Gifts from the scriptures and a baptism!

This is the kind of letter that makes a parent's heart swell. We can really see the spiritual growth and the power that Christ can have in all our lives. He is currently living in Binsfield, Germany. He has a new companion, Elder Jacob Cole. They are by the Air Force base so he says there are a lot of Americans. 

As he has been studying the scriptures these are some things that have stood out to him:

Lehi says to his sons in 2 Nephi, Awake and arise from the dust. That scripture really stuck out to me and I am impressed by how many times he tells his sons to awake or arise. 

As I've been going through my scriptures I've started actively studying and marking. It has made all the difference. As I have been striving to be active in improving myself instead of waiting for God to do it for me I have found that I have been yoked with Christ and that he has been carrying me. His Grace is sufficient. 

Mission conference with Elder Ballard was interesting, He talked a lot about the power of  a smile and how the major converting factor to the investigator is the missionary. That was strange to hear, we know that it is the spirit that converts, but Elder Ballard said that the overwhelming factor as said by investigators and recent converts was the missionary. Being who you are is really important and as you stay true to yourself you can allow people to feel the spirit. 

During our stake conference Elder Bednar came to speak. He is such a powerful speaker! He taught about how we should be striving to be the action not acted upon. We should ask God for the ability to do, not for Him to just do everything for us. He also said that when he served in Germany he had an American Area and said that it was the Celestial Kingdom so I give that a big stimme dazu. 

We just had a baptism this weekend and it was an amazing time. D. is such a spiritual powerhouse and he has made so many improvements in just three months. It was so awesome to be able to participate in his confirmation and to just feel the spirit so strongly. Afterwards, I saw him sitting with his family and they were all so happy and I just can't wait for them to become an Eternal Family. The gospel truly does bless families and I've been able to witness it firsthand. 

Love Y'all

Elder Brande

Enjoying the new area

Well it seems the pleas for a little more info did not fall on deaf ears. He sent us a letter with a list of answers to questions asked over the last few letters. He put it in list format so I hope I got the right answers with the right questions. He also sent us a fun package with chocolates from the Lindt factory in Aachen. It was such a treat to receive. We also got some fun pictures of his new area.

Here are the questions and answers

I'm very anxious to hear about your new area. How do you like it?

Yes, I like it

 How about your companion?

Good

 What part of England is he from? -baldock town, north of London 

How are you getting along? good

It looks like Bitburg is every bit as rainy as Aachen. 

-it hasn't rained too much here, our apartment is in Bisburg

How are you handling the rain? Good. It gets tiring after a while

Have you learned to love it or loathe it?  good

Now that the portion of this letter devoted to motherly guilt is over how are you?  Good

Have the Germans settled down after their win?  It sure looked like an exciting time! -yes, like two days after it was like nothing happened

Meet any new people? everyday I do. 

How are your investigators?-they come and go

What do you think of Aachen as a city?it was good

Any advice you  have for Lucas entering his first year of highschool?

advice for Luke: have fun, don't get caught up in the academics 

Where is your companion from? Utah  (this was in reference to his old companion, Elder Jack)

 How is the work going?  Same old, same old

How are you feeling about your language learning? Gut

How are you feeling spiritually, physically, emotionally? Good

Cameron enjoying the weather

His companion Elder Smith.  He's from London so Elder Brande thinks he talks funny and says he says Smith like Smiff. I can only imagine how he thinks Cameron speaks :)

Here's Elder Brande and Elder Smith in Trier,, a city in their area

Here's Connor Moores.  He describes him as a mini missionary that will be working with them for the next week

Here's a snap of the letter that came in the package

Transfer and a new companion

Well I don't know that we'd call this a letter,  more of a minimal informational update.  Despite asking specific questions and begging for more details our requests have been denied. Here's what we know. If you receive a letter from Elder Brande we would love to hear from you. Maybe if we all piece our information together it will form a bigger picture 😄.

Latest Email from Elder Brande:

seriously im not depressed I just dont like writing long letters :) its too much effort :) Im lazy you know that .) I just got transferd to Bitburg and I´m going to be serving with a Brit named Elder Smith. also I will be driving D: it´s hard to write in english now and I cant spell anymore :P My new area is apparently a military ward, so my german is probalbly going to take a dip :) 

Yep that's all he wrote folks.  I'm not bitter ( I say sarcastically 😜).  I looked Bitburg up online and it looks like a really neat place. They are a fairly small city, it looks quite picturesque. The Bitburg Air Force Base is there and it's next to Luxembourg.

It's a city in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate

Different Day Same as the Rest

It's been two weeks since we've had an email. His father was terrible at writing with great frequency so maybe this is the result of the dreaded curse, "I hooe you have a son just like you!" Although, that wouldn't be a terrible thing as Michael was an amazing missionary who loved his time in Alaska.  

Despite asking tons of questions in our letters to him he provides surprisingly little detail.  However, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised as Cameron has never been a big talker.  So here's the email, all six sentences :)- Enjoy!

Hi, I'm alive. There's nothing to write about It's been the same thing every day, except we finally have an investigator. His name is Tapas, he's Indian and Hindu. We had zone training and interviews on Friday and we didn't get home from Düsseldorf until 930 because they found a WW2 explosive and everyone had to stay inside until they figured everything out. It was way more boring than it sounds. I got my visa taken care of, so now I'm legal. 

Putting your shoulder to the wheel

Cameron's latest letter:

So Kenya Oma isn't the one who accepted baptism and it's kinda rough, Dania, the lady from Cuba who accepted baptism.....We're going to have to push back her Baptismal date pretty far back. we've also lost all of our investigators and now our teaching pool is empty. hopefully we can get back in contact with some or find new ones, but losing all those people has been hard

------------------------------------------------

As his mother, I'm not going to lie. These short letters are killing me. The internet costs to use so they're short and lately not too sweet. Missionary work is hard and he's experiencing the hardness of it. Sister Newmeyer, (http://rememberiwill.blogspot.com)

a missionary from our ward shared this great quote that I think sums up the work:

"... mission presidents, you will have an occasion to ask and your missionaries will have many occasion's to ask, Why is this so hard? It's true, Why don't the people just flock to the font? Why isn't the only risk in the mission field that of pneumonia? being wet all day and all night in the font, Why don't the people just listen president? Why can't we have success president? Why is this so hard? ... because Salvation Is Not A Cheap Experience, why do we think that this would be easy when it was never ever easy for Him..." - Elder Holland

Some weeks are better than others

We haven't had a lot to post the last few weeks. Elder Brande is in an area where the internet is expensive to use so his emails have been pretty short. So here are some excerpts of emails he has sent to various family members. We hope to hear more soon. On a fun note, their Mission President's farewell gift was to allow them to watch the Germany/USA World Cup soccer match. It was kind of neat watching it on our end knowing he was watching too. Even though, he only had a short time with President Shwartz he was very impressed with him and grew to love him and will really miss him.

Here is his new companion, Elder Jack:

To give this letter context Michael wrote to Elder Brande detailing his experiences at Girl's Camp:

Dad,

I'm glad you survived that much Estrogen and pain :P It's funny, you can relate anything to the gospel, and I think that is what is so amazing about our church, there is simplicity and all comes back to it. Just when we think we are most prepared that's when temptation hits the hardest. "Let me tell you something you already know, life ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there if you let it. Me, You, Nobody, will hit as hard as life, But it ain't about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."- Fun Quote

Love you Ganz Liebe

Elder Brande

 So where to begin? Well I found out that my trainer is going to be leaving me in the middle of my Golden cycle and that a new elder is going to be finishing me up :P We had a HUGE storm come through Aachen last week and it went in as far inland as Düsseldorf, it knocked over a bunch of trees and completley knocked out the train systems out here. Public transportation is the only way people get around here in Germany and this storm made it so when we went to Zone training in Düsseldorf, a normally 2 hour straight train ride turned into a six hour adventure. Getting home on time isn't an option anymore :P Good thing is that it has given me the oppotrunity to talk to my Mission Präsident a lot before he goes. I'm in a small little internet cafe in the middle of Bonn now, because we are having our own Distrikt Meisterschaft :) the downside of it all is that this place charges waaaaaay too much for me to justify writing a longer letter so Tschüß 

'm so tired and I don't know what to write about and I don't have time so yeah, ask dad if he knows a Blackley family from Alaska, with a kid named Brandon, just curious, I think I'm a little grumpy because we haven't been eating well because I was out of MSF waiting for some reimbursements, because me and Elder Anderson thought we had at least another transfer together. I'm so hungry and tired. I hope dass alles gute. Love ya

Chio  

Elder Brande

Here's a little excerpt from a letter he wrote to his Uncle Justin. This kind of hurt my heart a little bit but I am so proud of the way he and his companion didn't get discouraged and kept working. It's a great life lesson for all of us.

"Thank you so much for all the letters. They have been a strength to me on tough days like today. Just today we were cursed and spat at (though that's pretty normal). I have a man accuse me of the most horrible things, then a punk kid body checked me and said the most vilest things to me. We got back to our wohnung and I wanted to give up and honestly,just cry. Instead we went out and worked, and we found people that God had prepared and put in our path.

An invitation for baptism

He's been extra busy so his letter is short and sweet. Don't ask us what his "German" says. It doesn't quite make sense in Google translate so I'm not sure if the spelling's correct 😄.

Ja, alles klar. Mein Deutsch ist nicht schlimm. Mein mitarbeiter und ich sind töll. Die Idea von meine schwesterin fahren gibt mir ganz angst! So we just hit a minefield of investigators, here's a quick list of all of them; Dragos is this romanian guy who's homeless but not a druggie and he seems quite intelligent, Susan is an older lady who we call Kenya Oma because she is always so nice to us, Matthias is this old 40 something man who REALLY loves AC/DC, Till and Patrick are two Uni students who live in a HUGE frat house, Taran is a turk who is really religious the only problem is he worships the wrong side, then of course there is Dania who Nammen die gelegenheit für taufen an! Dania acceptet the invitation for baptism and here date is on the 19 of July! She was just so prepared and I was just lucky enough to extend the invitation. I love you and I hope that everything back home ist klar.

Elder Brande

Here's a picture of Elder Brande on a P-Day having fun with his Dusseldorf zone.  He's holding up his zone leader Elder Varney.