Baptisms

Sup Fam! 

Thank you for all the letters this week! Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for your inspiring words! I will definitely pay more attention to the sacrament prayers and reading those scriptures!

Also Congratulations Braden! I told the other missionaries that are here e-mailing with us and they thought it was the coolest thing as well! High fives and celebrations all around! Also, not to be selfish or anything, but i am super happy that you guys are staying close! California is definitely a hot spot and there is a lot of missionary work to be done here! So it sounds like Heavenly Father is sending in his secret weapons here to Cali to progress his work (Braden and Lyndsey!)! No better place than that of the center of the Oakland Raiders ;) 

These weeks just keep going by faster and faster! Elder Bates and I are shocked at how we only have one more week together! Our time together went by way too fast! Last Saturday we participated in the annual Mormon Helping hands service project of painting fences at Canyon Country Park! It was pretty hilarious when they were giving the entire community directions on how to stay organized and productive and they asked, "By raise of hands, who participated in last years service project?" Then out of all the missionaries my hand slowly raised up. So Elder Bates and I were supervisors to make sure everything goes good and people have enough paint and such. It's moments like these make me realize how long i really have been here in California! Feeling like a major veteran now... haha  

Also, Kenna, a girl from Northridge that we started teaching, surprised me at sacrament meeting yesterday! She came up to Santa Clarita to tell me that she is getting baptized and wanted to wait until i finished my mission so i could be there. She said her date is July 7th, and she asked me if that works and i said probably?... so i have no idea really what the schedule will look like when i get back, but do you think that will work?  

Anyways, we have finally made some progress here in Saugus 2nd with one of my favorite investigators, Bryant. He is a black guy that is one of our best friends and we have been spending a lot of time with him lately. He has been taught by missionaries for the past 3 years and i remember when i taught him a year ago when i was on exchanges with Elder Emery! So finally we worked through some road blocks and he has stopped smoking for the past 2 weeks now and we are planning on baptizing him this Sunday! He is a character and has been wanting to get baptized in a waterfall for the longest time, but we couldn't get that to work. Then he wanted to do it in Castaic Lake, but that got complicated as well... Since he doesn't want to do it at the church, we all came to common ground and decided to do it in a members legit swimming pool/hot tub with lights and tiki torches! So this Sunday, the whole ward is getting super pumped and Bryant is really excited for this to finally happen! Everyone in the ward is really good friends with Bryant because he has been coming for a long time now and he is definitely one of the funniest guys i have met on my mission. You never know what your going to get when you go and visit Bryant. Elder Bates will probably baptize him since he has been here longer but we will see. Bryant has his baptismal interview tomorrow so wish us luck! This will also be the first baptism this ward has had since the beginning of last year! Well we got to go, we planned a zone activity of making zone shirts again! Time to get loopy off of spray paint for the next couple hours... 

Love you all! 

Congrats Kristin and Jason on May 1st! :)

Love, Elder Brady

NO REGRETS

Full Throttle Mode

Sup Fam!

These weeks just keep going by faster and faster. It's scary really! Elder Bates and I are having such a great time and we are pushing it as hard as we can right now! Things are going really well and i feel like i am literally living the dream right now in this house with 3 other amazing missionaries! When i say that Elder Bates and I are working super hard, i mean we have spent straight up around 30 hours this week spiritual tracting! Praying, then being led to new areas and talking to everyone we can and knocking on doors that we feel prompted to. It's always a hilarious time going around talking with everyone you can. You come home at night with some great stories that's for sure! You never know what lies behind those random doors we knock on, it's always a surprise!  We have found a lot of new investigators this past month since we have been together, now we are just working on solidifying them. One of the strategies we have been using lately is giving out as many Book of Mormons that we can! We gave out 15 last week to only those who committed to read and pray about it! Then as we follow up with those people we can then see who is actually going to progress by keeping that commitment! One lady was having a really rough day and we left one with her and when we followed up with her she said it changed her day completely! Miracles! She was going to bring her family out to church with us yesterday but her little boy tripped and split his lip open right before church and they had to go to the hospital so they couldn't make it... pretty good excuse i guess... We'll let it slide this time:) Jk hopefully their family will make it out next week! Then there are other contacts we have that are not too solid... One lady said she would love to hear our message when her husband gets home, so we were all excited and went back that night! They invite us in, picture perfect family, perfect dog, perfect house, super smiley, fed us cookies, made juice for us, then took the their kids to the back room and put on a movie so they could listen to our message without any distractions! Holy shmoley! I felt like i was in the Truman Show and they were just acting it was so perfect with their smiles and such! Then they sit us down on the sofa and pull up two chair and sit right in front of us... Okay, too good to be true, it started freaking us out. Just then, once we started our message they pulled out their insanely marked scriptures and anti-Mormon literature to bash us and tell us how we are brainwashed and wrong for the next hour. It was definitely a chore to get out of there but eventually we made it out alive! Total set up! 

Anyways, like i said, you never know what experiences you'll obtain when knocking on random doors... but the Lord's work must progress and we will continue knocking! 

 This past week we have also been doing a lot of service. We helped a non-member build a fence in his backyard and we also helped another non-member paint a giant playhouse he just built for his kids in his backyard! Then yesterday we were asked by a new couple that just moved into the ward if we could help them paint their house this week! Professional Painters now? I think so! 

Thanks for helping me with that wallet situation haha. They should be mailing it to me this week. Just hold on to that other card until i get home. I should be fine until then. 

President Killpack!?! That's awesome! I'm super excited for that and that feels very good to me!

Also! I am so excited for Braden and Lynds! This week is super exciting for them! I wish i could stay in tune! Let me know for sure next week when he gets drafted to the Denver Broncos :) ROAD TRIP!

I love you all!

Talk to you again next week!

Love, Elder Brady

NO REGRETS

Ty's Email!

Sup Fam! 

This week was most totally triumphant! Elder Bates and I are having a super radical time here in Saugus, Cali! LOL. I can't believe it snowed there!? I'm forgetting what snow is like! We just finished playing sports and having a picnic at Central Park! The weather here is truly incredible. So i guess the big news for this week is that we had 9 of our investigators come to church! So we are blowing our goals out of the water right now! As for baptisms, they are coming soon! We just have to keep pushing them back right now because we feel we are rushing it and they need more time... Or else we could be baptizing every week! So I'll keep you posted on that, but we are excited to see them start coming through. We are hoping we will have some together while Elder Bates is still here. He only has 3 weeks now! Crazy! It's going by way too fast! He is originally from Northern Carolina but his family moved to American Fork one year before he came out on his mission! He is going back to BYU, Provo so I'll be able to keep in good contact with him as well! We are pretty stoked about that. I have never had a companion for only one transfer so it is feeling super short! It's crazy because my next companion is going to be the same way. One transfer is not enough time to get to know your companion in my opinion... 

Elder Ludlow came back and visited the mission with his parents and they tried to get a hold of me but i was on exchanges with the AP's and didn't get to see him... serious bummer. 

I did have a stake Presidency meeting with Pres. Hall and Pres. Lindberg this week! That was awesome! I love the stake Presidents i have served with! President Lindberg was the one whose wife is the sister of Sister Eyre! Or something like that... But when i saw him, he came right up to me and gave me a big hug and said i knew you would be back serving here with me! He is such a lovable guy! 

The last bit of news i have for you, unfortunately, is not very good... With all of the back to back exchanges we did this week i misplaced my wallet, I'm thinking probably around Wednesday and it hasn't shown up yet... So i was wondering if you could please just cancel my card from home and we will be going to the mission office today to cancel my mission card and figure out a way to get a new drivers license. But this is just a little trial because there has to be opposition in all things so with everything going so well, this is expected. haha. But thank you for sending that money with the package! That was very inspired! :) 

Well i got to go, but still love you all sooooooo much!

Have a great week! Keep reading Dad! You're the best!

The Church is true! The Book is Blue! and God is a Mormon! ;)

Love, Elder Brady

NO REGRETS

Saugus 2nd - General Confernce - Lots of LOVE

Hey Family! 

Things are going extremely well with us right now! I can't believe i forgot to mention in my last e-mail that we are living in a house! We live with the Saugus 3rd Elders as well! It's definitely the best missionary arrangement in the mission! We feel super spoiled. It's just us four with the house to ourselves. It's such a blast and to say the least, life is good :) 

It's Elder Bates, Me, Elder Shrum (who has been out for 6 months, from salt lake) who is training Elder Ballard (been out for 2 weeks, from Texas, but grew up in the Bahamas). So they are super Legit and us four have been having such a great time together! I forgot how much fun a 4 man Pad is... Starting in one and now finishing in one. The only thing different about this one is i love how mature they are. Everyone here is focused on the work and we all motivate each other and share our miracles/crazy stories of the day for a hilarious time. I have been catching myself literally laughing out loud at the overwhelming joy this whole experience is bringing. I already love these guys so much and it's only been two weeks! I have also been able to help out the Saugus 3rd Elders with the area and people to visit so it's been a very inspiring experience.  

Elder Bates and I attended another Zone Leader Council on Wednesday and then trained the zone last Friday for 3 hours and got very well acquainted with them already and feel we have great relationships with each one of them already! We have been doing 24 hour companion exchanges with quite a few of them already to get to know them better on a personal level. These missionaries are incredible! Elder Ballard is 22 and has such an amazing story about how he sacrificed everything to come out here on a mission and he is just the happiest guy to be a missionary right now! It's crazy, recently i have felt such a burning love that feels like it is just stuck in my chest making it feel like it's going to explode! I can't really describe it very well, but as i have been praying for more charity i have felt a taste of God's love he has for his children and how proud he is of his faithful missionaries. I also got a call from the Meza family this week and all the kids saying how much they missed having us around! As i talked to each of them on the phone for a second Mother Meza mentioned how it feels like her son is calling home from his mission. So many emotions! I'm not really the emotional type, but now as it is getting closer to the end, Heavenly Father is really pulling on my Heart strings with all these amazing relationships and experiences i have been so blessed to have during my mission. Elder Bates and i don't want to waste a moment since he only has 4 weeks left! We have made a rating system this past week of how effectively we are using our time and on average we are working as hard as we can for 90% of the days! When we have any free time we are quickly sharing messages with members and asking for referrals then off to the next place. We have been doing a lot of spiritual tracting when we don't have appointments and spent around 20 hours knocking this week! It's been a blast and we have had some really great experience from running into some that are atheist and yelling/lauging/cursing at us all the way to contacting others who start crying while telling us we have been an answer to their prayers as we teach them! Priceless experiences.  

I also wanted to mention that i got the package! I got a hold of Pres. Jex and he ran it up here to Santa Clarita and i was able to have a great visit with him at our house haha. The salsa is a major hit and we have all been trying to discipline ourselves to make it last the rest of this transfer! It's a serious matter around here and we treat it like gold, so thank you so much for that!  

Then lastly, we were spiritually filled with listening to General Conference again! We watched all the sessions at the stake center with the missionaries in our zone. It was hilarious, we compared all our notes and the inspirations we received to come up with what the theme for each of us was. At the end it was awesome to see all the new missionaries picking out all the cliche missionary work themes and then i was shocked to see that the majority of Elder Bates's and my notes was marriage and families!?! haha everyone seemed to get a kick out of that ;)  We were laughing so hard when we realized that we did this and shocked we are starting to think about this now....?  

P.s. i did get my first ticket a while ago and just hurried and paid it... Unfortunately i made a u-turn where i wasn't supposed to since it was in a "business area". Now i'm terrified of making a u-turn anywhere... But it was a cop who was definitely having a hard day or something because he was not a joy to talk to. Anyways though i was super shocked at the price when i logged onto the website! 250$ burned! For making one wrong turn in California... :( California is insanely expensive! We were confused when others were making that same u-turn but getting away with it even the members we were riding with! haha. But we think it was the lord's way of saying,"No, i assigned you elders to a bike area, and you are still driving cars all the time..." LOL> But now i am officially in a car area so it should be all good :) 

I love you all!

Have a great week!

Love, Elder Brady

20514 Caitlin Ln.

Santa Clarita, CA 91350

NO REGRETS

Transfer 16 info

APRIL FOOLS MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :)

Hey Family! 

So we are running super short on time and we just stopped by the Valencia mall Apple store to e-mail again just like the good ole days :) Can't miss writing my e-mail again, because last time it didn't turn out so pretty...haha.

Anyways, yes you have already heard the news! I am back up here is Saugus 2nd ward serving with Elder Bates! He is such a boss! Probably one of the best missionaries out here. We know each other very well already. Last year when i was in Newhall 2nd, he was serving in the Newhall 1st ward as an assistant and we would do exchanges and hang out all the time. We had milkshakes every sunday night at broher Rich's house. We were in the same zone, so all of those activities we did(marshmallow wars/zone t-shirts, etc.) he was there! We are super stoked to be serving together! We have had a great week this week already! We have 5 baptismal dates and 14 investigators we are teaching! President put us together so we can do some straight up HArD WoRk!!! President gave me an analogy and told me this would be perfect because he has felt that i have been sitting in a plane for the past couple of months and now i am just ready to get out and go running/sprinting around! So he put me in this area with Elder Bates and told us it will be fun to see 2 of his most experienced missionaries together. We are the most senior companionship in the mission! Elder Bates will show me the area this transfer, then go home... Then i'll show someone the area next transfer then go home... CrAzY! This seems to be a really great ward and i am excited to "sprint" around here! So here is the big news! We got to get going now we are planning another zone activity that starts in 10 minutes! We gotta be there! Rugby! :) I love you all! Have a great week! Tell Ludlow i love him! haha

Love Elder Brady

no regrets