Sunday, April 10, 2017

It's almost April 15th!!

Endure to the end!

Most of you are probably thinking this is referring to the amount of time I have left on my mission, but you are wrong haha.  April 15th is the end of tax season!!!  Every son and daughter of an accountant recognizes April 15th as a very special day.  It's the day we get our papi back haha.  You can do it papi, not too much more time to go!!!  I even have April 15th written down in my missionary planner haha.  I don't know how you balance tax season and being a bishop but I'm sure you are doing a great job.

This week was a solid week!!!  Nothing better than general conference weekend!  There were so many uplifting messages!  I think the talk I really loved was Elder Holland’s talk, Songs Sung and Unsung.  I think I related to it because I'm a terrible singer haha!  I also really enjoyed, To the Friends and Investigators of the Church by Joaquin Costa.  I liked it because he was a really entertaining speaker and he also reminded me of my son Elder Barbosa.  I wish I had time to write more about the talks and why I really enjoyed them, but unfortunately I don't have time.

One of the highlights of the week came Friday night around 8:40.  One of the hardest things on the mission is the time between 8:30 and 9:00, especially during the winter when it’s dark from 6 on.  People don't really like you knocking on their door.  Well Friday night it was 8:40 and we had no idea who to see.  We thought about it and we felt like we should stop by and invite Sione and Dallas to General Conference.  Dallas was the lady I talked about in my email last week.  She is a Maori lady whose partner is Sione and he is Tongan.  We were supposed to meet with them this week on Wednesday, but the appointment fell through.  Anyway, we started walking up the steps to their front door and standing at the door was Sione.  We started talking to Sione and Dallas immediately butted into the conversation.  We couldn't actually see Dallas because she was sitting on the couch on the inside of the house.  She was like, "Man don't you fellas know how late it is?  Shouldn't you be home right now? It's not very safe to be out this late.”  We apologized for stopping in so late and Dallas was like, “No brothers, that's alright, you’re starting to freak me out though.” She continued by explaining that every time something went wrong we would show up at the house.  Sione and her daughter Praise (who happens to be a member already) were standing there as well.  She then turned to them and said, "Guys don't you see we need the brothers in our life!”  It's impossible to reenact Maori people so this story would be 10 times cooler if you could actually meet Dallas haha.  Sione agreed with Dallas and told us how much he appreciated us continuing to stop by even though they hadn't been keeping their appointments with us.  They told us that they couldn't make it to conference, but that they really wanted to meet up with us on Wednesday, and they promised it wouldn't fall through.  We asked them if there was anything we could do for them and they said we could leave them with a prayer.  We said a prayer and there was a really sweet spirit in their home.  They must have been having a really rough day because after the prayer their daughter Praise was crying.  Lesson learned: Heavenly Father continues to work miracles at 8:40 when we are obedient.  Another cool part of the miracle was that we caught up with President Worthen, the second counselor in our mission presidency, at General Conference on Sunday and we told him how we had met one of his employees Dallas.  He said that Dallas had come up to him at work that week and was telling him all about us.  She was like…”the brothers are so awesome!”  Apparently she said it in front of a big group of employees too haha.  She just kept talking about how much she loved Mormons.  President Worthen thought it was really cool that she wasn't afraid to share with other people that she was meeting with us and enjoyed our church.  We are again excited to work with them this week, and hopefully our appointment doesn't fall through!

Also it rained heaps this week!!!!!!!  It's amazing though how much pain an umbrella can save you.  We got warnings for flooding throughout our zone.  Thankfully none of the missionaries were affected, but some of the members were affected down in Whakatane which is a little over an hour away, so we had a special stake fast for them on Sunday.  I love you all heaps and hope you have a great week!  

Love,

Elder Brunson