Sister Brianne Watson: November 2016

Monday, November 28, 2016

#LIGHTtheWORLD

I am SO EXCITED to write this email!! I'm just going to jump right into it. There's just so much to talk about :) so last Tuesday we had a big long zone conference that lasted 7 hours where we were introduced to the new Christmas initiative that the church is putting out. Not sure if y'all remember, but last year was #ASaviorIsBorn and the one for easter was #Hallelujah. Well, as you can gather from the title of this email, this Christmas of 2016 is #LIGHTtheWORLD!!!

We were taught and trained for 7 hours straight about how we can most effectively share this and blow it up this season. The church is releasing an advent calendar with 25 days and each day has different suggestions of acts of service that reflect the service Christ did while He was on the earth. They will also be releasing different videos every day until the 25th that do the same thing. The whole goal is to get EVERYONE sharing these videos and to also share your experiences as you do the acts of service that each day suggests! I can testify that serving others brings the purest form of joy and i can't wait to feel it all December long :)

OH, also, December 1st is the kickoff and it's a Worldwide Day of Service. We are all invited to participate in a service opportunity that day! You can find these videos on mormon.org's facebook page OR www.mormon.org/downloads. I would love to hear your experiences!! We have so many ideas of "lighting the world"...it's such a perfect way to close my mission! I remember sitting in zone conference and as soon as all of this was announced, a wave of excitement and love and gratitude and every other emotion that the spirit can bring filled my entire body. I knew for a fact that i was supposed to stay out here through all of December instead of leaving at the beginning which i planned on doing. This is going to be one of the best Christmases ever and i'm just so blessed❤️

But before we get to Christmas, we have Thanksgiving this week!!!! Yay!!! So far we have two meals that we've been invited to. So excited!

LEON PASSED HIS BAPTISMAL INTERVIEW!!! He was interviewed yesterday and he was seriously so excited for it. He couldn't wait to make it official and he even has a countdown going that leads to his baptism on Saturday! He also called us today asking if it's allowed for people to take pictures of his baptism so that he can keep them for memories. Unfortunately we can't take pictures of that actual ordinance, but we will be taking pictures of everything before and after :) I'm so excited to see him enter the waters of baptism...ahhh!!

Ohhhh here's a fun story. So we've been teaching a lady named Claudette for the past little while and she's super nice and sweet and we just love her. About 2 or 3 weeks ago we stopped by and her husband answered the door and told us to go away...okay. Bye. But, of course we kept driving past her house and whenever his truck was gone, we'd go have a lesson with her! This past week we taught her about the Plan of Salvation and right when we finished, her husband walked in the door. Shoot. He walked straight to the kitchen table and started reading a magazine quietly and we ended up going over and introducing ourselves. He said, "umm, what denomination are you from?" And when we told him that we are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints he seemed so relieved! He thought we were Jehovah Witnesses.

I offered him a Book of Mormon and he took one...Hooray! Well, it gets worse. Their son called us that night and completely cussed us out for stepping foot on his parents property. He told us to never go over there again or he'll call the police😂 i don't know what people have against us! We simply go around offering joy to people and we get persecuted for it. But, it helps us feel just a little tiny sliver of the persecution that Jesus Christ went through during His time on the earth. I couldn't even imagine it...but that's something i've learned since being out here! When someone opens their door and looks at our name tags and acts on their anger/frustration through yelling or slamming their door, it's not because of me or my companion. They aren't angry at the 20 year old innocent girls on their doorstep. They are pushing their anger at Jesus Christ, the name on our chests. They don't know me enough to hate me like that...so when i receive persecution, it's really aimed toward my Savior and that fills me with so much gratitude and humility. He will go through any fiery furnace for His church and so will I.

Tonight we are going to a member's house to help them put up their Christmas tree and they're feeding us salmon and shrimp :)) LOVE. I'm so glad people are allowing us to help them put up decorations because that's one of my favorite things to do at home for the holidays!

Hahaha a few days ago we got into our car to go help a member tie up a blanket at the church and when i turned the car on, the dash said that we had a flat tire. Great. I think this was my 3rd or 4th flat tire on my mission...whyyy. Luckily the church is five minutes away from us so the member's husband was able to come to our rescue and we got it taken care of. Every time something like this happens, the Lord sends someone to help us immediately and we are so grateful!

This email so scattered and so random but there's just so much going on right now! We are teaching more people than i've taught my whole mission so far and they're all progressing and doing well and it's WONDERFUL. We are being so blessed. That's it for this week!!

❤️, Sister Watson

Zone P-Day today! We had a big thanksgiving feast (my idea💁🏻)

FIRST SNOW!!

All of that...for this?

Helloooooo!
We've had ANOTHER wonderful week here in Damariscotta filled with miracles and great experiences! These are seriously the greatest weeks of my mission...we are having so much success and so much fun. Our first miracle this week was with Yvonnet. She was a referral that we received from the missionaries in Bath, Maine (my mission birthplace 😀) a few weeks ago. They talked to her at a grocery store and referred her to us when they found out she lived in our area. Apparently she was SUPER interested and wanted to learn more so the sisters were excited for us to teach her!

For weeks we tried and tried and tried to get a hold of her but we didn't have any luck. Occasionally we would catch her on the phone and set an appointment but she wouldn't be home when we showed up at her house. Every time we went to her house, nobody was home and we even asked the neighbors if there was a woman named Yvonnet that lived next door and they said yes. For weeks this went on and i was beginning to lose hope with her. Finally, we decided to try one last time a few days ago while we were in her area. She was going to be our last stop for the day since everything was falling through. When we pulled into her little subdivision, a red car pulled in right behind us and Sister MacDonald yelled, "what would you do if this was her behind us??" And believe it or not, that red car followed us all the way to Yvonnet's driveway. We happened to pull up at the EXACT same time as her!!! We were finally able to meet her and set up an appointment with her. Suuuuuch a miracle! Everything lined up in our day AND Yvonnet's day so that we could witness that happening. The Lord is so good :)

We taught Leon twice this week and he's SO excited for baptism! Yesterday after church he asked me how many more lessons he has to have before his big day...he wants it to come so bad! He also said, "even if it's 20 below...i'm still getting baptized." He is progressing so well and it's honestly a testimony builder to me to see someone embracing the joy of the gospel like this. He's soaking it all up and it makes me so happy! The gospel is so wonderful and being able to share it with others....there's nothing better.

I had my second-to-last interview with President Blair this past week. I'm sure going to miss those :( he asked me about goals i have for myself for the rest of my mission and about how i'm feeling with everything coming to a close soon. NOT COOL PRESIDENT. He talked about how missionaries start slowing down at this point and it scared me to death. I do NOT want to slow down and waste this sacred time! These last 6 weeks are so important and i'm making it a point to be diligent and show President Blair and the Lord that I'm making the most of it. It seems easy to take a step back and be relaxed about everything since home is so close. It seems wonderful to only think about returning to my family and leave my companion to do all the work. That is NOT what I came out here to do. It doesn't matter what month, week, or day i'm at in my mission...I'm going to do all I can to work hard until the bitter end! I decided to set a personal goal with myself to give out a total of 100 Books of Mormon in these last 6 weeks. Whether it's me or Sister MacDonald, we are going to pass out 100 books. There is so much power in this book of scripture and i'm excited to extend it to 100 different children of our Heavenly Father! Wish us luck :)

Yesterday a guy in the Oxford ward (when i lived in Bethel) came and spoke to us in sacrament meeting! He's currently waiting for his mission call and he's just so awesome. He talked about trials and perspective and how important it is to have hope while facing something difficult. He has personally faced a LOT of challenges in his life, but he said it's what made him into who he is today. He quoted someone that gave a speech at a meeting he went to and she talked about the quote, "all of that...for this?" There are times where we put in so much effort and we go through so many hard days to find nothing in return. We wake up and everything is the same and life just continues to be hard, all for nothing.

NO.

Every trial is personalized and specific for each one of us. We are given the chance to improve and progress even if we don't recognize it-especially when we don't recognize it. We aren't given mountains to climb for no reason or purpose. We are trusted with hard experiences because the Lord knows we can grow from it. We need to change the attitude of "all of that for this". All of the hurt and pain for a better relationship with our Father. All of the tears and trials for a better knowledge of hope through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We are so loved.

i love being a missionary.

have a beautiful week ❤️

BWE (again!)

I only have six P-Days left after this one...gross. More miracles happened this week that I am so excited to talk about! Most of them happened yesterday at church though, so we'll start there. A few days ago while we were having a facetime lesson with our investigator Rachel, I felt prompted to ask her if she would bear her testimony in church the following Sunday since it was fast and testimony meeting. (Note: Rachel is very shy and nervous around people because of events in her past. She calls herself the "church mouse" and isn't used to speaking in front of people at all). But, every time we facetime her and read out of the Book of Mormon, she's always telling us her feelings and how much the book of mormon has blessed her. We actually just finished the entire book of mormon with her in the span of 12 weeks! She's on FIRE. She's come to church every single Sunday for the past couple of months and is now considered a part of the branch. She's not baptized because of some things that we have to work with through the First Presidency but HOPEFULLY someday in the future she will have the opportunity to partake of the beautiful blessings of baptism. Anyway, so a few days ago I randomly said,

"Rachel, i have a favor to ask of you. Will you bear your testimony to the branch this sunday?" ........................

*silence*

........................

"Pleeeeease?"

And then...after some persistence on my part, she agreed! The next day she said she was practicing and she also wanted us to come over the day before church to practice with her so that she had it just right :) she's too cute!

Finally Sunday came and she walked right up and bore a touching testimony about the Book of Mormon. She compared it to a pie. Before finding this church, she had other bibles and she said that was the filling of the pie. She had different ideas and perspectives that started her testimony of Christ. Then she found the Book of Mormon and after reading it, she compared it to the crust. It's the foundation of this religion and it keeps everything else together..it's the "missing piece". I learn so much from my investigators and i just love it :)

IT GETS BETTER! As we were sitting in the chapel waiting for church to start, in walks Richard. I won't go into that whole situation but just know that it's a dang miracle that he showed up!! I'll go more into detail when I get home because I'm getting lazy. But he CAME! We ended up having....drum roll.....SIX INVESTIGATORS IN SACRAMENT MEETING!!!! That is by far the most i have had my entire mission. I'm pretty sure it actually triples anything we've ever had.

It gets even better. Remember Leon from last week? He came to church again with Brother James. He came up to us after gospel principles and apologized for having to miss our appointment during the week. We took the opportunity and scheduled an appointment with him right after church and luckily he was available! We taught him the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the branch president's wife and Brother James in a tiny room in the church building. The spirit was so strong and we even extended a baptismal date of November 26....HE ACCEPTED! We told him to pray to know if the message we shared with him was true and he said, "I already know it's all true. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet even though lots of people i know don't."

We warned him that the time between now and November 26 will be hard and the adversary will be doing its best to stop his progress but he assured us he will be ready by that date :) Amazing things happening here in D-Scotta! I'm pretty sure that was the happiest day of my mission. I felt so much love and joy and happiness and gratitude. When we pulled into our apartment after church, I asked Sister MacDonald if i could quickly say a gratitude prayer before we got out because we were just in awe at the miracles we were blessed with that day. I felt like Ammon in the scriptures with the joy exceeding my strength!

I remember a few months ago Jessica sent me an email and asked me if i had a goal for myself for the end of my mission. I took that question to heart and I pondered it for a while before coming to the decision that I'd like one more baptism before I go home. That goal is pretty high considering the slow baptismal rate this mission has, but I was determined to pray and rely on faith to help me reach that goal. At first I was a bit doubtful, and as the weeks slipped by without any investigators getting any closer, I thought I was out of luck. Then, a week ago, Leon randomly walks up to us and basically drops to his knees begging to be baptized!! JUST IN TIME...a few weeks before I go home. The Lord is so good.

This is HIS work, and as long as I do my part with faith and diligence, He will make up for everything else. I love being a missionary. I love representing my Savior in this miraculous work. I love the New Hampshire Manchester mission and I love all the crazy New Englanders. I love the joy that this gospel brings.

Enjoy my pictures and have a great week!

Love, Sister Watson

We matched! 😂

Rachel took this action picture of me raking her yard...In my "Mainer flannel". Wuzzup.

Yes yes yes yes and yes 😍 #christmaslights

BWE (best week ever)❤

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!! Hope you eat pounds and pounds of candy and soup and chili and more candy. Sister MacDonald and I will be celebrating "Deep Clean Halloween" as we lock ourselves in at 6:00 and deep clean our entire apartment. Ha...hahaha...haha. Woo. And we will most likely eat our body weight in candy from the members and chili from her momma.

But hey! We got to attend a super fun Halloween party at the church on Saturday night where we were witches :) I'll post pics!

I'd like to announce that I have my hearing back! Yay! I had to soak it with hydrogen peroxide three times a day for an hour every day until it was all better. Many prayers and lots of patience was given throughout the healing process, that's for sure! So much to talk about...this week was filled with miracles :)

First miracle happened at the beginning of the week. Our phone is full of contacts and we honestly don't even recognize most of the names since this phone has cycled through tons of missionaries. So, we decided to try a new finding technique by calling up the names we don't recognize and ask them if they'd like to continue learning, if they moved, if they're a member, etc. A few calls went by and we weren't having much luck. Then, we get to Joyce B...when she answered the phone we gave our intro by saying' "Hi, we are the sister missionaries in the area. Is this Joyce B?" And right away we heard, "Yes. Wanna come over?" WHAT! Ummmm yes Joyce. We would love to. So we stopped by the next day and had a little lesson with her. It was so great, especially since she's been investigating for many years now. Hopefully we'll be able to continue meeting with her!

Next miracle, MILES. We get a certain mileage limitation each month that we absolutely cannot go over. If you do go over, you could get your driving privileges taken away for a while or they just cut down your limit quite a bit the following month. Well, this month was a crazy one and we did a lot of traveling and our miles were dwindling pretty fast. We did some calculations last week and with all the plans/lessons we had scheduled to drive to this week, we were for sure going to exceed our limit. There was no possible way to get everything done without going over! It was terrible, BUT i knew that the Lord would bless us. He blessed Sister Cox and I last year when we had the same problem. Sometimes it doesn't make sense logically, but somehow it all works out as long as we do everything we can to save the miles. Sister MacDonald was a little hesitant about my whole, "IT'LL ALL WORK OUT" perspective with this situation but i just knew we would be taken care of. We prayed and prayed and we had many different solutions come to our minds as to how we could save as many miles as we could. We contacted members for rides, we found places we could walk to, and prayed some more. EVERYTHING worked out! Every member we asked for a ride from gave us one. We worked around our schedule and put in times to walk instead of driving. We put our faith in the Lord...and I can honestly tell you that we had extra miles left over. What a miracle!

Last and the best, L E O N! Oh my Leon.

Backstory: There is a member in our branch named Brother James. For the past couple of months he's had a guy named Leon living with him since Leon was kicked out of his apartment twice. Sister MacDonald and Sister Bishop contacted both of them and Leon ended up shredding up the pass-along card and throwing it at them while spewing out anti-mormon stuff at them. Then I came into this area and Sister MacDonald and I went to visit them. We showed Brother James a video about the temple since that's what he is working towards and Leon decided to spew stupid stuff at us as well. Then...we walk into church yesterday and we see LEON! We were scared out of our minds..the whole branch was. He was at the front of the chapel talking to our branch president and everyone knew he was there to "prove us wrong". Super awkward. After sacrament meeting he said he didn't like it and begged Brother James to just take him home but Brother James talked him into staying for just one more class. I am so thankful for Brother James. The next class was Gospel Principles and everyone braced themselves for the worst when he walked in and sat down. The topic was focused on Jesus Christ and the spirit was so strong. He raised his hand and gave comments, but all of them were supportive of Christ and they went along with the discussion. When the class ended, I overheard Leon talking to Brother James and he said, "...this is a church i WILL join."

Excuse me?

I couldn't believe it. I pulled my companion aside and told her what I heard and we stood there in awe. Brother James and Leon walked over to us and Brother James said, "Leon would like to start taking the investigator lessons." And then Leon asked if we could give him the baptism forms right at that moment! He wants nothing more than to become a member of this church! The spirit in the room during gospel principles completely softened his heart and we now have a teaching appointment for this week where we will set a baptismal date with him. I am so happy.. :)

Miracles upon miracles upon miracles happening here in D-Scotta! Sorry for blabbering, but I just love being a missionary. A little less than 2 months left and I'm determined to work my booty off until the very last second! Love you all!

Us with our investigator Rachel :)

Us with Morgan Hisler! He will be attending BYU idaho in January as well so that'll be great to see a familiar face!

Someone's backyard...yeah...

A little early...but we helped Rachel set up her tree! :)

Opposition in ALL things.

I honestly don't know how to explain this week. It was very long, very hard, filled with doctor appointments/physical injury, and small unfortunate events.

1. I have lost all hearing in my right ear. (still don't have it back)

2. I had to go to the doctors and fix a problem with my toe

3. Sister MacDonald had to get her body checked out for multiple different reasons

4. Lessons fell through just about every day this week

5. We are about out of miles for the month...it'll take a gigantic miracle to stay below our limit

6. We tracted in pouring rain/mud with zero success

Heavenly Father seems to think that He can dump all sorts of opposition into the last 2 months of my mission! It's honestly been a rough road recently BUT it's all reminded me of the quote i heard at the MTC that i've kept with me that says, "comfort and ease doesn't bring you to your knees."

At church on Sunday, the theme in sacrament meeting was opposition and how life won't always be peachy and happy. We must go through trial and hardship to recognize the goodness and the blessings around us. Because of the things I'm going through right now, I'm better able to notice the little moments of peace and comfort throughout the day. I am so thankful for the opposition I face. I'm thankful for the Lord and His trust in me in giving me challenges which in turn give me a chance to learn and grow. Plus, most of these things will make for when i get home ;)

We've been hardcore battling ladybugs in our apartment...WHY. I used to absolutely love ladybugs...I used to think they were so cute and innocent...but no, not anymore. They bite, they sneak up on you when you least expect it, and I want them extinct. Goodbye ladybugs. The weather is starting to get suuuuuper cold...Maine winter is coming! It's expected to be something like the treacherous winter two years ago. Good thing I'll only be here for the beginning of it! It's also starting to get darker super early in the evening and it stays dark for a longer time in the mornings. I'm not ready for it to get dark at 4:00pm again😩

Oh, and Sister MacDonald and I are staying together in Damariscotta for another 6 weeks!! This will be my last full transfer as a missionary so we are going to KILL IT. I don't know what else to say about this week...but pictures speak louder than words sooo ENJOY!