Elder Ethan Brown: July 7, 2014 Weekly Letter

Sent from my iPad

Hey, long time no...email,

So I'll give a quick recap over the last few days, also sorry it took so long to get my email out to you guys on Friday, we were booked all day with activities, probably one of best days thus far, so much fun and very busy. Down here the fourth is bigger than Christmas, but anyway. So starting off Friday I helped the other elders out with a lesson, but after we had a huge barbecue with hot dogs, hamburgers, condiments, watermelon, pineapple, grilled pineapple, noodle salad, potato salad, cookies, brownies, ice cream, and Apple pie with enough to spare to feed another thirty people easily, we played soccer and football on the roof of our apartment and all so had the amazing experience watching a soccer ball drop from eight stories or more onto the streets, good thing it wasn't New York. We came back only to find twenty five to thirty elders in our apartment and a huge mess.

From four on we went down to the mall or the monuments in other words.

We watched street performers and went to some booths. I was great for once you could walk down the street and catch people giving you mean looks or ignoring you completely, surprisingly people still who knew who we were and were a lot nicer to us today, felt really nice.

Afterwards we went to union Station and ate and headed over to the Washington Monument to go and watch fireworks, we were right next to the monument, and just across about a hundred feet from us was a concert preformed by the US military, really cool, love the song "I'm proud to be an American", everyone burst into singing and it was really cool, they also introduced all parts of the military such as army, air force, marines, navy, etc as they played their theme song to finish. They then started shooting off fireworks as music such as star wars and other modern favorites. After the fireworks it was a mess a total mess, the metro was backed up for a ways and trying to get back by eight thirty was near impossible, luckily we made it back in time because we soon found out that those who didn't don't get to get to go to the Nats game this August. We also hosted a sleepover of about four elders so that was interesting. And that was our Fourth of July.

Saturday was work as usual, but found out that Guillermina came back to DC and she came to church Sunday, and we teach her tonight, so we are going to hammer her hard with baptism, we will see how it turns out. We also taught Zefferina, she tells us she loves the church, she comes every we, but there is something stopping her, I don't know what it is, but we need to figure it out.

Not much happened Sunday, but we got fed really good food, the Lacayo family made hamburgers, that was a tender mercy, all the elder love Hispanic food, but. Yes it tastes good most of the time, but it get really old after a while and it sits in you, so hamburgers were a miracle. We visited a less active family from Mexico and they gave us corn on the cob. And that's not all, it had a light coat of mayo, parmesan cheese, and pico de gallo powder on top, and I know what your thinking eww nasty and a heart attack on top with that, and the same thing went through my head for a moment, but as a missionary you stop worrying, and you know what it actually tasted amazing, unhealthy yes, but amazing.

Today was super fun, we had our zone activity and we had a World Cup tournament, our team was undefeated I thought I would let you know.

People were surprised by how well I played soccer, nobody knew, and only three people play soccer in our zone, so to say the least I was considered the best, which made me feel good, it boosted my ego, I love it when people notice your hard work, talents, and practice in action. Reminds me of the glory days in coed LOL, it felt good.

We have a lot lessons this week and hopefully we can teach all of them or a lot of them. I'll let you know how things go, by the way the language was good this week, learning a lot. This week was really good. If there is anything more you would like to know just email me, but that was a recap of three days.

Love you guys as usual, enjoy the week.

Love,

Ethan

We determine our own happiness.

President Uchtdorf