Mon May 5th 2010

Hi,

Well this week has been a crazy week. This week was the end of my sixth moves-cycle as a missionary. Six down, only ten left to go. That means my time in Thailand is more than 1/3 over.


On Monday, Elder Webb received a call from the President to go Zone Leader. He is now serving in Chang Mai, probably the most coveted area in the mission. On Tuesday I received a call from the President. He started the phone conversation by saying, “Elder Brown, I have a couple of things for you.” I was very shocked that he said the word couple. Turns out God has called me to go Senior Companion, District Leader, and Trainer all at the same time!!!!##%%:}


This has been a fairly large jump in responsibility.
I'm starting to deal with the stress a little bit better though. On Thursday my left eye wouldn't stop twitching. That was interesting; I think I am coping better now though.


The best part of the story is that our district has also increased in size. The elders in Samup Pragaan joined into our district. President Smith has combined some districts together to reduce the number of district leaders and to increase the number of members in a district. This is great news because one of my favorite missionaries just moved into Samup Pragaan. Elder Fowles from my MTC group is now in my district! I will get to work with him and learn from him. He is a really hard working, brilliant Elder.

(so all the next part is in missionary speak-baby, grandchild, kids are how they refer to eachother)
So I am training! I got a beautiful wonder-bread-white baby. It would have been fun to train a Thai person, but I think training an American will be even more fun. My "kids" name is Elder Tibbetts, he is from Mesa, Arizona. Training really has been pretty entertaining, it brings back a lot of memories from when I was new; except this time, I get to be on the other end of the string. My trainer, Elder Nance, finished his mission this moves. It was pretty sweet that he actually got to meet his "grandchild". Elder Nance is now at home trying to find a girlfriend. Maybe I'll be kind and send him some dating tips.


Having a "kid" has really showed me how far I've come in the language. He asks me all sorts of questions about Thai and usually I can answer them but I can't tell him a reason. All I know is that “it sounds right, so I say it.” He usually doesn't like that answer, but as fluency increases, I just don't need to know all the “rules” I just speak and it works.


Yesterday was a pretty stressful day. Yesterday was Sunday and we called all the people we had appointments with and they canceled. Also we had a two hour ward council meeting that was very frustrating. After the meeting I went home and grabbed some fruit and said a prayer. It really helped. We left the house and went finding for about three hours. In that three hours we found about six people, got into two houses, and gave one of them a baptismal date. That was a pretty sweet experience. We will see what happens to him.


Hey that's all I have. Thanks everyone for the continued support. Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. God will bless you! Keep praying for me, this moves is going to be hard.


Love,

เอ็ลเดอร์ บราวน์
Elder Brown