Hurricane Watch

hello hello everybody!

this was another long/hot week in the great rio grande valley. i will put things into bullet points:
--we had a big valley conference.. we combined with 5 zones.. since our mission president is leaving. it was pretty fun. i got to see sister haws (my friend from provo) and some of the missionaries i had served with up in laredo and it was good times to be had by all.
--they invited us sisters and the office elders (including elder clayton, peter's friend's son) to this open house going away party for our mission president and we sang a few musical numbers. this guy in the stake down here i guess is a pretty big hot shot composer and he composed his own arrangements to "a poor wayfaring man of grief" and"god be with you till we meet again." they were beautiful. he played the violin and we had the piano and everybody in the audience wasc rying of course. it was pretty neat to be a part of. i like being down here so close to the mission office to be included in those things.
--erin is still AWESOME and is probably getting baptized. she is like the most open and genuine person i've ever known. she's out of town this week but we're going to visit her friday. i've never met someone so spiritually in tune. she just knows how to pray and recieve answers and her own personal revelation and she sticks to it. she's great.
--that awesome brother and sister ramon and jennifer turned out to be not so awesome. they refused to pray or read anything even though they both had admitted to feeling the spirit. but it's okay. they're young. maybe sometime in the future they'll figure things out and be willing to act on things that they feel. i think it's hard for them because they are getting a lot of persecution from their friends and family.
--there is apparently a hurricane headed our way. sister bustillos and i are kind of excited. if the hurricane hits they'll evacuate us and we'll stay in a church for a day or two or as long as all the unsafestuff is happening, and then we'll go right back out and help people with the relief process. give food and clean up and that type of thing. i think it's a little exciting. but i know it would be bad news for the people here who aren't prepared. so who knows. maybe i shouldn't be wishing for it to come. kind of funny we're getting the new mission president this week.. his welcome present could very well be having to carry out an evacuation plan.--our new mission president happens to be the dad of a girl i went to high school with. small world.
that's about it for me. hope all is well with you. should have some interesting news to share next week if this hurricane happens. until next time.
xoxobrittany
p.s. my birthday is coming up on july 9th... that is all.

Good week!

Pig stomach. Yum!

hiiii everybody.

this has been an amazing week! first of all, me and sister bustillos get along GREAT. i love her with all my heart. she actually lived in provo for a year and knows a lot of the same people i know so it's been fun talking about people. also, she is a vegetarian and has stayed vegetarian on her mission. which means i've been calling all the people who normally feed us nasty greasy meat and telling her that my companion can't eat it, which also means that I can't it. it's great, they think she's the crazy one, and i get off scot free. and meat free. i've also seen that people really don't get offended here if you just tell them ahead of time you don't eat meat. i have been thinking i'm going back to being veggie. i don't think i can look at one more plate of greasy carne molida and my insides can't take it either.
anyway.. it has been an awesome week! like i said before, we were starting from scratch this week. it was a little discouraging planning for our first day and having absolutely no appointments or people to visit, but we stayed positive and found some really awesome people. we even had a whole family come to church. sister call and i only got one person to church all last transfer.
we found this awesome lady named erin. she's from indiana and one of the only white people i've ever met down here, besides the members in the english ward. we gave her a book of mormon this week and she loved it! she read the chapter we gave her to read and she said she didn't need to pray to know it's true because she just knew it when she read it. that it was everything she always knew she believed, she just couldn't find it so clearly put anywhere else. she's about to be going through a divorce too and she used it to find answers and guidance where to go and what to do and she said she received answers. she's so awesome.
we also found this family, a brother and a sister who are 15 and 14. the brother, Ramon is 14 and he is the head altar boy at his catholic church and wants to be a catholic priest. we taught him and his sister about the restoration and the book of mormon. Ramon kind of spouted out his beliefs as a defense to us telling him new stuff. we couldn't get him to shut up actually. then we finally said, you don't have to figure it out logically. you have all the tools. you can read the scriptures and pray about it. don't listen to us or believe us. don't listen to your priest or believe him. study it out yourself and god will tell you what to do. he got really quiet for the first time the whole night and then said, "you know... i think god puts everyone here for a reason." i asked him what he meant and he calmly said. "god wanted me to be really confused right now, and he wanted you two missionaries to come to my door and tell me how to find the answer." it was really neat. we challenged him to read a chapter from the book of mormon and pray about it. we are seeing him tonight, we'll see how it went. his sister Jennifer is awesome. we thought she wasn't interested at all because she was so quiet in the lessons and didn't want to participate. but she said that when we invited her to church, she ha d a burning feeling in her chest and couldn't stop smiling and she went in her house and told her mom that she needed to come to church with us. she told us this whole story about how she's been searching for this her whole life. it was a cool experience. it's amazing to see how god is always answering prayers and putting people in other people's paths at just the right minute.
anyway, i attached some pictures here including the pig stomach, the world's largest killer bee in hidalgo, texas, my two favorite converts frank and jesus, and me holding another bird. why do people here insist on putting their birds in my hands?
hope you're all doing well!
favorite quote of the week:
when asking a woman if she wanted to come to church in english or spanish, "hmm... do you have one in tex-mex?"
dead serious.
people down here...

xoxo
brittany

Funny Girl

hello hello people!

the long awaited transfer news has finally come. my new companion is going to be sister bustillos. the one who came to laredo and i said her life was like the mormon "the hills." should be pretty interesting. turns out me and my dear sweet sister kellett are companion swapping. they're also splitting our area and putting boy missionaries in one half, which happens to be the half that all of our investigators are in, so we'll be starting from scratch. kind of cool,kind of sad. lots of unexpected changes. but that is the mission life for you! life moves on.

this was a cool week. i would like to start by telling a joke that one of the primary kids told: how do you wake up lady gaga? poke-her face.(ba dum cchhhh)(that was a drum roll)

anyway. we had another miracle this week. besides the elizondo familybeing whole again, we witnessed the miracle of the lost kitten. one of our recent converts, Jessica, had a cat and three kittens. we all loved the kittens very much. well jessica lives at an apartment complex that does not allow animals. so one day the manager came and took the kittens away to "animal control" which really means that she dropped them in a field somewhere. we know that BECAUSE... three weeks later, we found one of the kitties!! sister call and i were knocking some doors about a mile away from jessica's house and this little kitten came running to us from somebody's yard. we actually didn't recognize it at this point, but we looked for it's home and after not knowing if it had one and thinking that she looked a little too skinny, we decided to bring it home to jessica who was needing more kitten in her life. when we showed it to her she freaked and said she was pretty sure it was one of the three kittens. then we showed her to the momma cat and she recognized her! it was truly a christmas miracle. we found the kitten a home with one of jessica's best friends, so she still gets to visit and now she has a home. we're not sure what happened to the other two kitties, but hopefully some kind souls stopped and picked them up.

anyway.. i don't have much time to email today.. we have to get stuff ready for transfers. hope you are all having a great week. untilnext time...xoxo

brittany

After the trials come the blessings!

(From Terry) I went to the mail box yesterday and found a hand written letter from Brittany. I knew it had to be important if she couldn't wait to email me on Monday as usual. Here is a transcript of the letter. It's awesome :)


Momma!

I just wanted to write you now instead of waiting til next week to tell you the awesome news. So, as a ward, we fasted for Elizondo's (the one who was in jail). As of Sunday the last they heard was he'd be there at least three months. but we got a call today at around 3:00 from sister Elizondo saying they let him out suddenly. That they had no evidence on him and he's free to go. It was a miracle! We were all crying. They invited us over for dinner tonight and he told us all about it. He said his first night in the jail he was praying and he just had this overwhelming feeling everything was going to be okay. Also, he's going to be applying for citizenship soon because he just found out he qualifies, which means his wife can become legal, which means they can go through the temple! So cool right?

Heavenly Father really answers prayers. I love Mosiah 27:14....he answers the prayers of the righteous. Anyway....that's all!

Love, Britt

Trials of Faith

hello people
another slow week here in mission texas. sister call and i are having a trial of our faith. and so are all of our investigators. they keep getting hit hard with things. but it's ok. we've seen miracles happen too. one thing that was cool this week was when we met elizabeth.
she was baptized about a year ago and has the craziest story ever. we actually got her number from a member of her original ward.
she told she had moved into our ward and gave us her number and address. so we tried to call her and we had the wrong number. we kind of forgot about it for a while but then decided this week to stop by the address and see if anyone was there. she was there. and she almost burst into tears. i guess she had just gotten off the phone with her mom who is a little crazy. she's into televangelism and calls us the "crazy mormon cult" and is very against elizabeth (who is 51) being in the church. she told us that she had been praying all week and asking god to help her figure out what she should do. she said she would go to a different church or do whatever it took to get her relationship back with god. and that her mom had kind of just given her a verbal beating maybe about an hour before we showed up. she said she knew it was an answer to her prayer. so we were excited and told her about the new ward and told her that we already had a ride for her on sunday and then she freaked out even more because i guess when we had actually knocked on the door she had been looking in the phonebook at churches and trying to see if any of them had ride services so that she could get there. she then told us about how the first time she ever met the missionaries she was out pulling weeds in her garden and crying and praying to find god. and mid-prayer the missionaries tapped her on the shoulder. she said she knew right from the start that what they taught her was right. so through fighting with her husband and mom, she ended up getting baptized. then the next sunday when she was supposed to go to church to be confirmed her husband drugged her up on sedatives (he's a nurse or something) so that she couldn't move. one of the members came (the same one that gave us her number) and found her and helped her up and they pressed charges on the husband and now they are divorced. i guess her mom was in on the whole thing too. it's absolutely crazy. but anyway, she is the sweetest woman ever and it's amazing how many prayers she has had answered in the course of the year. the best part is, she is PERFECT for one of our other recent converts and we are going to try and set them up on a date secretly.
:)
anyway. i just took up all of my time writing that story. we are still waiting things out with sister elizondo finding out about her husband in jail. as of right now it's looking like he'll be there three months minimum, if not a year. she's still staying positive about it and everyone in the ward is praying for her. it's still super hot and we still eat way too much. and that is about it. until next week.
xoxo
britt

Pig Stomach Soup Anyone?

hello people!
this was a hot week. once again. but all in all i still prefer it tothe cold. it's not too bad.my first story is another about a crazy thing i had to eat. pigstomach. pig stomach soup, to be exact. pictures to come. sis. calland i went to a carne asada that this investigator family of ours werethrowing. the woman had just had twins a few months ago and they hadhealth problems becuase the were premature. so this was kind of their"hooray our babies are going to be normal" fiesta? anyway, we had justcome from a dinner appointment but wanted to come and support. so weget there and one of the women offered us food. i politely said that ihad just eaten and just would enjoy the party. but ten minutes latershe handed me a plastic cup full of "frijoles." which happened to be alot more than just frijoles. the mystery meat of choice was pigstomach. there were huge chunks of it and you could see every singlelayer of the pig's body. like the muscle, the dents from veins, andbig chunks of fat. it was horrible. i ate a nibble of the meat, andthen just decided to dodge all the meat and go for the beans. luckilythere were some dogs around and dumping under the table wassuccessful.

my other story is not funny, but sad. there is a woman in thespanish branch here named sister elizondo. she is one of my favoritehuman beings alive, actually. she's about 28 and she is has been amember of the church for two years. she is the young women'spresident. she has two sweet little girls that are 4 and 2 years old.and an awesome awesome husband. i met her on my first day here and weclicked instantly. she is seriously the coolest person i've known.anyway, she's illegal, as most people here are. so they were alwayssuper careful to drive the speed limit and be safe and things. hehusband has a visa and is always crossing the border for work. well,immigration took him in this week and i guess they had caught him fromsome old criminal charge from when he didn't have his visa. so theyhave him in jail. it could be 15 days to three months until they findout what happens. the whole family runs the risk of being deportednow. plus sister elizondo doesn't work (since she's illegal.) so she'salone with the two girls who don't know where their dad is, with noincome, and no idea what is going to happen. i feel so bad for them.she is handling the situation very well. she's trying to stay positiveand knows there is just something she's supposed to learn from it andthat if she keeps doing what she knows is right, everything will workout. no matter what happens. she's getting a lawyer, and hopefullythey can work everything out. pretty sure they can't even hold him forsomething from the past even though now he has papers. but they aredoing it. so it's been a pretty loaded past couple of days. it getsfrustrating not being able to help people with that. and seeing goodpeople be treated like criminals for wanting live in our country.sigh. things will work out...anyway. that's about it for me. i hope this email finds everyonedoing well. until next
week.

xoxobrittany