Family!! :)

So, President told me he wanted to extend my mission by a month or so and I told him  if that’s what God wants. So is it okay if I come home in November?........ hehehe just kidding ;)))  I love you all so much you are the best!! I couldn’t stay away from you all too long! :)

So this week we had to drop Bianca and her family. We were super sad but they stopped answering our calls and the door but we know that one day they will be ready. Just planting seeds! This week we were super blessed to find Damian. Let me tell you this kid besides Julia is the most elect person I have taught. Sister King and I prayed specifically before knocking on doors to find a person who would accept everything and who was in their 20s or so and had a child. As we were knocking, we weren’t having much success but as were passing this house we saw a young black man (actually Jamaican) sitting on the top of his car. He looked really sad and so we asked if we could give him a card.He came over and we said we are also in the area sharing prayers with people can we share a prayer with you? And he said yes! He said you guys came at the right time! I was super frustrated. I have been going through a hard time trying to get custody of  my 16th month girl because the mom is crazy and it’s been hard because I want to be able to raise my girl up right and have her be in a loving home. He went on just telling us his life story. He said I know God is real because you could have seen or helped with anyone else on this street but he sent you to me and I know you were sent here for a reason. It was a very powerful testimony. We then asked him how old he was and he said he was 23. We then testified that we were sent here by God and that we prayed specifically to find him! We said a prayer with him and he cried during the whole thing. He felt the spirit so strong. He is the most humble and charitable person I have ever met! He doesn’t have the best living conditions by any means. It’s really sad but he is super happy all the time. He wouldn't hurt a fly! He is just so Christ-like and puts others first! It’s amazing. After the prayer we invited them to be baptized and he said yes and that he has been thinking about being baptized. We were so happy! Ever since Tuesday we have been seeing him. We taught him the restoration and he loved it and just understood everything! He reads the Book of Mormon and loves it. He can’t read very well or understand it, but he reads it because he knows its right. During the lesson we talk about it and go over it. He is so faithful. We also taught him the plan of salvation and focused in on how families can be together forever. Because he loves his daughter and wants to be with her for eternity. He loved it so much and said he wants to go to the celestial kingdom so bad. After that lesson we asked him to say the closing prayer and in the prayer he said "please bless that I can get baptized on May 30th and that my daughter can be there even though she won’t understand it I still want her there. I am so grateful that Sister King and Sister Heacock found me, they are a blessing, they have helped me so much...." It was so the most humble loving prayer ever. He talked to Heavenly Father like he was right there and that he was his best friend. The spirit was so strong it made me and Sister King cry. On Sunday he wasn’t able to come to church because he couldn’t get it off and he said he tried real hard but his boss wouldn’t let him. He said that all throughout work he kept thinking I needed to be at church, I need to be at church. He said that today he is going to ask for Sunday off right away. He said he started looking for another job so he can have Sundays off. He said he just felt so bad he couldn’t be at church. So we had to move his baptismal date to June 6^th. He is super excited and so are we! It is going to be amazing. We just have so much love for him. I wish you could meet him! He is so amazing. Specific prayers are real!

Finding him reminded me of this poem "In heaven we were the best of friends. We did everything together. One day a grand council was called in heaven. We knew it was an important event. Everyone was there, Moses Noah and Jesus Christ. Father presented a plan and we voted for Christ to be our savior. After the council we ran to get in line to receive our life package. In the bustle we got separated. I received my package and ran to you. You were sitting under a tree. We opened our packages, mine said I would be born at a time when the gospel was restored on the earth. It said that I would have good parents and the fullness of the gospel in my home. I jumped for joy and we hugged each other. You were so happy for me. Then you read yours. I saw the tears in your eyes and I asked what’s wrong? You said that you would also be born when the gospel was restored but you would be born in a different place and the gospel would not be in your home. You looked at me straight in the eye and said friend find me, no matter what it takes or the trials you have to endure, find me! And bring me the gospel!" 

Some other exciting events this week, While we were going to knock the other day we parked in the grass and when I opened the door there was a storm drain right there. When I got up, the phone that I forgot was on my lap, fell onto the ground. As I went to go pick it up it slipped right into the storm drain and went "ker plop" Yup right into the water filled drain. I went white. Sister King was on the other side of the car and I went around to her and said "ummm Sister...." and she was like "what?!" "Ummm the phone is in the storm drain" and she was like "shut up!!!" We both burst out laughing, like roll on the floor laughing, because it was just so ridiculous and that it would happen to us. But we had to get the phone out so we looked into the storm drain and the phone was lit up so we got palm fronds and sticks and string and tried to make a shirt shovel to get the phone out. It was 7 when we started and we had to work fast because it would soon be getting dark. Well after a half hour we weren’t having any luck and it was starting to become dusk so we decided we needed to ask someone for help. Right across the street was a nice man who offered right away to help us. He lifted up the storm drain and started racking things out and getting all the water out and finally an hour later at 8 we found the phone and all the pieces. Yay!! But after being in rice overnight our little phone didn’t survive and we got a new one. Yay for adventures!! It was a great time.

Thank you so much for the vitamins! They are great! Huge but great! :) Also glad you got the pic from Sister Blake a family in our ward who is amazing. She is just so sweet! She doesn’t have anyone on a mission right now. She has two teenage daughters who are awesome but she always makes sure that we have what we need and it was so cute she started getting emotional as she took the pic of us. It was so cute we love her so much! 

So about Sister Boga that amazing less active! We went and saw her and her husband last night and she made flan cheesecake! It was good! Not as good as dads of course. Dad should try and make one!! It would be amazing! She is always making sure we are doing well and that we are fed. She feeds us so much! We found out her husband is super into 80s music so we bonded over that. It was so much fun. They have a concert to go every month of the year. It’s funny. 

This week in personal study, I was reading in D & C section 138:55-56 and I love it because it talks about how we have already been taught how to be missionaries! We were taught in heaven by the greatest teacher, our loving Heavenly Father. We just have to put off the natural man and trust in him that he taught us well enough and trust ourselves as well because we know this! We know how to teach! We were pre-ordained!  Just always remember our potential. It’s super powerful and just boosted me up!

I hope you have a great week!!! I love and miss you all!!! xoxoxoxoxo :)))))  

Briaunna

Family!!!! 

It was so nice to see all of your faces!! You guys are a sight for sore eyes hahah you all just crack me up so much!! :))) thanks so much for all your support and love!! Couldn’t do this without you all! Why is my family so funny we should start a comedian show! :) 

That book about the Pioneer handcart companies sounds super cool dad! I can’t wait to read it!! This week I have been trying to learn the pioneer child song As They Walked in Spanish and as I was thinking about its crazy how they were going through all that walking without shoes and they still sang! They were happy and positive! Its true superheroes don’t have capes they have handcarts! :) It would be so much fun to go to Martin’s Cove! 

So this week!! We had to drop Lynn because, well we don’t know what happened, one day she was super solid and then the next she wouldn’t answer our calls or the door. We were super sad because she was so amazing! But that is okay. Planting seeds. But we were blessed again with Bianca and her family. They are the Bolivian family. We were tracting and we decided to try one more door before going home. So we went to this door that we both felt prompted about and right next to the door was a sign that said families are eternal! We were like no way! We knocked on the door and she let us right in. She has a daughter Alison who is 12 and a son who is six and her husband is in the Marines. Super cool! Bianca is a little slow, she just has a hard time understanding the priesthood and why we need to be baptized again. But her husband gets it. He knows that to get to the celestial kingdom he has to get baptized and be sealed to his family in the temple. We are going to take them on a temple tour this week. It will be super fun!! 

Miami Skyline

 Yesterday while knocking doors, we had this cool experience. wW were knocking in this very Latin area and went to give this lady a card and she didn’t speak Spanish. She said that she was just here to pick up her god daughter from her grandparents and she was like, “do you speak Spanish?”  I said yes. She was super happy. She asked if I could translate for her. So I got to translate for her and it was super cool. She was so grateful. She said I don’t know what I would have done without you guys. It was a cool experience.

  

This week we went and visited Sister Boga and her husband was there. He is really into guns and when he found out I liked them and did archery, he got out all his guns and showed them to me. He has a nine mil like dads, and a couple of action powered shot guns. Beautiful rifles and these are like crazy expensive ones. He loved it because none of his kids are really into it. It was so great to get to know him better. Dad would of loved all his guns and him!! Haha

Look what we found on our porch!!

This week I was reading in 1 Nephi 20:10 and it says, “For behold I have refined thee, I have chosen thee in the furnace of thy afflictions.” It made me think of a piece of coal and how we are like that coal and even though we are a piece of imperfect coal he knows our potential and what we can become. So to help us he gives us that heat and pressure which is like trials, scripture study, the atonement, prayer and church to help us become that beautiful diamond that he knows we can be! It was a great analogy. It was also amazing as I was reading in Moroni as well and it talked about how Moroni could of stopped writing the Book of Mormon after he finished Ether but he says I am not dead yet so I am going to keep writing. It was so powerful because he went the extra mile. If he didn’t we wouldn’t have the rest of the book. It’s so important we go the extra mile because we don’t know who we are going to affect. It makes me think of in Hercules when he sings "I can go the distance.... I know every mile will be worth my while..." it’s true every extra mile we go will be worth it. 

I love you all soooo much!!! Thanks sooo much for all you do!! So happy I got to see you guys yesterday. Have a great a week!

Family!! :)

I hope you all had a wonderful week this week! :) This week was awesome and exciting here in the good old land of Florida. There has been some crazy storms lately which means it is officially summer! Yay!! This transfer we got a new sister in the house so I am officially the oldest. It’s weird, but I love all the girls so much. Our house is the best! So much fun.

This week we went to eat with Brother White and his family. Best bbq chicken ever! And guess what? He said the prayer for the food and he said that was the first prayer he said in years. His wife was very impressed. We know that she will join the church because of his example. It was a fun time. We love their family so much.

Last p-day we went to Sister Boga’s house and hung out with her and had lunch. She is another awesome less active. I don’t know if i told you about her but she is amazing! We love her so much. She is really into gardening and she has this huge garden, so every time we come over she teaches us lot about planting. When we were talking with her she asked us what the biggest challenge is as a missionary and we said reaching our goals and getting good numbers, because of how much pressure there is in the mission. She said something awesome that really helped us. She said that numbers don’t matter. She said it’s better to baptize 2 good strong people and have them be in the church forever then baptize 30 people and have them all fall away. She said if we baptize 2 solid people, those two solid people will effect generations and by them millions of people can be baptized.  She compared it to a plant. When you are planting a potted plant into the ground you can see it has a bunch of small roots but they soon quickly either die or fall off. It is the couple strong roots that stay and give life to the plant. She said don’t worry about numbers worry about baptizing solid people so the church can have those strong roots. It was awesome. Sister Boga is the best and has such a strong testimony of the church. She is just stubborn, but we know she will become active again.

So we dropped Mike and Emma but we have Lynn who is amazing! I think I told you about her last week. We got to teach her for the first time and we taught her the restoration. It was super powerful and she understood it great. She just had a couple a questions about the priesthood and other rumors about us but all those were easily answered and fixed. She told us that last Sunday they woke up late to go to their church and it was 45 min away so she told her son that they needed to find another church that is closer. So they knelt in prayer and asked Heavenly Father to guide them to a church and they ended up at ours. So cool right! She was definitely meant to be there! She has been reading the Book of Mormon and has been praying for an answer if the church is true as well if Joseph Smith was a prophet. She says she hasn’t received an answer yet but that it feels good. We are excited to continue to help her progress! :) She is so willing to learn.

I have some other sad but good news. Sister Calvo has finished her mission:( but the good news is she lives here in Florida! I don’t know if i ever told you guys the story but Sister Calvo lived in Spain and about a year before she got her mission call her mom moved here to Florida. So when Sister Calvo got her call to Florida she was surprised. What is super cool is her ward is the Spanish ward in the building I go to!! This is why I was supposed to stay! hahah What was a huge blessing it was last Wednesday. We were at the church to pick up dinner the young women made for us (super awesome by the way) and in walks in Sister Calvo and her family which is like my Spanish family. She was there to be released from her mission. It was like a big family reunion!! They all said they missed me. I gave Sister Calvo a huge hug and she asked me if I wanted to stay for her releasing and I was like yes! So she went in to have her interview with the Stake President and then we all got together. She gave her last testimony as being a missionary which was sad and then they asked her to remover her tag and that’s what got me. It was probably the saddest thing to see. I don’t know how to explain it but seeing her remove her tag was super hard. The rest of the night I was holding on to mine. I didn’t want to take it off. It made me realize how fast time goes and how I don’t want my mission to end at all. I know I will always be a missionary but still... it makes me sick to think about. So now Sister Calvo comes out with us to teach and knock doors. Which is weird but so much fun! She is for sure still a missionary!! I get to see her at church:)

This family in our ward, the Riggin’s, are from Seattle and are amazing. A young couple in their late 20s with two awesome kids! We go over to their house every Sunday. Brother Riggin’s is a golfer and him and his family are going to Seattle for the US Open so they will be in Lynnwood for a week with family and they said they want to come visit you guys. They said they can take stuff home for me or pick stuff up from you guys and they want to take pictures. That will be the week of June 13th. I am super excited for you all to meet them!

This week I was reading in Ether and I was reading how the Jaredites were in the barges and how they had to go through fierce winds and crazy stuff but they were still being pushed towards the Promised Land. I never thought much about this scripture but as I read it this time it made me think about how this is like how our trials are. They can be crazy and toss us to and fro but we are still being pushed towards the Promised Land. It made me think of as well this story about this family who went rafting and when they went through the rapids it was super scary and they fought to stay on the raft. But after the trip the dad said that even though at the time going through the rapids was super scary it was the best part. When we are going through trials they may seem hard to bare but in the end as we look back we will find that it was during those times that we grew the most and were able to come closer to our Father in Heaven. :)

A quote that I heard was "If you were the only Book of Mormon people would read what would they read" something to think about :)

I almost forgot about Skyping! I will be Skyping around 7pm or so my time so for you guys it will be 4. Does that work? I will call you guys before I get on to warn you:)) I can’t wait to see all your faces!! Super excited that Lauryn will be there!

Ii love you all sooo much!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Have an awesome week!