February 18, 2013

Hi Family and Friends,

I feel a little better.  I went to Florianópolis on Friday to take care of the electricity problem because president was busy and kept forgetting.  So I got it taken care of and sometime this week we will have electricity again.  I am happy.  I can now save the food I buy in a refrigerator and save money.  And no more cold showers.

So this week was good and bad at the same time.  We had some success with M***** and others, but S****** and her family are rejecting us.  Well, just she is.  Her husband likes us but S***** keeps telling her kids to tell us that she is not home.  Everyone has their agency I guess.

This Saturday we will do an activity with the Ward where we will all hand out pass-along cards with our phone number on it to try and find more people who want to hear our message.  I do hope it turns out as a success.

The mission is rough sometimes, but it is getting better.  We are planning on encouraging one of our investigators to commit baptism and marking a date.  I hope it happens.

We had no investigators at sacrament meeting but we did have a lot of less-actives who came and that was exciting to see them all at church.

We are going to work hard to find more people this week.  I hope it turns out great.  I love you all and thank you for your encouragement.

Love,

Elder Brady

February 11, 2013

Hey Family and Friends,

Yes mom, I do agree.  Generally when we are converted . . . it does lead to conversion. :D  So this week I eventually got over my illness at least.  We still have no electricity, and everyone is vacationing because of Carnival so there is not much missionary work that is able to be done.  I love how there is no electricity in the house and how the nights here are so hot and how the mosquitoes love to bite us and keep us up all night and how the repellent ran out and how the showers are freezing cold and how we got caught in a rain storm and all of my scriptures got wet.  Love it.  See how positive I am?. :)

We had a zone meeting this week.  Probably the highlight because I was able to see some old friends from on the mission and my companion from the CTM.  Good stuff.  And that's about it with the highlights and the good stuff that has happened.

Of course it doesn't really do any good to complain because the mission is no different than real life.     I decided to be more laid back and not get stressed out about things so now I feel better.  It helps a lot.

I do love the mission and at the same time I struggle with it.  I have a “love – not so much love” relationship with the mission.  I want to do good and at the same time I sometimes lack motivation.  I know the purpose of a mission, yet I don't feel that fire (especially when we don't have electricity!).  Or it does ignite a fire within me and then everything bad that can happen happens.  This mission is the most difficult thing that I have ever chosen to do in my life.  Just by finishing the mission I have already put in more effort in it than any musicals, plays, or sports I ever participated in.

Anyway.  We are working with the same guy who is recent member every now and then.  He has only gone to church once since he got baptized but he has stopped drinking for almost a month now.  That is great.  Now to help him come to church is our next goal.

So that is what has been going on this week.  I hope your week goes well.  I love you guys.  

Love,

Elder Kevin Brady

February 4, 2012

Hello family and friends,

Well, this week was kind of the pits.  We have no light or electricity in our house so we cannot cook anything to eat. We also have freezing cold showers because of it.  And to top if off, yesterday I had a cold that turned into a fever while sleeping and now I feel pretty horrible.  I also feel some wheezing when I breath in deep.  I think it's a sinus infection.  I really can't stand it.  I have no idea when we will have electricity again. I have never been so miserable.

So anyway, we had a baptism on Saturday (that night is when the cold started) and that was great.  M******* was very excited to be baptized and she is coming to church more often as well.  We had hot dogs afterwards which I enjoyed.

I really can't remember much of anything that has happened this week my mind is all fuzzy and my head hurts.

We have another girl who we are teaching.  Her mom is a member though less - active and we are working with them both to come back to church.  We plan on marking a baptism with them sometime soon.

Well that is all I can think about writing right now besides complaining about how miserable I feel, but I am sure that you guys don't want to hear that.  So I will end with the fact that God wants me to go through all these difficulties for a reason that I cannot see at the time being and that it will strengthen me somehow.  I just have to push forward with faith and hope that all will turn out well in the end.

I love you guys.  Have a good week.

Love,

Elder Kevin Brady

January 28, 2013

Hi Family and Friends,

Well this week was OK.  We were all waiting for Saturday to satisfy our curiosity to find out if we were being transfered to a new area or not.  But we weren't.  We are still in the same area.  This is weird for me.  I generally don't like to stay in the same area forever.

Anyway, the baptism that was supposed to happen this last Saturday got postponed to this upcoming Saturday.  We are hoping that it will work out OK.  We feel confident that it will though.  She was the only one that came to church out of all of our investigators.  She does enjoy coming to church.

All of our other appointments fell through.  We had only two lessons with members present and no lessons with just investigators.  So, not so much fun.  Hopefully this week is better.

I think my face is sensitive to shaving.  I am constantly getting pimples and zits where I shave and my face gets irritated whenever I shave. It's really starting to get on my nerves.  But what do you do?

So, not much spiritual experiences for me this week since pretty much nothing happened.  Weeks like this are difficult.  Well, anyway, it did give my companion and I an opportunity to talk about our interests. So we talked about the different martial arts and what we want to do and everything.  He wants to learn boxing, or kick boxing.  I want to learn all the most popular martial arts and boxing to learn stamina.  Then I can defend myself and others.  It might be a good way for me to lose stress and have a better lifestyle when I get back home.

But on the mission I have got to learn stress tips with the limited-- extremely limited resources that I have.  Yeah so that was my week.  I learned a bit about patience too.  I read some scripture in proverbs that talked about if we can't be patient then we are imbeciles.  Something like that.  I laughed, because I'm not patient and the scripture is calling me basically an imbecile.  Lol.

Well that was my week. I love you guys.  The church is true and so is the gospel.

Love,

Elder Kevin Brady

Letter from Kevin

(to Katrina)

Monday January 28, 2013

Hey Katrina,

It was so good to hear from you.  Henry seems to get funnier everyday. All the kids are growing up so fast! I love you guys and I wish the best for you.  The mission is going good for me right now.  Have a great week this week.

I love you!

Elder Kevin Brady