This has been a most splendid week. I have had many extraordinary moments with my companion. She is such a doll. What a blessing it is that we have the opportunity to serve with each other. We have been locating many children of God this week and introducing them to the gospel. How I enjoy that. Sister Rinslisbacher and Sister Johnson thought it was a good idea to prank me this week by filling up a bucket with ice cold water and meandering over to the bathroom, with the goal of pouring it over the shower onto me. Needless to say, they succeeded in their endeavors. I am trying to develop and attitude of sharing, so I felt it a good thing to share the spirit of pranking with them as well. We are unified in this feeling. Throughout this glorious week we have been laboring hard, not only in preaching the word of God, but also in service to others. We have hiked up and enormous hill to dig holes for pillars to construct a house for Charmella, spontaneously shoveled dirt into a wheelbarrow many times for Jemin, used our newfound muscles to mix cement for the baptism stairs at the church, and many other countless acts of service we have performed with our hands this week as well. It is indeed the season for rain here on Grenada. I have witnessed outpouring of water from the sky many times this week. The grass is very grateful for the hydration. As we are on the topic of liquid, we have also been sweating a lot more this week due to our hard-work. We have been entering peoples' houses looking as if we have recently been swimming when in fact; we have not been immersed in water in a long time. My heart is filled with joy at the mention of my friends returning home. I am forever grateful for their righteous desires to serve the lord and dedicate the past year and a half to two years laboring in the vineyard. Tomorrow we will be entering a conference room at the Radisson resort where we will be holding Zone Conference. Our mission President arrives tomorrow and we are anxiously awaiting his arrival. I am positive this week will be another wonderful experience. I hope know that I love and miss you dearly and am excited for my arrival home in 4 months. Fear not, the time will go swiftly by. Sincerely and with love, Sister Breana Stewart
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9/5/16 Last week I didn't get chance to get on a computer and email! That was hard. But it has made me so grateful that I can this week. This week was a tough one. Not talking to your family really pays a toll on you. So thank you family for making me happy each week. I now know what I am like when I don't get the chance to hear how you are doing. Picture a snicker commercial. I'm the one that needed to eat snickers. I bet you are laughing at that visual now :) Hopefully. I have my new companion now! Sister Rindlisbacher! I miss Sista Layton so much! She is one of my very best friends. I am grateful for the time I had to meet her and form the friendship we have. I wasn't too sad because I know I will see her after the mission without a doubt but it did sort of feel like I was getting broken up with...in a sense haha. She will do great in St. Maarten but she is dearly missed here. Saying goodbye to everyone last week was so sad. We had a lot of great missionaries here on Grenada. My new companion is great! I love she so much already! We came out together and have been on trade-offs together before but it is such a blessing to have her as my companion. She laughs a lot and makes me laugh as well, loves everyone, is patient with me, and is just fantastic! What more can I say? I have been blessed with another great companion. We have been working a lot with Less-actives recently. There are a lot and we are excited to help them come closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. We are building up our teaching pool right now because it is pretty small. We have been finding some really cool people. My dear friend Charmella set a baptism date for December 10th! I am so excited for her. She is a great investigator with a desire to do the Lord's will. She is building her house right now and all of us missionaries are going to help her with it once she gets a few more things she needs. I am doing good. I can't believe I only have 5 months left!! I know it is going to go by way too fast. I will enjoy this time while I have it. Zone Conference is this week. So stoked for that. I loved hearing from everyone this week. I love you all! Love, Sister Bre Stewart It has been ages since I sent out a weekly email. So Sorry! I just haven't had the time. 9/13/16 So many great things happened this week. Tuesday we had an appointment set with our friend Jimal, who is less-active. He is in his 20's. He expressed his desire to meet with us and to come back to church. He wants to follow God's plan for him and is making changes to do so. So Tuesday afternoon we went by Shemorlly and walked with her to where we were going to meet Jimal. He wasn't there and we were a few minutes late so we decided to walk to his house. We hadn't gotten too far when I heard someone shout, "WAIT! SISTER STEWART! HEY! RIGHT HERE!! SISTER STEWART!". I turned to look behind me and I saw I guy across the field waving his arms in the air towards us. I had a feeling it was Jimal before we were close enough to make him out. We walked over to where he was and saw that he and a handful of other guys were mixing cement and pouring it down to build the foundation of a house. He said he just needed about 15 or 20 minutes and then he would be done and could meet with us. So we decided to go visit a member named Listra who lives just near that. The whole walk there I felt like we were supposed to be back there with Jimal. When we got to Listra's we said hi to her but she was a little busy so we were only there for a few minutes. We left and went to sit in the covered seating area across the field from where Jimal was working because it was raining and Shemorlly didn't want to get wet. I kept getting the feeling we were in the wrong place. We needed to be across the field with Jimal helping him! So, I told Shemorlly and Sister Rindlisbacher that I was going to do something a little crazy....help them out. Picture 3 girls walking up to you in skirts and one insisting she help. All of the guys laughed at first and said that it was a man's job, so instead of asking again I simply started to help. I loved it! It is hard work they are doing! I doubt I could do it on the daily like them. They were a little hesitant at first and a few kept making jabs at me saying I couldn't carry the buckets because they were too heavy with cement. If we are willing to do as the Lord has asked us to do he WILL give us the strength to accomplish what he asks of us.(1 Nephi 3:7). I said a prayer and sure enough, I was able to carry the buckets they handed me, regardless of how much cement they put in it. But boy did they test my limits. I sure felt it the next day. It was so much fun, and such a work out!! SO much respect for all of them that do that on the daily. Later that day Jimal turned to me and said, "Ya know, you're not like all dem otha missionaries dat pass trew here. Not alla dem woulda just jumped in like dat ta help out, specially in a skirt. We need more a dem like you." Jimal taught me a lesson with those words that day. I learned that it is more than what you say, it is what you do. It is what you show everyone. I knew the spirit was prompting me to go back and help them. I didn't focus on the fact that it would ruin my clothes. I didn't focus on the how. I had faith that the Lord would help me serve them. And he did, he truly did. Zone conference was on Wednesday and Elder Zivic (from the seventy) was there. He is from Argentina! Haha as soon as I heard that I thought of Dad. We learned so many great things from him, his wife, and President and Sister Herrington as well. Sister Herrington talked about one of my favorite scriptures and the story that goes along with it in 2 Kings 6. (My favorite verse is 16) House Meeting (a meeting at one of the local member's houses-usually Roger-where we have a spiritual thought and games.) went so well. One of the members shared a spiritual experience he had this week with me and it strengthened my testimony of the Savior. He truly is mindful f everyone one of us and watches over us continually. My testimony on Prayer and communicating witH our Heavenly Father has grown so much this week. It is amazing. Thursday we helped out friend Miss Allison prepare corn. She taught us how to clean it and prep it for cooking. It is actually a lot more work than it sounds like! That was a lot of fun though :). Then we had institute that night and learned about how the Book of Mormon is the Keystone of our religion. How true that statement is! Everything we teach falls back to the Book of Mormon. Either the Book of Mormon is true or not. There is no other answer. We were able to watch the Restoration video with Donnalee this week. I had never seen it before and I learned things that I had no idea had happened. Sister Rindlisbacher and I were talking about that after as we walked to our next appointment. The fact that we already have a testimony of Joseph Smith and Modern day prophets/revelation made it so that when we hear something new to us,(this one is in D&C) we automatically accept it as truth and then from that point study, ponder, and pray about it to receive a testimony. For example: Obedience to the modern day prophet and his teachings is necessary. The little things matter even if you don't think so at the time. By being obedient to the little things, if the prophet instructs us on something bigger, we will not harden our hearts to his council but we will heed his words. It becomes easier to follow what our Heavenly Father wants us to. Of course, just like with anything in the gospel we still need to study it out in our minds, ponder, and pray to know, but it removes the difficulty of making it to those three steps. On my mission I have learned a lot about obedience. Some of my happiest times on my mission were moments when I was being obedient and following what Heavenly Father is asking me to, whether is be from him or his servants. Satan is real. He is not hiding somewhere waiting for you to walk by stumble upon him. Rather he is out there in the world watching and waiting for you to CHOSE to be disobedient so that he can give you more opportunities to serve him instead of God. The scripture that tells us we can not serve God and mammon always comes to mind when I think of choices. President Monson gave a talk recently about choices. He referenced the children's movie 'Alice in Wonderland'. Alice, at one point, comes to a fork in the road and is not sure which direction she should go. The Cheshire cats councils her by telling her that it does not matter which road she takes if she does not know where she wants to end up. It is very important that we know where we want to be. We should want to be with our Heavenly Father. As I have been on my mission I have realized that is is not as easy as I thought it would be. When we are serving the Lord and doing his work, do not think for one second that Satan gives up on tempting you. It is quite the opposite. He works even harder to get you than ever before. We must always remember to hold the word of God close to us, engrave it in our hearts, and never let go. Many of my past companions, fellow missionaries, members, and my Mission President have helped me to learn the importance of obedience. It is not being 50% obedient that gets you into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not even 99% obedience. We must do OUR VERY BEST to be 100% obedient. Yes we slip up, but as long as we are doing OUR very best (not our Neighbors best, but ours) than Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ will make to difference. Do not settle for less. Our obedience is one of the ways we show God that we love him. I love you and am grateful for the example you have been to me and everyone else. Can't wait to see you in 4 1/2 months and continue to learn from your righteous example. Thank you Mom. Thank you for everything. I will leave you with a quote I discovered this week from Elder Holland. :"Assume the good and doubt the bad." Love you! Sister Breana Stewart |