Sister Brianne Watson: (Cat)astrophic

I still don't know how to start out these emails.....so hi everyone! Hope you're all enjoying the new year and going back to school and working and all that real-life stuff. While you were doing that I was teaching and preaching and working as missionaries dooooo... I didn't know I was going to write that until it happened but it seemed to have worked out hahaha :)

Anyway, this week was pretty productive! We had lots of lessons and miracles and nursing homes and cats. Put that together and you get a mission in New England! To start out, let's talk about the Bible study we did in the Rumford, Maine nursing home. We went to visit a member of the ward who
lives there earlier in the week which was a lot of fun. She's a very sweet lady and of COURSE I loved seeing and being around the elderly folk. Sister Cox and I don't have a community service opportunity every week like we should so we got the idea to ask someone if we could volunteer at the nursing home once a week. We could help them clean up, paint nails, play Bingo, whatever they want.

The Activities Coordinator was more than happy to accept our help and she immediately assigned us to hold a Bible Study every Saturday! Okay lady....so we had a day and a half to plan an hour long bible study for people that most likely couldn't hear us. Neither of us have taught to a group of people from different denominations only out of the bible before so we were kind of terrified. I'm not entirely familiar with much of the bible either so that was hard too. We decided to go over Matthew 5 and cover the Beatitudes and discuss how we can become perfected throughout our lives. Around 8-10 people showed up and a few of them even participated! They said they loved it and they're going to come back next week so that's good news. Lots and lots of prayers went into that bible study so I'm grateful for God's help in guiding the lesson.

Oh.....my.....cats. I have never been around more cats in my ENTIRE life before coming out on this mission. This week tops them all!!!! I felt like every house we went to had at least 3 or more cats. It is quite disturbing actually. We met with Vivian twice this past week and she has 3 cats. We met with a less active lady as well and she had FIVE cats plus a dog. It was so difficult to share our message when I had cats climbing all over me and on the table in front of me.

Then one day when we were tracting, we knocked on a door and heard a, " COME IN!" so we awkwardly walked into this random house trying to find whoever yelled at us. She wasn't in the rooms around us so we had to keep yelling to her to find her. It was like playing Marco-Polo! Eventually we found this old lady digging through her fridge and she didn't even say hi to us or anything...it didn't even effect her that there were two strangers in her house staring at her. Finally we told her who we were and asked her if she wanted to learn about Jesus Christ and stuff and she agreed. I walk into the room next to us and lo and behold....SIX CATS. TWO DOGS. The room was tiny and there were piles of dog/cat poop in some places which didn't help either. It was so so so disgusting!!

Last night we went to visit our investigator named Annette which went well! She's coming to church this Sunday and everything. While we were sitting there (she has a cat and three dogs by the way) we could hear her cat making the strangest noises from the kitchen...it was a mix between a cry and a yell and it was so weird. Annette said it was because she was "in heat". Yup. So the cat comes out and jumps up on the couch behind me, then she comes down between me and the couch cushion behind me which was fine because I was sitting up on the edge anyway. Then, the cat starts whimpering and pushing her stinking backside into me!!!!! Tail was up and everything! Annette was like, "sorry about that...a cat in heat just wants babies." WHAT. It was horrendous. Moral of the story: I will never ever own a cat. Ever.

I got closer to death than I ever thought possible this week..it was a few nights ago and the roads were pretty icy and we were driving to dinner. We had a T in the road up ahead so there was a stop sign and we had to turn right or left. Sister Cox started braking for the stop sign but we started sliding and the brakes wouldn't stop! So we slid straight into the road with cars coming at us and I watched a

truck coming right toward us and I literally accepted my death right then and there. Somehow, the truck BARELY missed us and we were able to turn and fishtail our way down the road while also almost hitting a road barrier. It was the most terrifying 30 seconds of my entire life and we ended up crying/shaking the rest of the drive to dinner...BUT thanks to the protection of the Lord, we came out alive and safe. In any other circumstance I'm sure that would have been a lot worse but the prayers of protection coming from everyone at home definitely saved our lives.

Another miracle....we pulled over on the side of the road to contact somebody but since there was deep snow, we got very stuck there. I guess the snow covered up the ditch so our front right wheel was stuck in the ditch and the other wheels were stuck as well but leveled up higher if that makes sense. In other words, there was no way we were getting out of there alone. I got out of the car to start

attempting to push us out and immediately a car that was passing stopped to help us. He had a big truck so he said he just needed a strap to hook us together but he didn't have one. Right then, another
car stopped and asked if we needed help and he had a strap for us!! As we were attaching our cars together, ANOTHER car stops and gets out to help us push and clear the snow from around the tires. With all of their help, we got out of the ditch of death. SO BLESSED. Within 7 minutes we were out and driving again and I have nobody to thank besides Heavenly Father....seriously. We would have been stuck there forever!!

I am so thankful for the blessings and the protection and the love I receive from Him every single day as I serve. I love recognizing those different blessings and watching my testimony grow from it.

NEWS: they cancelled all future transfer meetings! Yep, they don't exist anymore. Now they're going to call us on Sunday nights and tell us who our new companion is, where we are going, and our travel plans. It's a new mission-wide thing and I don't know....I'm just really going to miss transfer meetings :( oh well!

I love you all and again, I'm grateful for your prayers that saved my life this week!! No prayers go unnoticed, always remember that. Have a great week!!!❤️