My Official Two Month Mark!

Oi familia e amigos! 

Eu amo voces muito! I hit my two month mark today and I cannot even believe the time has flown so quickly! Granted, I have only been in the field for three weeks right now which makes my claim of being on a mission for two months, not quite as valid :)

Did you know that Victoria, Texas is in the 80's and super sunny in the middle of October? I did not know a place like that existed on the earth, but it does and I quite enjoy it :) I have two really neat experiences that I want to share this week and then I might get a bit preachy :)

First, we are teaching a less active family, Sister Bianchini has been meeting with them all summer. They all FINALLY came to church on Sunday, plus our new investigator, their future son in law. They also paid their tithing. They don't pay their tithing, it was seriously a miracle. We dropped almost all of our investigators and our baptismal dates at the beginning of last week and we then turned around doubled our investigator pool and got a baptismal date. The Lord is truly mindful of us. We have been gardening an older lady's home all week, we are seriously amazing gardeners! Mom, thanks so much for making us weed and garden and mulch all summer, it definitely came in handy! We got to hear a member of the Seventy on Friday, he was fabulous! He just has so much knowledge and wisdom about he gospel, he told us things that I have never even thought about! I hope to someday be half as smart as him after studying the gospel for fifty years!

Conference was stupendous. I need to go back and watch it because I received so much revelation that I have to go back and just study what was actually being said! I have such a testimony of the Prophet and his apostles, they are truly called of God, they study, pray, ponder, and receive inspiration for us. All of those talks were absolutely inspired. I know that every single talk somehow taught me what I need to improve as a missionary. They also all applied to our investigators in some way or another.

I think the two of the biggest focuses of Conference was member missionary work and going back to the basics of the gospel. I cannot tell you how amazingly crucial it is for members to bring their friends, co-workers, and neighbors to the missionaries. There are only two missionaries, whereas there are hundreds of members who are out and about everyday! When nonmembers are able to feel of  the Spirit in member's homes and be taught there, the conversion process literally sky rockets! Please introduce your friends and neighbors and co-workers to the missionaries! We cannot do this work without you! Also, praying morning and night, diligently reading the scriptures, and keeping the commandments convert us unto the Lord. We have to go back to the basics to increase our Faith and draw closer unto the Savior. I know as you do these things, the Lord will bless you ten times over!

I love you all and  thank you again for support, prayers, and love! May God be with you in everything you do.

Sister Brotherson

2nd Week in Victoria, TX

Hello family and friends!

Thanks again for all the birthday wishes! They mean a lot :)

 

Well, this week was amazing! So many great things happened and so many great things are happening in this mission! Our zone is the highest baptising and doing confirmations in the whole mission right now! Let's just say two of those baptisms and confirmations were ours Saturday night! We have an older lady in our ward who joined the church four years ago, her granddaughters came to live with her and my comp, Sister Bianchini has been working with them for the past few weeks! Their names are Khoriah and Kamrenea! They are 13 and 10 years old and they were just so excited to be baptized and confirmed, they have such sweet, simple testimonies.

 

We watched conference this weekend mostly at the church, but we did watch it at a less actives house with a non member and a recent convert, it was seriously a miracle! They all really enjoyed it and we are hoping to go back and teach the non member! It is amazing to me how appointments will cancel throughout the day, but we always manage to end up finding someone to teach a lesson! The Lord is so merciful and always gives us the blessing of a lesson almost every day!

 

We are working with a lot of less active families that we are trying to reactivate, we also are working with a lot of part member families and the non members are our investigators right now. They are such solid investigators, they are really striving to learn for themselves! Honestly, member missionary work is SO IMPORTANT! That is how people are truly converted!

 

I truly did love conference this weekend, it was super inspiring! I loved Elder Oaks talk and President Monson's about his, I just cried through the whole thing. We get fed like four times a week here in Victoria and seriously the ward members have been so kind and welcoming to me! I feel right at home and I have only been here for two weeks! We eat seriously delicious meals and it is going to be a problem... good thing Sister Bianchini and I are running every morning for our work outs! Also, it is super hot here! I cannot believe that it's October and like 90 degrees out! North Dakota is the complete opposite and everyone is always shocked when they hear where I am from. I do absolutely love the weather though because it is so nice!

 

I did cut my hair to just about my shoulders :) Long hair is just too hard to deal with when you are in the heat all the time! Let's see here are some neat experiences from this last week! We were asked to teach seminary Wednesday morning on 2 Nephi 4:17 which was awesome! Reading Nephi's thoughts about himself as a servant of the Lord really touched my heart. We were able to find two new investigators last week, when we went to teach other investigators and instead found random family members at their house! We were able to teach the Restoration to both of them and they invited us to come back! We went to a lady's house last night out in the country and she seriously had 50 kittens running around her front yard, I guess that's common?

 

We were also totally doged this week. We went to teach a lesson with an investigator and she drove away right as we pulled up! We went to the door, her daughter answered, and then we saw our investigator drive pass us five times for the next twenty minutes while we started to teach her daughter. It was kind of unfortunate that she was wanting us to leave, but it was super funny once we got into the car!

 

This week, Elder Golden, of the Seventy is coming to speak to us at a huge mission conference! I am super excited to hear him speak to us and to get special training, it will be AMAZING! Also, this week we got a call from our district leader and he told us that we ARE OPENING THE CHAPELS! We are one of fifty missions in the US to be starting this and we had two days to come up with a plan for the classes and activities that would be available to the public! We are so EXCITED! This is an amazing way to get people into the gospel and to find out who is truly interested! They will be presenting out plan to the Stake President and other Bishops this week, pray that all goes well!

 

I love you all and thanks again for all of your support :)

 

Love, Sister Brotherson

 

ps. no word on the visa yet!

My First Week in VICTORIA, TEXAS!

Querida minha familia e minhas amigos!

Alright if you want to write me or send me a package then please send it to this address:

 

104 Spur Dr. Victoria, Texas 77904

 

This is the member's house that I live in, so it is easiest to just send things to this address! I will try my best to write letters this week at some point when I have more time! If I get my visa at some point in the next few months, I will send out a quick email saying stop sending stuff until you know my new address, but for now you can send letters and packages here :)

 

Como vai?! o Como estas?! I think I need to start writing in Spanish because everybody here speaks lots and lots of Spanish! I am in Victoria, Texas! It is this smaller, country town about an hour away from the Coast and it is SO PRETTY! It actually reminds me a lot of Fargo, North Dakota because it is so incredibly flat and green, but the similarities pretty much end there because it IS SO HOT! I am not quite dying every day, but the heat combined with the humidity is turning my hair into a greasy, fuzzy mess!

So, you are all probably dying to know about my last week and everything that has happened to me since I haven't had P-day for like a week and a half! My trainer/new companion is Sister Bianchini! She is a red head, pale with freckles, huge brown eyes, has been out for eight months, sings SUPER BEAUTIFULLY, and she is from California. She is also super sweet, down to earth, and loves the gospel so much. I keep making mistakes like not backing her out of the driveway and she just laughs at me. Everyone has told me that I am so lucky to be with her and that I could not have a better trainer which is so true, I feel so incredibly blessed to have her and the Lord is already working miracles in our lives!

We live with a single lady/member named Sister Hastings. Her husband passed away a few years ago and she loves having the Sister missionaries live with her. She is so super nice and sweet; I just love talking to her about everything because she knows all sorts of things about Texas and has been teaching me Texans really talk like "ya'll" and "all ya'll" and  they say "golly" ALL THE TIME! She is super nice and sweet.

Well, I adore the Ward with my whole heart! They are so welcoming and kind! They feed us every night and everybody is absolutely fascinated when I say I am from North Dakota and when I introduce myself as Sister Brotherson. They all think I have the funniest name ever and that I am from pretty much a different country. I just laught about it and say, "Yes it is very cold in North Dakota and yes Texas is much hotter and why does my family live there well, I don't know that is a great question :)"

My mission president is Brian K. Ashton and his wife, Sister Anderson, were so welcoming to me last week when I got off the plane! We went to the mission office that day and there were about 15 elders and sisters that were brand new to the mission, so we unloaded all of our luggage, did interviews with the Mission President and his wife, ate dinner at the mission home with the AP's and senior missionaries, and then we had a testimony meeting. Unfortunately, I left the MTC at like 2:30 am, so we were all dead on our feet by the end of the day, but I tried really really hard to stay awake! I am truly so impressed by my Mission President and his wife. He and his family, they have seven children, they are so kind and so welcoming to us. He truly has great expectations and the two things he told me to do were to be exactly obedient and to work hard! I promised that I would do everything I could keep these two rules and then he promised me that everything would fall into place. Wednesday night LAST WEEK I stayed with some other sisters at a senior couple's home. On Wednesday, we had a ton of training classes that morning with the President, his wife, and the AP's, so I learned a lot about mission life and how to teach! They then shuffled us all into the chapel, the newbies sat on one side, while the trainers sat on the other and they just called our names out and that's when I met Sister Bianchini! It was then transfer day for the rest of the mission, so everybody else from the whole mission that was being transferred all had to come into Sugar Land that day! The chapel was packed because so many missionaries were getting transferred! They just put a huge slideshow up and put people's pictures together it was surprising that it was done so publicly for everyone to see!

Also! My birthday was fabulous! My companions TP's my room which was so kind of them and they made me a photo book of our district and zone with cute notes from everyone, it was super super sweet :) The elders in my district also decorated the whole classroom with balloons, paper towel streamers, and they drew all over the board! Every time I walked into the room they started to sing Happy Birthday in Portuguese, it was quite hilarious!

 

Anyways, you probably want to know how mission life is going! Sister Bianchini and one of her previous companions opened this area (called white washing) just about four months ago. This area hadn't had sister missionaries in YEARS! She has literally built the work up from the ground! It has a long way to go, but so many miracles are already taking place and there are so many people being prepared to hear our message! Well, we have taught a ton of less actives this last week who are trying to get their lives back in order to come back to church. I have never had to be so brave in my whole life because we just show up at less actives doors when we don't have appointments and just walk in their house! This mission works solely through member/investigator referrals and street contracting, so I have been talking to lots of random people I do not even know, but it is amazing to see the Lord's hand in missionary work. Every day we have been blessed with a lesson whether it be a less active or a random investigator when other appointments fell through.

We taught this sweet elderly couple last Thursday, my first day in the field, and they have not been active for many years, but we taught them about the Sacrament and how important it is to take the sacrament each week, I am not a big cryer, but I was sitting there bearing my testimony when tears just started to fall! We all felt the Spirit so strongly testifying of renewing our baptismal covenants through the sacrament. It is amazing to me that I can be taught so much through what I am trying to teach others! We also taught a less active lady named M who is pregnant and living with her boyfriend, he is interested in the discussions, but we haven't taught him just yet. She came to church on Sunday and she has not been at church in years!

Two of the less actives that we taught this last week were at church on Sunday along with one of our investigators and a recent convert!  On Saturday, a little boy named Jonathon, age 14 was baptized and I was asked to speak at his baptism! I was so nervous, but I figured I might as well get my feet wet, it went well and I was grateful for the opportunity I had to share what I knew to be true with him and his family, and the other ward members. On Sunday, we had a ward musical fireside, set up by the elders and it was awesome! So many people performed and I guess it has been in the works for months! I sang a duet with my companion and we sang "Come Thou Fount" and it went pretty well! I'll be honest, some of my notes might have been off, but we were a capella and I have not sung in front of people for years, so it was just neat to share my testimony through song! I was also asked to share a scriptural message about five minutes before the program started, so that was again very exciting! A lot of investigators and non member families came to the musical fireside on Sunday night, so we have a lot of following up to do this week! I am so excited because we have so many lessons planned for this coming week! Oh, also we have two baptisms this Saturday after conference! I cannot take any credit for these because Sister Bianchini has been working with these two granddaughters of a member for months and they finally committed to baptism, but I do feel very special to be given this opportunity to see them enter the waters of baptism!

I am realizing more and more that missionary work depends on my desires and on my faith. I need to want to and desire it so badly! The Lord will then bless me when he sees that I am working as hard as I can to find people and teach the gospel to everyone. I am realizing just how inadequate I am and how much I have to learn as a missionary. I just want to study all the time, but I also want to be out finding and teaching all the time! It is a hard balance to find :) I know that through the Lord I can do anything and that he will bless me. Also, I need to be patient because the Lord's time is not my time and often what I want it selfish, whereas he knows that I need to learn patience and humility!

 

I love you all so much and thank you again for the birthday wishes and the good lucks that I have been getting from everyone :) It means the world to me and I am so grateful!

 

Love, Sister Brotherson