President Brown insisted that he’d never want us to say that “the mission years were the best two years of our lives”… So we won’t say that here… but for both Angie and I those years still hold some of the choicest blessings and some of the fondest memories we’ve experienced so far. And how we miss our dear mission family, our great missionary friends, and the people we were called of God to serve!The Câmara Manoels are the merging of two Porto Portugal missionaries- Sister Angela Fawson and Elder Câmara Manoel, and rather than entertaining you with how that ever came to pass, we’ll tell you a bit about where we are today.
Angie ended her mission in mid-1993, and at the end of the same year I ended my own. At that time I came to the United States to spend Christmas with a good mission friend. During that stay Angie and I went on a date, and 23 days later we were married in the Salt Lake Temple (we had other dates during that period of time- at least two or three more). Heavenly Father has since blessed us with four beautiful and healthy children. Two boys and two girls (David- 13, Stefanie- 10, Daniel-8, and Anna-4).
We lived in Utah while I completed my undergraduate at BYU, and shortly after graduation was hired by Novell where I worked for the better part of a decade. We’ve since moved to the Pacific Northwest where we’ve been living for the last five years, thanks to a departing Novell VP who snagged me to work with him at Microsoft, in Redmond Washington. At Microsoft I work as a Group Program Manager (that means that I manage a group of developers, testers and project managers) in the software virtualization space. I have since then also completed an MBA.
While I’ve been having fun with computers and school books, Angie has taken upon herself the responsibility of full-time motherhood, running our household, raising our four children (and now homeschooling them), and serving in a variety of callings in the church, from cub leader (this one came handy), primary president, to counselor in the relief society presidency, to now a teacher in the primary. My church service has been almost exclusively in the young men, serving in various callings in the ward, stake and with the Boy Scouts of America’s Western Region. Only recently was I called to serve as an Elders Quorum president in my ward where I still work with “young men at heart”.
The one constant thread throughout our journey together has been our deep and abiding testimony of Christ’s atonement, and the truthfulness of His gospel. This we have today, in great measure, because of a loving mission family who nurtured, loved, taught, and chastised us when we needed a loving and firm father and mother. They were instrumental in instilling in us the good faith-promoting habits that have since shaped our lives.
Still today, whenever my own family kneels to pray, I remember Sister Brown’s pleading to the Zone Leaders (who were not kneeling to pray), to show reverence for the great Jehovah.
Still today, whenever I kneel to pray in the morning, I remember how President Brown taught us that the first part of his body to touch the floor when he got out of bed was his knees.
Still today, when I open my scriptures daily, I remember how he taught us that his life-changing Zone Conference talks had taken him over forty years of preparation, explaining that they were the fruit of consistent scripture study.
The truth is we all just wanted to be like them back then, just as we still do today.
And with those teachings they left us, with their great legacy of faith, and in following with President Brown’s loving admonition, we will continue building the best years of our lives.
We love you President and Sister Brown.
Com o seu poder e no seu amor, nos encontraremos em jesus. Com seu poder e no seu amor, oh, que deus vos guarde em sua luz.
