciting things happening in my little corner of the world.

But first off let me tell  you something about Colorado. There are little bunnies EVERYWHERE here and they are so cute! Except bad news- people hate them. People will just go around and shoot/poison them because they eat up yards and make holes. It's so sad. I hope people in Brazil don't shoot little fluffy tailed bunnies. *Sigh*

Anyway...

We worked so hard this week and it really paid off! When we first got to the area there were literally zero progressing investigators. Z.E.R.O. So not ok. We have been working hard to find new families and people to teach. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am happy to announce that we now have 6 new investigators. How awesome is that? We have 4 others who will hopefully become investigators this week also- just so many amazing people. Want to hear the best news of all? Of course you do.

Like half of them are black. #tendermercies

 

In other exciting news, I have made up a new word. As missionaries we do a lot of contacting and tracting. In our area we've had a lot of success when we mix the two- head out to contact members and end up tracting. So I started calling it "contracting" and I think it's hilarious. Someday someone is going to look back on my planner and be confused at why I'm "contracting" everyday. "Huh?"

 

We met one of our new friends while "contracting". We met her when we felt impressed to visit her next door less active neighbor. They weren't home so we knocked the house next door and found her. Beatrice is this ridiculously classy, 60ish years old, black woman and oooo how I love her. Her husband's name is Johny and he is just as wonderful. She is a Montessori principal and just the warmest, loveliest person alive. She loves Mormons and has a lot of family in the church. We've visited her a few times now. On Saturday we spent 2 hours helping her move her hot tub and clean her backyard and just grew to love her even more. It was a happy day for all and we're going back to teach her this week.

We also started teaching a man who has been married to a member of our ward for close to 10 years. He has several friends in the ward and has been coming to church for the past few months. We had dinner with him and his family and flat out asked him if he would like to start taking the lessons. He said he thinks it's time. His wife was just beaming and couldn't stop smiling! We taught him for the first time on Sunday and he accepted my invitation to be baptized. We're teaching him again this week and hopefully we'll set a date. Yay missionary work!

 

It's crazy to me that I've only been on my mission a few months and used music so much! Having a fellow singer as a companion has already been such a blessing! We have started singing as a door approach. It's amazing how a hymn or primary song can soften so many hearts. We have also started singing for our investigators at lessons, when we visit members homes and the ward has also asked us to sing a few times.

 One of our investigators is this sweet 11 year old girl Aunica. Her dad is Iranian and she is just beautiful. For her first lesson, last week, we taught her about how she is a princess- a daughter of god. She was beaming!We also taught her about prayer and at the end of the lesson we decided to sing "A Child's Prayer". It brought the spirit so strongly and she loved it. We came back to teach her yesterday and she had learned the song and choreographed a "dance" with her little sister to show us. I love sharing the gospel through music!

Earlier this week, we had a training meeting from our Mission President. In it we had a brain storming session as to how we can "hasten the work". He told us that we need to start thinking outside the box. "We've been knocking on doors for 200 years. We need something new." One of the ideas that Sister Hunter and I had is to host an interfaith music fireside. How cool is that? We both have the skills and experience to do it and it's going to be amazing! Our vision is a night of the community coming together and just worshipping Jesus Christ through music. No proselyting or preaching or contention just united, musical worship. We want to show people that we're all on the same team. It's going to be great. We met a girl the other day who is a Worship Arts Major at a Christian university and we're going to all work together to pull it off in like 3 weeks. Woo!

My challenge this week is to use your talents to show God's love to His children. Find one specific way to help or uplift someone using your gifts. Each of us have been blessed with so much and it's all from God.

I have about a million other things that I could tell you but I'm trying to keep my emails shorter so this is going to be it for now. Thank you so much for the prayers and support. Being a missionary is really, really, really hard and support makes all the difference. (*cough, cough, keep sending me mail*). I finally started having some of my mail catch up to me a couple of days ago and it did so much good for my spirits. Sister Hunter was starting to think that I had no one that loved me haha. I know God lives. I know that He knows and loves you.

 

Love from Colorado,

 

Sister Megan Brown