Rain and Floods

What a rainy stormy week this was! We got some big thunder and plenty of rain. Our church parking lot flooded completely on Friday as well as the yard creating a small lake. We were very blessed to have a car so that the rain didn't keep us inside or simply soaked through. We managed to keep dry for the most part, but the rain made it hard to find people to teach. People don't want to do anything when it rains, they stay inside and sleep. We did find a few people to teach, however. 

We were able to support the Grande sisters in the baptism of a wonderful family (Parents and 2 kids of baptism age) this Saturday, what a blessing to have found such a strong family! Now Sister Wilson and I are preparing for our investigator's baptism this coming weekend. That will be a great day! I am so honored to have been an instrument in the Lord's hands in helping her to get married and now baptized. That will definitely be a story to remember from my mission. 

Sister Wilson is going home really soon, a week from Wednesday, and I think it is only now starting to feel real for her. She will be saying a lot of goodbyes the next week and a half. I can't even imagine what that will be like, but before I know it that will be me. I just want to remain focused with the time that I have left. 4 months is a lot, but also not enough. I will truly miss all the people here, but I will be happy to be home. It is even harder for Sister Wilson, but I know she will get through it; she is one of the strongest people I know. I will miss her a lot when she leaves. It will be strange to think that so many of the missionaries I have been serving around my entire mission (including Sister Crompton) will be going home this transfer, plus even more the following transfer when Sister Herrick leaves. It will be strange when my group of Sisters will be the oldest in the mission. 

Give everyone my love!

Love,

Sister Bratt

Ooops -- Taxi Stand

I had an eventful day on Wednesday this week. Sister Wilson went to Tobago again, so it was Sister Duff and I. We went into Arima to meet our first appointment. Not knowing where he lived exactly, we parked and met him and then walked to his house. After our lesson we came back to where the car was parked only to find that the car wasn't there. Long story short, it was towed because I apparently parked along a part of the road reserved for Taxis to pick up passengers. I hadn't seen a sign saying no parking, but there was a sign further up the street indicating it to be a taxi stand. So, we ran around all day trying to get the car back. It was even more complicated because the day before we had realized that the insurance card wasn't in the car, so they requested a new one for us. But, we hadn't gotten it yet when the car got towed, so we had to go get that before they would release the car to us. Plus, we had to pay $500! (don't worry, that's in TT currency, but it is still close to 100 US) The mission was nice and paid for it, knowing it wasn't my fault. But that was definitely and adventure! 

Today we went hiking to a waterfall as a zone. It was really beautiful, and we had a good time. Then we got Wendy's afterward on our way home, since there isn't a Wendy's in our area. 

I hope you have a great week! 

Love you lots!

;"> Sister Bratt

A Wedding, The Fast and July 4th

Our week was very eventful with Zone Conference, leadership council, the wedding of our wonderful investigator and her fiance, and the fast. It was a great week though! It felt a little strange not being out teaching and in the normal swing of things, but Sunday was really nice. We were able to take two young ladies from our branch on splits, and they had a great time. They both want to serve missions, and one is even preparing her papers to be submitted. We want to take them every Sunday if we can, it was a great experience for them. They took us by some of their friends as well. The fast was very fruitful. We had 3 investigators at church, two for the first time, and we look forward to being able to follow up with more of our members on how their fasts went. I don't remember if I told you last week, but we were asked to fast with our members for help from the Lord in reaching our goal of 600 baptisms for the year. We are about half way so far, and just need to keep having faith, working hard, and getting our members involved to reach the goal. 

The wedding on Friday went very well! They looked very happy, and the bride looked beautiful. I'm glad you got to see the video, I guess I'm getting more brave, huh? I never would have sung a solo before...

Our 4th of July was nice. Some of our members through us a bbq complete with chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, cheese cake, and apple pie. They also sang the national anthem for us! Haha! They were sweet to do that for us. 

Love,

Sister Bratt

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