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Dear família,

CRAZY week for us in Maricá. Congrats to Ryan for being accepted at Gonzaga! That´s awesome they´ll be staying with the rest of the fam at home, and Certainly Natalie will love the company.

It was a relatively sad week in Maricá since my companion Elder Porfírio decided he would go home and no one could do anything about it. It was really tough for me to accept the decision he made, since I´ve had marvelous experiences during my mission, but he was certain that no one could change his mind.

But I´m keeping my head up and looking towards the bright future that we´ll have here in Maricá rather than looking behind. My new companion is a Texan named Elder Heidenreich. He´s from Dallas and knows where Longview is, so that´s cool. He had to go home for a surgery about a month ago, and after he recooperated, he came right back down to Brazil last week. He´s been serving for 7 months, and is super excited to get back to work after his month long break. He´ll stay with me for this week, and next week, Maricá will have two companionships! So I´ll be showing him the area, our investigators and members, and next monday, we´ll find out who our new companions are. I´m stoked to stay here in Maricá since I already have a huge love for this branch. I have no doubt that it will become a ward in the nw future now that the members have been learning our to help us do missionary work and fulfill their callings.

We had a change in the branch leadership, and we´re SUPER excited about the future here because of it! Our new branch president served as MISSION PRESIDENT in Recife, Brazil between the years 2002 and 2005. His name is Saul and has already put together some incredible plans for the members and misionaries have some great progress.

I wantto thank everyone who sent me words of encouragement this week. I don´t have enough time to read them right now, but I´ll print them out and read them on the bus ride home. I don´t have a ton of time right now to say much more that happened this past week, but I am truly grateful for the love that my wonderful family members and friends have shared with me. I´ve gained a great love for the Lord´s atonement in my life and mission and have become amazed at how much I´vegrown these past few weeks. Keep Spokane funky fresh and let everyone back at home know that I love them!

Tchau tchau,

Elder Braun

I left my camera at home and don´t have any way to show you all my pictures from this past week :(

Nobody Said It Was Easy

Dear family,

I´ll be straight up. This week was pretty rough. Not an easy week, that´s for sure. But you have to have some difficult weeks to be able to enjoy the rest of your time serving a mission, right? I don´t think there are lilacs here in Brasil, mom. I honestly don´t see many flowers here, but every now and then, there are people who have flower pots and grow them. I like to take my chance and smell them whenever possible.

Unfortunately, what we never would have expected, Jessica´s baptism fell through this past week. Elder Porfirio and I were so excited for her, especially her ability to recognize the spirit grow with every lesson we taught her and her family. But on Wednesday, she said she wasn´t sure she could get baptized anymore because she wasn´t sure she could keep every commandment. We promised her blessings, invited her to pray and read the Book of Mormon, but she still wasn´t feeling like it was the right thing for her. She didn´t return to church on sunday and we´ve had trouble reaching her by phone. Satan knows what will strengthen us, and for that reason, he has a powerful ability to tempt us right at our strongest moments. 

On the bright side, we were knocking doors close to our house last week and that family I told you about, Julia and Tiago, is an AWESOME family. They read the book of mormon and understood it! (That´s actually a really big miracle here) They even accepted baptism, but they weren´t able to come to church this past sunday because of a family emergency. They´re really interested and are truly seeking to understand our messages and applying the doctrine of Christ in their own lifes. 

I have a question for everyone at home. Anyone is invited to help me out, whether it be mom, dad, siblings, cousins, etc. We´ve been having difficulties involving members in our teaching and integrating of investigators in the church. There aren´t many members here in Maricá, and none of them have cars, and very few live close to the church, where we´ve been encouraged to work. Every time this week we invited a member to visit someone with us, knock doors with us, they weren´t available and they said they´d talk to us when they would be. When we call back, they usually say the same thing. We haven´t had much luck with investigators wanting to visit again because frankly, they don´t like it. The members don´t talk to them, instead of a beautiful chapel, it´s an old, rented party house, and they don´t feel like it´s the restored Church of Jesus Christ we´ve been teaching them about. If anyone has helpful advice, I would be sooo grateful. I love this area so much, but there needs to be some changes here if it´ll ever progress enough to become a ward.

Please don´t forget to pray for me. At times I just don´t know what more I can do to help these wonderful people feel the same love for this restored gospel that I have. Please pray for my companion as well. He´s having difficulties and could really use some help understanding his purpose as a missionary and the sacred significance of his calling. I know that my Redeemer lives, and that through his atonement, we can receive relief and comfort from our trials and infirmities. It was never easy for him, so we have no reason to think that our life or trials we pass will be easy for us. I love you all and wish you the best!

Love,

Elder Braun 

Long Time, No See

Mother's Day 2014-Google Hangout with the Family

Hey Family,

It´s been a good 16 hours since we had a wonderful chat. I guess that would explain why I didn´t receive an email from home, but there´s no hard feelings. I honestly have no idea what to say in this letter since I told yáll about everything that happened this week, but I guess there´s nothing wrong with receiving it again in written form. 

Elder Porfirio and I were doing a lot of door-knocking this week, and we found a great, MARRIED, family named Tiago and Julia. They have been looking for a church and had never really found one that felt right to them. They accepted to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Wha-What!

Jessica accepted baptism and is preparing to be baptized this sunday (18th)!!! We are super happy for her and the progress she has had with her parents, who only need to get married in order to be baptized as well. Things have been going super well for us here in Maricá, and hopefully everything keeps improving.

I really don´t know what else to say, but Mother´s day was awesome! We always joke with people when they ask ´´why don´t you guys have holidays like the rest of us?´´ and we tell them, ´´as missionaries, the only holidays we have are Christmas and Mother´s Day´´. Haha. I love you all and wish you a wonderful week! The gospel blesses familes! Let´s strengthen our family while we share the gospel with everyone they know so thay can have the same happiness that we have!

Love,

Elder Braun

Time to get Louco

Me and Elder Porfírio and a member family in Maricá.

Hey guys!

I hear that Melanie is roommates with Katie at BYU? Like, Melanie my cousin and Katie my best friend? Is that true? If so, DANG that´s cool. How´s it going for everybody at home? What does this new company do that Dad will be working for? At times people here in Brasil like to ask what my parents do for a living, and it would be nice to have some sort of idea what Esterline specializes in. Way to go Dad!

Like I said last week, I´m training now and my new son´s name is Elder Porfírio! He´s from a city called Sobral in Brazil, it´s close to Fortaleza, and I like to call him my little fireball. He arrived here in Rio super animated to work, he has a great knowledge of the scriptures and the missionary lessons, and we´ve been working hard since day 1. And some miracles have definitely resulted! He´s a convert, was baptized when he was 16, served in the army in Brazil, and is 22 years old. Weird, huh? Training a guy who´s more than 2 years older than me? But he´s seriously great. He was super scared when I told he we were serving in a branch, but he´s already been a great help. 

We had a guy get reactivated this Sunday! His name is Adalberto and when I was still with Elder Evans, he stopped us one day on the street and said ´´I´, mormon!  The church is here in Maricá?´´ He´s from Recife, but moved to Rio because he had cancer and had to have serious treatment, but he´s starting to recover. I gave him one of my white shirts and ties, and he was super grateful to have found us so that he could return to church and continue being nurtured by the good word of God! He was an awesome miracle for us, and it makes me wonder how many there must be in this giant area that are members who never were able to find the branch here in Maricá

After the wonderful feedback from our activity last week, we´ve decided to have activities on a more regular basis in Maricá so that members can invite their friends, the Missionaries can receive more references, and more people can receive knowledge of the Restoration of the Gospel. Our next activity will be on the 24th of May, and we´re gonna have a dinner at the church house with a great message planned. The members are all really excited and we´re happy about that.

A man named Paulo that has been investigating the church for about 20 YEARS accepted baptism! His wife is a member (who has already received her endowment), as well as their daughter. He never was willing to give up drinking, but with the help of his doctor who told him he needs to stop because of his growing problem with diabetes, he has finally stopped. He has been calling himself a member of the church for years, has even taught the Gospel Principles class a few times. We have his baptism marked for this Saturday, the 10th of May.

I love you all very much and am SOOOOO excited to talk to you on Sunday. You guys in Washington get out of church at 2, right? I´ll try and call around 2:15ish or 2:20 (6:15ish) Here in brasil. I´ll be able to use Google+ to talk to the siblings who are interested to talk to me too! If Google+ doesn´t work, I´ll use Skype as my backup plan, so have that up and ready just in case. If Skype doesn´t work, I´ll just scream, maybe it´ll be loud enough for you to hear. Can´t wait for the 11th!

Love,

Elder Braun

Making it T-RAIN in Maricå

Hey family!

First of all, the title of my last letter was something like ´´All dry in Maricá´´. I didn´t realize until after we left the internet house that I never explained why that was the title. We passed about 4 days last week without water in our house. For whatever reason, it just stopped. Our neighbors said they knew how to fix it, and then they left on vacation for easter, so we were like... well, now what? Eventually a big water truck showed up last tuesday, and we were happy :) Back to taking showers, clean dishes, clean clothes, etc. All the little things you don´t realize that water does in your life.

This week was AWESOME, and with transfers this week, I´m happy to say that I´ll be STAYING in Maricá and I´m training again! Wooohooo I loved training Elder Acevedo back in Ramos, so I´m excited to be training again. I´m pretty dang said that Elder Evans is leaving though. Every day was a blast with him, we got along really well, and we are finally getting the gears running in this branch, so hopefully we´ll be able to continue having miracles with him on the other side of the mission. I´ll find out who my companion is tomorrow, so you all will find out next letter who it will be!

The branch here in Maricá had it´s first activity since missionaries started working here 7 months ago! Elder Evans and I planned with the help of one of our leaders a Family night last saturday night, and tons of people showed up! We were kind of worried that lots of the members would have a hard time attending since the area is pretty big and it wasn´t a sunday, but we had a good attendance of both investigators, less active members and members as well. And on sunday, we had an attendance of 42! We had 5 inactive members return to church that we had been visiting, including Zaira, Maria Parreira, Maria josé, Ana, and Gabriella! We were so happy to have them return to church.

Cremilda was able to attend church with her husband Luiz! We´ve been teaching her for maybe a month now, we had marked a baptismal date with her, but it fell through because of difficulties she had being able to come to church. Now that she visited, and she loved it, we´ll hopefully be able to involve her more with the members and teach both her and her husband so that they can prepare themselves to be baptized as a family. One great footstep on the pathway to eternal life!

Mom had some questions for me to answer, ask and ye shall receive!

What is a typical lunch for me? 

Here in Maricá, there´s no typical lunch. Not exactly, at least. About 2-3 times we´ll eat with a member and their family. Usually it´s Black beans with rice and a salad and some sort of meat, like grilled chicken or beef. People here love juice or guaraná, too, so that´s usually part of the meal. When we don´t have lunch with a member, we´ll usally just eat noodles at home with sauce and meat. Sometimes we cook stroganoff too. That stuff´s the best.

Breakfast or Dinner?

Dinner: It pretty much doesn´t exist here. At least for missionaries. We keep working. For breakfast, I like to eat a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Sometimes I eat oatmeal too.

How are my shoes holding up?
They are doing fine. I´ve got two pairs that I periodically switch between using. They should both last together at least another 6-8 months. I´m not too worried about it for now.

Advice for the missionary class?

I´m not sure if you´ve already taught about this, but a lesson about prayer would be awesome. And invite them to do an activity where each person pairs up with another person, asks them about each member of their family, then say a prayer, guided by the spirit, directed towards the other persons family. I remember a lesson where Bro. and Sis. Jamison did that, and up until today, it has played a huge role in my mission and I remember it still today. It really helps me to truly pray with the spirit and ask to bless each family that I meet everyday.

I love you all so very much! The Lord really has blessed me here in MAricá, and I´m so excited for what he still has in store for me. Sorry this letter came late and seems a little rushed, I didn´t have much time and had a training during the day today.

Love,

Elder Braun

Marica's All Dry

Our zone leaders crashing in Maricá (Elder Van Wagenen on the left, Elder Sea on the right of me)

Dear Family,

Thank you sooooo much for the birthday emails and messages! Holidays and birthdays are very different during the mission, but your love and thoughtfulness were greatly appreciated. Parabens for Jeff for the PR!! 3:24 in the marathon! That´s incredible! He´ll totally be ready to break 3 hours when he runs down here in Rio... Ha. Mom has an iPhone.... no I´m not jealous at all. It´s not like us missionaries use a small flip phone with a limited number of credits to call people. I kid. That´s way cool news, especially with the new phone plans. I smiled when I read that :) 

As far as money goes, things got a lot better this week since the relief society president was at church and I was able to meet her and coordinate lunches with members this week. She lives super far away (2 hours by car from the church) and she was visiting her mom in Belo Horizonte who had been having health issues.Yesterday was a very difficult day for Elder Evans and I. We marked to have 17 investigators, members less-active, and recent converts to visit the church yesterday. We called the day before, visited people yesterday morning, but only one of them showed up to church. It´s a tradition here in Brasil to party the night before Easter, and we think that may have affected it. Many active members also did not show up, so the attendance was less than expected. Elder Evans and I ended up teaching the sunday school class, and we gave talks during sacrament meeting. 

After a very difficult and slightly dissapointing attendance in the branch yesterday, Elder Evans and I did some hardcore planning with the leadership to get some real results coming. Home teaching and visiting teaching here was completely non-existent, and members here have problems trusting other members because of a history of gossip and rumors, but we´ve set some goals to help everything out. With two holidays this week, we planned to visit investigators and less active members with the branch pres, the relief society president are visiting less active sisters for those two full days,and the EQ pres with a representative from the stake will visit lots of families. Elder Evans and I also have been planning a ´´Family Home Evening´´ at the church building this saturday. The first activity here since missionaries started serving in the branch 6 months ago. I´ve never planned an activity for an entire branch/ward, but the Spirit has been helping us out get everything organized and know how to help strengthen these wonderful people here.

For my birthday, our zone leaders helped us out do a weekly planning to help this branch and everyone we´ve been teaching. I got pretty overwelmed, because there´s like a bajillion things that needs to get done. We´re working on it one thing at a time, and sooner than later, Marica will explode with families to baptize, complete, and reactivate! We also visited Jaqueline and Alexandre for my birthday and they made me a cake! Pictures will certainly be included.

Goodness we found an AWESOME family on saturday. We were just done teaching an awesome lesson to a family, Willis and Ivana, and as we left the house, a guy was driving by and stopped us and said he was one of Pres Limas counselors (I didn´t even know he had them), and had just left his brother in laws house in Maricá. He showed us where this guy lived and we met Adenilson, a less active member who had never been to the church in Maricá. but moved here recently. We met his wife Adriane (sadly, they aren´t married, but have plans to do so) and their kids Gabriel, Gustavo, Isabel, and Guilerme (15, 13, 6, 3years old). We briefly taught about our families and who the gospel bless them. It was so powerful! Adenilson gave the closing prayer, and felt he felt the spirit sooo strong. He said it was like he was lost but was found again. Elder Evans and I did a Drake and Josh style ´´Hug me Brother!!!´´ after that lesson. We were so happy and hope to see them progress towards being married and sealed as a family!

I love this work! At times, my faith gets tested, but just as Ether 12:6 teaches, that is necessary for us to truly be converted in this restored gospel. Happy week of birthdays and Easter to everyone from Brasil!!!!

Love,

Elder Braun

Me and some birthday bake

PS I forgot to add that Pres Lima called me this week letting me know that a lady named Andrea that I was teaching in Ramos was baptized last week! I´m positive I talked about her in one of my letters back in February.

Twenty Times the Blessings

They were very receptive to our message of the Restoration of Jesus Christ´s Church.

Dearest family,

So I turn 20 years old this week which is cool. I remember what I was doing on my 18th and 19th birthdays still. I worked a 7 hour shift at Dairy Queen from 3 until 10 when I turned 18 and took 3 finals at BYU for my 19th birthday. So I have no doubt that this birthday here in Maricá will be great. I love it here!

Congratulations to Natalie for passing the driving test! I guess I´m the only one who didn´t pass it on the first try. Shame on me.

This week was cool. I´m excited to let yáll know how it went. Elder Evans and I were grateful to have reactivated a family here in Maricá! I wasn´t able to get a picture with them yet, I´ll get that soon. It´s a family of a mom and dad (who aren´t married yet, but we´re working on that with them) And their names are Liviane and Wescley. Liviane has two sons Lucas and Felipe who were both baptized when she lived in Fortaleza, where she joined the church. After they moved here, they kept going to church, but the members here in Maricá weren´t as friendly as they were in Fortaleza, and after they had a baby, no one visited them, which made them a bit dissapointed. But Liviane still has a big testimony of the church and the Restoration of the Gospel. They all have a huge desire to go to the temple to be sealed as a family, so we´re thrilled to have been able to meet them. Liviane has already helped us by giving us references and helping us teach some of her neighbors. Unfortunately, she lives really long away, so we can´t visit them super often. Only once or twice a week since it costs a lot to take the buses there and uses up a lot of time.

Which reminds me. Money is super tough here in Maricá. All of our district meetings and most of the people we teach that are progressing require us to get multiple buses to visit them. We also don´t receive lunch from members as often as we would in a normal ward. Only 2-3 times a week, so with the little money we have, we have to use to get buses and buy ourselves food. If there´s anyway I could receive a little bit of help while I´m still here in Maricá, it would be extremely appreciated. I don´t like to complain, but I would be super grateful for a little bit of help.

We were able to follow up with our visit that we had with Cremilda, and it was great! She said she read 2 times the chapter we left for her to read in the Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 31), and she loved it! She went to get us a cup of water really quick and Elder Evans and I did a Valerie-style happy dance for like 5 seconds. We taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she accepted baptism! We´ll help her prepare to get baptized on the 3rd of May. Here in Maricá, it´s pretty uncommon to find people who are willing to dedicate themselves to a particular church. They usually just visit whatever one´s closest to them when they feel like they need more Jesus in their life, so we jump for joy when someone recognizes the importance of keeping God´s commandments and making sacred covenents with him by the proper authority. What a great birthday present!

I love you all! We have a cool lesson planned to teach Jaquline and Alexandre this friday on my birthday. My hope is that as a present for me, they´ll both return back to going to church every week while they are getting ready to be married and baptized. Elder Evans and I will be praying our brains out, that´s for sure. Have a great week full of birthdays!!! 

Love, 

Elder Braun