Week 7 - This Work is So True!

October 3, 2017

Familia y Amigos,

Ice cream, me and Hermana S.

What a crazy week! I hope you all took time out of your day to watch General Conference. Conference is a way God speaks to us directly, we just have to exercise our agency to take advantage of it! I encourage you all to go back and read through the inspired talks and you will find answers to your questions and be inspired by the Spirit to help you with whatever you need.

Thursday: My actual first lesson! We taught a young mother named Y. This was her second lesson I believe, and I was the one to ask her to be baptized, and oh, man, it was kinda scary and I don´t think she completely understood me but she said she would be in time when she learned more! This gospel seriously brings so much home in the lives of people. We added another hermana making a trio for the day while her companion was at a meeting at the mission office, so that was fun. We read the Book of Mormon with F., a Haitian whose family is still in Haiti but he came here to find work and support his family back in Haiti because politics are really bad and so is finding work. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of Haitians here doing the same thing or in the process of bringing their families here. It's amazing the courage and strength they have. Most of them are learning Spanish or only know a little, very similar to me, so I can relate with them really well. Some of them only know English because they took it in school (and French and Creole, of course). 

All the sisters in my apartment

Friday: one of the harder days. We taught J. (another Haitian) who has been taking lessons for a while and has been taught everything about the gospel. He had a baptismal date but it was moved back because his leg got ran over by a car I think, I could have heard wrong. But now it's a lot better but says he wants to wait until his Spanish gets better. I had the opportunity to strongly testify to him that it is not a requirement to God to know anything perfectly, and God trusts in us, but we need to trust in Him. I testified in my broken Spanish that God know what we are capable of, and we need to act on the faith we have. Faith without works is dead. I told him that God will bless him so much is he acts on the faith he has. I also promised him that if he read the Book of Mormon out loud in Spanish, he would learn faster and understand people and by the end he would know Spanish. This experience really helped me realize how much I need to trust God in my life. It's too easy to get frustrated or down, but I need to see beyond that because it's not possible to have faith and fear at the same time. And I have faith!

Watch General Conference here!

Saturday: GENERAL CONFERENCE!! And I got to watch it in English!! This was a really inspiring day for me. the Between the talks and during my personal study I found exactly what I needed to keep going. And it rained all day. It was crazy! The streets were flooded like rivers, and you know in movies when the water come up and splashes all the people on the sidewalks when the cars drive by and it doesn't seem like such a large of a splash is possible? Yeah. That's not just in movies. I think my favorite talk was President Uchtdorf's, talking about being a disciple of Christ. I love conference because not only are the talks good to listen to, but if we listen with spiritual ears, God will whisper thoughts and revelation into our minds, personal for our own lives. We stopped by L. that night, who was my first contact! He is super interested in knowing about his purpose here on the earth and I wanted to tell him everything in one visit! I can't imagine what it would be like to not know about the plan of happiness! We stopped by Felipe's (from Haiti as well) who has had a few lessons and told us he is getting baptized. We didn't even ask him too, ha ha. He and his family are amazing, and he's sharing the gospel with everyone in his family. He just needs to get married here in Chile and then he can be baptized! His brother was there that night and told us he wants to start taking lessons because he's noticed such a big change in his brother. Ah, so amazing!

I love this family!

Sunday: Another wonderful day of conference. F. and J. both came to conference and loved it! That night we stopped by F.'s again because he invited us to his and his nieces (the cutest baby in the whole world- she's in the picture, but she was kinda tired when we took it ha ha) birthday party! There were a bunch of Haitians there and he was so excited to share his culture and food and family with us! It was super cool, just being there with his family. I could feel the strong bond of love they had for each other. And many of them wanted to learn more about the gospel or had questions. And the food. Oh, boy, was unreal. 

Delicious Haitian food!

Monday: Zone conference, which was super good. 

I could go on and on with stories and feelings, but really the bottom line is this work is so real and so true. It blesses lives like nothing else can, and I'm really grateful to be a part of it. No it's not always easy, okay, never easy, but, oh, so worth it. Hope you all have a great week! Love and pray for you always.

Much love,

Hermana Briggs