Happy New Year 2013

Hey Family!

So we are just sitting here at the Horne's home again finishing up our laundry and and eating dinner with them waiting for the new year to arrive!  It was so good to talk to you again! Only one more phone call... Crazy.

Anyways, to answer some questions, i received the Christmas package a couple days ago! That package was a pretty big deal and had some amazing things in it! Thank you! We have yet to locate Elder Yovanno's... but i'm sure it will get here, if not it'll be okay, he received 9 packages this Christmas from several sources so he is well taken care of now :) haha. I love those shorts and shirt! They are awesome! Just curious though, hypothetically speaking, if those clothes are a size or two big would there be any way to exchange them for a smaller size? Those are by far the coolest shorts though! North Carolina AND Michael Jordan! You guys know me way too well!

Anyways, it's a weird feeling that Christmas has past and today is New Years Eve... You don't really feel the holidays as a missionary haha, which is fine because we'll have plenty to celebrate after!

Elder Yovanno and I are still doing really good, still trying to improve here and there but it's slowly changing around here for the better  .He is such a fun companion, you always have to be on your toes with him because you never know what your going to get and there's never a dull moment! We are slowly regaining the members trust around here too, i can feel it, they are warming up to us, talking to us, and helping us. We are now teaching the gospel principles class in the YSA ward and yesterday we were the speakers in sacrament meeting as well. The YSA ward is hilarious and the Family ward has some super legit families. We picked up some more new investigators this past week and we had 3 at church! Hopefully things will keep going well and our investigators will keep progressing! Transfer calls are this weekend and if i had to guess i would bet we are staying together since we have only been together for like 4 weeks, but who really knows anymore. I am still learning a lot everyday. Pres Hall e-mailed me this week and gave me some advice and strategies of what i can do to help us be more obedient and i am very grateful for that so we'll see how that goes this week. I know that our loyalty is first to the Lord, but it is just super hard when it angers your companion... (my biggest struggle right now) Relationships with others is EVERYTHING to me and i don't want to have to be picking between the lord and my comp so i have been trying to figure out how to have both...

Anyways though, Dad, I just finished the Book of Mormon a couple weeks ago and was about to start it again but didn't have a time frame for finishing it. So i am going to join you in your challenge Dad and try to read it all another time before i come home too!

Well happy New Year! Stay safe! Be good! Make good choices! And return with honor! :) Love you all!

Love, Elder Brady

*no regrets*

Northridge Emergency Transfer

Hey Family do i have an intense e-mail for you today!

This past week has probably been the most eventful week of my mission. First off, with all of this drama that has been happening for the past month in the Granada Hills zone, hopefully is coming to a stop now! To start off, the missionary that i have been worried about for the past couple weeks pretty much was packing his stuff to go home last week. He had one of his final interviews with President Hall when Pres. Hall received some revelation for this missionary... Long story short, Pres. Hall got permission from the Missionary department in Salt Lake for this missionary to stay out on his mission under one condition, Pres Hall keeps a close eye on him and he gets one of his best missionaries for his companion. So after much prayer and talking to Elder Yovanno they came to the conclusion that i am the missionary for this scenario. I have been talking with Pres alot lately and he told me that some missionaries have mission problems, but this case is different, Elder Yovanno has a life problem right now and is struggling with a testimony of the church. So another long short, i accepted, and got emergency transferred last Thursday to be with Elder Yovanno in Northridge covering the 1st ward and the YSA ward for the entire valley. So we did a little permanent companion exchange and they moved the ZL area to the Encino Elders because Pres doesn't want us to worry about all the leadership responsibilities and to just focus totally on our companions right now. Even though we still worry about everything because the new ZL's have been calling us about how to do everything. I also was called to be the district Leader here in Northridge and Jhonson is the District Leader for the other side of the zone still in Van Nuys. Crazy crazy stuff. I have now finally gotten settled and have come to realize these past couple days that no missionary work has been done in either of these wards for quite some time. So we are going to be basically starting from scratch now. I feel so bad for Elder Yovanno right now, he has had such a hard mission, with tough companions, and has been through a lot. On top of wanting to go home, the only reason he was out here was to make his grandma proud, who passed away last week as well. I feel like Heavenly Father has increased my Charity/Love/patience for Elder Yovanno right now because i love him sooooo much and want to do EVERYTHING i can to help him through this life struggle and so he doesn't go home. Secretly we were super excited to have this opportunity to be companions and we have been having a lot of fun this past week and because we were already great friends to begin with. We have already has so many great talks and crazy spiritual experiences together. I have known Elder Yovanno for a long time now and have been his ZL for 6 months of his mission. He has been out for about 14 months. This Christmas is definitely going to be a different one that's for sure. If i could ask one favor of you guys for Christmas this year it would be that you would please not worry about me, i am fine. Could you please though maybe make a package for Elder Yovanno this Christmas since i don't think he'll be getting anything. I am trying to come up with a couple ideas that i could do for him and I have cleaned  up their entire apartment since it was a dump and have brought all the lights/christmas tree to bring a little christmas spirit in there.

 I have so much i want to say right now, i just don't have the time. Here is some more word vomit for this week haha

Talk to you again soon! Merry Christmas!

P.s. my new apartment address is...

9801 Zelzah Ave. Apt# 101

Northridge, CA 91325

Love, Elder Brady

((((((((((((((((((NO REGRETS)))))))))))))))))))))))

Rhenz's Confirmation

Good Morning!

Thank you for your words of wisdom mom!

This week was a lot better! But after some reflecting, circumstances didn't really change, but my attitude did! It's all about perspective and sometimes our vision gets a little blurred... but as we know, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7)

Anyways, Rhenz's confirmation went well! He is now a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day saints and has the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost so what's not to be happy about! It is such a humbling experience to exercise the Priesthood for these ordinances. Every time i am able to give a blessing like this, i know that it is all Heavenly Father taking over and i am just an instrument in his hands. When the blessings begin, I just remember thinking about how i feel like i am floating and my mind is completely blank... yet i am still saying words...? I know the Priesthood is real and i am so grateful to be apart of these spiritual experiences. Elder Johnson was able to baptize Rhenz last Sunday. Rhenz has some family attend his baptism such as his aunt that he is living with and his grandparents. His dad passed away and his mom is in the Philippines going through a divorce right now. He is such a strong kid and we have grown really close to him, he's our best friend! Right now we're trying really hard to hook him up with some other good friends that are good examples for when we get transferred to another area.

To answer some other questions, we will be getting more missionaries here in this mission. We are around 190 right now and will be up to 250 by the time June rolls around. That is awesome though that you guys are getting missionaries in your stake, maybe I'll see a missionary for the 3rd time in Utah when i return! haha

 As far as Christmas goes... I can't believe it's that time again. It feels like fall still! We attempt to listen to Christmas music but it's just so different in California without snow or any cold weather yet! I still have no need for any gifts, i am good on clothes for the most part, and don't need any shirts or anything of that nature because i still have the ones you sent me! I'm keeping those new for later :)

Lastly, we planned a Temple trip for our ward that took place last Saturday! We went down to the L.A. Temple to see the lights and walked our investigators/less active members around the visitors center! It was awesome. Always good to feel the spirit the Temple brings.

I've got to go! Love you lots! Talk to you again soon!

Love, Elder Brady

................................................no regrets................................................

Intense eye opening week

Wud up.

So sorry for forgetting to tell you that we wouldn't be able to e-mail yesterday... we had a mission conference with Don R. Clarke who is the head over missionary work. He's going to be here all week and we have Zone leader council with him tomorrow up in Santa Clarita. Anyways, so we changed our P-day to Tuesday this week.

This week has been so insane i literally don't even know where to start... its even been taking me a while to organize my thoughts at night when attempting to write in my journal. I guess the first thing to mention is the highlight! That Rhenz's baptism went perfect! I will be confirming him next week at church during sacrament meeting! He is doing amazing and his baptism was definitely a day to remember. It was probably one of the most personal baptisms i have ever witnessed. So to explain why, we play basketball with Rhenz and a bunch of Filipino kids every Wednesday night. About 30 kids show up to play with us every week. So we organize tournaments and out of all these kids that we are hanging out with, only like 6 of them are members. Rhenz has made a lot of friends by coming with us and he invited them all to participate in his baptism. It was so awesome to see all of his new friends supporting him by speaking/praying/and witnessing his baptism. We are all now teaming up to baptize everyone who comes to play basketball at the church Wednesday nights. You can tell most of these kids have rough backgrounds growing up in the valley and are involved in gangs with tattoos/piercings and stuff of that nature... but it is awesome to see how they change when they come to play ball with us. If one of them accidentally swears or says something inappropriate, they all get on their back and they feel super bad and keep apologizing to us. It's just a fun positive atmosphere that is great for these kids to be in and you know they feel the spirit.

Other things that have been on my mind this week is how wicked this valley really is... we live right by the Burbank Airport so planes are always coming in and swooping right over our apartment to land every 15 minutes. We have pretty much tuned that out and don't even really hear it anymore. But the other night we hear a helicopter that was hovering above our apartment and spot light glimmering past our windows along with cops on megaphones making announcements... pretty common noises as well, but this time it wasn't going away so we finally got up around 11:30 to see what was going on. We look our our window to find the road outside our apartment blocked off by cop cars surrounding a guy who was stealing a car right out front of our apartment and took him to jail. Then another instance, we were driving down the freeway to our appointment a couple nights ago and we were stuck in traffic. We knew something big was happening because there was 3 helicopters(or commonly known as ghetto birds around here) spaced out hovering above the freeway. As we got closer to some flares at the scene we see a lady get taken away in a stretcher and thinking it was another accident, but we were super shocked when we see the car all shot up with blown out windows... Then i got sick to my stomach when we saw that there was a car seat in the back of the car and this poor lady got shot. We did some research at our appointment and told them and turned on the news to find out that the baby was unharmed. Thank goodness. Here is the article about it that we just found about it.

 

 http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/11/30/woman-hurt-baby-escapes-injury-in-car-to-car-shooting-on-170-freeway/

 

Anyways, this is a super sketchy place and we still hear about tons of crazy things people have done around here. We had dinner with the Haro family and Brother Haro witnessed the "1997 North Hollywood shooting" from his little kiosk across the street that still has bullet holes in the walls that protected him as he was hiding... Here's one about that one too...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

 

We have life so easy in our safe little draper bubble in Utah. I definitely want to raise my family in Utah.

Sorry probably too much information, but just to share a little bit of how much my eyes have been opened on the mission and how much i appreciate growing up in a safe environment with an amazing family active in the church that raised me with good morals.

Concerning our zone, the Granada hills zone is leading the valley in baptisms! At least one of our 5 companionship's has been baptizing someone every week since Elder Johnson and I have been here! They are on fire. We have been on some baby sitting Arron's from Pres. Hall this last week and last night we were with some missionaries until 4am and one of them is probably going home this coming week due to bad decisions he made... We are so sad and worried about this missionary and have done all we can to help him out. We love him so much but now we are turning it over to Pres. Hall tomorrow and he'll probably go home this week... I feel like i am going to cry. In Valencia, a quote i heard about being a good zone leader is" no matter how many sheep you find, don't lose any of the Shepperd's!" -Brother Richard Rich. Now our powerfully strong zone of 10 missionaries (smallest in the mission) will be down to 9 and we might be in a tri-panionship covering 3 wards again... definitely hardest time of my mission. I'll have lots of details to share when i get home. But still trying to stay positive! :)

I love you all! Thank you again for the packages! The homemade salsa is amazing and a huge hit when i made nachos for the missionaries in our zone. They say thank you!

Love, Elder Brady

                                                                                                                                         `~`~ NO REGRETS ~`~`