Week 8 A Christmas Week in Missionary Paradise

Dec. 29, 2014

FYI... this is a long email... sorry :)

 

Happy belated CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and Happy NEW YEARS! 2015 came really fast...

 

Thank you everyone who sent letters/packages and emails. It makes our day when we go to the mail box and there's a letter!!

 

This Christmas was totally AWESOME!!!!!!!! Everyone was so kind and loving and thoughtful! So... run down of Christmas...

 

Christmas Eve we went to the Rhiners! They are a BIG family (10 kids.... one couldn't make it but one is married so... there were still 10 kids there). It was wonderful! The Elders came too! We thought that they had somewhere else to be so it was a fun surprise. We had dinner (some REALLY GOOD burgers... some of the best I had ever tasted...), did a nativity where everyone dressed up in sheets and towels and bathrobes and the like to be the characters, then visited for the rest of the evening.

 

Then... drum roll please... Christmas DAY and we slept in for half an hour! (This made me super happy!) :) We opened presents and then went to the Beasley's for breakfast (which was DELICOUS!) to watch their boys, N(4) and S(2), open presents and then we played some games. Then we went to Brother and Sister Hays's house for lunch and to Skype our families.

 

Lunch was ham (everyone does ham for the holiday's... not turkey) and had pie and a whole lot of fun stuff! Skyping home was super fun and nice to be able to see my family. While my companion Skyped her family I watched Hercules (a really good movie! lol). Then we went to yet another member's house with the Elders, the Atwaters, to have Christmas dinner. Any guess as to what we ate? Yep - more ham and mashed potateos... lol it was super yummy! I had a wonderful Christmas all around. :)

 

This Christmas season it was very hard to have solid appointments and most fell through - BUT - this just made it so that we had to ask Heavenly Father where we needed to go and then follow the spirit. Because we did that we now have about six potential investigators (PI)!

 

We were tracting handing out the "He is a Gift" cards and the first door we knocked on we had a lesson and now she's a PI! She was very open and excited! (We hope that she still is!) Her name is actually really cool! Shaellena (Allena with Sh at the front). We tried to go find where she lived and we finally found it yesterday... after driving around for a while. It's a drug house and there are a lot of people living there. At first we thought that she gave us a bad address because the guy that answered the door was like, "There's no one here by that name" so we gave him our card and went back to the car. We got in and then heard someone yelling. We rolled down the window and the guy was yelling out the window that she was there but that we had said her name wrong but that she was in the shower, so we are going to go back... and hopefully we can figure out a better place to meet.

 

Then we had some extra time Christmas Eve before we had to stop proselyting so we tracted. We placed 5 cards, but we talked with 5 people and 3 of them are now PI and we have appointments to go back! On a different day we were tracting again and we got 2 more investigator! 

 

Yesterday was so amazing! I woke up and my back was feeling really weird... (you know the sensation you get sometimes when you lay down after a long day and your back just relaxes? Well it felt like that but the muscles were tightening... it was really weird). I couldn't really stand so I had Sister Eschenbrenner shower first. While she was in there I sat on the couch and prayed that I would be able to stand and do everything we needed to do. I acted in faith and got up and was able to take a shower and my back stopped hurting. It was awesome, but that's only the beginning. We had 3 AMAZING talks that the ward really needed, all about how we need to be continually turning toward God and casting off the natural man...and it was done with so much love that you WANTED to listen and change.

 

During Relief Society (which is "the greatest women's organization"), one of the Sisters came up behind me and surprised me with a hug. I was not feeling like myself and it was the perfect timing. After church we tried to go and see a bunch of people but no one was home so we went to a less active (LA) member's house that we had tried this whole transfer to see AND SHE WAS HOME!!!! We taught her the first lesson. Her son (who isn't a member and is 9) wanted to join in and take the lessons! HE ACCEPTED TO BE BAPTIZED! This member has a Saint Bernard that doesn't know he's not a puppy anymore and tries to sit on your lap. He would just bury his head in my lap and it was one of my miracles for the day as it filled a void that Jake left (for those who don't know Jake was our dog. I was almost 8 when he showed up on our doorstep just a week after my baby brother, Adam, died ten years ago. Jake means A LOT to me). That big puppy love was very healing for me.

 

After we were done with that visit we went to see "K". We had to drop her about two weeks ago but she reached out to us this week so we decided to stop by and see if she was home (she never was before) and SHE WAS HOME! We were about to read the Book of Mormon with her and she ACCEPTED TO BE BAPTIZED at the end of January.

Before we left she asked us what the church thought about spirits, like evil spirits. She explained that she thought that there was a spirit there because her last house burned down by a fire and then she got moved to another house in the same neighborhood (this is not a good part of town) and there have been a few close calls for this house, too. The burners will be on and then at night when she goes to bed the thermostat is at 60 and then she wakes up at 5 am (it's always 5 am) and it's at 90. We offered to dedicate the house and cast any spirits out. As soon as we offered to do this, the heater turned on full blast. We went on anyway and the feeling of the room changed into one of hostility. Sister E had "K" kneel with us and she proceeded to pray. As soon as she said, "In the name of Jesus Christ we command you to leave", the feeling of the room changed. There was no more hostility and the spirit of the Lord was there. We left shortly after.

 

We then both felt prompted to drive the 100 yards to "R"s house (same neighborhood) and so we did. "R" was outside and saw us coming and later in the lesson she mentioned that she thought she saw THREE people coming. We definitely had a guardian angel protecting us from that spirit we cast out... he was mad... we could feel it.

 

This week was amazing and that's only part of it. :)

 

I Love you all but I'm running out of time.

 

Happy New Year! 2015 - Here we come!

 

Love,

Sister Megan Brimley

 

Scripture: Mormon 9... the WHOLE CHAPTER! you can do it! verse 24 is cool... :)

... and the pic... what can I say :) me and my crazy first district (left to right: Elder Peterson[007], Elder Hess [district leader], Elder Dickert, Elder Dixion, Sister ME:), and Sister Eschenbrenner)