Sister Brittany Ann Wilkins: Weeks 28 & 29

Week 28

So I just wrote a giant e-mail and the computer shut down and erased the whole thing. I don't have time to write the whole thing again... but i will try to tell you everything....

I am coming home in exactly 1 year!

Hello family!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday! I know that I did! I was sad I couldn't e-mail but luckily president said we could do it today! :) Yay! :) So this week is kind of a blurr :) haha I need to be better at writing things down that I can tell you :) My companions and I just have way too much fun at night so I never remember to write in my journal...woopsies! But I am going to be better! :) Ah man guys, I love being a missionary SO much! :) I can't even attempt to explain it! But I do! :) haha Alright so to tell you about my week we are going to start with Thursday because that's as far back as I can remember :) the rest of the days were productive and great but nothing really sticks out to me about those days...haha except that I got to be a missionary!!! :) So Thursday was park day :) yay! In the morning though we got to use our car because Sister Packard and I had to go to an STL meeting :) and it was great! :) We just talked about our responsibility to be examples as leaders and how to be good leaders and help president and such things :) haha It was a very good meeting, and afterwards President and Sister Weaver took us to Steamers! It's a fish place...but I got a chicken sandwich :) haha It's right next to the sound and it was super pretty down there, and man was it good! :) I loved being with those sisters too! All of them are just amazing missionaries! After lunch we went home and had to do weekly planning, and that took us a long time! But when we finally got out of our house it was POURING rain! I am dead serious I have never seen rain fall down that fast/hard. Hermana Dean calls it a "torrential downpour!" it was INSANE!!!! And we got SOAKED! When we walked out of the apartment the streets were literally flooded and the water was past our ankles! hahaha oh man was it FUN!!!! We splashed in the puddles and just knocked doors all day long! We don't even live in our area so we were going to have to walk for a while luckily on the way to where we were knocking AND on the way back members were driving by and offered us rides! :) So that was awesome :) On Friday I got to go on my first exchange as an STL! Sister Fabis came from Soundview to be with Sister Dean and I for a day! It was very fun! Sister Fabis is a very fragile little flower and extremely shy she reminds me a lot of myself back in the day but I am not like that anymore! The monster has been unleashed! :) haha So sister Dean and I were crazy and happy all day! We had a ton of fun! :) So I have to tell you a bunch of random facts and I am a little rushed because like I said I just wrote a giant e-mail and this is where is stopped saving :( but I will try to re write it in the 12 minutes that I have! :) Random facts: We exercise every morning! We came up with the greatest invention! Microwave cookies! You take cookie dough put it in the microwave and pour milk over it and it's delicious! :) haha Sister Packard is a great cook! She cooks us food all the time, and they are not normal combinations. :) Like yesterday we had noodles with eggs yams and bbq sauce and it was SO good! :) haha I told her she needs to open up a restaurant and call it "the singing chef!" haha She's very very talented! :) Speaking of her talents, she plays the drums!!! :) We were at a member house last night the Pryor's they're awesome! :) haha (that's the lady who sent you the pic mom) and They have drum set and Packard just starts going at it! I was amazed!!!! haha she is super awesome! We sing all day every day because we all LOVE to sing! :) We have a giant dead spider in a jar in our bathroom. We have a language made up of weird noises and we all understand each other :) yes we are strange :) haha we laugh ALL THE TIME!!!! :) I love playing with Sister Packard's hair! :) She's the best! Hermana Dean can speak Spanish like crazy and I don't understand any of it! :) hahaha I have the gift of weeping (that's what Sister Hall calls it :) ) haha you already knew that though but I bet you didn't know it was a gift! So this is very scrambled but I have to tell you about my mall experience! haha We went to the Tacoma mall yesterday (it's in my zone so I can go whenever I want) and I did not enjoy it! haha It was the weirdest thing to be in a mall...and I realized I am a weird missionary!!!! YAY!!! :) haha It felt very worldly and I did not like it...I felt very afraid...which is not normal! haha so we'll have to adjust to that in a year! :) haha I am going to have to write you more about this week next week because I just don't have time!!! But I have to get to this part! Being POSITIVE!!!! :) haha So our district is doing a 40 day fast from things that poke at the spirit and as a companionship we are working on being positive! So happiness is an inside job :) and sometimes we let the torrential downpours in our life overcome us and make us feel soaked and wet and cold! But! We can always learn to dance in the rain! :) So my challenge for you this week is to dance in it! Be positive and don't worry about how short this e-mail is because I am doing very very very very very very good! I am loving it so much and I just can't even express how much I love it! But I’m out of time!

Love always

Sister Brittany Ann Wilkins! :)

Week 29

Well Hello my wonderful Family and Friends! :)

I was very bummed about my e-mail last week cuz it was pretty epic and then it DIED! But I am glad I’ve got a while to tell you how things are going NOW! :) YAY! I can't even tell you how happy I am to be here in chambers creek with Sister Packard and Hermana Dean! I LOVE it! I have already learned and grown so much! Sometimes I wish all ya'll were out here with me because this place is the GREATEST! :) So this could be scattered cuz I don't remember what I told you about last week, I was in a rush :) but I will try to make it make sense :) haha! Here we go... this week we had a lot of conferences! :) Zone conference and Stake conference! :) Zone conference was on Wednesday and it was awesome! I love this mission so very much! There is a lot of love and unity here in the WA-TAC and it's great! :) President and Sister Weaver are the greatest people too! They hold such a dear place in my heart and always will! They are very sweet and will always put aside what they are doing if you need to talk. They care so much about us as missionaries and as sons and daughters of God. During the Conference Sister Weaver talked a lot about Virtue, which I'm not really sure what I understand about that it's one of those kind of incomprehensible things :) but if any of ya'll have a talk or something that you like about virtue you should send it to me :) President talked all about repentance and it was awesome! He talked a lot about saving grace....and how Life is like a relay race, it doesn't matter if you fall or if you are a slow runner because Christ will make up the difference, it is of utmost importance that we try our best though :) The only way we can lose this race is by giving up. Which is more common than we think it is, I have seen SO many people who are atheist or agnostic and it's all because they just gave up. They thought it was too hard to follow Christ or they didn't like going to church or they just stopped reading their scriptures, saying their prayers and going to church. And it's sad! Because those things are simple acts of our faith, and when we give those up our faith slowly diminishes. It's like the parable of the frog. If you put a frog in boiling water in will jump out! But if you put the frog in water and then heat it up slowly the frog will die. If we slowly turn up the heat in our lives by not being conscious to the heat we will slowly die spiritually. We will give up. So don't give up! He also talked about how Repentance is a changing of our desires. And instead of asking God to forgive us and then we go and do the same things again we ask God to change our desires! And it works! I’ve been trying it :) haha The Holy Ghost's job is to change our hearts. So listen to Him! :) cuz he's pretty awesome :) Anyways, Zone conference was AWESOME! I felt very spiritually pumped afterwards! And of course at the end we sang! :) We are going to be starting up firesides again! YAY! :) This is a VERY musical mission and I love it SO much! :) This week has been a little more rainy! Just the past two weeks it's gotten rainy it's been sunshiny since like...the middle of May! It’s only rained like 4 times all summer! It was GREAT, but recently we've been getting up and having to run in the rain! It's great! :) haha we are just running and there's water running down our faces and it's pretty awesome :) hahaha :) Oh! On Wednesday we celebrated Hermana Dean's birthday a little more! On Monday we did a ton for it, and it was awesome :) But Wednesday we got to surprise her with a cake from Juan! :) We had a lesson with Myk (our progressing investigator who can't get baptized cuz she's 16 and her mom won't let her) and her boyfriend Spencer and some of our recent converts! Jon, Juan and Kyle! It was great! Sister Packard and I decorated the cake and Hermana was so confused cuz we locked her out of the kitchen and it was just a funny night! :) I LOVE all of these people SO much! :) At the end of the lesson we all knelt down and our most recent convert Jon said the sweetest prayer. We are all very great friends! :) Thursday is always a fun day because we do weekly planning in the morning and it's great :) haha Sister Packard boiled an artichoke and it was Hermana's very first time eating one and it was hilarious! She had the weirdest look on her face the whole time! haha I quite enjoyed it though! :) That day was Kyle's Birthday (one of the recent converts) and so we went to his house and sang him amazing grace! It was so sweet he loves that song very much, and Kyle is such a sweet spirit! :) Oh! This week we got a call from President and Hermana should be getting her Visa soon! Salt Lake just got a big package of visa's from Argentina! So she will most likely be leaving in 2 weeks! Crazy! It’s bittersweet but I am excited for her! :) So for some reason God must think I need to be healthier because most of my companions have been health nuts! Sister Hall, Baird and Packard are very serious about their healthiness and it affects them a ton! Sister Packard used to be a vegetarian and a vegan before the mission, so she has decided to eat vegan unless we're at a members house. So I am supporting her in that and I am going vegan! woot! ;) haha We'll see how this goes...but it should be good :) I am only doing it for her, because I don't really care that much. But I don't want her to have temptations around and such so Vegan I go! :) yay! :) hahaha...So other things that happened this week...there's a girl in our ward Becca Lundquist that is going to Tucson AZ Spanish on her mission soon! So she came out with us on Friday and Saturday! It was fun! :) On Friday she came tracting with us and she went with Hermana since they are both Spanish speaking and Packard and I went together. It was great! Being in a two-some is good :) I'm not sure which one I like better because when you're in a two some you have to talk more ;) haha jk But it's different! Anyways we had fun! We knocked into this kid we call him Clementine cuz his name is Constantine but Sister P can't say it. :) But we started talking to this kid and he got very passionate about his Bible. He was shaking and yelling at us by the end of it and Sister Packard and I just stood there with all the love we could muster and then left, but it was quite the experience haha funny funny funny kid :) Can I just tell you how much I love the Book of Mormon?! I LOVE it! :) I have made it a goal to read it first every morning during study and it has made such a difference! The BOM works miracles! :) I have a story about this...well Sister Packard has a story about this :) haha Sister Packard has A.D.D pretty bad and she used to take medication for it, but one day she got really sick of taking it because it was a crutch and it had not so fun side affects and so she talked to a friend who told her to just read the Book of Mormon for 15 minutes every morning and she would be fine. So she tried it and it works! She reads the BOM first thing every morning and she can focus and work hard and it's awesome! It is just a really cool miracle and blessing that the Book of Mormon brings into her life. SO yes, the Book of Mormon= awesome :) So onto other random things :) Saturday night we were driving around to members houses and we just started singing all sorts of random songs such as "Row Row Row Your Boat" and "Mary Had A Little Lamb" in a round and it was fun :) and we're weird it's fine :) but I love being with my companions! I feel 100% myself around them, which is a first on my mission. But I don't feel like I have to hide anything or feel insecure or inferior and a lot of it is myself but a lot of it is them as well because they are so loving! And love is empowering! :) I love my tripanionship very much :) which ya'll already know... but I will tell you over and over again because they are just that great! :) Sister Packard made another great creation! :) It's called "Marfremata a la turkey" haha It's a sandwich! It has Turkey, marinara and alfredo sauce and tomatoes and then you put "slap yo mama" seasoning (it's very good dad you should try it it's kinda spicy :) ) and cracker boy! And oh my it's SO good! :) I quite enjoyed it! Oh! yes so on Saturday we went tracting for an extra hour and WA is COVERED in spiders! haha So at every house we went to we had to tear down the spider webs in front of us! Correction I had to tear down the spiderwebs... :) but it's great! I call it "tearing spiders down for salvation!" haha I would do just about anything to be able to knock on someone’s door! Because the message we share is SO important! It is the most important thing in the entire universe! Crazy.....! haha But it's great! I LOVE being a missionary! :) This week we met this kid named Brent and he is almost a Mormon! He has so much truth and it's great! It made all of us really excited :) because he is very prepared! :) awh! On Saturday Juan fed us dinner, and it was SO good! He used to be a cook for a top-notch restaurant :) he made Chicken Parmesan and noodles and CINNIMON ROLLS!!! I have been CRAVING those my whole mission because I miss mom's cinnamon rolls very much :) haha but it was delicious :) We also got some really good curry at the Lindquist’s last night :) YUM! :) But back to Juan! I love him! :) haha he was baptized on March 2nd and he got ordained an Elder yesterday!!!! I am so proud of him! :) My companions like to make fun of me...I told them about my speech impediment back in the day and so the other morning we were reading the white handbook and trying not to say the R's and it was very hard even for me! I've been healed! haha :) But It's quite funny :) just a random fact! Now about Terrance! I love him! He is going to get baptized! :) He won't set a date, but he says he will get baptized :) yay! We are working very hard with him. We go over there every single day and it's great! He's 44 and he's very big into Batman and Starwars and such things :) He had 2 strokes last November so he has very bad migraines and stuff...but I just love him with all my heart! :) This week he gave us new nicknames! :) haha I am "Enforcer" hahaha he doesn't like my enforcingness :) He always tells me it's a good thing I have dimples! :) Our lessons are so much fun though! This guy is hilarious, :) and I’m pretty funny too... ;) we have fun with him. :) On Sunday we had Stake conference and it was awesome! It was a broadcast to WA and Alaska! :) Marcus B Nash conducted and Carol F Mckonkie, Robert D Hales, and L Tom Perry all spoke! It was sweet! :) Some of my take aways: Elder Nash talked about keeping our covenants. Consistency is key! :) He also quoted a part from "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" I LOVE that song! very very much. Sister Mckonkie talked about checking ourselves and making sure we are on the path drawing closer to the Lord, which is cool cuz I studied Alma 5 this week and tore it apart, it's a great checklist for how we are doing :) So if you want to check read Alma 5 but remember the gospel is not a stick to beat yourself up with :) She also talked a lot about changing our hearts and how our attitudes define who we are. Robert D Hales talked a lot about tithing! (I hope you are all paying your tithing ;) ) It is very powerful :) It gives us so many blessings and it's critical to be paying it in these last days. L Tom Perry talked about the foundation that we are building on and how important it is the build our foundation on Christ. He also talked about how our bodies and our spirit work together! It was awesome! I loved it! :)

So I don't remember if I’ve told you about the 40 day fast already but if I have you get to hear about it again :) haha So our district is doing a 40 day fast from things that poke at the spirit so my companions and I have been working on our attitudes and it has been SO good! Not that we don't have good attitudes but we have our days and we can always improve. Happiness is an inside job, so if we aren't working at it we aren't going to be happy. Sometimes life gets very difficult and we feel so emotional. But guess what? We can be happy in torrential downpours of our lives because we have the gospel! :D Yay! haha so one thing we have been doing to keep our attitudes good is a grateful journal and I am going to challenge you all to do this! And I am 100% serious! Go get a journal RIGHT NOW! :) Every hour we write down something that we're grateful for! And we all try to do something that's not selfish because selfish thoughts = unhappy state :) but ya'll don't have to do that :) But what you DO have to do is write something you are grateful for down EVERY SINGLE HOUR that you are awake. And I promise you that if you do you will notice a different light in your life. It helps TONS and....no offense...but I feel like ya'll could use it right now :) ya'll seem STRESSED! :) haha :) SO take advice from your baby daughter sister niece whatever I am to you and start now to try to find joy in the little things :) Because why not be happy now?! :) Anyways I just want to tell ya'll how much I love this gospel! And it's a lot! Because it's true! That’s why it brings us so much joy. I know that my Savior lives. I know that He loves me and that empowers me to be who I am :) I know this is Jesus Christ's restored church! And I know that it can fix anything or anyone that is broken. I love the Scriptures. They are so dear and important. We MUST read study and ponder them every day! :) Because it will help us change our desires as well as prayer. Prayer is a direct line from us to heaven. And it will help us no matter what state of emotion or life we are in. Prayer is so powerful. I am a MORMON! I know it, I live it, I love it. And I love all of you and expect you to be in the Celestial Kingdom with me. So expect that for yourself. And you will be there. LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!! :)

Love always

Sister Brittany Ann Wilkins :)

http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/general-relief-society-meeting/2011/09/forget-me-not?lang=eng&query=forget+me+not

Lillian's baptism!!! <3 love this lady so much!!! :)

The fruit from the trees are very delicious in WA :)

The narrows bridge :) We get to run it on p-days! :)

The narrows bridge :)

My Gorgeous and Wonderful companions! :) I LOVE them! :)

Sister Hall and I <3 :)

Companions again :)

Sister Dean the Bean and I :)

Sister Fabis me and Dean out on the pier at Chambers Bay :)

Model pose! :)

Hermana's cake :) I decorated most of it ;)

Hermana's cake :)

COMPANIONS THAT I LOVE WITH ALL MY HEART! :)

My best friends in the whole world! Spencer, Myk, Kyle, Hermana, Juan, Jon, Packard, Me!

Jon's baptism :)

Baby kitty! :) <3

Oh Terrance :) haha I love these people! :)

me and bootstraps :)

Darlene and Annete! I actually taught them the first lesson on my exchange with Sister Packard and Sister Hardy back in my 3rd transfer and they got baptized in August! :)