Current Location and Address

UPDATE: Reassignment (click)

Puerto Rico, San Juan - East Mission

Puerto Rico, San Juan - Mission
E-mail: Brandon.bryan@myldsmail.net


(Remember to keep things upbeat and supportive try to not to share or say things that might distract or make him feel homesick.)


He will be happy to hear from you all.

Current Location:

P.O. box 33
Adjuntas, PR 00601

Mark 1:4 and 9

4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

9 And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.

Christ was not baptized for the remission of sins because he had none. But, as Nephi recounts, he was baptized for the following reasons:
(1) As a token of humility before the Father;
(2) As a covenant that he would keep the commandments;
(3) As a prelude to receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost;
(4) To gain entrance to and be saved in the kingdom of God, for no one, not even the Son of God, can so obtain without baptism; and
(5) As a pattern and an example for all men, and so that he could say: “Follow thou me” and also, “He that is baptized in my name, to him will the Father give the Holy Ghost, like unto me; wherefore, follow me, and do the things which ye have seen me do.” (See 2 Ne. 31:5–12.)

Bruce R. McConkie, “A Man Called John,” New Era, May 1984, 4

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

wait... what?



Wed, Feb 16, 2011

What do you mean I didn't send you my email? :P I sent you TWO last week! :P the first one was a reply to your email, and then the second one was a completely independent email. So I dunno know what you be talkin' bout, yo, but I guess I'll just toss last weeks into this one as a forward. geeze. :P

So yes, singles awareness day was fairly uneventful :-/ no mail. Just a ridiculously, early get up time. Blah! Even more tired! But, more recently I've been sleeping better. theres one interesting thing that I've noticed so far. In all of my experiments to figure out what’s going on and how I can make my kidney complain less, there’s something that I noticed WILL work: if I work out a lot right before I go to bed, it doesn't hurt in the night. And maybe even for the next couple days. quite thought provoking, eh? I'm not sure why, but it works. And it has to be right before I go to sleep. It can't be like during the day or in the morning or anything, cause I've been riding my bike a very large amount during the day and that doesn't make any difference. it must be right at the end of the day. :-/ so... I dunno. But I’m glad that I was able to inspire the Laurels to realize the truth about this day. Everyone just knows who's single on that day. :( *sigh* oh wells I suppose.

So, for Ecuador. Ha, ha, ha, you're funny. :P NO, I didn't want to go there just because Stephanie would be around there. Gosh. I just wanted to do it cause it would be fun and I mean, what a great thing it would be to just be able to go and help those little orphan children. :3 did you see them? They’re so cute! Plus, South America! :D and cool Amazon trip! and cheap shopping ;) ha, ha, ha, but really. I've always kinda wanted to just do some service like that. I dunno, I've just felt this draw forever to like, go volunteer at Pioneer Valley, or at Clair Bridge or something. But I never really got the chance. so now that I'm slightly less mentally tired than I was before the mission, and dying just a little bit less, I wanna be able to go and do something. It was weird though. When Elder Hargadon was telling me about it I just felt this draw, like I was being sucked in to it. But alas, you are right... I have WAY too many decisions that I have to make when I get home. BLAH! no more easy life. do you think that you would be able to figure out if Pierce credits are transferable to LDSBC? Also, if I were to stay, where do you think I would be able to get a job at? Any of the places that I suggested, or someplace new? :-/ I DO know that I'll be able to know what to do and stuff, but I wanna know what YOU think. or I could just go to Roberto-Venn? ;) Or Summit school in Canada, eh?

So, training! :D woo! I'm gonna have to say, I'm pretty lucky with my son. I got off easy, I think. He’s pretty good at understanding and speaking Spanish already (both his parents served Spanish speaking missions) and he's not suffering from greenie-pride-itus. He knows the doctrine pretty well. So basically it's just the whole being a greenie and not knowing what to do thing that he's working on. Fortunately he catches on quick. Alrighty. So, we HAVE divided up the area actually. We now have Alta Visat, Villa Flores and that area all the way to Coto Laurel, which is basically its own little pueblito. :) So, this last week, now that we've been talking with the bishop to get the goal of 125 people in church, things are going up! :D we went from 63 two weeks ago, to 73 this last week! WOO! Obispo Feito is a beast. He’s super willing to work with the missionaries and get things working. Plus we have some amazing members here that all want to make things go. We actually just got a new ward mission leader this last week. His name is Raphael Rivera. He is very up and at 'em. :D he's an Ex-Marine, so he's very thorough and systematic. Perfect. But I've got some high hopes. Super good. Yes.

anyways. IVE GOT GOOD NEWS!!!!!! :D so we went back to Yauco this last Saturday, right? And we get inside the apartment. lo and behold, there’s a package sitting on the floor right next to the window. (Our neighbor squeezes things through our little open window next to the door.) It’s from the Dorado family! :D it is now safely in my possession. Turns out they had a family emergency and had to stay over on the east coast till like two weeks ago or so. So, that's what happened there. but everything’s good now, it sounds like. Especially now that I have a FREAKIN SWEET ORNAMENT! Oh man, that thing is awesome! :D I love it. :3

Aw, no more suburban... now how are we supposed to take ridiculous amounts of people places? or home from mutual? Do we have to walk to church now? ...*sigh* now everythings gonna fall apart! we don't even have the Trailblazer either! AH! the end of the world is coming! AH! 2012! AH!

OH! update on la familia Ruiz-Rivera. so, we stopped by for our appointment on Friday, right? this time, they didn't have the entire family gathered together... :-/ after a little bit of talking, it seems like Nestor's wife maybe talked to him, cause his attitude seemed a bit different this time. but, we talked about the importance of knowing if this was the only true church or not, and how if our message is true, then it's the only way to "be saved". (Sorry, we ran into some Pentecostals yesterday. I just wanted to use that phrase) so we left them with the challenge to read and pray more firmly to find out if this message is true. We’re going to bring Raph with us to the next appointment on Friday so I'll give an update on that.

*old chinese man* one MORE thing, so that ridiculously early schedule? well, it's preparation for the "flooding of Ponce" where everyone outside of the city (Juana Diaz, Guayanilla, etc...) comes in to work in our areas. I worked with Elder Pezo from Peru yesterday (He's Elder Crawleys companion normally. from Juana Diaz) and so everyone comes in the night before, gets ready to get up super early, and then we all attack Ponce for a day. But it's sounding like things are gonna happen two days a week and yesterday was just a pilot day.

well... I guess I took a bit too long messing with Elder Radmall's picture... so I think I might have to send that to you, just so you can see what I was doing... it's kinda small though.

but, I love you more than I love trying to figure out my kidney mystery.

~Elder Bryan (Brandon)

FOTOS!
1) oh sí. (chevere means cool in puerto Rico) found that when we got lost looking for a referral the other day. it was in an old folks home parking lot. Those old people really know how to party! :D





2) Elduh Radmawl

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