Hermana Brightman's Eternal Adventure : Fast cars and Fat Cats

It does a missionary momma’s heart good to hear their awesome, amazing, dearly missed daughter doing so well!! Can you just hear the excitement in her voice as you read the email?! As hard as it is to let go, and believe me THAT is the hardest thing I have done thus far in my life, it is amazing to see Hermana Brightman’s growth and enthusiasm!! The pictures are the cherry on top!!

Jumping for the joy of the gospel!!

Her name tag. She calls it her prize possesion

Hermanas Cloward and Brightman...Can you see all the impishness these two will get into??

Este semana fue un poco loco. Primero---Ana? Nuestra investigadora? Ella es ahora nuestra maestra. Despues de cinco lecciones (y el compromiso de sera bautizado) sabemos que no tiene los lecciones con ella otra vez. Porque eso dice nuestros maestros, Hno Silva y Hno Martinez, pero el proximo dia, Hno Martinez dice "There's going to be another teacher in here with me evening. Una hermana". Entonces, estamos como "...que?" è This week was a little crazy. First – Ana, our new investigator.. She is now our new teacher. After 5 discussions (and the baptismal challenge) we found out we would not be having discussions with her again. That’s what our teachers, Brother Silva and Brother Martinez said. But the next day, Brother Martinez said “There’s going to be another teacher in here with me this evening. A sister.” Then, we were like “what?” because we’d heard rumors that the investigator …

porque we'd heard rumors that the investigator would become a teacher, pero no creemos. èbut we didn’t believe it. However, when he got done saying that and the door opened, in walked Hermana Resendiz. AKA Ana. We were all quite surprised (and un poco embarassed because she DOES speak English and so she understood everything we said when we would whisper "como se dice....?" "no se" and have to find different words). Esta bien though because she's awesome and we love her. "Ana" was actually based off of one of HER investigators in Chile (Santiago East Mission) and so we got to see pictures and hear stories about the REAL Ana. We were also really glad that our goodbye to her wasn't as permanent as we thought it would be.

Last Tuesday we had a devotional from our area 70, Elder Villalobos, and it was incredibly poderoso. The Lord says countless times "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Joseph. He says that because of their faith in Him. Would He be proud to say the same of us? Is our faith sufficient for our works?

It is so important to be exactly obedient. The children of Israel, after the death of Moses, were walking to the Promised Land and they would write king after king and say "we are going to walk straight to our destination. We will not turn to the right nor to the left. May we pass through your land?" and king after king would say no and send armies out to meet them. But as they stayed true to that and did not turn to the right nor to the left, they were aided by God.

Our district has the strangest, most random conversations. It is ridiculous and hilarious. For example, one day we had a conversation about essential oils....which led to a conversation where we learned that there's a good chance Elder Richins was at a Christmas party with Mom's dentist. Random but true. Another happened just last night. It started out with irrational fears, and then went to Bigfoot and Cain, and then the flood, and then Aliens. I love how we have silly random conversations and can also be super spiritual together.

We listened to a devotional Sunday night by Elder David A Bednar about the Character of Christ. It was a Christmas Devotional at the Provo MTC and I would LOVE if you all would go look it up because I want to share so much form it that there's no way I'd be able to cover it all. But it's wonderful. And I learned a lot. So go look it up :)

I got super cold here this week so I ended up buying a hoodie from the tienda for at night and gym time. It has been so beneficial. I also bought a new waterbottle because my other one broke. We played volleyball as a district today con Hna Resendiz and it was super fun! But Hnas Fish and Schreiner left before Hna Cloward y I and so we got locked out of our casa because they were the ones with the key! We found some other girls from our casa though, and got in.

Also, the four of us are singing in choir at devo tonight! We´re singing "Come Follow Me" ("Vendid a Mi" en español)

Our classes are great. We spend 3 hours in the morning learning Spanish, learning how to teach by the spirit, and then having our teachers (who are also our investigators) coach us on what we could improve in our lessons, etc. then we spend another 3 hours in the evening doing the same. Every evening we have an hour to use a language software called "TALL". It hasn’t been able to connect to the server at BYU for the last few days though and so we had "district home evening" last night instead.

My goal is to read all of El Libro de Mormon en español antes del 16 de marzo, when we leave for Texas. Tambien tenemos las metas de escrituras, palabras, frases, y de hablar. For the other hermanas and I, one of our goals for speaking is solo español during gym time. es MUY divertido porque jugamos mucho de "fusbol" y we get SUPER into it. We start shouting in spanish, name our players, and laugh a LOT! My fusbol skills are still pretty non existant but I'm going to be so much better at fusbol, pingpong, volleyball, and basketball when i get back!

There's so much more I want to say but I{m almost out of time so I{ll close with the story behind the title.

Hno Martinez LOVES stories and parables. He told us a few this week. One was about our potential as missionaries in comparison to a Ford Mustang. If a Supercharge was painted pink and covered with Hello Kitty and never drove over 10 kph, it would feel like it wasn’t living up to its potential at all and would spend its life questioning itself. If it was painted with flames and sped down a stretch of road at 120 kph, it would know that was what it was made for. We need to be the flame-painted Supercharge. Not the Hello Kitty one.

The other was a fable about a skinny cat and a fat cat. The skinny cat was afraid he was going to die, so he asked his cousin, the fat cat, how he was getting so much food. Fat cat showed him. he put his mouth by the mouse hole and barked. He stepped back and a mouse confidently walked out because he thought, since he heard a dog, there was no cat around. Fat cat ate him and showed his cousin (and us) the importance of being bilingual. ;)

That's all for this week!

Con Amor,

Hermana Brightman

Some pictures from last week.