A Little Puffy There...

¡Buenas!
So this week has quite possibly been the longest and hardest week of my life. But I´m trying to press forward and focus on my blessings as I know it is only when we open our eyes that we truly begin to see the hand of the Lord in our lives. Had an interesting experience yesterday as I work up in the morning very confused because my right eye just didn´t want to open. When I got out of bed and looked in the mirror, I was horrified to see that my eye was puffy, red, and swollen shut. So of course when I showed up to church all of the ward was in a flurry suggesting possible theories of what it could be and what remedies there were. I decided to stick with a benadryl and leave it alone...which worked just fine. It´s back to normal size today and just slightly puffy, but we still have no idea what it was. The work in Los Frailes continues to try us as we clean our investigator pool and try to coordinate appointments with members who don´t often come when they say they will. It can be very discouraging. However, after lots of tears, prayers, and hard work, Ines is set to be baptized this Saturday. Working with Ines has been special for me as I was one of the missionaries who baptized her son Englibert. With the change he´s made in his life thanks to the gospel, Ines was inspired to investigate the church even though she practically vowed to never step foot inside it. She reads her book of mormon faithfully and continually hungers for more knowledge. She will face some economic trials as she will have to quit a job in order to join the church, but I know the Lord will bless her for her sacrifice. Each day my testimony grows stronger of how aware the Lord is of His children. He KNOWS us, He KNOWS our situations, and He is constantly guiding us with an ever patient hand as long as we´re willing to follow Him.
Love,
Hermana Bradley

A Little quote Happy...

Querida Familia y Amigos,
Fue una gran bendicion a escucharles ayer en el telefono! Espero que paso una buena dia del madre mama y que sabe que te aprecio tanto. Ok, that´s enough spanish. Sometimes I find it hard to switch over from typing my letters to the president in spanish and then typing in english. I hope you all laugh at me good and long when I get home and can´t even speak my own langauge. Anyways, this week was both a blessing and a trial as we finally moved houses. Now that we have running water we´re much happier, but moving everything was pretty exhausting and I´m still battling a runny nose and cough so it´s been interesting. However, I am very much enjoying our new porch with the hammock my companion put up, so there are perks! This week we also fought alot with discouragement as it appears very few of our investigators want to progress. So we´re cleaning the pool again and starting from scratch. I know there are people out there that are prepared, we just have to find them. I´ve also been diving into old conference editions and finding so much direction from those talks. Here´s a few....

Hope and happiness and joy are not products of circumstance, but of faith in the Lord. Faith requires work and comes by righteousness and obedience, not by miracles or mere belief. -Elder Andersen

To express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven. -President Monsen

We might see ourselves in terms of yesterday and today. Our Heavenly Father sees us in terms of forever...The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of transformation. It takes us as men and women of the earth and refines us into men and women for the eternites. -Elder Wirthlin

We don´t acquire eternal life in a sprint, this is a race of endurance. Discipleship is a journey. We need the refining lessons of the journey to craft our character and purify our hearts. -Elder Uchtdorf

I´ve drawn alot of strength from those quotes over the past week and come to realize that through the trials I´m experiencing out here in the mission field, the Lord truly is helping to refine and mold me...but He´s got His work cut out for Him. :) I want you all to know though that I am so incredibly grateful for all your support, love, prayers, and letters. On the hardest of days I draw strength from all of those. I know that this gospel is true and that like Elder Wirthlin says, it is a gospel of transformation. We only have to open the door and let our Savior in to see what marvelous things He can do with our lives. I love my Savior and I know that this is His gospel. My testimony of Joseph Smith grows stronger each week as I bear testimony of him and his divine calling as the prophet of the restoration. I feel so blessed to live in the last days where we have a living prophet, President Thomas S. Monsen, and other apostles leading this church under the direction of Christ himself. I hope you all never hestitate to go out and share your testimony with others in whatever setting you may find yourself. Share the good news...there´s nothing better to do with our lives.
Love,
Hermana Bradley

May Already?!

Dear Family,
Another week has come and gone and here we are in May! I wish I could say this week was more exciting than last week and the work picked up, but it stalled yet again. It seems like we work hard all week without seeing much success, but then we always have lots of investigators at church on Sunday. It´s kind of ironic. However, right now we are really hoping to see the baptism of Ines in the coming weeks. She is the mother of my baptism from two transfers back, Englibert. At the beginning she didn´t even want anything to do with the church as she has worked as the secretary for another church for years, but once she saw the change in her adult son, she opened up alot. Now she´s reading the Book of Mormon faithfully and attending church. We´re praying hard that she can find a new job soon and be baptized. Another blessing yesterday was the appearance of Fanny and Valerie in church. I´ve been visiting Fanny and Valerie´s house since I got to the area as Fanny´s sister Flor was baptized just before I arrived but immediately fell inactive. The sisters were initially visiting Fanny when Flor began accepting the lessons and Fanny dropped them. However, after attending church yesterday for the first time, both Fanny and her daughter Valerie are alot more open to listening and we hope to see progress with them as well. We also had a neat lesson last night wih Paula and Alvin, who told us they´d been talking to their neighbor Alexander about our visits and how different we are from other missionaries in other churches. Turns out Alexander has a member friend and once visited the church, so he also joined us for our lesson last night and was full of questions. So we offered to visit him and his wife later on in the week. It´s so amazing to see how the Lord works through people and brings us all together. Yesterday I was able to get up and bear my testimony as it is most likely my last fast and testimony meeting in Los Frailes, but who knows. My mission seems so long in some moments and so short in others. But I am so grateful for the lessons I am learning each day and especially for the special people I am meeting. Although the way has been fraught with trials of language and cultural differences, companionship trials, sicknesses, and difficult living conditions, I know it is all for a worthy cause. I love this gospel and I grow more aware of the great sacrifice of our Savior and the love our Heavenly Father each day.

Semana Santa

)
Querida Familia,
Happy Easter! I wish I could say Easter here was pretty special, but the D.R. has an interesting way of celebrating the last week of the Savior´s life. It´s called the Semana Santa and everyone gets off work and school for almost the whole week. Then everyone either goes to the campo to visit family or drags out baby wading pools into the streets to ¨swim¨ and get over the heat. There´s lots of drinking and loud music and eating...and very little of remembering the Savior. It made me a little sad, but it was comforting also to meet other people during the week that did recognize what semana santa is really about...resulting in 13 investigators at church yesterday. We were floored as this past week was a little slow in the work. However, we are moving forward with faith and determined to see at least one baptism before the end of this transfer. Last Monday we also got to meet some of the new sister missionaries and it turns out one is from Paraguay...Sister Vera...and actually knows Uncle Matt from when he was mission president there. I love how small the world is. This week I also had my first taste of a Dominican Semana Santa classic drink...called habichuelas con dulce. I was pretty iffy at first considering it´s raw black beans ground up and put into coconut milk with cinnamon and other sweet things, but it turns out I liked it. One more interesting recipe to take home. Hermana Reay and I had a wonderful finding experience yesterday as well. Last Sunday we were out contacting and were walking down a street that I had already knocked about a million times. But there was a woman standing outside her gate that I had never talked to before, so we invited her to church and promised to pass by the following week. So yesterday we headed back, a little later in the day than planned, and were floored to meet the twin daughters of the lady we contacted. They are 16 yr old twins who told us they´d always wanted to visit the church along with their dad, but never knew the schedule. They also explained that they had always wondered why every other church had knocked on the door before and never us, because they have friends at their Catholic school that are also members and frequently talk about the missionaries. It was an incredibly simple but spirit filled lesson with them both and Hermana Reay and I are really excited to go back. Just another testimony that the Lord truly does prepare people and you never know when or where He´ll guide you to them. Lately Hermana Reay and I have also devised ways to help us overcome the negative aspects of our living situations. Tactics range from eating chocolate daily and singing high school musical songs on crowded buses to telling eachother made up bedtime stories and putting disney princess stickers all over our (and our district elders) planners. Sometimes I wonder if I´m growing older or younger in the mission. Haha. Anyways, love and miss you all! Til next week!
Hermana Bradley

Weak Things Become Strong

Apr 18 (6 days ago)
Saludos!
How are you all doing? So even though I´m still recovering from the loss of my camera card last week, things are moving right along here in Los Frailes. I´m learning alot right now about patience and obedience, as our investigator pool seems to decrease each week whereas at the beginning of last transfer the area has so much potential. But I know that we are doing all we can to help prepare this people. Sometimes we just have accept that everyone has their agency, but it can still hurt sometimes. We had another baptismal date fall through this past week, and it can just be hard. But the good news is we heard from someone who heard from someone else from the office that we MIGHT be moving. I love living at the bottom of the communication chain. However, if we move at least that will mean normal water. I´m sorry I don´t have much else to write today, it´s been a pretty uneventful week. Just trying to press forward and find those people that are waiting for the gospel. I did however have to opportunity to see one of my baptisms from last transfer, Englibert, receive a calling into the young men´s presidency. Even though we haven´t seen alot of success lately, it still brings me joy to know I was able to be a part of his conversion and that I still get to see the wonderful effects of the changes made in his life through the gospel. Lately Hermana Reay and I have been reading in the Pearl of Great Price and I´m learning all sorts of new things from a different perspective. I love learning more everyday and overcoming my weaknesses. As I´ve passed time out here in the mission field I´ve been able to become better acquainted with my weaknesse.,However, I´ve also learned that is through our weaknesses we come closer to Christ. I can´t be the perfect missionary, but I can press forward with faith and put the work in the hands of the Lord as I allow Him to mold me into the instrument He needs. Love and miss you all, and thank you so much for the emails, letters, and encouragement!
Love,
Hermana Bradley

SAD DAY

Dear Family,
Sorry but today is going to be a short one. It has been another long week and while it really wasn´t all that bad, today was awful enough to ruin my attitude for a good while. I stupidly managed to lose my camera card today which pretty much contained all my pictures from the first half of my mission. I have spent the majority of the day trying not to be upset about it, but I´m not very good at that sort of thing as you all know, especially when it comes to things like photos and memories. But anyways, if I sent pictures in the mail to any of you over the past 9 months, please take good care of them for me so that I can make copies when I get home.
The work this week has been busy. Hermana Reay and I hardly have enough time to visit all of our investigators and we are a little overwhelmed. But we received transfer calls last night and were happy to hear that we are staying for another one together. Saturday we were able to help the Elders coordinate their baptism of Patrick, a deportee from the states who has completely changed his life through the gospel. We even got to sing Nearer My God to Thee as a quartet during the service in English. I love bearing testimony through song. Anywho, we had a baptismal date set with Evelyn for next Saturday, but she didn´t make it to church yesterday so sadly it will have to be postponed. Please keep her in your prayers. We continue to visit with a number of families each week and see more progress as they come to church and feel of the Spirit there. It really is a wonderful blessing to see the Lord prepare people. Anyways, hope you all have a good week and are enjoying the cold weather!
Love,
Hermana Bradley

Conference High

Hola Hola
Well this letter should be interesting as the space bar doesn´t really want to work. But at least you´ll all be getting pictures this week. Let´s just face it though, internet in the DR is basically lame lol. I´m sweating my body weight in this place. Anyways, onto happier things. This week we had interviews with the president and I was happy to hear from him that there will most likely be no changes in our area this transfer! Wahoo! I´m excited to get some more time here with our investigators and especially work with Hna Reay. Even though we definitely aren´t the perfect companionship, we are having alot of fun and working hard together. Although, would you believe we still haven´t moved? Sometimes trials try our patience lol. I guess why they´re called TRIals. However, today was a nice escape as our zone got to visit Los Tres Ojos, a beautiful natural reserve place where they have amazing caves. I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. So fun! This weekend was also fantastic as we got to listen to conference and hear the voice of our prophet! Due to some technical difficulties I got to watch the first session in French with English captions. I may or may not be considering a third language already for when I return home lol. I was also giddy with excitement to see the special they had between sessions about the Messiah in the Holy Land. So cool! It made me miss Jeru and all my friends so much!
Anyways, aside from conference, we also had a very good week of work. On Thursday we visited Ludmilla, who just got over a really bad virus and hadn´t been able to attend church for a few weeks. But she did start reading her homework in her French Book of Mormon (she´s Haitian) and was SO excited about the plan of salvation. She couldn´t stop grinning and the Spirit was so strong throughout the lesson. We were led to pùt down a baptismal date, and although some other road blocks have appeared since, we are confident she will be baptized within April and receive all of those blessings she is anxiously awaiting. We´ve also been visiting with Evelyn for the last few weeks and after attending church the week before conference and recognizing the special Spirit the gospel has brought into her life, she also committed to be baptized this month. She´s anxious to bring her children to church next time and has already begun to share what´s she´s learned with her neighbors. We all had to chuckle at our last visit when she asked if she could include herself using ¨us¨ when sharing things about the church and members lol. I love this work and even though the days are long and hard and I´m still imperfect as ever, I know it is true. Alot of the speakers in conference this week spoke about ¨becoming¨ instead of just ¨doing¨, and I am determined now more than ever to become that disciple of Christ my Heavenly Father needs me to be. We can´t just ¨do¨ the gospel, as I´ve often found myself explaining to investigators. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints isn´t a hobby or a just Sunday thing. It´s a way of life, and as Elder Robbins explained, we don´t ever cross off a to do list ¨to be¨ because it is NEVER done. So let us all move forward and center our desires on becoming more like our Savior! Love you all!
Hermana Bradley