Monday, July 4, 2016

Happy 4th of July!!!!!!!!!!!  

As crazy as people say America is, I'm still proud to be from the United States.  I'm thankful that I have grown up in a time of religious freedom.  I am thankful to Heavenly Father that I was born when the gospel is on the earth.  I feel like it was just yesterday that it was the 4th and I was preparing for my mission.  I really can't explain how fast my mission has gone.  In less than two weeks I will have been out for a year.  Everyone says that the first year goes by really slow but that the second year flies by.  I can't imagine my mission going any faster!  You might be wondering what we will do to celebrate the 4th of July.  Nothing haha.  Nahh we will just have a pretty normal pday today.  However, we are throwing a surprise bday part for a sister in our Zone.  We will probably just play some bball.  We have been having tons of fun playing basketball on pday.  We go pretty hard haha.  Plus we have some sisters in our zone who are pretty good at basketball.  One of the sisters was a sister that was in my district in the MTC. Her name is sister Hazelett.  We will just play ball at the church and have a big feed haha!  

This week was full of some amazing miracles!  I will see how much I can write haha.  On Wednesday we went on an exchange with Elder Van Hauwaert and Elder Tune.  I stayed with Elder Tune in our area and I was super pumped to smash it.  Our area is actually really small, but I was still a little worried about leading the area.  However, Elder Saurey let me choose what area I wanted to work in so I took the challenge of working in our area.  I figured the Lord would provide us with miracles if I worked where I was less comfortable.  If you go on an exchange in another area it is pretty easy because all you have to do is teach.  You don't have to come up with names of people to see.  The exchange started of absolutely insane haha!  So the first place Elder Tune and I went to was an investigator named Tommy, who is the man.  We have only met with Tommy once, but we are really hoping that he comes to church this next week.  Anyway, we tried to see Tommy, but he wasn't home.  So Elder Tune and I decided that we would walk to a potential investigator’s home who lives a little way down the road.  It was a really dark and cloudy day, but it hadn't started raining, so we were not too worried about the rain.  I had on my green raincoat just in case though.  Well we started walking and about 2 minutes into our walk it started absolutely dumping rain!!!!  We wanted to show Heavenly Father our faith so we kept on motoring in the rain, and even stopped and knocked on a couple of doors.  Man people in Seattle think they know rain, but I reckon it is nothing compared to New Zealand.  I wish I had the vocabulary to be able to explain to you how hard it was raining, but it's not even possible haha.  Well we kept walking until we finally got to the potential investigator’s home named Wai.  Wai is in her 20's or 30's and was a lady that we had met when we were out riding our bikes.  We gave her a pamphlet and invited her to our sports nights on Fridays.  However, she didn't come, but we decided to stop by and see if we could teach her.  When we finally arrived to her home we were soaking wet!  It looked like we had jumped into a pool with our church clothes on haha.  The rain was dripping from my hair, and I could barely even see haha.  Well Wai answered the door, but she said she was really busy.  I'm not sure if she was actually busy.  If it were me there would have been no way I would let two soaking wet Elders into my home haha.  We invited her again to the sport night for Friday though and then we went on our way.  Guess what?!!  On Friday she came, and she also brought her less active sister from another ward!  We were so surprised to see her there.  She had a really good time playing basketball, and she was surprisingly pretty good!  Anyway, back to the exchange.  So after we knocked on Wai's door we made the treacherous journey back to the car.  It was still dumping down rain, and we were freezing cold!  As I walked, water seeped out of my shoes.  I practically ruined my shoes in 20 minutes.  Well we finally made it back to the car and blasted the heat.  Next we drove to Gary's and had a lesson with him.  Gary is a 17-year-old boy who has come to church a couple of times.  We taught him a lesson in our soaking wet clothes haha.  After the lesson we decided that we needed to change out of our clothes.  So we drove home and switched clothes really quick, and headed back out to see some miracles.  Elder Tune and I were confident that we were going to see some miracles, because we had worked really hard while it had been raining.  It had also stopped raining so that was our sign that good things were going to happen.  Well what do you know…something good happened.  The highlight of our exchange was knocking doors and finding a man named Peter.  At first when he opened the door he didn't seem too keen.  However, he walked away from the door for a few minutes and then came back and invited us in.  He told us that he had been having back problems for 3 years and nothing was working.  He said that his family had even contemplated moving to the states to try and get better medical care, but they couldn't afford it.  We felt impressed to teach Peter about the priesthood.  We taught him that we held the same power to heal as Jesus Christ did when he was on the earth.  We told him it would be more meaningful if he knew that to be true for himself.  We gave him a restoration pamphlet and invited him to read and pray about our message.  We told him the next time we came around we would follow up with him and give him a blessing.  He committed to do the things we asked him so we were really pumped.  We are hoping to be able to work with him and his family!  It was really cool though that he invited us in.  We very rarely get invited in to someone's home on the first visit.  

I have some other miracles to share.  The next miracle happened on Saturday.  Saturday afternoon we took a young man named Gups out.  Gups lives with the Pritchard family a member of our ward.  Their family is Samoan and they are really awesome.  Anyway, Gups is 18 years old and is preparing to serve a mission.  He is the man!  A few weeks ago the Pritchard family gave us a referral to go and see a family who had recently lost two sons in a car accident.  We had tried to visit them several times with Gups, but each time we went we talked to the dad and he said that we could come back another time.  Well once again we went and tried them.  There was no better time that we could have tried them.  The whole family was gone except for the Dad, and he invited us in right away.  I really wish I could explain the lesson play by play.  All I can say was that it was one of the most, if not the most spiritual lesson I have had on my mission.  We taught and testified of the plan of salvation.  We asked him questions and really tried to see where his relationship was at with God.  He had a lot of hurt in his heart because of the loss of his two sons.  He said that he had not prayed since the accident.  He had a lot of emotions in his heart and shared lots of them with us.  It was an amazing lesson and the spirit was so strong.  By the end of the lesson we were able to commit him to get on his knees that night and pray and just talk with God about what had happened, the feelings he expressed with us, and what he was going through.  I love times when the spirit is so strong.  The role of the spirit is to testify of truth, but also to testify of the reality of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  If you ever question if Heavenly Father is really there and if he loves you, I want you to think of those times that you have felt the spirit.  Every time we feel the spirit that is Heavenly Father's spirit saying that he is there and that he loves us.  I'm so thankful for the Holy Ghost and the comfort and guidance that it can be for us in our lives.   

Alright one more miracle haha.  So Saturday night we went to try and visit a potential investigator named Hendon.  Hendon is a Maori fella and is 40 years old and is married and has a two year old girl.  We met Hendon knocking on doors and gave him a restoration pamphlet.  Well Hendon was really busy when we tried, but he told us to come around Sunday afternoon at 12.  When we went around on Sunday he was busy mowing the lawn, he told us to come by at 7 and his wife was going to cook us a feed.  Well we went back at 7 after our dinner appointment.  We tried to eat a light dinner, but we were at a member’s home for dinner.  We were not actually sure if Hendon would feed us anyway.  Well we got to Hendon’s house and sure enough, his wife had cooked us a mean feed!  Guess what it was…boil up!!!!!!!!  It was the first time that I had boil up since I was in Wairoa.  I just realized that I really just need to take a picture of a boil up so I can send it to you.  You might be thinking that the miracle is that we didn't throw up while attempting to finish our feed, but that's not the miracle.  We got to know Hendon and his wife really well though.  His wife has had lots of contact with the church, and has had close relatives serve missions.  She even knew that it was fast Sunday haha!  She is really on to it.  She was really busy with the two year old daughter which was really sad though.  Because the funny thing was she read the pamphlet and Hendon didn't.  We had a really good lesson with Hendon though.  He said that he knew our message was true because he could tell that we were sincere.  We are really excited to teach him and his wife though, and hopefully we can get them baptized!  Hendon is working to be a counselor for youth.  Hendon had a strong addiction to drugs in the past, but has been clean for a long time now, and is trying to help others do the same.  They would both be such good members of the church though!  

This next week should be really exciting!  We will get to meet President Cummings on Tuesday!  I'm excited to get to know him, and to see what his vision is for our mission!  I'm sure he will do great things.  I hope you all have a great 4th of July and try not to do anything too crazy!  Kev Bot I hope you get feeling better.  You are the man!  

Love, 

Elder Brunson