Dearest family and friends,
Another great week has gone by here in Chamblee!! I have survived the 7 week transfer!! :) Haha. It really went by super fast!!! I can't even believe it!!! So, I have some transfer news!! Sister Stewart is leaving ..... we've been companions my whole mission and now she's leaving!!!!!! I am SO SO SO SO SO sad!!!!!!!!!!! I love her so much! She really is my sister. This is hard. I will have the opportunity to train!!! I am super nervous, but I know it's what the Lord wants! I am so excited for the opportunity!! Life is great!! But I will miss Sister Stewart.....lots and lots....:(
This week was GREAT!!! We had a lot of great things happen!! We got to go to the temple with Hector!!! He absolutely LOVED it! He told us after he wants to go every week because he felt super close to heaven. Wow. What a great experience to share with him!!! :) I love going to the temple!!!
We have a lot of people who are progressing now! It's SOOO excited! The Lord is truly blessing our area!! :) I will now tell you about Raquel. She was a referral from one of our less actives. We went and visited her a couple times, but she said she felt more comfortable with her friend being there, and would never visit with just us. She's super shy. We finally just showed up and taught her a lesson and got to know her better. Now she's a lot more comfortable with us! Yay! She said she wanted to go to church, but needed a ride. We talked to one of our members, and she had just bought a van specifically so she could take investigators to church! She agreed to drive her! :) Yay! So, Raquel came to church! She is single, and 8 months pregnant, and she has a 4 yr old boy. She is SO sweet! She loved church. The branch was so great to friendship her. :) She told us she was SO excited to have us come and teach her more! yay! We see promise with her! :)
Sadly Rogelio and Flor didn't come again :( We were pretty bummed about that. We know that they will progress in their own time. We have to trust in the Lord....even if it's hard :( But on the bright side, a less active family came to the Chamblee branch after 10 months!!!! WOW!!!! How exciting is that!!! WE have visited them faithfully almost every week, and they were always too stubborn to forgive whatever offended them in Chamblee. Well, here they were yesterday!!! We seriously cried we were so excited!!!
Really, life is great here in Chamblee!!! I couldn't be more excited to be serving here for another 2 transfers for sure!!! Woot woot!!!! :) :) I love it here!!!! Thanks for all your love and support. Have a great week!
Love,
Hermana Bringhurst
Dearest family and friends,WOW. What an amazing week this has been! I sure love being a missionary!!!! This week was incredible!!!!! Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our companion Sister Cuevas. She had to go home :( We will miss her :(Well, I guess I will start out with the BEST part of my week! We went to the TEMPLE finally!!!!!! :) We went with Fermin, and 3 of the elders' recent converts. Hector couldn't go, but we are going this week with him!!!! :) :) :) Yay! :) It was such an incredible experience!! My favorite part was being able to translate for them. It was so neat and special. I sure love being a missionary. Their faces were just glowing! Wow. What a GREAT day!!! One of their temple recommends didn't have the month or year circled, so while they were calling our branch president, the TEMPLE PRESIDENT came down and talked to him, and I got to translate! AHHH! So fun! I love the temple! There was such a neat spirit there. It was cool to be there with so many missionaries :) Wow. An experience to remember! We are SOOO blessed to have a temple in our mission. Wow. What a blessing. :)So, one of the COOLEST things about this week was all the "1st time" lessons we had. We were able to pick up a former again and we had a GREAT lesson with her!! We had a first lesson with a referral from the elders, and she is GOLDEN. I hope to have more stories about Alicia in future letters!! WE also had a lesson with Lourdes, the bus stop lady. Her 14 yr old daughter Rachel came and joined the lesson! At the end of the lesson, Rachel was confused about the book of Mormon a little, so Lourdes turns to her and says, "ok. Mormon abridged it, and his son Moroni put the plates in the ground, and appeared as an angel to Joseph Smith, then Joseph Smith translated the book so we could have it now." Can you believe our investigator was explaining this??!! It was amazing!!! They both just accepted everything! WOW!!! I sure love being a missionary. I can't wait to share about all these people progressing!!!!Sadly Rogelio and Flor did not come to church, but they texted and said they wouldn't be able to make it, so that shows they really are serious about this!!! :) Yay! I am SOOO happy :) This week was SOOO incredible!! Thanks for all your love and support. I hope you all have such a great week! Love you all! :)Love,Hermana Bringhurst
Dearest Family and Friends,This week has been absolutely incredible! We have seen SOO many miracles! Too many amazing things happened so I can't even write them all with the time I have! It was just too amazing! I did learn a valuable lesson though. I had been so discouraged this transfer, and only looked at the worst. I just gritted my teeth and held on until something good happened. Well, it did, and here am I in the good, and it's amazing!!! But I wasted so much time wallowing in my sadness because of the bad. I've learned that good does come. It always does. But I want to work on trying to make the best of the not so great times, instead of just sitting around and waiting for the good. So that's my lesson learned of the week :)Now onto the greatness of the week!! Rogelio and Flor came to church for the second week in a row!!! They absolutely loved it!!! It was fast and testimony meeting, so that was GREAT for them!!! They had such a great time! A member said they hoped to see them next week, and Flor said "if God wants it", then she turned to us and said "And He's going to want it!" It was so cute!!! They are a GREAT family! We had an amazing lesson with them and our branch president. They agreed to work toward a specific date for baptism, but they havne't fully agreed to baptism yet. They said they feel good enough to keep investigating, but haven't received the baptism confirmation yet. We know they will. :)So, we have received SO many member referrals lately! Seriously! All we've had to do is show up at the member's house, and before we can even say "who do you know?" they say, "Hey! Want to come with me to my neighbor's house and teach them??" It's incredible!!! So we got 3 new investigators this week just from members!!! Holy cow! It's incredible!!!Hector got the priesthood this week!!!! yay!!!!!! WE were SOOO excited! WE are planning on going to the temple this Saturday!!! Hector can't go, but Fermin and the elders' recent converts can! Maybe it will actually happen this time!!! :) WE are SOOO excited!!!Since our teaching pool hadn't been so great, we did a lot of finding this last week. We were walking down the Buford Highway, and we saw a lady at the bus stop. We stopped to talk to her, and left her with a card. We got her number and went on our way. Because we talked to her, she missed her bus :( So later down the road, we saw her again! :) We said hi, and she walked into an apartment complex we visit often. Fast forward. We were on team ups with a returned missionary, and she went with Sister Cuevas to an appointment, while Sister Stewart and I went to another. They're appointment was in the apartments we saw Lourdes (bus stop lady) walk into. We joked and said, "maybe you'll find Lourdes!!" Well, they DID!!!! She happened to walk out of her house, and they stopped to talk to her! Apparently missionaries had visited her before, but she moved and lost contact! What a miracle!!! The Lord is truly blessing us!!!!So this week truly has been amazing. Truly. I am SOOOO grateful for missionary work!!! It's incredible!!! We see miracles everyday, and sometimes I take them for granted. I hope I can learn to be more positive even in the midst of trials. I hope you all have a GREAT week! Love you!Love,Hermana Bringhurst
Dearest Family and Friends,
Wow. Did all of you enjoy conference as much as I did?? I feel like my pen couldn't keep up with all the wonderful things I wanted to write down! I can't wait for the Ensign to come out! I have SO many goals now as to how I can become a better disciple of Jesus Christ. I am SO filled with the spirit after this conference. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well!
So, first I'll talk about the 2 amazing lessons we had this week, and then I'll tell you about the conference miracle we had!! We taught Rogelio and Flor this week with our ward mission leader. Sadly, some unfortunate things happened to Flor related to her job, but on the bright side - they can come to the full 3 hours of churc h!!! The Lord is providing a way for them! They just don't see the blessings yet...but they will!!! It was a great lesson! We talked about what Nephi did to find answers to his questions, and how they can do the same for the book of Mormon and baptism. They agreed to come to conference. It was SOO amazing!!! Then on Saturday after the first 2 sessions of conference, we visited with the nephew of the less active I talked about last week. He wasn't super into the lesson at first, then when we started talking about the apostasy, his eyes widened and the questions flooded! He really wants to know if our church truly is the true church. The thought of one true church makes him so happy, and he wants to know! he agreed to read the Book of Mormon, and he said he'd come to conference! He even said the closing prayer, and his aunt was crying. It was really sweet :)
Now fast forward to the Sunday morning session. In walks Estaban!!! We were SOOO excited!!! Then Rogelio, Flor, and their little 4 year old followed!! We were overcome with joy!! We had called the elders' recent convert family before and asked them to sit with Rogelio and Flor. Everyone was all set! It was so exciting! We watched conference in English in our branch president's office. We could hardly focus on anything the first few speakers because we were SOOOOO excited! It
seemed that all the talks were especially for them! Especially Sister Oscarson's talk. The lord always provides a way!
Miracles are everywhere! Sometimes missionary work is slow, and there are lots of disappointments...BUT you can't let it get you down. That's what Satan wants. I learned a valuable lesson about patience through adversity this week. The Lord has been with me throughout all the hard time as much as He's been with me through the joyous. I love Easter, conference, our prophet, modern revelation, and missionary work. This week was GOLDEN!! I just had to hold on until Sunday to make it all worth it! :) I hope you all have a great week!
love,
Hermana Bringhurst :)
Hello everyone!!I hope you all that the most wonderful Easter!! I have grown to appreciate the holidays about Christ a whole lot more since coming on my mission. Sometimes I get too caught up in the family aspect of it (which is NOT bad at all :) I love my family ) and not always the Christ part of it. So this Easter has been a good time for me to reflect on my Savior, and His Atonement. I love the Easter season, and I hope everyone had a great Easter :)So, I have a neat miracle to share this week :) We hadn't been in contact with Rogelio or Flor for a few weeks, and they hadn't been answering our calls -so we decided to do a surprise visit. They were there! They were so excited to see us!!!! They said their phones had broken, and they couldn't get our texts. They hoped we come back so they could explain. That was SO sweet!! The last lesson we taught was about the Sabbath day. We promised them that if they had faith, the Lord would provide a way for them to go to church. We followed up at this lesson, and flor said their prayers had worked! They were able to get a car! And the best part is that they can come for sacrament meeting!!!! how great is that!!!??? We are SOOO excited! What a great miracle to brighten my week!Since we've been working with less actives, we've also seen the work start progressing! We were at a lesson with a less active, and her nephew was listening. He asked us after the lesson if we really had a prophet who received revelation from God. We said yes, and shared the Restoration with him. He agreed to hear the 5 lessons! WE were SOOO excited! The less active was too! It was a miracle!!!Sadly we had to post-pone the temple this last Saturday. It closed early because of Women's Conference. We will go in 2 weeks though! :)Women's Conference was amazing!!! For those who watched it, you are aware of the theme of "service". It was JUST what I needed to hear. I thought of different ways I could serve while listening. It was such a great conference. Before the broadcast we had a mini program/dinner with the stake women. It was SOOO great! We talked about Easter, and Christ. It was SOOOO amazing! I was just filled with the spirit that night! Missionary work definitely provides wonderful opportunities!Well, that's all for this week! I hope to share more in the coming weeks! I love you all so much! HOpe you have the best week!Love,Hermana Bringhurst
Dearest Family and Friends,This week has been filled with many great things as usual! We've been switching our work mainly to less actives. But first I'll talk about our Easter Zone Conference! The subject was Repentance. Wow. What an amazing conference! I learned so much! We had a great discussion about what repentance really is. It's not something to be feared. It's something to be celebrated! WHile at the same time, it's still difficult. It takes effort. We talked about the blessings that come from repentance, like your guilt being washed away, your relationship with the Savior increasing, etc. Wow. It was absolutely amazing. It made me want to go out and preach repentance even more!!! I had been mistaken in the past thinking that only baptism was the gate...but repentance it the gate WITH baptism. You need both. Wow. All I can say is wow. I felt the spirit SOOO strong! I also had the opportunity to play the piano for my companions and two other sisters for a musical number. They sang a mix of families can be together forever, and love at home. It was beautiful. I love being with all the missionaries. The spirit is always just so strong! I love being a missionary. We watched a neat video on the Atonement as well. That video always brings tears to my eyes. I love my Savior. I am SOOO grateful for this Easter season :)So, like I said, we are mainly working with less actives. It's been a HUGE blessing for the area! Not a lot of them come to church, but it's definitely what the Lord wants us to focus on right now. We don't really have any investigators because they all decided to drop us....sad :(....but we know that if we keep a positive attitude, are obedient, and follow the spirit, the work will progress the way it should! :) A less active family that we're teaching came to church yesterday! Her husband is now driving them! how neat is that?? I was SOOO excited to see them!! Chamblee is such a great place!!So I have a funny story. We were teaching Sally and Jessy the commandments, and when we got to the law of chastity, I told Sally "ok Sally...just don't think dirty thoughts" and she said, "like mud??" Kids are so innocent and cute! I love it! So there was the fun moment of this week that made me smile :)I know that Chamblee is where I'm supposed to serve. Regardless of the level of "success" we have, I know that this is where the Lord wants me. I'm humbled every day to be a missionary. I am so grateful for my Savior and HIs sacrifice. I'm grateful for repentance, and I know it's powerful, and I know it changes you. It truly changes you. I know this church is true. I know it with all my heart. Thanks for all your love and support! Have a great week!Love,Hermana Bringhurst
Dearest Family and Friends,
This week was a good one! I guess I'll start by talking about our new companion! Yay for trios! Who knew I'd be in a trio for 90% of my mission? Haha. I'm learning a lot! Her name is Hermana Cuevas (sister caves in Spanish ;) ) Haha. She is originally from Chile. Spanish is her native language. She moved to the US when she was....hmmm....I forgot. She knows English better than Spanish though. She was assigned English, but now she is here in Spanish with us! We are very excited! She's very sweet :)
So, the great news of this week is that we have a date set to go to the temple with all the recent converts in Chamblee!!!!!!!! March 26th!!!! Hector, Fermin, and the Aranguren's are going! How exciting is that!!!!! We are beyond excited! I can't even believe it!!! :) :) I will be SOO excited to write about that experience!!!
So this week we did a lot of working with the less actives. We weren't really able to meet with our investigators this week. We met with Stephanie, and Balbina. That's it. :( It was kind of a bummer, but that's okay! We have this week!! So, the less actives we are working with are SUPER nice! They are very excited to come back to church! Everyone we work with, investigators included, keep pretty much all their commitments, except for going to church. It's kind of disappointing to work super hard all week, and not see anyone at church :( It was especially hard one week when the elders had 13 INVESTIGATORS at church.....man. How do they do it?? I know that everything is in the Lord's timing, and everyone has their agency. I KNOW they will come to church! I know it! We are really excited about everyone we are working with! One less active, Maria (go figure) invited us over for the first time in 8 months! I've never met her, so this was a HUGE miracle! We ate lunch with her. I was eating too slow for her taste, so she told me I was cast out from the table....haha. Silly Maria. I ate REALLY fast after that. then I got ice cream! Yay! :) So many great things are happening. I am SO excited about it! It may be at a downhill, or more like a flat road...but eventually it will go up and everything will fall into place! I know it!!!
The great thing is that Hector came to church, and he told us he told his work he wasn't coming because he had to go to church. :) yay!!! Hector and Fermin are the BOMB!!!!! The branch may not be as happy that they aren't "families" but they are 2 strong men who will make great families in the future. I am SOOO excited for Chamblee! This week was great!!!!!
I hope you all have an amazing week! I can't wait to talk about everything great that's happening next week! yay!!! I love you all so much! Thanks for the love and support!
Love,
Hermana Bringhurst
