Hey family!!! 

             Brother Riggin and family is back in town! Made me so happy! He showed me the pics he took of you! You guys are so cute!! I love it! :) The boys are sooo tall!! i left the tallest and i am coming back the shortest ahaha it was so nice to see your faces! 

 

Fresh Pineapple!

            This week we did lots of finding. Lots and lots of it! We did have a cool miracle though! In the mission we have to get 5 new investigators by Wednesday and on Wednesday we had 0. We set a vision for what we wanted to find and we prayed all day for the family we wanted to find. We set out and started knocking. We knocked for 4 hours. The last door we knocked we found the family we have been praying for! We found a family of 4 and all were baptismal age. They were all boys and their ages were 9, 11 and 15. It was amazing. We prayed and they loved it and we taught them and invited them to be baptized and they said yes! We were so excited! So we scheduled a return appointment with them. After the discussion, I said to Sister Smith, “I am starving”, because we hadn’t eaten anything all day and it was almost 8. Then she looked on the phone and Sister Boga texted us and said, “Hey! I made you lasagna, you can come eat it!” We were sooo happy!!! It was a miracle! I love Sister Boga so much!! She was so in tune with the spirit. It was such a great meal. She stuffed us to the brim! I can’t wait for you guys to meet Sister Boga and her family. Afterwards she gave me a bracelet she bought me. It was so cute! It was a miracle day! 

 

Helping someone move. Doing Service

            But it was short lived because that family dropped us. In fact everyone dropped us at the same time. L So we are back to the drawing table, but we know God is a God of miracles. Sometimes he gives us miracles, small ones even. If they don’t work out he is just letting us know he is there and that he loves us! 

 

A Latin Professional Electric Violin player who played for us. He was so good!

            It makes me sad how crazy fast the world is becoming wicked. We are in the last days.  With the whole same sex marriage. Yes we have gotten lots of questions. We haven’t had a training on how to best answer but we have passed out a lot of The Family: A Proclamation to the World pamphlets!! It’s been hard with the Warren Jeffs thing going on. Have you heard of that?! If not look it up. It’s been hard to get people to let us in because of that, or get them to listen to us. Satan is real but the power of God is more real. We already know we will win, we just have to keep up the fight and stand strong and wear the armor of God! We need to make sure we are the type of trees that have strong roots! 

            This week I have been studying a lot about trust. It’s kinda been the theme for my whole mission! I was reading a talk and a quote from it I love says, " When one follows the course marked by the road signs of the gospel of Jesus Christ and places his trust in the Lord, its influence is such that it is manifest not only in action and deed but by a marked and visible change in his very being. There is a special light and a spirit which radiates from his eternal soul. It can be described in words like brightness, light, joy, happiness, peace, purity, contentment, spirit, enthusiasm, etc." 

I never thought about how trusting in God can affect your appearance and make your light shine even brighter. That’s something I am working on too is learning how let the light of Christ within me shine bright. It’s been an ongoing thing but I love it! I hope to one day trust in God so much that I just glow :) 

 

Fishing with Elder's on P-Day

            Damien is getting the priesthood!!! I am so excited!!! He is amazing! :) Sorry this is so short, I don’t have lots of time but I love you all so much!!!!!!!!! :) Oh and I love Sister Garrett!! She is amazing!!!!!! So sweet.

            If you want to send me packages or mail it has to be to my direct house address now. Or else I have to wait. 

Love you all!!! Have a great week!!!!!!! :))) smile!! :)

 

Me and Sister Garrett

Hey Family!!!!

Damien’s baptism was amazing!! He just had his interview  for the priesthood! He has the biggest testimony of keeping the Sabbath Day holy. It’s amazing. He loves the ward so much and he says after he leaves the church he gets in the car and prays and thanks heavenly father for letting come to church. I love that kid so much! 

Gregory dropped us. It was sad:( He said he read the Book of Mormon and prayed and said that this isn’t something he wants to do right now. It was a bummer. So we started from scratch again but we saw lots of miracles this week!

The first one was towards the end of the evening and we felt like we needed to be in a certain part of our area and we didn’t know quite why. We went and visited all the members and less actives in that part of town but none of them were home. We knew we needed to be here for a reason so we decided to knock on some doors. We prayed about what street we needed to knock and we felt like we needed to go to this particular street. We knocked and knocked to no avail. Then we saw a house that caught our attention.  We went to it and sitting outside was Erin. Erin is in her 40s, black and has been looking for a church to go to. We said a prayer with her and she loved it and we invited her to be baptized and she said yes. We were so happy!! We set a time to go see her this week! She is so open and excited to learn about the gospel!! She was our miracle. We were so happy that we followed the Spirit that led us to her.

Our other big miracle that happened this week was yesterday. It had been a long day filled with knocking on many doors. We had knocked in two apartment complexes and no one let us in. It got to the point where we were begging Heavenly Father to let us find somebody who needed the Gospel. We wanted to find a family who were looking for peace. We had an hour and a half left in our day and we decided to go to a different apartment complex. We drove by one and we felt that we needed to go there. We went and found a place to park and started knocking. The first 4 were unsuccessful but we still kept going. On the last door we found George. We told him that we were representatives of Jesus Christ and that we were here to share a prayer with him. He accepted and we asked what we could include in the prayer and he said that his dad had died a year ago and that he and his family needed peace. After we prayed, he was in tears. We testified and said that we knew his dad had sent us to him that night. We invited him to be baptized and he said yes right away. He was like yeah so where do we do this baptism?! He said he and his sister have never been baptized! We then asked him how old he was because we thought he might be YSA and he said he was 25 but he was engaged which means he is ours! We were so happy. It was just what we prayed for! We are going to go and see him and his family tomorrow! It was such a blessing. 

On my mission I have gained a strong testimony of specific prayers. Like very specific. When we are specific with the lord and the things we need and we have that vision and faith and trust he will give it to us. The scriptures say knock and it shall be open unto you, ask and ye shall receive. Heavenly Father does listen and answer prayers, it just takes faith and diligence.   I have learned so much about prayer on my mission. It’s amazing. It’s something that I love to do. I can’t wait to go home and just talk to my Heavenly Father and tell him about my day. I have never felt so close to Him. I can honestly say he is my best friend.

Sister Smith is boss and I love her so much! She is so sweet and we get along great!! Today we are going fishing as a district with a member so that will be fun! It’s exciting to change things up a bit lol 

Thanks for that scripture and quote dad!!! I loved it! Super motivational!! :) Thanks for all your love and support!!! :) You guys are the best!! :) Love and miss ya’ll tons!! :)

Briaunna

Family,

I am so happy you guys got to meet the Riggin’s! Aren’t they the best! I just love them so much!!! They are like home away from home which is nice. They take good care of me! Isn’t Teagan so cute!! I knew he would love Kerrgayn! He is just cutest thing ever. I love that kid. Also, depending if I transfer out of this area, I will start sending more things home at the end of July or so. You just collect so much stuff as a missionary! Also next month you should be getting my flight plans so look out for that. Do you want to know my release date? Nah you probably don’t ;))) haha

My new companion is Sister Smith! Yup another Sister Smith hahah. She has been out for 4 months and is from Preston Idaho. She is super sweet and kind. I love her to pieces. She is also very shy and quiet so my goal is to get her out of her shell. She is super powerful though and an awesome missionary!! I do miss Sister King a lot though and it’s weird not having her around because she knew everything about me. It’s weird having to start over but I love Sister Smith and am excited to help her and get to know her better. 

Damien has been super good!! Man I love that kid so much! Speaking of kids! He gets to bring his daughter to church on Sunday! Which is a huge blessing and miracle!!! :) He is working on getting his temple recommend so he can go to the temple. His testimony is so strong and blessings are just pouring out for him! It’s so amazing to see the change in him!! 

Jamie and Tony are kind of up in the air, we are going to have to do a drop talk with them this week which is really sad :( But we know that the lord will bless us with someone who is truly ready for the gospel :) 

This week we had a big miracle. On Saturday we got a referral from the YSA sisters. It was a man named Gregory. We called him and asked him if was coming to church and he said yes. But when church started, we didn’t see him. We were bummed but right before the sacrament started he came in!! After we talked about church and invited him to be baptized on the 27th he said yes! Later that night we went and saw him and taught the restoration and gave him a BOM. He loved it and understood it really well. He was so excited to read the Book of Mormon and find out if it is true. He said that he had been to lots of churches but ours was different and he liked it. He said he felt at home. In his prayer after the lesson he said "Thank you God for sending me these to lovely ladies to help me and please bless me that my heart will be changed as I read and I will be able to know if this church is true" It melted my heart. I love when gators pray! That’s one thing I will miss most! Because some of these people haven’t prayed in years and when they do for the first time it’s so humble and sincere and like a little child. So pure. I love it so much. They just talk to Heavenly Father like he is their friend. It’s amazing. 

We are just working on finding people this week to add to our teaching pool. We are working with members a lot more and trying to get referrals from them.  Sister Smith had some really good ideas so we are excited to help our members! It is going to be an amazing week! 

I read a talk by Elder Bednar this week about tender mercies and a part that I really liked is:

“The Lord’s tender mercies do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Faithfulness and obedience enable us to receive these important gifts and, frequently, the Lord’s timing helps us to recognize them.

We should not underestimate or overlook the power of the Lord’s tender mercies. The simpleness, the sweetness, and the constancy of the tender mercies of the Lord will do much to fortify and protect us in the troubled times in which we do now and will yet live. When words cannot provide the solace we need or express the joy we feel, when it is simply futile to attempt to explain that which is unexplainable, when logic and reason cannot yield adequate understanding about the injustices and inequities of life, when mortal experience and evaluation are insufficient to produce a desired outcome, and when it seems that perhaps we are so totally alone, truly we are blessed by the tender mercies of the Lord and made mighty even unto the power of deliverance” (see 1 Ne. 1:20).

Sometimes we can overlook the tender mercies the Lord gives us or underestimate his power to give them but he loves us so much and wants to help and uplift us. As we take the time to slow downs and count our blessings we will be able to see the many miracles God has given us each day. It is then we will realize in times of trouble that we are not alone, but that he is right beside us every step of the way! :) 

I love you all so much!!!! I hope you have a good week!! Glad you like the t-shirts hope they fit!! :)))

Briaunna