Family!!! :)

Thanks so much for the hump day package! It came right on my hump day the 16th! I loved it!!!! Such an awesome idea! I loved the t shirt and the story! So cool! Everyone in the house was jealous. I didn't do anything special except missionary work, but as always it was so much fun! :)

Hey Mike, Mike Mike

Hump Day Camel

Hump Day!

Thank you thank you so much for giving me a play by play for the Seahawks game!!! So grateful!! We went into to Costco not too long ago for dinner. First time since before I left. Churro never tasted so good. So I told myself if they have football on the TVs I won’t look. As we walked in they did, so I didn't look with all of my will power. Costco was crazy though. So packed so I knew something big was happening with football. I was dying but I knew I would be blessed for being obedient and I was

Okay, back to missionary work. This week was a miracle week!! We had been having trouble finding investigators the last couple weeks but we knew that we were going to be blessed. This whole transfer we had been praying for a family of 4 to baptize and on Tuesday of last week we got a referral for this guy named Oscar.  So we decided to go see him since some of our appointments had fallen through. So get to his house and knock on his door and his wife answers, Nicole. We tell her that we received a text saying that her husband wanted to know about our church. She was really kind and inviting. They are from the Dominican Republic and had just moved here. We asked her how many kids she had and she said we are a family of six! We asked how old they all were, and two of her kids are baptism age. Which means with those 2 kids and her and her husband it equaled 4! Just what we had been praying for! We were really excited and happy! We scheduled a return appointment with her and her family and are so excited to teach them! They really want to be united as a family and we know the gospel can help with that. We have no doubt that they will be getting baptized!

Another miracle this week was another referral we received from some elders. It was for another family, Nuvea and Teo and their son who is 23. We went and visited them right away but only got to meet the wife Nuvea. They are from Columbia and just moved here as well. She is amazing and so elect. We love her so much. She really wants to learn more about the gospel and baptism. They have never been religious so she and her husband are excited. They are struggling with work and financial problems. They live in a trailer park. Yes there are many of those but not as scary as the one Brent was assigned too haha. They know that God can help them. Nuvea really wants to learn English so we told her we could teach her for free. Every day we are going over there and teaching her Spanish. First lesson is tonight and we can’t wait!! Such a sweet family. We can totally picture them in white. We are working with some awesome families and we know we will just keep on finding! :)

Our Bishop and his wife

           An awesome experience we also had this week is with our bishop. We and the elders in our ward realized that we know nothing about our bishop and that we don't have a relationship with him and his wife at all and we decided that we were going to fix that because if we wanted to help our ward we needed to start with the head. On Sunday we asked the bishop if we could come over and visit with him and his wife and he said yes of course! So we went over and it was amazing. Such a spiritual experience. We learned that he is a convert of 7 years, never would have guessed! He shared with us a lot of spiritual experiences as well as funny stories. We were laughing all night and really bonding. Right before we were about to leave we asked if he could give us all a priesthood blessing. The blessings were amazing so powerful. The spirit was so strong. We didn't tell him any of our problems but he addressed them all. He even said some stuff that was in my patriarchal blessing! After he had given us all blessings he and his wife were in tears. He said I am so touched that you would ask me for a blessing, we haven’t had missionaries here for two years and I have been praying that you would come. He said we needed you so much. It was such a great experience. I have never felt so much love for a bishop before as I did then. I know that as we keep strengthening that relationship and trust that it will help our ward trust us and they will get excited about missionary work as well.

So some big events that happened this week! First off the mold in our bathroom is gone!! One of the senior couples, (the ones from Seattle! Their names are the Harttzels. Elder Hartzel grew up in Lynnwood and went to Edmonds high school. He says he knows some Carters but not sure if it is Grandma and Grandpa Carter. They are also good friends with the Williams.  Anyways, they came and got all the mold off, so our bathroom is clean. Now we are not scared for our lives when we shower! 

Less active doing my nails

The next event is on Sunday. I have my first talk since the MTC! It was about prayer and we got asked at 9:30 pm the night before haha. I talk to people in Spanish everyday but I was still nervous as ever, but it was fun and it went better than I thought! Such a good experience!

OK, so the next big event that happened this week is.... are you ready for this!?!? We got a new addition to our mission! Yup our mission just got bigger. This week we got a chunk of the Tampa Mission added to ours. So know we have everything from Cape Coral down. We inherited a whole zone. Which is called the Fort Myers zone. That zone includes 30 missionaries that are now a part of this mission!! Crazy right!?!? Yeah we were in shock too!! We are all still in shock but excited for this big change! So as you know Tampa is an iPad mission, so the poor missionaries had to hand in there Ipads and in return got a blank area book and was told to transfer everything to it. That must be hard to go from a tech mission to now a normal, no Ipad mission.

A cool personal experience I had this week: If I could choose a theme for this transfer it would be trust. This transfer has been all about trusting the Lord and just giving everything and not worrying about things that will happen after the mission. So when me and Branden write to each other, we send each other scriptures that we liked and what we learned from them. Well, last week Branden sent me some scriptures and I didn't have time to read them so I took a pic of the email and decided to read them during personal study the next day (keep in mind Branden doesn't know what my theme has been). So the next day I look up the scripture he sent, Philippians 4:6 and I read it and I was like okay? It didn't make much sense to me. I saw that there was a footnote for the verse so I decided to read that and it was amazing. The footnote said "don't be unduly concerned about anything" just like that. I was like oh my goodness. My mind was blown because it was what I needed to hear! There were some suggested scriptures as well so I decided to read those. The next one was in Psalms 55:22 and it was awesome as well. It talked about giving our burdens to the Lord. The next one I looked up was Matthew 6:25 and there is a Joseph Smith Translation for that verse so I decided to read it. It was also what I needed!! It was amazing! It talked about not having a care about the world and how Heavenly Father will provide for you whatsoever thing we need after we preach the gospel. It was amazing. Such an answer to my prayers! I have learned so much about how important it is to trust in the Lord. Because of this, I feel like my relationship with God has been strengthened. He is my best friend and I know he will provide. :) So many good lessons. :)

Well I hope you all have a good week!! I love you all sooo much!! Keep smiling and having faith!!! You guys are the best thanks for all your love and support!! :)

Love,

 Briaunna