Sister Brianne Watson: ☁️9️⃣

Another full week of many strange yet wonderful things! I feel like last Monday was 372 years ago, but we will start there. When P-Day ended, we went over to the Small's house and helped them put their christmas tree up while we ate shrimp, salmon, and ice cream :)) #coastlife

On Tuesday we went on exchanges with our sister training leaders in Yarmouth. I was with Sister Knecht who i was in the MTC with and it was great! We saw a lot of miracles which obviously is something to rejoice about. I, being me, forgot my coat and it was freezing while we were tracting together. There came to a point where I was shivering pretty bad so Sister Knecht suggested we just go back to the car but when i looked at the next house, i felt a like we needed to go knock. We hadn't seen any success up to this point, but i felt absolutely certain that something good was about to happen. An older man came to the door and i offered to share a scripture about gratitude with him but he declined, saying he didn't have time. I was not about to leave without something happening so i offered to give him the entire Book of Mormon and he could read the scripture when he does have time. HE TOOK IT! That may not seem like a huge victory...we didn't get a return appointment or a baptismal date or a new investigator, but we gave someone the most important book of scripture that they will ever read. THAT is a victory to me.

Thursday was THANKSGIVING! I'm not sure i'll ever recover from that day. We had three meals right after each other and I think i'll be full for the rest of my life. But we were SO thankful for the support and love shown by the members! We were obviously well fed and we were so happy. I thought back to last Thanksgiving with Sister Cox in Bethel when we cried the entire way home from a meal appointment because we were so homesick. Honestly, this year I barely thought about my family and what they were doing because i was so happy where i was and who i was with! Holidays as a missionary are getting more and more fun because this place is my HOME. (Mom, don't worry. I still love and miss you😂)

Here's something exciting...on the way to our last meal appointment, i hit a deer!! Yup. It darted out into the middle of the road so i slammed on my brakes and I hit its back side. We were incredibly blessed because no air bags went off, we didn't swerve and die, and the only damage was a broken headlight. No dents, no injuries, nothing. We have no idea how the deer is doing since we didn't stop but everything else is just fine! i was shaking for a good 15 minutes after that...it was horrifying.

And now, we get to LEON'S BAPTISM!! It happened everyone, he is officially a member of this wonderful church! We had a couple of technical difficulties on Saturday which caused his baptism to be changed to Sunday after church, but IT HAPPENED. If something could have possibly gone wrong, it did. I was super stressed and humiliated and discouraged all night Saturday and Sunday morning but as soon as I saw Leon's smile spread across his face and light pouring from his countenance when he came up from the water, all of that washed away. All those lessons, the planning, and the challenges that came from teaching Leon and getting him to this point was all made worth it at that point. I am so in love with bringing other people closer to Christ. I ache to know that I only have 4 more weeks of this...but I'm going to make the most of every second!

THE #LIGHTtheWORLD VIDEO HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN RELEASED!❤️ hooray! The branch president asked us to go and present the entire Christmas initiative to both the Relief Society and to the Elders Quorum on Sunday and it went very well. We wrapped up tons of Book of Mormons in wrapping paper to hand out to people and we had some of the members take some to hand out as well. Our goal is to flood this area with LIGHT and we are going to do everything in our power to make it happen! If you haven't seen the video yet, you can find it on Mormon.org's Facebook page or in the gospel library app under 'holiday videos'. Please share the videos and participate in the advent calendar that they have as well! That's all I have for this week, love you all!