Christmas Week

Hey Family!

I get to call you guys in one week!!! (It will probably be around noon!) I can't believe Christmas is already almost here! Time is going by so fast! Thank you for all the thoughtful letters! Baby Elle looks so great! Seriously a little Angel! I am excited to celebrate my first Christmas on the Mission!

Our Temple trip to L.A. was amazing! We had an entire session with like 70 missionaries and our mission president. The Celestial room experience was truly something I will never forget with all of my fellow missionary friends. All of us, a bunch of 20 year olds, conversing one with another, far away from our families, preaching what we know to be true, in the closes place to heaven, in EXACTLY the best place we could be in this EXACT time in our lives. We were all emotional as the spirit bore witness this to all of us together with our mission president.

We also all gathered together for a Zone Conference again back on Tuesday. It was an awesome meeting, the trainings that President Martin gives are always super powerful. I figured out many things that I could be doing better. The little things are what make the difference. By small and Simple means are GREAT things are brought to pass! (Alma 37:6 I believe?) Then at the end of the meeting, President wanted to end with a testimony meeting and selected 3 missionaries to say a few words... We'd now like to hear from Elder so and so, Sister so and so, and we will finish up by hearing from (I bet you can guess...) Elder Brady. Yeah. Every time without fail... Ludlow turned and looked at me and said that's you! I just looked at him and said, I knew it. He said, they told you before hand? And I said, no, I just knew somehow... ha-ha. So I just got up there again and blabbed for 5 minutes, cried, and told them what I have been thinking about lately and what has helped, (the usual) and hopefully it helped someone out there? I'm not sure if it did, but Heavenly Father wanted me to speak for some reason, I just know that we should never turn down opportunities like these to bear testimony, be his hands and serve.

Speaking of Service, This last week, we have grown very close to Miracle during this Christmas season and I ended up giving them the Christmas tree you guys sent me because they don't have one... Very humbling experience but it reminds us of the TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS once again. And brings us eternal JOY.

We should be having a baptism this Sunday, Christmas day! Jade Mundy wants to get baptized then and we just have to teach her a couple little other things then see if she is ready and passes the Baptismal Interview questions. We found her like 2 months ago and she has come a long way so hopefully it happens! Cross your fingers and that's where we need the prayers this week! I don't think there would be a better way to celebrate Jesus Christ's Birth by bringing a soul unto Him through the waters of baptism! That's as good as it gets!

I love you guys so much and I don't know what else to share but I know there is a lot of crazy stuff happening. Think of some good questions for our phone call because I feel like I have already shared everything that is worth sharing? Ha-ha

Talk to you guys on CHRISTMAS! Until then, have a good one!

Love, Elder Brady

---NO REGRETS---         

Castillo Family -Miracle-

Hello Family!

Thank you for all the letters and Christmas love! Our (Stripling Warriors Hideout) apartment now has a pretty good Christmas feel to it with all the lights lining the walls and 3 of us received little trees so we have placed them all in our living room! Way sweet! Something weird about California is that they don't have any overhead lights... we just have to use lamps but now we replaced them with all our Christmas lights and trees so when we walk in and flip the switch our apartment lights up with Christmas spirit! Thank you for everything you guys are doing and for your thoughts! They give me a HUGE boost every Monday! Thank you.

So Yesterday was Erin Castillo's baptism! We were stressing about it all week because we are in charge of making sure everything is taken care of and runs smoothly, we felt a lot of pressure, but as always it turned out perfect and was exactly amazing. The Castillo family is by far one of my favorite families out here! They even had their family fly in for the baptism! We had a huge turn out from all their family and the ward attending. They are all super strong and spiritually awesome. We made sure each one of the Castillo's was involved in the baptism. Brother Manriquez, our ward mission leader, (The MOST AWESOME MISSION LEADER EVER!) conducted and set the atmosphere extremely well (He got baptized a year ago and is "so legit" ha-ha, probably barely 30 yrs old). Then, Ben (10yr old) started out with the talk on baptism and delivered such a great message. Then Erin and I proceeded to do the baptism and it worked perfectly. Then while we were changing, Jeremy Castillo said a few words and we came back into the room to find everyone filled with tears and Jeremy upfront crying. The Spirit was so strong! Then to top it all off, little Sarah said the closing prayer and got up there and said "Dear Heavenly Father thank you for Erin to be baptized... (Then started bawling and you couldn't even hear what her little voice was trying to say for like 2 minutes... then she just said in the name of Jesus Christ amen." SO CUTE! No better way to finish off a great baptism day.

Oh and Abby, P.S. she told me, "Elder Brady, I'm sorry I haven't written your sister yet..."ha-ha so, Sarah should be sending a letter to you soon Abby!

So that's pretty much all the big new for this week except we found another awesome lady whose name is Miracle and she is a single mother with like 5 kids! She calls us all the time and feels like we are the only ones that she has to listen to her, so we just go over and she just lets everything out and we try our best to help her. Yesterday we were over at Miracle's and she was reaching across the table to hold our hands and told us that you guys don't know how much I need you right now and we all just started crying. I see such a bright future for Miracle and her family and they want to be baptized as well! But we are going to take things slow with her cause she is struggling right now.  When we leave we kneel down and all the kids run up to us and give us big hugs and say "BYE DA MISSHHONARDIES!" This is what a mission is all about :) Just melts our heart every time. We are probably going to go over and help her clean her house today.

This week: We are having Zone Conference this tomorrow and we all get to go to the Los Angeles Temple on Thursday! SOO EXCITED! Sister Kabel is going to give Sister Brown, Sister Mix, Elder Ludlow and I a ride up there! I love Sister Kabel. We call her Grandma Kabel and she takes such good care of us. Easily one of my favorite ladies in the ward. Grandma Kabel took us to the chiropractor and spent a day with her last week because something was wrong with Ludlow's sinuses and he is very stuffed up for like the past ...7 YEARS of his life... so yeah. Ha-ha Grandma Kabel is trying to fix him. We love her so much.  I have become very attached to the people out here in Lancaster. Maybe since I’ve been here for 1/2 a year and it's exactly where Heavenly Father wants me and I feel like I was destined to know these people. The Right thing, Right Place, Right time for sure.

Well I have to get going but I believe we can call you for free from a member’s house or cell phone on Christmas day. We still don't know what time but don't worry, we'll surprise you! :D

Until next time, I love you guys and hope you all have a great week!

Love, Elder Brady

---NO REGRETS---

Fantastimagical News!

Thank you so much for all the support! I received your package and Ludlow and I immediately put up the tree in our room along with the present under it! Yay! I love Christmas! We also put the lights around the apartment along with some other strands of lights and now it's all decked out! That story was also amazing! Thank you Thank you

So this week Ludlow and I did a lot better! We taught about 15 lessons this week, which is more than he has ever taught the last 5 months of his mission! Yeah, we're making progress! Hopefully we can keep this up... last week was exhausting! The weather is getting very BITTER and in Lancaster, people like to refer to it as land-scatter because of how WINDY it is. We have found that any direction that we are riding our bikes the wind is always blowing against us in our face. We must be in a tornado or something... Last week we were going to meet the Spanish elders to knock some doors with them and it took us 45! Minutes to rendezvous with them! Crazy wind. Too bad we are only getting STRONGER! Ha-ha. We just laugh because there is nothing else we can do about it.

Anyways, also this weekend was the Christmas Creche Festival! A huge celebration where all religions in the community come together to worship Christ. Everyone brings Nativity scenes to display them from all different religions and countries! It was so cool! I took some pictures of some way sweet and creative ones that I will have to send to you. We spent a lot of time up there answering any questions that people had as they walked around. Oh! And get this, they had some nativity scenes all the way from Chinese ones that use the heat from lit candles to operate the nativity scene to things as simple as white chocolate and Lego ones... and even HALO!!! Yeah, Halo. The coolest Nativity scene I have ever seen in my life.

So we visited with the Castillo's again this week (like usual) and we shared a message from the Ensign this time mix things up, nothing too special, but then she started crying! We helped her out and we then started talking about her baptism and how important it is and she is so excited! We then started to figure everything out like what songs ect. She wanted at her baptism. Then we asked her who she wanted to baptize her and we assumed it would be her husband, but then he said he couldn't... so she then she looked up at me and said" Will you baptize me?" and I just hit a brick wall and couldn't believe it! The spirit hit me so strong and of course I said yes and we were all excited! I am so happy to do this for Erin Castillo, she is so awesome I am thrilled and honored to perform such a sacred ordinance for someone I love. MISSIONS ARE THE BEST!

Love,

ELDER BRADY

---NO REGRETS---