Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you all are doing great!! I appreciate your support so much...just that you are reading this letter means a lot to me. Please keep me in your prayers--I know your faith on my behalf truly strengthens and blesses me in my efforts.

I'm going to try to write a little more this week because I know I'm generally pretty bad at providing much detail or sharing many experiences.

So last Monday, we had an appointment but the man wasn't home, so we stopped by to visit Daniel who lives in one of the apartments below. We'd talked with him before but then he hadn't been there for our appointment with him. Anyway, his daughter opened the door and told us that he was about to take a shower but that he was coming. We were kind of confused, but we waited a little bit, but after a while we figured he wasn't going to come out, so we wrote out a note on a card to give to the little girl to give to her dad. Well, just as we gave her the card, he came out and invited us in. We sat down and talked with him and taught him and he was very receptive. It was funny because his two little girls were driving him crazy and he kept trying to send them into the other room with their mom, but they wouldn't stay there. They wanted to be out in the living room with us! We talked a lot about how important our families are and how the gospel of Jesus Christ has blessed our families. It has! I love being able to explain that to people. Anyway, we set an appointment to continue teaching him, and he wanted to meet us at the church for the lesson, which we thought would be great so we could show him the church and kind of give him a tour. After the lesson, we went and had a family home evening with the family of our branch president (the leader of our Spanish congregation) and talked about the Articles of Faith. He was gone because something came up he had to do at church, but we taught his wife and three of this four kids. His wife works on Sundays, so she doesn't come to church, so we try to meet with her and help her keep growing her testimony and knowledge of the gospel. She joined the church when they got married, so she hasn't been learning about it all her life...for example, that was her first time reading the Articles of Faith!

On Tuesday we had district meeting, a meeting of the 3 of us missionary companionships that are grouped together. It's for training, and this week we talked about overcoming discouragement and also how to begin teaching people--how to introduce ourselves and our purpose and get to know them and just set up a good relationship and environment for teaching and learning with the Spirit. In the afternoon, we met with a lady who we had just started teaching...well, she told us she isn't really interested in continuing to learn. She was just leaving to go walking when we got there so we said we'd be happy to walk with her. She said that was great, but then when we got outside she wanted to just stand/sit outside and talk with us, and we had a little conversation where she told us a lot of reasons she doesn't want to change. It was sad because we know the changes the gospel would bring to her life would all be good changes and bless her so much. After that we had a lesson with one of the members who lives nearby. He got baptized about a year and half ago but doesn't come to church anymore. He's super busy and also a little disorganized but a very very kind man. Has such a good heart. We talked about the plan of happiness that Heavenly Father has for us and also the things that we need to do in life to live the Gospel. His friend who has been meeting with the Elders was also there and we taught them both. Tuesday night we had an incredible lesson with Irene. She's someone the missionaries had taught a while back and we went by the other day and she was really glad and said she'd been wanting to come to church and asked us to come back. We brought a member--the president of the Relief Society in the branch--with us and as soon as we got there, Irene was so happy because they knew each other! They used to work together! I know Heavenly Father guided us to bring that specific sister with us. Irene was really glad that she would know someone at church and wanted to come this week! We had a really good lesson and she said we could come again Friday. 

I type way too slow...I'm running out of time and there is so much more to tell because that is just two days. Well, some follow-up at least: Daniel wasn't there for our lesson at the church Thursday. Hasn't answered our phone calls but we're going to keep trying to go by and try to catch him home again...no luck yet. Hoping he just forgot on Thursday...life is busy. We had our lesson Friday with Irene. She is reading little by little and learning and wants to continue and prepare herself to be baptized. She didn't make it to church on Sunday, but she doesn't have a phone, so we don't know why yet.

Also a couple other highlights: We went out to do service this week--put on yellow shirts and jeans and went to look for ways to help people. We found a man in the community garden that's close to our house and we ended up doing some weeding. It was fun, and he was really nice and asked us questions about what we do as missionaries. He kind of disappeared partway through though, it was kind of weird. Also, we had dinner with a lady the Spanish-speaking Elders are teaching and she gave us shrimp soup. It's starting to grow on me...maybe pretty soon I'll start liking seafood. Fingers crossed. (:

Well, I've got to go...

I love you all!!!!

Love,

Hermana Brighton