Little Miracles

Sup Fam!

So i'm just sitting here chillin', shootin the breeze, trying to figure out how to write a so totally radical e-mail to you peeps...

Jk. I don't actually talk like that,,,,yet ;) But anyways, this past week has been awesome! Unfortunately, James's baptism got pushed back to next week because they moved to a different apartment and it felt too rushed so hopefully things have settled down and they will be ready this Sunday. Besides this, we had some more miracles this week! We gave one of the sister missionaries investigators a blessing and he has been investigating the church for about 7 years and still hasn't received an answer about baptism... Elder Ludlow gave the blessing and right after he felt the spirit super strong and we talked about baptism then left and went on with the rest of our day not thinking too much about it. Then that night the sister missionaries in our district called us and told us that he got his answer from the blessing earlier and he wants to get dunked now! So the sisters went back over the next day and set a date with him for Feb. 3rd! The priesthood is real!!!

We also picked up 3 more awesome investigators this past week.  We have been becoming very good friends with, Franco, a 27 year old Filipino guy. We started up playing basketball on Wednesdays again! He has been coming to church every week for the past 4 weeks! We are thinking about setting a date with him as well when we meet with him tonight. He is going to Utah tomorrow to visit his girlfriend and i told him to say hi to you guys! You guys would love him, he's so legit.

We have also just been trying to exercise more faith and pay attention to the little miracles around us, they're everywhere! Whenever we are led to an apartment complex where we can't get in, because it has a security gate, we know we ended up there for a reason so we decide to pray for a miracle! Just then, as we begin to pray we get interrupted by someone on the inside getting the prompting to check their mail or something and let us in! Coincidence? I think not! So just cool miracles like that :) haha

Lastly, one more "miracle" i witnessed this past week was when we went bowling as a zone and i definitely bowled the best game of my life! 180 you say? nope, higher!.... 200 you say? nope, higher!..... 220 you say? HIGHER! .... 233 you say? ding ding ding we have a winner! The miracles you witness that only seem to happen as a missionary make me laugh :)

Anyways, things are still going great in our little Trio! They met with President this week and President said they were doing fantastic! And it made his week with the improvements he saw in them. We didn't notice because these changes seem very gradual to us so it was nice to get an outside perspective! I didn't get to meet with him because i was on exchanges that day working in Encino with the ZL's... It's hilarious though how attached us three have gotten to each other. Right when i returned back the next day i was so happy to see them, and they ran up to me and hugged me saying,"Brady! Don't ever leave us again!"

 

Thank you so much for you letter Grandma and Grandpa Brady! You guys are awesome! And to answer some questions, we attend church from about 7:30- 3:00 in and out on average covering both wards. The 1st ward starts at 9, and the YSA ward usually starts at 11:30 depending on how many show up haha... It's a big day! The address to our church building is

17101 Plummer St.

Northridge, CA 91325

Love you all!

Love Elder Brady

no regrets

Best Trio Ever!

Hey Fam!

Sorry to hear about the "news" this week... i wanted to call you guys and President Hall told me i could but i decided it would be better not to... Elder Yovanno and I have become really close in this past month together and now Elder Ludlow is with us and as you know we are already super close and it is so good to be serving with him again. When people heard about our Trio that we have going on here, the rumors have spread throughout the mission like wildfire and missionaries are calling us with jealousy saying that it's not fair we all get to be together and now have the funnest companionship in the mission...haha. I believe that statement is true as well! We are having a blast and i am happy to say that they don't want to go home anymore! I just feel like we could do a lot better on the missionary work side of things. We are making improvements though! We sat down and set some goals of what we want to accomplish and we are all going to read the book of Mormon this transfer together. We read 15 pages a day and have awesome discussions on what we read, the book of mormon is working miracles for us right now! This stuff is pretty personal stuff that i am telling you, but this will be the first time they have finished the entire book of mormon so we are all super excited! So as hard as it is for me to not be finding all those new investigators out there as i could be, i am at least glad to say that i am helping my companions become more converted to Jesus Christ. Which leads back to another one of my favorite quotes, "no matter how many sheep you find, don't lose any of the shepherds!" I have seen some great things just this past week with Elders Yovanno and Ludlow, they are on fire right now and we are all just feeding off of each others energy. Oh! Also, the package came! It was in our leasing office for a couple days! Elder Yovanno says thank you so much! He loves you guys! I told him, yeah they're pretty awesome, i love them too :)

I also sent the shorts and shirt back last Thursday-ish and placed the sizes that i think would work best in the package. Hopefully that makes it there! I am so sick of Post office drama!

P.s. i bought a Bocce set that was on sale for $20! The missionaries are definitely starting to like playing it!

I love you guys! have a great week and focus on the positives! It works! :)

Love, Elder Brady

ooooooNoRegretsooooooo

Transfer 14

Hey Family, sorry this is going to be short today. Things are getting super crazy around here...

Things have been going really well for Elder Yovanno and I this week! We have had some awesome spiritual experiences together. One of which we were teaching an 11 year old black kid whose mom is a member but he is not. As we were teaching him we wanted to find out what was holding him back from getting baptized? After teaching him how to follow Jesus Christ's example and the happiness that gospel brings he got really excited and was showing some real interest! Then when we asked him if he would get baptized he was hesitant again... come to find out, he is just scared of going under the water and didn't want to do it. We decided to give him a blessing to see what would happen, so Elder Yovanno performed it, and right after the blessing James looked up at me and i then asked,"Well James, how do you feel now?" Then James answers,"Not scared!" MIRACLE! Heavenly Father literally just took that fear from him! Then we set a date for 2 weeks from now (20th) and he agreed! He just wants both of us in the font with him for a little "comfort" and we told him we could do that. I told him that Elder Yovanno is a really good baptizer so he wants him to do it! This will be Elder Yovanno's first time performing a baptism! I am so excited to be apart of this, i know this will change both of their lives forever.

So besides these awesome experiences and seeing Elder Yovanno feel the spirit and exercise the Priesthood numerous times, this isn't even the big news for this past week...

I got another call from Pres this week and he really pumped me up on the phone for a while thanking me for everything i have been doing and basically gave me a big head. I was just confused why he called to just tell me all this and give me compliments, then i finally came to that conclusion... all in a nut shell, he told me he has been working with another struggling missionary for the past couple weeks who almost went home this past month... This missionary doesn't have any motivation right now and wants to go home but he only has 3 months left! He told me that he would like to stay if me and him were companions... So this is where him buttering me up comes into play, he is now giving me another assignment... to help out another missionary. He recognized that i am already on an important assignment so he wants to put him with us in a Tripanionship! I asked who it was and he said Ludlow. Right when i heard that i got so happy! I love Elder Ludlow so much and was one of my favorite companions! We always fantasized about being comps again but it didn't seem accompishable! But he definitely pulled some strings to make this work! Haha. This is going to be so interesting! We are not supposed to know until the transfer meeting but president wanted to make sure i was okay with it. I told him "DEFINITELY!"

So now we got to get ready to equip our apartment with things of 3 for when we pick him up tomorrow! We still haven't done laundry and we're helping the sisters in my district move to a different apartment for more sister to move into our district and we got an appointment at 7:30 so we got to go!

Love ya!

Love Elder Brady

--No Regrets--

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 ~`~`