Monday, February 8, 2016

Well once again I will most likely have a really lame email this week haha.  This will probably upset my mother because now she only has one child on a mission instead of two.  So I won’t have my big sister to make up for my lame emails anymore haha.  I can’t believe Kathryn Joy Brunson is home.  I'm sure you are all realizing now how good of a missionary she was.  I'm so glad I have such a good example for an older sister.  She really is the best sister ever!  But I love Amanda and Emma just as much.  It is weird hearing that she is home in our house.  I can’t even really picture what our house is like, and I have only been out for two months.  I can’t imagine what it will be like when I have been gone for two years haha.  I'm sure the family has had such a good week this week.  I'm sad that I'm missing out on the celebration, but I know I'm where the Lord needs me to be.

This week has had a lot of ups and downs. One of the ups was that we had a Zone conference on Thursday this week.  Zone conference was so mean and I learned so much!  Elder Tibbits, one of the Assistants gave a mean training that really helped me out.  It was getting towards the end of zone conference and we all gathered back together in the main room.  President Rudd was giving his closing remarks and then has said, “I would like Sister Green and Elder Brunson to come and share what they have learned over these past two weeks with listening to an Apostle and having this Zone conference.”  My heart started racing and I was like, “oh great” haha.  Luckily sister Green spoke first, so I had some time to prepare.  I pretty much shared my experience that I shared in my last email and also bore my testimony.  It was a good experience to share my testimony with heaps of missionaries.  I'm thankful for my testimony and I'm thankful for the many spiritual experiences that I have had in my life and so far on my mission.  After I got done sharing my experiences President Rudd grabbed a hold of me.  He walked me to the front of the room, and I was like oh great what did I do haha.  Then he said to everyone, "I want all you Elders to look at Elder Brunson's shoes. Some of you need to follow the example of Elder Brunson and introduce your shoes to some polish.”  Mom I thought you would enjoy hearing that I was wearing my really shiny shoes haha.

Now the down for this week is that we were having a really slow week, and by slow I mean we were having no success.  It was really bringing me and Elder Vaea down and we were not sure what to do.  Elder Lingwall, our zone leader, told us that Satan was trying to smash us before Les Parish’s baptism on Sunday.  Les Parish is an 85 year old man who we baptized this Sunday.  He was set for baptism by Elder Vaea and his companions and they taught him all of the lessons.  So Elder Vaea and I were just preparing him for baptism.  Les is a really nice fella and loves the missionaries.  He is always looking out for us and wants the best for us.  I definitely think what Elder Lingwall said is right because after the baptism on Sunday, Elder Vaea and I smashed it!!  We had such a good day Sunday and found heaps of new people to work with.  It was pretty amazing.  I definitely have a firm belief that before and after a miracle Satan really tries to work on us.

I will tell you about one of the cool miracles that happened on Sunday.  So Sunday night we went to try and visit a part member family that we just recently met.  We went to visit them and they didn't answer the door.  We were pretty sure they have been home the past few times we have tried and are just dodging us.  After knocking on their door we figured we would try and find our purpose for being in that area at that time.  We knocked a door and had a nice chat with a lady but she wasn't interested.  Then the fun began haha.  We decided to knock on one more door.  So this fella opens the door tells us to beep off and slams the door on our face (like really slams the door hard) and then continues to swear at us from behind the door.  So pretty discouraged and angry, Elder Vaea and I returned to the car.  As we were about to get in the car and leave, I turned to Elder Vaea and said, “We can’t end on that note, we can’t let Satan win, let’s go knock one more door.”  So we knocked on this door and this fella answered the door.  He looked angry and said absolutely nothing to us and walked away.  Then his partner yelled to us to come in.  We knew that she had no clue who was at the door, but we were guessing that if she knew it was Mormon missionaries she wouldn't be saying come in.  Well Elder Vaea and I figure here is our chance, so we took our shoes off and went in.  The lady looked surprised to see us.  I was like, “Are you surprised you were inviting the Mormon missionaries in haha?”  She was like, “yeah I had no clue who it was haha”.  The good news is this lady was nice.  So we kept talking to her and it turns out that she is a member of the church.  We talked with her for quite a while, while her partner went off into another room.  She apologized and said her partner was really grumpy.  Finally when we were about to leave he came into the room. So we tried to make some small talk with him but he was grumpy.  After a while though he started to warm up. We asked him if he believed in God.  He said he wasn't really sure.  We taught him about prayer and committed both of them to pray every night for the next week, and they accepted.  We are really excited to go back and teach them though.  I definitely know that the Lord lead us to them.  I love being a missionary, when you have one small miracle it makes up for an entire week of no success.  Keep my sister out of trouble haha.

Love,

Elder Brunson