Hi family!!

 Sorry I didn't write yesterday, the Monday before transfers is a work day. So we got transfer call yesterday and of course me and my comp are staying but one of the sisters in our house is now going to be training so we will have a greenie in the house and now I am not the new one yay!! I feel more like a missionary.

I love America and so glad that Heavenly Father knows me and sent me to a place that doesn't feel like I am in America, but I am at the same time. Such a blessing. I really love the Cuban people so much I don't want to get transferred from this place ever! I want to be in Cuban central my whole mission. :) 

So this week we got a new mission president and he is the best! He is so focused on helping people stay in the church, reactivating people, and getting new converts to the temple! Which I love because that's one of the reasons why I wanted to serve so others can be with their families for forever. He is so down to earth, loving and loves to have fun but likes to work hard as well. He is the best. He loves to talk too. He could talk for hours. His wife is really awesome too and down to earth and loving like him. It’s funny everything that me and my companion and been worrying about this last couple weeks when our focuses had changed he touched on all of them. It was so crazy. It’s awesome to know that we were in tune with the spirit and so was he that he knows what changes need to be made and what this mission needs.

New Mission President and his Wife

 This week me and my companion set a goal to be exactly obedient and I didn't know how important being obedient was until now. We saw so many miracles this week. All this week we were on time to all of our appointments, and we got to see everyone we wanted to see. I have such a strong testimony of obedience. It’s so crucial that you are exactly obedient. A quote I read this week says "If you almost keep a commandment you almost get a blessing", and it’s so true! When we are exactly obedient Heavenly Father blesses us and we are able to have the spirit with us at all times.

   As for Daisy, our most awesome investigator and now really good friend, is having such a hard time with setting a date for baptism. She told us this week that she isn't ready and that she has to know for sure that this church is true and it just breaks my heart because she has had so many great experiences and she just hasn't recognized them as a confirmation.

Another quote I read this week really helped with my doubts this week with Daisy it says "As you emphasize your faith and not you doubts your faith will grow". I shared this with her as well but learned that I cannot have any doubts that I have to trust in my Heavenly Father and his timing for her because my timing isn't the Lord’s timing.

 

Some of the weird things that I have eaten this week is Malanga, yuich, iron beer which is a Cuban spiced root beer, Malta, and guava cheese which is Mexican cheese with guava jelly on it and I love it so much! haha I love trying new food and they all taste good but Honduran food is still by far my favorite. 

4th of July night together

 Fourth of July was amazing! Our church bbq was a great success and we gave a chapel tour to some of investigators there which was a great spiritual experience. That night we had an early curfew of 7:30, and we share our house with two other sisters. So we bought a bunch of junk food, moved all our furniture and sprayed the floor with poison of course and moved our mattresses into the living room and watched the church movie Legacy and watched the fireworks. It was a fun night although none of us slept well because we were all afraid of the cockroaches. Blah. 

Huge cockroaches!

Oh this week we and the other sister we share the house with are going to teach English classes for free at the church for anyone who wants to learn English to help us find new investigators so hopefully it goes well. Oh our new president also said by the end of this year we will be an ipad mission and possibly fb so we are all excited for that! woot woot. haha yeah it’s crazy how much is changing. I don't know I feel about it because I like using my physical planner (my life saver) and stuff and serving that "normal" mission but we will see maybe it wont be that bad.

  I love you all soo much!! Thanks so much for all your prayers and encouragement. I am so glad I have such a loving family because a lot of people here don't have that at all. Have a good week!! love you guys!!! :)))

  Love,

 Briaunna :)

This week has been busy! We are planning a ward missionary activity for July 4th and are super excited! It’s going to be great! We have been inviting everyone so hopefully it will be a good turn out!

 I am sick of mangoes! I think me and my companion have been eating our weight in mangoes and I don't want to see another one again! Members and neighbors keep giving them to us! But one thing i could eat my weight in is street churros! I had my first real Mexican street churro and it was the best thing in the whole wide world! So yummy! Mom would die!

This week has been a cockroach week and I don't know how long I can take. They are in our bed, in our bathroom and my companion found one on her tooth brush. They are in the kitchen just everywhere and they are huge! We have like 20 different poisons for them and nothing works! Ugh!

Cockroaches watch out!!

This week was also busy but hard as well. I really learned what it means to forgive and forget about the natural man. Me and my companion are so alike, very hard headed and like to be in charge and my patience was definitely tested this week. I would hold grudges and finally I realized because of that the spirit wasn't in our lessons, i wasn’t happy and neither was my companion. I learned that it doesn't matter if she talks the whole time of if what she said made me mad all that matters is our investigators and their progression. I realized that I need to just let things go or talk to her about it. After that the rest of this week went awesome and our friendship grew so much! We are working better and we have received so many blessings because of that.

This week I prayed really hard for the gift of tongues to help my Spanish speaking and studied so hard. I also prayed for my mission leader, and this week heavenly father made sure I had opportunities to use my Spanish. We went on exchanges and I took over the area and I was with an English speaking sister and had to speak all the Spanish by myself and had to try and understand them. It was so scary but the Holy Ghost was with me and somehow I understood and remembered what I studied.

Studying hard!

I also bore my testimony on Sunday in Spanish and was so scared but oh what an amazing experience it was as the Spirit testified to me that what I was saying was true. During correlation it was my turn to tell our mission leader about our investigators and I was really scared about that but he was able to understand me and said I was improving. I was so relieved.  

This week and I came across this hymn and it’s called When Faith Endures and it says "I will not doubt, I will not fear, God’s love and strength are always near. His promised gifts help me find an inner strength and peace of mind. I give the Father willing my trust, my prayers and my humility. His spirit guides, His loves assures that fear departs when faith endures".

I realized that I needed to replace my fear with faith and as I put that to the test I have definitely seen the blessings that come from that. There are so many things in life that are scary but as we just turn that fear into faith our Heavenly Father will bless us so much and help us. We are never alone. He is always right there. And i know that with all my heart :)

Daisy is doing amazing! She is coming to church, keeping all the commitments and is growing and changing. Without us telling her, she went and bought modest clothes for church on Sunday! She is making so much changes and has such strong testimony! We are like best friends! She has a baptism date for the 13th and we are so excited!! Her family is amazing too! They feed us amazing Cuban food all the time and say that they want me to marry a Cuban so I don't have to leave Florida. They want me to stay forever! I love watching investigators change and gain a testimony. It’s something amazing and the best thing is hearing them pray. When your investigator prays for the first time it is the best experience ever the spirit is so strong! 

With an investigator named Celia and a member of the church.

  As with the new mission president, we get to meet him this Wednesday and we are excited. It’s so weird, a couple weeks ago before he came he was set apart by an apostle and its so weird but when he was set apart we missionaries could feel it. All of a sudden our thoughts and focus changed. We could feel the change then our president left. I don’t know how to explain it but it was so weird and amazing. We are all so excited for something new!!

Love,

Briaunna :))

Hey Family! 

Man i cannot believe you guys have a senior, fifth grader and an 8th grader. Mom and Dad are getting old haha just kidding!

  I drink plenty of water. I drink 6 bottles a day and love it, and here it hasn’t been that hot only in the mornings then it rains and storms the rest of the day. In the summer it rains, go figure but i love it. The other day it rained so much while we were driving, it was a big storm and i couldn’t see two feet in front of me so we had to go to a taco bell and wait till it stopped so we could drive. scary.

 I am eating great and the members are really good about feeding us. For lunches I usually have some days a tuna sandwich with fruit and a veggie, nuts and cheese, or i will be have a quesadilla with beans fruits and veggies. Hahah. I am not that creative but trying to stay healthy because Cuban food is so greasy and really heavy blah no Bueno.

 This week was such a blur! The days go by slow but the weeks goes by so fast. It has been crazy here with the World cup going on. We have member dinner appointments every night and they always have the game on so we have watched quite a few. My companion likes soccer and has me getting into it. One night at a members house we were watching soccer and eating hamburgers and hot dogs. We got really into the game. It was quite a party. Latin people love soccer.

The highlight of this week was the temple! The temple is so big and so beautiful!! A lot of the paintings in the temple are original and were painted just for this temple so it was so cool to see all different points of view from the painters. Being able to go through the temple with my zone was so amazing and so powerful! it brought new excitement and energy into our work. The celestial room was beautiful! Our president said that the carpet in there was handmade. The workers would come every day and sew it little by little.

Temple Trip to new Fort Lauderdale Temple

I learned so much this temple trip. I learned a lot about Eve and her role and her wisdom behind the choice to eat the fruit. How she longed to be a mother and fulfill her purpose. It really inspired me how much she loved Heavenly Father and how she wanted to obey all his commandments. She knew what she had to do. I also learned what the difference is between a transgression and a sin and how what Adam and Eve did was a transgression because there was no other way. It’s just amazing how much the spirit can teach you when you are open and ready to learn. This temple trip was also the last time we got to see our mission president and his wife. They leave this week and the new president comes in this Friday.  It is sad but we are so excited for what’s to come and the fresh ideas this president will have. I know that with this new president we will have great success as well.

This week was challenging with investigators. Some have dropped us and others we have had to drop them. It has been frustrating but this week we did have an investigator come to church which was a great miracle!   Her name is Daisy and she is 17. We have been teaching her mom and she never sat in on our lessons until like a week ago she got really interested and asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon immediately. She was so excited for church on Sunday! When we arrived to see if they could go she was already! Her mom couldn’t go but her parents were really supportive and she had such a good experience with the ward and the Young Women. I and she became fast friends. She is so awesome and I know next week she will get baptized for sure. I hope we find more people like her this week!

Daisy

 Investigators have been a challenge and so has the language. It has been becoming difficult lately. For example we call our mission leader every night and usually my companion talks to him because he talks like hard core Cuban. But the other day she said it was my turn and he refused to talk to me because my Spanish wasn’t good enough. That killed me. I was frustrated and hate grew inside me. But then i remembered what it said in my blessing before I left. It said the language wouldn’t be a barrier for me and i decided to humble myself and use this experience to motivate me to do better and study even harder then i was. I have been improving and my vocab has been expanding. I know that with the Lord’s help and faith in that blessing that i will be fluent in no time and soon i will be able to talk to him and show him how amazing i am.

    A quote I liked this week was “the more clearly we understand our divine destiny the more immune we become to Satan”. It’s so true as we realize who we are and where we came from and what our purpose is here Satan cannot win! We cannot fall and will always progress and always do what is right.  

  Also this week i have been thinking a lot about pioneers and how you are going on trek soon and I found this poem that I really liked, it’s called Faith Enough.

Faith enough …

To form molten stones of glass

Seeking the Creator’s touch

Faith enough …

In the midst of the tempest to say,

“Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea”

Faith enough …

To serve earthly royalty with hidden, burning testimony,

To recognize one sent from God

Faith enough …

To let go of the boat

And step out onto the billowing wave

Faith enough …

To follow God’s newly called Moses

In wagon and handcart, across the unknown plains

Though my story is still being written,

In reading theirs I find I too have

… Faith enough

Also this week at a member’s house, she gave us to drink blended cantaloupe.... yup just blended melon and milk. Eben would have loved it but it was so hard for me to choke down. I wanted to puke it was so gross. I think i would have liked to have warm jello like grandpa had haha. Oo different. I miss you guys so much and love you all!! Keep me updated on everything and all the summer fun!! :) Oh and my sunglasses work great! :) I also love that quote and yeah my companion is soo excited for the new branch in Cuba she started crying, it’s so amazing!! :))) 

 Have a good week!! :)

 Love Briaunna :)