Wedding Planners

Big news! I'm now a wedding planner! Haha! Sister Wilson and I are planning a wedding for the 4th of July! Our investigator is finally getting married to her boyfriend of 7 years. It has been so special to watch their progression together as he is coming back to church while also teaching her and bringing her with him. She is preparing for baptism soon, but we couldn't set a date until after the wedding. Everything just fell into place this week, and so we are planning last minute to make their wedding special. They don't want anything big, but we still want it to be nice and memorable. We couldn't be more excited for them! Today is filled with wedding preparations, tomorrow is Zone conference, Wednesday is another leadership meeting for Sister Wilson, Thursday we will set up for the wedding, and then Friday is the BIG DAY! :D

I forgot to mention last week that...we got a car! There were two elders moved out of our branch, due to lack of enough missionaries coming out in the mission, and too many going home, so we got to take over their car as well as part of their area. Now there are only 2 sets of missionaries in our branch, us and the Zone leaders. It is nice to have a car so that we can cover more area more quickly and efficiently, but it is also a struggle. We had forgotten how hard it is to get contacts and meet new people when you are always driving from one appointment to the next. We will have to do much better at taking time out to talk to people between appointments from now on. We really need to meet new people. It has been nice to not have to walk everywhere, but we had gotten a good system going. We would take the public transportation to an area and then walk from appointment to appointment within the area before moving to a next area, etc. In the maxi (the vans they use for transportation) we would split up to talk to different people and each try to get a contact before we reached our stop. It made it nice to be able to be talking to people as we traveled between areas. Plus, the exercise from walking was good for us too! :P I guess we will just have to utilize our exercise time in the morning better.

I got to ride a bike this week on trade offs! haha It was fun, but really tiring. It left my bottom sore, but that is a small price to pay for a cool experience. 

One tender mercy that we saw this week was when we got a call from a woman that Sister Wilson and Sister Munafo had contacted in passing a few transfers ago. They simply introduced themselves shortly, explained what we do as missionaries, and asked if they could share more with her sometime. She agreed, and gave them her information, but it was a very short exchange. They tried calling her, but never got through, so she went out of their minds. Then, a few days ago, this woman called us. She had saved our number, and kept thinking about us until finally she felt ready and gave us a call asking us to come by her. So on Sunday we did, and she has great desires and potential. The Lord truly prepared her to meet the sisters when she did, and the spirit prompted her to call when she felt she was ready. The Lord works in mysterious ways! I am so grateful for experiences such as this to help me remember that the Lord is laboring in his vineyard with us. 

Have a great week!

Love,

Sister Bratt

Greetings from D'abadie

Greetings from D'abadie! This week was the first of a new transfer which made it a good week, but also a busy one. It was a holiday weekend as well, Thursday being Trinidad's labor day, and Friday was Corpus Christi, a Roman Catholic holiday. That meant that a lot of people that we are teaching were either home, or out of town for the weekend. So some of our days were good, and others were slow, but we worked hard. We also did service at our Branch building on Thursday morning, less active visits on Saturday afternoon, an a missionary fireside Sunday evening. Not too many members came to help clean the church, but the ones who came worked hard, and it payed off. Less-active visits were very successful. Our group was able to see almost everyone on our list, though some of them didn't have time to sit down for a lesson. We were very pleased with the turnout of members at the fireside! Unfortunately, the investigator turnout wasn't so spectacular. I think it was good to get the members to see how great the firesides can be so that next time they will invite more people. We are going to start early to get them and our investigators excited for the one next month. We are putting together a video to share with the members who didn't come to let them see what they missed out on, and we will give those who came an opportunity to share their testimonies about what they learned. Our fireside was about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we used Lehi's vision to teach it by doing an Iron Rod experience through the church complete with yarn (the rod), obstacles, tempters, the Holy Ghost, and plenty of blindfolded members to walk the "not-so-straight-or-narrow-path" along the rod of iron. Everyone who came, including us, learned a lot from the experience. The spirit was very strong.

We are working to build up our teaching pool again. We have some plans for this coming week to work with members to get more people to teach so we can keep the escalator moving upward. The Lord is aware of our needs and sees our desire to help his children, so people will come through our diligence and hard work.

Love,

Sister Bratt

High Hopes

There are some great individuals and families we are working with in our area presently that we have high hopes for. I know that not all of them will be prepared right now to be baptized, but it has been a pleasure knowing them and working with them on the path to salvation. We have two baptisms scheduled for this Saturday that we hope and pray will work out, but if not there will be some coming up soon. I love witnessing baptisms. It is such a special spirit that is felt there as someone enters into a covenant with our Father in Heaven. The leaders had a special conference with President Mehr this week, which meant that Sister Wilson was out of our area for a few days. I was with the sweet Sister Dinah Duff, who is preparing for her mission in Ogden, for those days working hard. Sister Wilson and I worked really hard the rest of the week and had a lot of success. We had a full day on Friday especially, going on splits with members and such to get more done; it was fun, though tiring.

Well, I love you all a lot. Give everyone there my love!

Sister Bratt

Birthday P-Day

Thanks for all the Birthday love from all my family and friends! I love you all dearly, and am so grateful to be a part of your lives.

Sorry this will be short, but I took up too much time savoring all the great messages and emails people sent wishing me a happy birthday. So far, it has been a wonderful day! Sister Wilson is soooo sweet. She got up early to make me pancakes and muffins for breakfast and to decorate our study room with paper "balloons" she drew, and a sign on our white board. Today we are going to the mall with Sister Herrick and Sister Hendricks to eat, shop, and get ice cream. The mall has Bluebell! So, I'll probably treat myself to a little piece of home for my birthday. Sister Wilson has also been trying to sneakily plan some sort of surprise with the other missionaries in our zone and all the sisters...as far as I've gathered. Haha, I've been trying not to ruin the surprise by hearing things I'm not supposed to, but it is hard when we are always together for anything to be a surprise. It's a very sweet thought though. I love her lots!

***My blog editor has not been keeping up very well the past couple of months. She has promised to go back and catch up on some of the missed posts. Stay tuned for more updates :)

D'abadie

D'abadie is going great! Sister Wilson and I get along well, and are working hard to help those we work with to progress. This area is so unique to those I have worked in before. The members are wonderful and willing to do missionary work alongside the missionaries. Sundays are fun to witness as the missionaries all scramble to reserve the members to go out teaching during that week. We are working with a lot of great potential priesthood holders right now; more than I have ever taught before. It is amazing! The Lord really knows our need for strong men and is blessing us with those who are prepared. I know that the Lord is very aware of us and is helping us each day. 

This week, on Saturday, we were able to have our monthly less-active visits with the Branch. We split up with a few members each and went out seeking the wandering sheep. It was a great experience. Of the people we visited, members of two of the families came to church the following day, and another family said they would come next week. The members were really able to connect with them better than we can as missionaries. They felt the love that the Branch has for them as well as their desire for them to come back. 

Some fun things this week: We taught a guy and his cousin at a covered table in the middle of their soon-to-be petting zoo! There were ducks, geese, peacocks, and goats wandering around us, as well as rabbits, a parrot, and pigs in pens. That was fun. We also are teaching a young man who is 14 and has great questions, understanding, and desires. While we were teaching him the other day, he hurt his finger and swore, but immediately realized his mistake and asked, "was that a bad word?" He went on to ask whether we ever say things like that if we get hurt and we told him no. Later we came back to travel with him to our Friday night activity, playing football (soccer) at the church, and he stubbed his toe pretty good. We could hear that he was in pain and he yelled out, "Sister Wilson, what do I say?!" It was so funny! He ended up just groaning and grumbling a bit, he didn't swear though! Haha. He is a good kid.    

Today we had a sister activity and all met up in Port of Spain to go to the Zoo. It was a small zoo, but still fun. We took lots of pictures and got to hold snakes and pet a parrot. :) Now we have a lot to do to make up for lost time this morning, but it was worth it.

Love,

Sister Bratt

 

                                                                  

Happy Mothers Day

I am in my new area, but everything is still really new. I will be able to tell you more about it next week.

It was so nice to talk to Mom and Dad yesterday for Mothers Day! 

Here is the link to a wonderful Mothers and Daughters video by M. Russel Ballard that I sent my Mom.

 http://www.mormonchannel.org/youth-videos?v=2816251288001#.U2enyHZO2rs.email

I hope you can access it. Enjoy! And send your love to all our wonderful Moms!

Love,
Sister Bratt

         Friends Forever!!!

Transfer

I have some big news!! I'm being transferred! I will be leaving another area after 6 great months there. This time I will be staying on the same island though....if you can call Trinidad an island, haha. It doesn't feel like it sometimes. I will be going to an area north of San Fernando called Arima. And guess what....no more car! Yes, I will be "roughing it" on foot and will have to take "travel" (the taxis and maxis a.k.a. vans that run as the public transportation here). This area just opened to Sisters 2 transfers ago, and my companion, Sister Wilson, was the one to open it with her last companion. Sister Wilson is also the sister training leader for a couple of areas. The STL is like a zone leader or district leader in a way, except for sisters. She does companion exchanges with the sisters to train and check on the sisters in her assigned areas. The areas and islands that she is over are Sangre (sandy) Grande (where Sister Herrick is! I'll get to go on exchanges with her and ride a bike!), Tobago and French Guiana (but I won't get to go there most likely, usually she goes alone and I would stay with a member on splits....at least that is what I heard). Sister Wilson is a really great missionary and is super sweet too. She was my STL back in St. Vincent, so I went on exchanges with her once there. She only has 2 transfers left, so I will most likely "kill" her (be her companion at the end of her mission). Who knows, maybe I'll spend my last six months in the same area just like the last two 6 month periods. haha. Way, only six months again on my mission, boy! (Just a taste of Trini language for you! ;) ) 

I'm so excited to skype/video chat with Mom next Sunday! Unfortunately I don't know anything about times since I am going to be in a new area, but I will most likely email or call before.

Love,

Sister Bratt

Saying Good-Bye