Thank you and Invitation

Dear friends and extended family,

I am back home and so grateful to be with my family again. Thank you for all of your prayers and the encouragment that you have given me in the past weeks and months.

This Sunday, the 27th of April, I will have the opportunity to speak in sacrament meeting, the most sacred meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For any of you who will be in the area that day, I invite you to come to sacrament meeting to hear me speak and, most importantly, to remember our Savior. The meeting begins at 10:30 am at 16331 Hafer Road, just off 1960.

Thank you for your wonderful support!

Love,
Alicia Brighton

Dear wonderful family and friends,

I hope you all are doing great!

I just have a few moments to send a quick note and want to take the opportunity to list some of the things about my mission that I am so grateful for.

Wonderful examples of leadership

Relationships with companions, people I have taught, members of the church I have worked with

Strengthened testimony

Better understanding of how to pray

There is so much within each one of these categories. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve a full-time mission and learn how to be a servant of Jesus Christ.

I love you all!

Until soon,

Hermana Brighton

Dear all,

Thank you so much for your continued encouragement and prayers for me. I appreciate it so much, and my heart always overflows with gratitude whenever I reflect on my many associations  that enrich my life. Thank you for being you.

This week, we had some really wonderful opportunities to serve other people. Just little opportunities that came up, and I am really grateful that we always strive to talk with everybody, because if we didn't, we would have missed all of those opportunities.

General conference this weekend was a wonderful experience. I got to watch one of the sessions in Spanish with one of the people that we are teaching! Saturday afternoon. It was really neat. The other sessions I watched with my companion in English, which is always nice because you get to hear the actual voices of all of them. 

I am so grateful for the answers I received to questions I have and also to questions I didn't have but should have!

I hope that you all could also enjoy general conference, and if not, that you will check it out, or any sessions you might have missed atgc.lds.org.

I love you all so much and hope that you have an absolutely fantastic week! 

It's going to be a great one on my end!

Much love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear wonderful family and friends,

I hope that you all are having a wonderful week so far and that your April gets off to a great start tomorrow. You will have to let me know next week of any good April Fools happenings.

So this week we will be experiencing even more changes here in Novato. After only four weeks of being with us, Hermana Anderson is being emergency-transferred out of the area. She leaves tomorrow morning to go be companions with Hermana Fernandez (one of my former companions!) in Dixon, CA. As far as I know, this is no April Fools joke. 

In other news...this week on exchanges we met a man named Juan who has come to church on and off for 24 years but never gotten baptized. He told us that he feels that now is finally the time, and he is planning to be baptized on April 13. The day that we went by his house, he had been having a really rough day. The next day, when we taught him again, he told us that we were his angels and expressed the gratitude in his heart. He explained that as he had pondered after we had left, he felt like he understood the love of our Heavenly Father in a way that he never had before. He is coming to know who God really is. I know that He is our loving Heavenly Father and that He knows and cares for every one of His children. He answers our prayers.

I am grateful that I have been learning to speak with Him and understand His answers to me. I am so happy for the wonderful experiences I've been blessed with, moments when I have seen and felt him work through me to express His love for others of His children, my brothers and sisters.

Thank you for your continuing encouragement and prayers. I appreciate it! I hope that you all have a wonderful week, especially as we prepare for and enjoy this general conference weekend and the chance to hear from our living prophet.

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear wonderful family and friends,

I appreciate so much the support that I continue to receive from you all. It's good to hear news...so many great things happening in all of our lives! There is so much good for us to do, and so many ways in which our Heavenly Father blesses us as we do it.

This week I have pondered quite a bit about the second coming of Jesus Christ. I have thought about how my efforts to share His gospel and to help others to live it are the way that I am able to hasten his return. It makes me view everything I do every day a little differently when I think of it more in that perspective. 

A random thing I have thought about for some reason more than normal this week is that I miss math. That is not something really significant, but just thought I would share. Considering I have not taken a math class since high school and didn't think I'd really want to take another one...it's kind of odd. 

Things are going well in our area. We have a great companionship and lots of people to visit and teach. It's actually pretty crazy how much we have going on...there could definitely be another set or even two other sets of missionaries in our area, and they would all have plenty of work to do!

Miguel is continuing to get ready for his baptism. It's not likely going to be this coming weekend like we had originally planned because he has been working a TON, and has a couple other obstacles to overcome, but it should be soon. Please pray for him! 

I love you all very much and hope that you have a wonderful week!

Until next week,

Hermana Brighton

Dear family and friends,

I hope this finds all of you well!

This past week was another great one. 

We had a great stake conference this weekend that taught me a lot about missionary work and especially how to share the gospel when you're not wearing a black nametag.

A wonderful, wonderful experience that I had at the conference was getting to see Sonny again!! As a reminder, she is the young lady who was baptized on Mother's Day last year in Rohnert Park. She is doing wonderfully, and it was such a joyful reunion. It was a taste of what it will feel like after this life to find myself with people like her who are so special to me and with whom I have shared such special experiences and had a part in bringing them to a knowledge of our Father in Heaven and His plan for them. She told me she is working really hard, doing her own missionary work with her family, and that she feels her purpose is to help her family be together in the celestial kingdom. Oh, it is so hard to put into words what it felt like to be with her again and really myself be lifted by the strength of her testimony.

Another wonderful experience this week was teaching Miguel and seeing in him such sincere desire to repent as we taught him about commandments and the blessings that can be his through obedience. It is so heart-softening and wonderful to see right before your eyes someone's perspective changing and their resolve to do what is right strengthening. 

I hope to always have that kind of humility and faith to always seek to better understand the will of God for me and then patiently and faithfully make whatever changes that He requires of me.

I love you all and am very grateful for the ways in which you have supported and continue to support and encourage me. Have a wonderful week!!

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear wonderful family and friends,  3-10-14

I hope that you all have had a wonderful week. For those of you on Spring break this week (Alex, Scott, Stacey and anyone else who might be), I hope you have a great time! 

This week was incredible. We have just about had more work than we can even keep up with. It's been awesome to just be able to go for it and work hard all day every day again.

My new companion, Hermana Anderson, is from Washington state, the Seattle area. She is 5'11'' and very sweet and a hard worker. Fun fact: she really likes essential oils. So our apartment smells really good now.

So now I just want to tell you about some of the awesome people we met this week.

On Monday, we met Amy. She had talked to other missionaries who gave us her number, and on Monday we had our first lesson with her at a Starbucks. That was a first for me--teaching a lesson in Starbucks. She was born in Houston...it was an instant connection! She is also my age, about 6 months older than me is all. She grew up in Guatemala and has a lot of family there. We started teaching her, and she is so receptive. She is going to school so that she can get a better job because she provides the financial support for her two orphaned nieces who live with one of her sisters in Guatemala. 

Monday we also had a first lesson with Chato, who is also working here to support family out of the country. He was already reading and praying about the Book of Mormon, and he wants to be a member of the church. He has a lot of family, including his dad and his sons, who are members of the church. 

On Tuesday we visited a family from our branch that hasn't been to church in quite a while. Their grandchildren were over, and we started talking with them, and ended up teaching them how to pray and how to read the scriptures and who Jesus is. They haven't been to church since they were really little and basicallly have forgotten everything they might have known about God. Their Mom wants to take them back now, and they were really excited about it.

Wednesday we were walking out of an apartment complex and Hermana Harris stopped and said, we need to knock on that door. So we did, and no one answered. Then we knocked on the next door one and this lady answered. Clearly in distress, the house inside was a mess. Turns out they were moving. We talked a little and took down her information to give her a call a little later on. When she wrote down her number for us, she also wrote a note to us saying that they were being evicted but she doesn't want her family to know. We've been praying a lot for them this week. She was very appreciative and I know Heavenly Father sent us there for her.

Thursday we were planning and couldn't for the life of us remember who someone was. We had an appointment scheduled with him but couldn't find anything recorded besides his name. So we said a prayer and immediately after (well really during), Hermana Harris remembered who he was. I know Heavenly Father really does know all of his children, and he answers our prayers through the power of the Holy Ghost.

Well there's more, but I've run out of time.

Things are going wonderfully!! I love you all so much. Thank you for your prayers and all the support you give me.

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear wonderful friends and family,

This will be a quick note because we are here at the mission office today dropping off Hermana Zimmerman, and we just have a short time to email.

This next transfer Hermana Harris and I are staying together in Novato and receiving a new companion as well, Hermana Anderson. She is one of the tallest sisters in the mission...I will be the shortest one of the three of us. So we will be a pretty tall companionship.

I definitely have learned a lot this transfer about diligence, patience, charity, and compassion. I'm grateful for the experiences that I am having and for the miracles that I continue to see each day in the work and in the lives of those around me.

I love you all so much.

Sincerely,

Hermana Brighton

Dear dear family and friends,

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend. Funny thing, I didn't realize until halfway through today that most schools are out for President's Day. And that the post office is closed.

This week I want to share my testimony of sacrifice and diligence. I have seen over and over and over on my mission that when we work hard, when we take advantage of a few extra minutes at the end of the night (kind of like the experience Elder Brighton shared this weekend), and when we sacrifice our comfort for the Lord's work, we are inevitably blessed. Those are the moments when I most feel that I am an instrument in Heavenly Father's hand. 

This week, we met two different families who seemed very receptive, both of them on the two evenings when we were knocking doors in the very last moments of the evening. Also, we had two lessons that we taught while Hermana Zimmerman was not feeling that great. That was a sacrifice for her. And in both of those lessons, the men we were teaching accepted the invitation to be baptized at the end of next month. 

I want to tell a little more about the second of those lessons. 

It's 6:30 Sunday night after dinner and we go to see a man who is a referral from the English elders. Right outside his apartment is a huge bounce-house and a big hispanic birthday party going on. We have to literally squeeze past the bounce house to get to the flight of stairs up to his apartment. We knock on the door, I talk to him a little bit (I found out after that my companions could hear nothing of what he said because of the noise from the bounce-house) and he invites us in. We talk to him a little about his family, work, and life. He is Javier Yah, from Yucatan, Mexico. He is so sincere, asks questions as we teach him, and has the desire to be baptized by someone who has true priesthood authority. He agrees without hesitation to prepare himself to be baptized on 30 March. As we finish, he offers a sincere prayer, promising God that he will read all of the Book of Mormon and asking for help to prepare himself for baptism. 

I felt the Spirit confirm to me how much the gospel is going to bless the life of this man and his family. I am so happy for him. We're going back Wednesday to teach him again.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Let us all continue in diligence, sacrificing what is necessary and all that we can to give our best to the Lord in our respective efforts to serve. Big or small as our responsibilities or opportunities may seem, they all count in the eyes of our Heavenly Father.

I love you all!!

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear Wonderful Family and Friends,

Did you have a great week? I sure hope so!

This week was a very full one for us. On Wednesday, we had a zone conference and on Thursday we went to the temple in Oakland. Sister Zimmerman has still been sick, but we were able to still teach several people, and we started teaching two men this week who both seem to have a very sincere desire to know the truth and to act accordingly. One of them is the friend of one of the sisters in the branch, and he has come to church with her and her four little kids the past couple of weeks. We taught him for the first time on Saturday night.

We have seen a great miracle in the past week. Last weekend (February 1st and 2nd), members of the church and other people throughout California united in fasting and prayer for rain. We had been having a really bad drought. Starting last Sunday, it has been raining a TON. On Thursday night, we had a dinner in downtown San Rafael. We didn't know exactly where the apartments were, and there isn't a lot of parking in the area, so we ended up parking really far away from the sister's home. In the pouring rain, we walked probably half a mile and arrived pretty soaked! It's been such a happy thing to see our prayers so immediately answered.

This upcoming week, Sister Zimmerman has a couple of doctor appointments. Please pray for her and for the doctors. If they cannot find a solution, she is going to have to go home.

Thank you for all of your prayers and your support. I know that Heavenly Father hears and answers us. I know He knows us and loves us. 

Have a wonderful week!!!

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear Friends and Family,

I hope that you all are doing wonderfully. Has it been a good week? I sure hope so.

For me it has been a good week. Hermana Zimmerman has still been sick, poor thing, but we have been able to still do a significant amount of work. On Tuesday, I went on exchanges with two of the sisters in the English Sister trio in the next town over. They are both incredible missionaries. They also are both finishing their missions...this is their last transfer. So it was really good to be with them and see how they are determined to keep working hard and how well they are applying all that they have learned throughout their missions. 

I have to say, I have been blessed with really good health. I am really really grateful because I think I am the healthiest, least tired sister missionary that I know. That isn't meant to be a prideful statement at all, just wanted to recognize the huge blessing that I have received to have so much energy and so few health problems so far on my mission. Thank you to all of you who pray continually for me.

I was reviewing the list of members in our branch last night and counted more than forty families that live in our area. I think that is more than 4 times the number of members in any of my previous areas. Wow! We have so much support and so much potential in this area. I just hope to work effectively so that we can bring about the miracles that Heavenly Father is surely wanting to bring to so many people here.

I love you all! Please choose to have a wonderful week!!!!

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Mis queridos familiares y amigos,

Espero que hayan tenido una semana magnifica!

I arrived here to Novato on Wednesday afternoon! The Spanish branch here is the biggest congregation that I have served in my whole mission. Wow! We have SO many members of the church that live in our area, many of whom don't actually come to church right now, and many of whom have members of their family who are not members of the church. Currently we are teaching several of those families, and I think we'll be teaching more! The area is pretty big geographically as well. There is SO much potential, I am so excited.

So far, I haven't met a lot of the people we are teaching because one of my companions has been pretty sick. I'm blessed because this is the first time that I've had to spend a significant amount of time inside with a sick companion...and even more blessed because so far I have never been sick enough to not be able to do missionary work. Please pray for Hermana Zimmerman to be able to make a quick recovery!

So, more about my companions:

Hermana Zimmerman is from southern California. She has been on her mission for about nine months. She was studying molecular biology at BYU, just like me! We overlapped one year, but I don't think we ever had any classes together. She has two sisters, one older who is married and has a little daughter, and one younger. Hermana Zimmerman has been here in the area for just six weeks, so she knows it pretty well but not super well...we've still gotten a little lost a couple times. 

Hermana Harris.

Is hilarious.

She has kept us laughing every day and definitely helps us not take ourselves too seriously. As I think I mentioned before, I worked with her quite a bit in Davis/Woodland because I was exchanging with her companionship for two transfers and we were in the same branch. I love her!

Both of my companions never really wanted to serve missions until they knew they had to do it and came! It's interesting how different everyone's story is, how many different paths brought us to this mission.

Oh! I almost forgot...my new address. Mom, can you please make sure Grandma and Grandpa Brissette get it?! Thank you so much!

1514 Hill Road #49

Novato, CA 94947

Thank you for all of the support and encouragement you all continue to give me, especially the weeekly letters from Mom and Dad. It means so much. And the many letters from Grandma--thank you!! Thank you as well for your continued prayers on behalf of me, my companions, and those we teach. I'm so grateful to have a wonderful family and great friends like you all. 

I wish you a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Queridos amigos y familiares,

I hope you have all had a wonderful week!!

This week was amazing in Davis. We found a lot of new people to teach and did a lot of teaching. We worked really hard and were very blessed. I love that combination.

On Friday, we received word that I'm leaving this area to go to Novato. I'll be serving once again in the San Rafael Stake, which also includes Rohnert Park where I served before. I am excited of course to meet new people and get to know a new area. I'll be serving in another threesome with Hermana Harris and Hermana Zimmerman. I've exchanged with Hermana Harris when she was here in Woodland, and she is fantastic! She is from Montana and is taller than me (I haven't had very many companions where that has been the case!). I don't know Hermana Zimmerman but I am excited to get to know her.

I have learned so much and been so blessed here in this area. It's hard to leave it. Even families that I just started teaching this week are so dear to me and my heart aches knowing that I won't be the one coming to that next appointment that we have with them. It's a good thing to feel that way, I suppose, because it is so wonderful to feel that love for so many people and to feel that I really know them. I was talking to one of the sisters in the branch about that this weekend at a dinner appointment, and she made the comment that we do as Christ does when we really get to know the people, that in knowing them and their needs and seeking to fulfill them we are truly representing the Savior for them. Made me want to do a better job of really knowing each of the people I work with, those I teach and those I serve alongside alike.

We have so much to do today! This morning we took some time to help with a service project that the stake had organized along with some other churches in the community. We raked leaves and helped move plants at an addiction recovery center. It was time well spent! Now we'll be heading out to do shoppping, cleaning, laundry, packing...everything to prepare for another wonderful week and all the many changes that it will bring us.

I love you all so much. Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear wonderful family and friends,

I hope that you all have had a fantastic week. Looks like Mom has had some fun with paint in the house this week. It kind of looks like something out of a Dr. Suess book, the colors are so bright! How are you who live there liking it?

Next comes...an awesome experience from this past Monday. After dinner, we went with the family that fed us dinner to go visit one of the ladies that we are teaching in the hospital. She had an outpatient surgery but got an infection and had to be in the hospital for a few days. We visited, sang some hymns to her, and prayed. We were about to leave when her doctor came into the room and announced that she does NOT have cancer! She had been very worried, and we had been praying a lot for her. It was a really special experience to be able to share that moment with her and her family.

Another amazing experience of this week. Last night, Brandon shared his story of learning about the gospel, coming to know it was true, and being baptized at a fireside here in Davis. He talked a lot about how much one of his new friends at church helped him in the process, including how much it meant to him that that friend could be the one to baptize him. Both of them are seniors in high school, and he said that knowing that there are other people trying to do the same things he is trying to do has helped him a lot. I am so happy to know that he has such a great support system in place that will continue even after Hermana Law and I leave the area. 

Next, a report on our mission leadership council. It was yet another wonderful and very spiritual experience. The first afternoon when we got there, we did a service project widening one of the trails and making it more safe for use by the young women who come to camp there in the summers. After that, we spent pretty much the rest of the camp in meetings receiving leadership training and other instruction. My portion of the the training went well. I especially enjoyed sharing the story of when Eric and I were little and squeezed pomegranate juice all over our babysitter's shirt...connecting the way that we view little kids who do naughty things like that with the way that Heavenly Father views us, his precious children, and can see beyond our current weakness and follies to the great potential that we have. (Side note: I need to improve my storytelling abilities still because the story was supposed to be funny, but nobody laughed.) I also shared the poem that Elder Brighton wrote about the Atonement in talking about how each soul is of such great worth.

My main take-away from our leadership council:

We can have high expectations because God has promised us great blessings.

I love doing the work of our Father in Heaven. I love Him and know that he will fulfill His promises to us.

I love you all and wish you a wonderful week.

Love,

Hermana Brighton

Dear family and friends,

I hope you have had a great first few days of 2014. I looked at my journal last night and realized that I had continued to put 2013 for the past few days. I guess I just wanted to go back to the beginning of this last year instead of continuing on and turning the page to the next one.

I certainly have done a lot of growing and learning in this past year. I can hardly believe that I spent the entire year of 2014 as Hermana Brighton, serving in the California Santa Rosa Mission. It has flown by so fast. And at the same time so much has happened. During just this year, for example, I lived in 4 different cities and served with 10 different companions. That first area sometimes seems more than a year away now because everything is so different now than it was then. Wow.

For the first time in I don't know how many years, I set no resolutions on January 1st. On one hand, I feel a little bad about that. On the other hand, not so bad because I do have goals...just didn't set them to specifically coincide with the new year. I've found I have often forgotten my new year's resolutions by the end of the year anyway. I went back and looked at mine from last year...I hadn't specifically remembered them all year but I definitely have made progress in achieving them and have set many goals throughout the course of the year that have helped me in that progression.

I thought I might share some of the thoughts that I have had throughout this week...a little different than sharing stories, but if I have time I will share a couple of the events from this week too.

I was thinking  the other night about how the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. (One reason I was thinking about that is because I am teaching about "Leaders and Our Divine Potential" this week at the mission leadership council, which by the way is going to be over three days at Camp Liahona in the Redwoods. I am glad that I remembered that just now because I meant to tell you all about it and almost forgot. I probably would have remembered for sure to tell you next week anyway!) So back to the thought. I was thinking about our worth and then about how every soul is of equally great worth. And how the work of bringing a soul unto Christ isn't completed just in introducing someone to Him and His gospel. It extends throughout the lifetime of a person and then probably beyond. And every person we come in contact with is in that process. So then I thought about all the companions that I have had and how, just like I have a responsibility to continue to support and encourage those who I have helped to become members of the church, I may have a similar responsibility toward each one of them. To continue to maintain contact with and encourage them throughout our lives. Because their soul is just as precious.

Another thought. As we learn the gospel, we must Know, Do, and Be. So I read 2 Nephi 31 the other day and placed what I learned about each of the first principles and ordinances of the gospel (faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost) into categories of know, do, and be. It became kind of a chart and it is interesting to see how each step of the gospel applies at each different level of living it. And how the steps of knowing, doing and being build upon one another just as the steps of the gospel build on each other.

So a couple of events. A miracle. We were praying to be able to teach someone because everything had cancelled one night and in the middle of the prayer we got a call from a sister who was happy to have us come and teach her and her family.

Upcoming event. Brandon, who just got baptized last weekend, is going to share his testimony in a "Why I Believe" fireside this coming Sunday here in Davis. We had an awesome lesson with him this week about missionary work. He was so happy to realize that he can be and has been an example for his friends, and he is also already thinking about serving a full-time mission.

Well, it has been another wonderful week for me in the service of Jesus Christ. I still have much to learn and improve and am looking forward to another week in which I can continue to do just that. Please keep doing that yourselves too! I love you!

Hermana Brighton