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 ~`~`

Thanksgiving

Sup Fam!

So thank you so much for the awesome packages! Right after Elder Johnson and I finished talking at a baptism, President Jex came over to me and pulled me aside as gave me the surprise packages! So unfortunately, I didn't get to see Bill, but all the missionaries sure were jealous when Pres. Jex hooked me up haha. I feel like I have a lot of connections right now after serving around California for a year and a half. Definitely feel like these people are my extended family out here. So we got transfer calls this week and we are... staying together! Yes! Still keeping it up with being for each of my companions for 2 transfers or more! I feel like just 6 weeks wouldn't be enough time to get to know someone anyways. So we are super happy about that! We will be together for Christmas and New Years! Nice!

This week has been super chaotic... Started off with knocking around on random street doors and coming across a bunker house with "gate keepers". So of course we love mysterious/potentially awkward situations, so we knocked on and talked with the gatekeeper... long story short he let us in and a bunch of his buddies were inside camping out in tents and it looked like a giant fort house! It was so awesome! And of course they were playing PS3 and Xbox games haha. But after we finished hanging out with them we came to find out that they were a socialist group that was rebelling against the government/banks and were on "strike" camping out in their foreclosed home "for a total of 87 days now". Then on our way out they had to hurry and slide their gate closed and lock down because cops were coming down the road. The cops warned us not to go near there because they are very dangerous people... needless to mention that we were just inside hanging out with them for a while having a great conversation about God and that they were super nice... Crazy experiences as a missionary.

Then on Thanksgiving morning we were having a Mexican turkey bowl activity where we play soccer instead of football. And right after we finished we get a call from president needing assistance from us. One missionary got emergency transferred so elder Yovanno joined elder Johnson and I this past week. So we were in a Trio this past week! It has been so much fun! Definitely a week to remember. Long story short, we have been covering 3 wards with Elder Yovanno this past week. Van Nuys 1st, Northridge 1st, and the Northridge YSA ward. Talk about a crazy Sunday yesterday! haha and a Thanksgiving night to remember with 3 Thanksgiving dinners, one in each ward! This week has been super draining but Elder Yovanno will get a new companion tomorrow at the transfer meeting.

Lastly, Rhenz is still getting baptized this Sunday! He is super solid! He wants us to help him so he can serve a mission too! He asked me if I would confirm him on Sunday! I have done quite a few baptisms but this will be my first time confirming someone a member of the Church! So I am super excited about that! Well I got to get going but I'll talk to you again very soon!

Love ya!

Love, Elder Brady

---NO REGRETS---

Thanksgiving!

Aloha!

Thank you for all those great letters! Sounds like you guys are definitely staying busy at home! I can't believe Lynds and Braden are going to move here to L.A.!  That's crazy! Definitely a lot different from Utah... just look at the picture I sent dad when he receives his birthday gift this week haha. Ridiculous, and that's just a taste of your in-town "scenery" around here... Anyways, this week is going to be a short e-mail. We have transfers coming up this week and one of our sisters is getting transferred early so we have to help her out today. She is going to the grand land of Valencia! She is Korean and they need her to open a new area up in Santa Clarita!

This week, an awesome member is going to feed us on Thanksgiving Day! So we are super pumped about that.

Our investigator, Rhenz, is doing very well and is ready to get baptized on Dec. 2! Elder Johnson and I have really been having a lot of fun here in the valley. We also were helping at the mission office and we played our cards right with the office staff and we scored a new car because they love us so much! Our last car was a beat up valley car with 50,000+ miles on it! So we got a new 2013 Cruz! It's awesome and all the missionaries are super jealous of our "connections" :) . Also one more thing I will mention is that we had an "operation gratitude" this past week! Where volunteers throughout the community came together to make care packages and stuff for the National Guard! We made some parachute bands, and most importantly, sorted tons of candy! With all the candy that was donated we could have filled up my entire room with it! But we had to go through all that was donated to make sure it is legitimate. We found a couple of toys and such we had to take out as well as anything that would symbolize a body part because it could be "traumatizing". So we probably spent over 2 hours sorting hand fulls of candy and throwing it into trailers. Epic.

Sorry, I have to go! We are going to have a California snowball fight zone activity! (Aka. socks full of flower) Love you all!

Love, Elder Brady

No regrets

Granada Hills

Hiya! So this week has been super busy for Elder Johnson and I! We got the GPS and it is so helpful thank you!!! We made some trips up to Santa Clarita for ZLC, and i am really starting to like those! It was so much fun to see all the other zone leaders serving around the mission! Kunz goes home in 2 weeks! Dang!!! Same with my father, Elder Kennard! Crazy stuff... very sad. 

This week we set 2 more baptismal dates with a father and a son! December is looking like a great month for multiple baptisms so we are lovin life right now! Elder Johnson and I are really kicking things off well, we are working hard and having tons of fun! We had companionship exchanges with the Elders in Northridge YSA ward this week that are covering the whole valley and we visited a referral up in Topanga/woodlin Hills area (aka the richest area in the mission) and that is such a nice area! As we were driving up through the hills this elder i was with took me to the top where you could see the whole valley and then you turn around and you could see downtown L.A. off in the distance and the Beach/Ocean! It was crazy to see how close we really are to all that stuff! Oh haha and come to think of it, on that JPS, it listed a previous search of Anaheim (Aka Disneyland!) as only 30 miles away! Our zone is awesome. We trained them last Friday and it's a whole lot easier keeping a group of 12 under control rather than 22! We have also been having a lot of fun and we have been bringing basketball games here every Monday for those who want to play, and it's becoming tradition now! Elder Johnson is... you guessed it, my best friend. Just like the past 5 companions of mine have been. We have so much in common too it's crazy! He played football as well loves Michael Jordan apparel! We even both have Mosiah 2:17 as our missionary plaque! It's hilarious how much we have in common but i will just leave it at that for now. :) 

Sorry we've been super busy today and i proposed the idea of making zone shirts and everyone is super excited so we'll probably be doing that here as well. So we got to go now! 

I love you all! Have a great day! Talk to you again in a couple minutes! (1 week in missionary time:) 

Love, Elder Brady

no regrets

The update

Hello family!

Thank you so much for those pictures! I'm glad you guys had a great Halloween! We all laughed so hard when I pulled up that Halloween jib jab card from Braden... I definitely was not expecting that. We did do the monster mash pretty well though! Our Halloween was pretty fun as well! We were not allowed to go out after six so our whole zone got together and we played games, got pizza, and just partied! Our missionaries in this zone are awesome! It's so fun hanging out with them. I'm still trying to get the hang of this ward... It's all over the place ha. They are mostly off doing their own thing and I think Elder Johnson and I need to do some work to gain their trust or something because we only have like 4 dinners this whole month! Very different from Valencia, where they were fighting over spots to feed us for even the upcoming months! Well, we'll just have to change that somehow and show them how awesome missionaries are!

This past week we had some miracles! We have been teaching a less active family trying to get them to come back to church and their extended family are not members. The less active work is golden here! So while we were teaching, a 17-year-old Filipino kid named Rhenz, came in and joined in the lesson wearing a Kevin Durrant Jersey. So we started talking about basketball and we ended up playing some pick up games with him. Long story short, after getting to know him and becoming friends with him, he now has a baptismal date for December 2nd! We were trying to figure out if he was really serious about baptism and we invited him to come to church. Then yesterday, Rhenz showed up, and the less active family we have been working with, brought him! Magical! Two birds with one stone! So the work here is starting to pick up. :)

This is the major event of this week, and mom, don't worry, something that I have come to find out is that change is a good thing! Just like how Pres. Monson changed the missionary age limit... shocking at first, different, but it's perfectly what Heavenly Father wants for us and it ALWAYS works out. Also, we can't get too comfortable, we need new experiences! If they only fixed things when they were broken, I would probably still be in Saugus 3rd with Norton where everything seemed to be going perfectly! But now I was there and now I am here and wouldn't change these choice experiences for the world. Your counselor needs that new experience and will do great at her new calling!

 So I can't believe Logan is 2... That's crazy. Mom, I’m glad you liked that card, it definitely was one of my favorites! Dad, you too have something special coming your way this month! ;) Oh and a GPS would be Super nice to have, but I don't need a new one... If I got a new one, I should have gotten it at the beginning of my mission... but it's pretty late for that! I could just give back your GPS when I come home to save money!... just thought I would throw that idea out there.

Well, this is all for now! Keep Reading, Praying, and going to church cause that's how we endure to eternal life!

Love, Elder Brady

No Regrets

Mom's Birthday/Halloween

Happy Birthday Momma Brady!

I have a surprise coming your way in the mail mom so get excited!!!

This email is going to be a little bit shorter because we are going to carve pumpkins as a zone in a half hour...

But to answer a couple of questions, Elder Johnson is from Spokane, Washington and goes home one month before me in May! Crazy! Time is flying!

Our zone is called the Granada Hills Zone which consists of Hollywood, Van Nuys, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Mission Hills, Granada Hills, and even the Northridge area... We only have 12 missionaries down here, in our zone, and all of them except for the Sherman Oak Elders have a car. So it's a lot different from good ol' Valencia with 23 missionaries! haha. We have the most diverse missionaries in the mission down here in many diverse areas. We have an Arabic Elder, a Korean Sister and Elder, and 3 Polynesian sisters; one from new Zealand with an awesome accent, one from Hawaii, and another from Tonga! The Van Nuys ward is probably 60% Filipino, 30% Latino, and 10% white haha... So we don't know how we managed to get placed here but it's definitely a fun experience!

Our ward had a "trunk or treat" Halloween Party last Saturday and so Elder Johnson and I took advantage of the situation since we have a car and joined in! We threw NBA Jerseys on over our Proselyting clothes and passed out pictures of Jesus, Pass-a-long cards along with a bag of candy! Everyone seemed to get a kick out of it and wanted pictures with us and our trunk set up. I thought the best part is when we would get the kids all excited to get a picture of Jesus in their basket and they run off and tell their friends, "Hey you guys! I got a picture of Jesus!" "NO way! I did too!" "Yes! WOW!" haha

So we are looking forward to Halloween on Wednesday and Elder Johnson's birthday tomorrow! Party week whoohoo!

I am also thinking to get a GPS... i bought a map a couple days ago but this Valley is super nuts! We have actually been getting a lot of questions that have been arising from the combination of Romney running for President and the new "Book of Mormon Play" on Broadway showing in L.A. (not sure if you have heard about that but it's super popular here with signs everywhere!) But as President Hinckley said,"Any publicity is good publicity!"

Well this is the major updates for now!

Love you all! Have a great week!

Love, Elder Brady

Van Nuys 1st Ward

Hello Family!

So I got my transfer call and it was exactly what I hoped would happen! I am now serving in the legendary Valley that I have heard so much about my entire mission! The San Fernando Valley, which is what our mission is actually named after so I am stoked! Come to find out, its even more ghetto than East Lancaster! I didn't think that was possible!

They also put me with an awesome missionary whom I am already really great friends with! Elder Scottie Johnson! He has been out one month longer than me so we have seen/hung out with each other a lot in the past year and a half. Right before the transfer meeting we were talking to each other how awesome it would be to serve together and we had our fingers crossed, and it actually happened! Elder Johnson has only been in the valley for one transfer and so we are both getting thrown into the "pit" together. They have a lot of different nicknames for places down here that we are coming to find out. They also say that Van Nuys is the Heart of the Valley, so we will get the full effect really quickly :) The first night I was here, there was a car chase where a cop slammed a car into a barrier and 12 cop cars showed up to the scene where the victim started shooting at the cops so they all unloaded back, destroying this poor car... The missionaries in the ward next to us witnessed it and they had to bear testimony of what happened and couldn't leave the area until the cops were done "cleaning up"...

It's interesting how I feel total peace and comfort with where I am at serving Heavenly Father at this time, even though it's a super sketchy place, I know nothing can harm us when we are doing the work of the lord. It'll all work out as we walk down the streets in our little spirit bubble ;)

Elder Johnson and I just got called as the new Zone leaders in the Granada Hills Stake. One of the last zone leaders down here just went home and the other one got transferred so they just changed the zone leader area from the Sherman Oaks ward to the Van Nuys ward now. We have both served as ZL's for 6+ months now so we feel that we are going to do great together. He was a ZL up in Ridgecrest area (bishop/mammoth)!

Well, I feel like I am going to get some crazy stories and experiences serving down here in the Valley... I can't wait to show you guys these areas where I'm serving... It'll blow your mind. My mind is currently in shock. I feel like I am seriously in a movie at times, being in the world but not of it!

Oh! Yesterday we had our usual 7 AM meeting with the stake presidency and this one was so much better! President Jex is the stake president that we get to work with! We had a lot to talk about its funny odds that I am actually here like we envisioned before the mission started! President Jex is such a cool guy. Also, after I bore my testimony in my new ward, people came up to me and like half of them had some kind of connection to draper! One even asked if I was related to an Andy Brady? I was like heck yes I am! I am still a learning the names of the 200 people I met yesterday, but I am sure they will become "extended family" to me as well, just like in previous areas...

Things are going really well! I love you all! Hope you have a great week!

P.s. Touchdown Jesus and First down Moses was hilarious! Thanks for that.

Love, Elder Brady

---NO REGRETS---