Baptisms and Humility

I hear nothing but rave reviews of how you are doing.  Thank you for coming.

……………………………………….

MARK CUSICK

This is the email I received from my mission President today!

Here I am again, emailing and forgetting everything I want to say. I really need to start a list. Oh well, here are a few highlights!

Transfers this week. We now have 4 missionaries in our house. It is just Hermana Jahnel and me in our companionship. I love her and she is really helping me with my Spanish- how lucky am I! I have the only native companion!(:

Lesson in humility…

I got pulled over this week :/

I ran a red light- so dumb, but it was actually okay. It was a green for cars going straight on a one-way street (the street I was on) but I was turning left. There was a car that turned the wrong way on my street and almost hit me. So I went with the other cars to get out of there. Then the flashing lights came. Stomach drops and I’m feeling awful. I was so scared, but the cop was nice and just wanted to make sure I was okay. He didn't write me a ticket or anything. It was crazy. I hate driving in Florida. I no longer feel I am a better driver than Hermana Gibson ):

3 BAPTISMS! German, Ana, and Estevan were all baptized. It was great- we sang and had some ward members give talks. I felt a little bad that it was all in Spanish and Estevan had no clue what was going on, but I know he felt the spirit. German was late to his own baptism because of a crazy work schedule, but it was okay.

Estevan wore new church clothes for the first time this Sunday to get confirmed. It was adorable- so handsome. He’s the 8 year old.

It has been raining all week. Hard to be productive.

We had so many miracles this week, it is hard to choose just one. I will share our experience on Thursday. We were low (and when I say low, I mean VERY low) on miles, and could not fall behind schedule. We planned to drive to church with our bikes and go from there. We loaded our bikes on the car and left. When we got to the church, we could not get Hermana Jahnel’s bike off of the car. It was stuck and would not move. It was as if her bike shrunk while on the bike rack. We were using all of our strength and could still not get it off. After 15 minutes of struggling, we finally managed to get it off. We were behind schedule. Both feeling stressed and overwhelmed with the day, we decided to pray. We planned and had done all we could up to this point. It was time to turn our day over to the Lord. We both felt prompted to just take the car, so we did. Just down the street there was a pretty bad fresh accident. We were glad we missed that Not 2 minutes after passing the accident came the rain. It his like a wall and was letting up. I think it might have been raining from the ground up. We were glad we were in the car; otherwise we would have missed our appointment. We made it to all the appointments safely that day and ended the day with a beautiful baptismal service.

Love you all-

Hermana Bryan

PS. Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Baptism Day!

Good bye Hermana Gibson

Feeling like a Greeny

I feel like I have so much to say all week long then forget it all as soon as I sit down at the computer. Sorry everybody.. but here are a couple of things that happened.

I was so discouraged this week. I thought I would learn Spanish a lot faster than this. It is even harder because I am in a trio and both my companions know Spanish. They pretty much take over the lessons because it takes me a long time to say things and can't always understand what the investigators are saying. It is frustrating. Every weakness I have has been magnified. I guess the Lord is helping me to be humble.

There was one day this week I was feeling really sad and discouraged. I was so frustrated with myself and just couldn't shake the feeling of being unfit for the work. The next morning we woke up to some messages of our most helpful member as well as his close friend. He had some awful things going on and was handling it all the wrong way. It scared us. It was eye opening.

Gods hands are always stretched out towards us. This time he used his outstretched hand to give me a little slap. I've got it good- family and friends who support me, the gospel in my life, enough food to make it through the week (most of the time), the list goes on and on. It reminded me of a talk I heard a while ago (I think it was by Elder Bednar) about the characteristics of Christ. When bad things happen the natural man turns in, but Christ turns out. That day I turned out and just lost myself in the work. They key to missionary work really is work. It helped me to focus on others and not myself.

Transfers are this week. I am staying here with Hermana Jahnel and Hermana Gibson is leaving. I am so sad she is leaving. I have learned so much from her. We are going to get another Hermana, so we will still be in a trio. I am glad we are getting her, I know she is going to help so much here and there is someone who needs to hear from her, but I am getting tired of being a third wheel. I really need to trust that God has a plan for me and I didn't just get tossed in here for no reason.

There was a baptism for a branch member this past Sunday. He wanted the missionaries to sing, so we did. We sang the baptism song in Spanish and English. His parents only speak Spanish and he only knows English. It was a beautiful blessing. His dad gave the blessing in Spanish and then at the end he tried to repeat everything he said in English so his son could understand. It was beautiful and I cried because the spirit was so strong and he just loves his son so much. 

Shout out to my parents- Thanks for speaking English (:

We have 2 baptisms this week!  I am so excited for them! It is going to be a beautiful experience.

Well, I don't have much else that I can remember... so that will be all for this week. I love you all. Thanks for all the support.

Keep smiling!

Hermana Bryan

Bike, Cars, and a Holy Skirt, Amen

Wow! So much has happened this week. 

We got the AC fixed this week- it makes such a huge difference!

I got a hole in my skirt this week- it got caught in my breaks. I told my companions I was going to wear it to church every week and they looked at me like I was crazy. Then I told them I was going to wear it because now it is a "holy" skirt. They laughed for so long. It's like the oldest joke in the book! 

Speaking of my bike, I finally got all the mudguards and reflectors put on. It looks pretty spiffy. I love my bike. I am slowly teaching myself to ride without holding onto the handlebars because it hurts my wrists. So far I haven’t crashed, so I think I'm doing pretty well!

I got my iPad this week. It’s so great- I don't know how missionaries keep everything organized without one!!

I also drove the car this week. Hermana Gibson was feeling sick so I drove. I'm still a pro. Speaking of cars- oh my goodness. Hermana Gibson, our DD, ran a red light and we got hit. It wasn't bad because she swerved out of the way. We only had a little scratch and the other car didn't stop at all. We were all fine and the car was fine, but still- it scared me so much! When she didn't slow down I said, "umm.. The light is red." very casually. She realized when we were 1/2 way through the intersection. It was weird.

Funny story of the week:

My Spanish was really bad one day. I don't know why but I was struggling SO MUCH! We were teaching a lesson to a man who was talking really fast and it was just so hard. My companion was saying something and I was trying to catch words I recognized, but was so lost. Finally I heard her say "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." I figured she was finishing her testimony so I said, “Amen”. I was WRONG! She was teaching how to pray hahahahaha. Every one looked at me with the same looks on their faces and it was so awful. I wanted to laugh so hard but I had to wait until the lesson was over. My companions laughed with me for an hour haha.

Well, that’s about all I have time for this week. Love you all and thank you for all your support! 

Love-

Hermana Bryan

 

Oh RED LIGHT! Got it

Thinking of Grandma :)

GYROS!

Guess what we ate this week?! It was Hermana Jahnel's first time and she loves them! (:

4th of Julyyyyy

So much has happened this week, it's crazy! For my lack of time, I will just give you short tidbits of information.

I found out that --------- dropped the elders when we were transferred. That made me so sad, I cried a little bit. But then I realized it was just a "not yet". 

We had a schedule change this week. We have to wake up sometime before 6 and be in bed by 10. It is so nice! Before the change we had to be up before 6 and in bed by 10:30. It is amazing what an extra 1/2 hour of sleep can do. 

We found an investigator named -----. She took the lessons from the missionaries a long time ago but doesn't really remember and wants to take them again! She is just eating up everything we teach her. She really wants to come to church and progress, but her husband is a devout catholic and expects her to go with him. She is scared of what might happen with her husband. Please pray for her!

We went to go see a potential investigator and there was a drunk man next door who wouldn't leave us alone. He came up and grabbed Hermana Gibson's hand when we were at the neighbor’s door. We got out of there real fast. It was a little bit scary.

We are teaching a mom and son. They are going to be baptized next week!! --- is getting divorced from her husband who is not a good man. It is amazing the change that she has gone through. ------- was telling us that he has a bad life becuase of his dad. It was really sad, but we just talked about how much his Father in heaven loves him. He is just 8 years old and he started to cry. He is so amazing and now that he realized he has the best Father ever he is progressing so much! He told us that he loves us this week and we make his life better- we told him it wasn't us, it was God. He is just amazing.

Every morning we go to the gym to work out and it is usually just us, but sometimes there is this old man who comes and I really don't like it when he comes because then we have to leave. When we can’t be in the gym we have to just run outside. Let me just make something really clear- running in Florida is the worst. THE WORST! You sweat enough to fill a pool just standing there, so when you run it is so so so awful. PLUS, the bugs just eat you alive! Every day I just tell myself I will get some blessing from it because I have a hard time staying positive about it.

Also, this week my companions learned that I talk in my sleep. I am always just so dead so I never wake up. But I woke both of them up this week and was talking to them. They were talking back to me AND I ANSWERED THEM! Haha! They told me the next day and I just had to apologize for waking them up. It was really funny.

Earlier this week all our appointments would say "American girls- happy 4" in their broken English. It made me so happy. haha! 

This week our luck with the rain wore off. We got soaked! We just had to ride our bikes in the rain. It was bad.

Miracle:

On Thursday we had a lot of lessons! It was so good, but we didn't have time for dinner, so we just didn't eat. We were starving! We went to teach our English class in the church and there was a single adults ward activity where nobody showed up. The lady that set it up let us have their refreshments! The Lord will always provide!! Ha-ha It was really funny but awesome.

Also, ------, one of our investigators got up and bore his testimony in sacrament meeting!! He is so golden!!! Pray for him- he needs to resolve some issues.

Love,

Hermana Bryan

Jessica loves the 4th of July so we sent them all a flag shirt.

Her companions thought it was fun to get matching shirts!