Monday, February 29, 2016

I think by the end of my mission I am going to have arthritis from trying to type so fast.  I think I have elderly hands haha.  Anyway, momma I'm sure you are dying to know who my new companion is.  It is weird to think you don’t get live feed of everything that is happening in my life haha.  I'm sure that would make you a lot happier.  I’m a trainer again.  I now have a Filipino son!!!!!!!!  I'm so excited to be training again.  I knew transfers were coming up but the last thing I was expecting was to be training again.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to train again.  I think I did an alright job training Elder Barbosa, but I'm excited to be able to improve my training skills.  I would train the rest of my mission if I was allowed to haha.  My son’s name is Elder Suriben, and he is the man!!!  I don't really even have to train him because he is already trained.  I'm sure he will teach me a lot more than I will teach him.  Before he came out on his mission he had heaps of callings that helped him to prepare for the mission.  He was a ward missionary, a young men's secretary, and a family history consultant.  He worked really hard at his callings and they have really helped him to mature.  He went out with the missionaries heaps and learned a lot of things from them.  He is a great example for the Priests that are preparing to go on missions.  Papi make sure you get those priests to get out with the Elders!!!!!!!!! I wish I would have gone out with the missionaries more and really studied preach my gospel.  I now have lots of ground to make up to make sure I can be the servant that our Heavenly Father wants me to be.  You priests will be so thankful when you get out on your mission that you went out with the missionaries.  It really will prepare you to serve the Lord.  I always was too concerned about my life to want to go out with the missionaries.  When we were baptized we all covenanted to be missionaries, so find out how you can more fully keep you baptismal covenant.  Elder Suriben has one younger brother who is 12, and his mom and dad.  Both of his parents were raised in the church and so was he.  Elder Suriben's favorite food is rice haha.  Today when we went shopping he bought a massive bag of rice.  I think he might eat it in a week.  He is 18 years old and is really, really skinny!!!  Maybe even skinnier than Uncle Adam haha which would be amazing, I think he weighs 125 pounds.  I think I could toss him across the room.  He is a pretty quiet fella, but I'm sure he will talk more once we get to know each other a little better.  He loves to play basketball, so I'm sure we will play some basketball before the transfer is over.  Great news!!!!!!!!! Guess who my Zone Leader is?!  Elder Fellingham!!!!  Elder Fellingham was my zone leader for 2 transfers when I was in Gisborne.  He is way cool, and is actually the son of Elder Lingwall.  The funniest part of the whole thing was that I called Elder Fellingham coming to be the zone leader in Taranaki.  About halfway through last transfer I went up to Elder Lingwall and told him I just had received revelation that his son (Elder Fellingham) was going to come to Taranaki next transfer.  It was the weirdest thing ever haha.  So who knows, maybe I will get to golf this transfer since Elder Fellingham likes to golf.  I haven't swung a club in ages though, so I'm a little skurd haha.  This morning during companion study it was pouring cows!!!!!!!  The weather is still really hot though!  I'm so ready for it to be cold, because our flat is rubbish and always hot haha.  Also yes mom, my camera is pretty much toast, so I will have to buy a new one, and I forgot my camera at the zone leaders flat so I won’t even be able to send any pictures, sorry!!!!  Also, the watch I came with broke, and it would be $85 to fix and I wasn't about to do that.  After ages of contemplating I finally convinced myself to buy a $20 dollar watch.  I knew I should not have done that because I figured it would break really quick.  Not to my surprise, that is exactly what it did.  It broke, and then I fixed it, but then it went through the wash and got ruined haha.  So I'm really struggling at the moment haha.  I don't really want to buy any new things because they will just end up broken haha.

I'm not really sure if I have told you guys about Matiu one of our investigators.  He is the man, and has been coming to church every week.  He is set for baptism this Saturday, but still has some things we have to work through.  He is doing really good though, and we are really hoping that he will be baptized.  Elder Suriben and I have been working really hard to find new people to teach.  We had a really good experience this week following the promptings of the spirit.  It was Saturday night and we had come back to do 12 week.  The first 12 weeks of your mission you get an extra hour of companionship study to do 12 week.  So we opened up 12 week with a prayer and then I had the thought that we should go visit one person and just invite them to church on Sunday.  So we went to invite the people to Church and they were not even home, but there were two people that we were able to set up a return appointment with.  They had met with missionaries ages ago, but had gotten really busy.  They are Samoan and are way nice!  It was something really simple, and who knows if they will even progress.  But I'm so thankful for the gift of the Holy Ghost.  I got to go.  Time is up.

Love,

Elder Brunson!!!!!!