Sister Brianne Watson: 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!