Hello family and friends! all those I love!!!
the past 4/5 days have been sooooooooooo great!! I love my area soo much! and my trainer/companion is the greatest there has ever been! he is such a good missionary! and I am so greatful to be able to work with him! his name is Elder Chigede! he is from Zimbabwe!! one of the greatest people ever!! so this week! on friday we had a "program" haha it was really.... interisting! and I didnt understand half of it! haha oh well! we have a lot of investigatorswe are teaching and 9 of them have a baptisimal date set! soooooo awesome! I love this place and this mission more than I can say! so one of the recient converts, his name is victor, we were at the activity on friday and he comes up to us and says "this is my friend sulvester and he wants to learn more about the church and become baptized"! haha what!?!??? crazy right!! so the next day we go to victors house and sulvester is there so we got to know him and taught him the first disgussion. and then we challanged him to be baptized on the 3 of may! and he accepted!!! wha!!!!?!?!?!????!?!?!? super crazy! he is such an awesome guy though! his whole family is muslum, and yet he still wants to follow Jesus Christ and come into his fold! I think about myself and ask: "do I have that conviction an love enough for the savior that I would drop everything I have ever known and come and follow Him?" I sure hope so! in the MTC we had a devotional one of the first days that we were there and at the begining they asked us who is your first convert??? and no one really understood when they asked it. we all thought "well I havent met them yet!" hahahaha well atleast I thought that! but then as we went on and talked, we discovered that our first convert has to be ourselves! we cant go on a mission wanting peopleto believe on our words and follow the Savior if we have not already! we have to become converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and come unto him before we can do the same with others. aaahhhh!!!!!! I love being on a mission!! you just get to think about Christ all day and how to help others to came unto Him! something that has made a huge difference in my conversion to Christ is that every morning I get to study the scriptures for 2-3 hours every day!!!!!! it is like the best time of the day! cause as you are preparing to convert others, you are also converting yourself at the same time!
for anyone and everyone that reads this, GO ON A MISSION!!!!! if you havent yet, plan on it! if you arent planing on it, pray and ask God what you should do! (if you are a Male I canpromise you I can tell you the answer right now!) brothers and sisters, I love you all so very much!I am realizing that as you let room in your heart for the Savior we will kind of be like a baloon. your love and the gaining of the knowledge of him will will expand and expand untill He pushes every bad and Ungodly thing out of your heart and he will sanctify you and call you to his great work but we cant just het Him do all the work. He wont! we have to be doing the basics, daily prayer and scripture study! there was a talk given by David A. Bednar, in which He said: if you are looking for revelation on a certian topic, then you should buy or obtain a copy of the Book of Mormon. like the ones the missionaries hand out, write your testimony in the front, and then read through the whole book souly with that topic on your mind, mark it up and write in it just about that topic, and then write your new and improved testimony in the back of the book, and my the time you are my age you should have 40+ or so on a book shelf. and you will obtain an unshakable testimony that will be mounted on our rock, our redeemer who is Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior!(Helamen 5:12) do that for every topic you have a question about and even the ones you dont have a question about! I dont know about you but I definetly plan on doing that when I return home from my Mission! :DD (btw some of that David A Bednar stuff was my 2 cents added in! ;) another topic I would like to touch on is the topic of prayer! I was not very good at the whole prayer morning and night before I came on my mission! but I do it now and I can testify thatGod does listen to all of our prayers! nomatter if we feel worthy to pray or not! I did not think this was so before, but now I know thatprayer is an essential part of the day I dont care who you are the I know prays more than I do! and I know that I have prayed more on my mission in the last 2 weeks then I ever did before! prayer is an esential part to conversion and that is what we all need to be striving towards! because without it we can in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. (2 Nephi 31:last verse). the Lords work is hastening brothers and sisters. and we all need to rise to the challange, and help bring the Kingdom of God back on to this earth today!
I love you all so much! we really should have more time to email, cause there is soooo much more I want to tell you! but alas! we will have to wait till next week! again I love you all so very much! I know that I will not see you all for 2 years! but let us all press on and do the work that the Lord is continuously laying before us! let him guide our life! he will if wil let him. again, I love you all more than you all can know! God be with you till we meet again!
stay strong, continue on the path and press on. the Lord will work wonders though us.
yours, always faithful
Elder Michael Lawrence Brandt
