Family,

           

The weather here is amazing! It’s getting a lot cooler and nights are perfect! Its only 80! Ha-ha we are on bikes now too and its scary riding bikes here because in the neighborhoods there is no street lights!! I guess Miami is cheap. It’s annoying but thank goodness for bike lights right?

            This week was like a roller-coaster. It had its ups and downs for sure! We got to teach Mathew the 9 year old and his sister. We have been getting pretty creative and have been making puzzles for them. They love it! Their grandma got them a Book of Mormon for kids and they love it!! They are amazing and there are changing. Now they want to pray all the time and read and they remember things so well!! Their testimony is super strong already! We just need to meet with their parents! And try and get them more involved. We met the mom a couple times and she is starting to warm up to us but we want to get there whole family activated and to the temple!! So that's going really good. We love them so much! Makes me miss my primary kids. That calling prepared me for this!

We got to also teach Mary, the member who has dementia. She is so sweet. We were talking about the scriptures and Sister Burdett said "Yeah the scriptures can bring lots of peace" and Mary said "Yeah I like pizza too and hot dogs" So funny. We love her. She always makes us laugh! Her daughter invited us over for dinner today so we are excited for that! Should be good.

 We had interviews with president and they went super good! They always leave me spiritually recharged and pumped up. He said that this won’t be my last time training and that I will train a couple more times. Yay! It’s scary but I am excited! I love president so much!!! He is amazing and really cares and loves this work so much! He is like our mission dad :)

This week okay another funny experience. We were harvesting and knocked on this guy’s door and this 19 year old answered. He had Asperger’s but was sure nice and agreed to pray with us. We asked what we could include in the prayer for him and he said world peace and less people because he doesn’t like to be surrounded by idiots. Apparently there is too much in the world. The whole time I was like oh boy and it’s my turn to pray. This is going to be interesting. I started praying and he would add in his own comments.  I would say please pray that Hersin (that's his name) will have strength and peace and he would say "oh that's nice" and I would say please bless him that he will strive to make a difference in the world and he would say “I will try but there are too many idiots". I would say please bless his family and he would say “my semi normal family” and just stuff like that. It was sure funny.  The whole time I was trying not to laugh because it was so random and that has never happened to me so it was a weird experience. But he liked the prayer and felt the spirit so I guess it worked.

We had another experience while knocking doors. This one is kind of scary. We were knocking doors and we knocked this door and it looked like a nice house. This girl about 22 answered the door with this a knife like a 12” long knife and said “can you please step away from the door, and who are you?” We said "We are missionaries. We just wanted to pray with you" (while baking away) and she was like “oh okay! Can i put my knife down?” We said "uh yeah that would be nice" It was scary and weird. She was super cool though and loved the prayer. Hopefully that's the last time a person tries to kill us.

This week we got to see Christina, the one who we had an amazing lesson with a couple weeks ago and asked her pray for baptism and if it was right. She felt the answer was not right now, but she still loves when we come over and teach her so we went last night and taught her and she said that she has been praying for light and happiness for her kids. The whole time we wanted to say, “The light you are looking for is the gospel and its sitting on your couch!” It was frustrating but it was good spiritually. We decided we are going to teach about temples and families and invite her again to be baptized. Hopefully this time she will listen more carefully to the spirit because we know she needs to be baptized.

This week was slow in finding people. Our teaching pool is really small right now. During language study I was studying conjugations for the word esperanza, which means hope. I saw the verb for hope is esperar, which means to wait. I realized that hope and wait are jointed together. Sometimes we have to wait for the things we hope for. We need to have faith and trust in our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ and realize that good things comes to those that wait. And that Jesus won’t forsake us. He and Heavenly Father know we are having trials and tribulations, but he is right there next to wait.  New investigators will come as we continue to work hard and be obedient. It was a really cool spiritual experience during language study

  

I love you guys so much!! I have a new commitment for you guys too, will you guys say gratitude prayers as a family very night? i know it will be hard but i promise that you guys will be blessed and this week will go smoothly for you!! I love you guys so much!! Thanks for all you do!!! :)) I miss you!!! :))))

Love,

Herman Briaunna