Carnaval - not for missionaries! Contacting with the Spirit, Asking for Referrals, LOTS of Rain

Hey ya'll what a week!

We started the week in Rio Branco and now are in Casquieros. Carnaval started!! wahoo!! Fortunately, our mission president has banded us from going out after 5;00pm every night for 5 days. Apparently things get pretty crazy on the streets...there's lots of fireworks and yelling and music. during the day we see huge floats being prepared for the parades, but we don't even bother trying to look at night because we know it's just a bunch of naked women and drunk people, so we just stayed in our bedroom and had a mega companionship study. It was perfect. #ilovebeingamissionary

LAN House Where Missionaries Email

Sis Allen, my trainer taught me that miracles happen on exchanges and I've always been a firm believer of that and seen that on my mission, and I am blessed to exchange with sisters everyday, so I'm seeing incredible miracles everywhere, but I'd just like to share two.

1) Sis Menezes and I were walking down the street, I always try to have a prayer in my heart of who to stop and talk to whenever we're walking. It would be impossible to talk to EVERYone, so I rely on the Spirit to tell me who is ready. We passed a woman on the stairs and I felt like we needed to talk to her, soo...I grabbed Sis Menezes arm and whispered, we need to go back and talk to her..well turns out she had been stopped by the other sisters earlier that day on the ônibus and the day before by Elders when she was in their area. God was apparently wanting missionaries to teach her. We asked to go inside and taught the Restoration. The Spirit was incredibly strong and she recognized that God had answered her prayers by us stopping to talk to her. she recognized us as representatives of Christ. It was such a tender experience and evidence that God hears and answers our prayers.

2) Sis Nahimann and I were evaluating our teaching and we realized that we were forgetting to ask EVERYone for referrals, so we made a goal to literally ask EVERYone we talked to for referrals. We did and received MANY referrals, especially from people we didn't know in the street. We ended up teaching a horrible lesson to a young woman (there were so many distractions and the Spirit had no chance to be there because of her mom and other weird factors), but we asked her or a referral and she took us to her friend's house down the street. We knocked, introduced ourselves and one of the young woman was like, yeah, I was baptized in ya'lls Church....that's cool...then we found out that she was a less active Sis Nahimann and her companion had been trying to find ALL transfer. She had gotten in a fight with her parents and left and no one knew where she was. Also, she was one of the first people my girl Sis Allred baptized when she got here, and Sis Allred had talked about her a lot and wondered whatever happened to her. She let us in we had a powerful lesson on the Book of Mormon and then with tears in her eyes she looked at us and was like "I need to come back to Church, huh? I'll be there tomorrow". She called herself to repentance! #mightychangeofheart

Oh if only I could write all the wonderful experiences I've had this week!

Yesterday we and the assistants had a 4 hour meeting with president deciding how we were going to fix the mission. I LOVE President Cabral, I love him. I am so grateful for him and the other mission presidents I've been blessed to serve with. They are such inspired men. It was an incredible spiritual experience for me to counsel with him and for us 6 to recieve revelation together. #theChurchistrue

I feel incredibly blessed, The Lord knows me and I am trying my best to get to know Him. I love HIm. I love His work. I love His commandments and His gospel. I love that He sees potential in me that I cannot see. I love that He believes in me and allows me to struggle and fall so that He can teach me. I know Christ lives. This is His Church.

Have a great week ya'll. I love you! Be good and try not to get too trunky for me ;)

Sister Byrne