Week 13

Dear Family,

Last week I was hoping that this week would be different and that my life would change up a bit.  My hopes have definitely been fulfilled!

First things first,  Hna Samayoa is amazing!  She's from Guatemala and is in reality training me. She is ALWAYS excited to do missionary work and I haven't seen her the least bit down or tired. She's had gripe, what people here call a cold, this week but I don't think her energy will ever stop. She has a ton of faith, which is helping me as well. I know I'm going to learn a lot from her, and am excited for that! Every time something disappointing happens or I tell her we need to do something that isn't fun she just says "ok, esta bien!"

President Wilkinson gave us the homework to study Alma 43-63 and write down all the attributes of Captain Moroni that make him a great leader.   WOW. I always knew that Captain Moroni was amazing, but now I have a super long list of all the things that make him amazing.  There's a TON.   One of the things that I've noticed is that he is ALWAYS preparing and that he takes breaks from battling to prepare better. My companion and I have started getting up at 6:15 every morning so that we can be ready by 7:30 and have an extra half hour of study. I usually use this time to read from the Book of Mormon. This week I've had a real thirst/hunger to simply read the words of God.  I love the Book of Mormon!

The health department here has been spraying for mosquitoes that have Dange and so one day this week they were in our neighborhood. They sprayed our apartment, so we had to wait outside for about a half hour until the chemical smell was gone.  What we didn't know though was that everything that was out in the open when they sprayed had to be washed so that we wouldn't breathe in the chemicals.  We not only had to wash all of our dishes, clothes, and bedding, but there were also a bunch of dead cockroaches as well as live ones on the floor and climbing up the walls.  Ah!  It was a nightmare!  I knew there were cockroaches in our house, but I had no idea there were so many!  I definitely have not been sleeping as well lately ;).

We taught a new investigator this week who is the sister in law to Raquel.  Her name's Gretel and she has already accepted a baptism date for the 26 of October.  The cool thing is that her husband found a Book of Mormon in the street one day and she'd already read a lot of it before we taught her! She's practically ready to be baptized, we just need to get her married...which is always difficult, especially when our investigators don't have a lot of money.

:(

Another small miracle this week is that we were trying to find the house of a less active, but it turns out that she's moved away.  However, we asked Cindy, the person that lives in the house now, if she knew anyone that needed a message of Jesus Christ.  She said "I want to hear it"  and we were able to teach her as well as put a date for her baptism!

It's a lot of pressure being in charge, but it's kind of nice too...hehe.  I only hope I'm a good trainer.  I guess time will tell!

I wasn't able to get much out of conference, as I was either tending to Raquel's kids, or trying not to fall asleep...hehe.  I don't know why I was so tired this week!  Also, it was in Spanish, which I could understand most of, but only if I gave it all my attention.  However I'm excited to read it when it comes out!

Raquel and Gretel walked all the way to the church again with their children.  They are sacrificing so much!  This week we visited Raquel without her kids or Alejandro.  She's changed a lot and was talking about a bunch of things in the gospel. Before it was hard to get her to give an answer or say a prayer, but not now!  Yay!  She really wants to be baptized, but she has to marry Alejandro or separate from him first.

Love you all!  I received a bunch of letters/packages from Emily and Grandma.  Thank you!!!!!!!!

Les Quiero,

Hermana Bratt