Happy Halloween!!

Sveiki Visiem!

I hope everyone's week was great and that Halloween is the best this week!

This week flew by! Last Monday our district had a fall festival where we carved pumpkins and tried to make carameled apples but it was so fun!

On Wednesday we had another lesson with Valda and we taught the Plan of Salvation and it was so good! She loved the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It was a good reminder to me of how powerful it is that Jesus Christ understands all of us perfectly. Don't forget that! 

Also, since MoTab (Mormon Tabernacle Choir) is no longer that the new acronym is T-Cats (Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square). Haha I think it's funny and we joke about it a lot.

We also got to go to the soup kitchen this week and it was great as always but they were also filming two of the women there so we were in it and we're going to be famous! they were videoing Masa Teilore and I when we were setting out bread and some of the bread dropped on the floor and it was so hard not to laugh haha.

We had first lesson with the cutest girl!! She is the best! I'm so excited to keep working with her!

We also got transfer calls this week and I get to stay with Masa Teilore in the same area wahoo! I'm so pumped!

"And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins."

-- 2 Nephi 25:26

Christ is everything to us! I am so grateful for HIm and for His Atonement so I don't have to be alone and so I do have the chance to return to Him one day. We need Him so why not help others see they need Him too? Talk about Christ and develop a stronger relationship with Him. I can tell you through experience you will enjoy greater happiness!

I love you all and Happy Halloween!

Love,

Masa Brunere

Pics:

1: My district!

2: We tried to balance them on our heads

3: We also got a little excited this week and set up Christmas :)

4: The members are traveling to the temple this week and we can't go so instead we just went to temple street :)

5: Missed our bus on the way back from a members house so we got to walk across this cool bridge!

6: I saw Sister Smith-Driggs this week ::))

Jelgava!!

Sveiki! Sveiki!

I hope everyone's week was great!

Last Tuesday I went to Jelgava! Jelgava is a city about 45 minutes away from Riga and it is so cute! We have church members there who come into Riga for church so we went and visited one of them and it was so fun! I love the Jelgava members so much! 

This week we had two lessons with new people! Sarmite and Valda. Both went super great! At the end of the lesson with Valda we invited her to pray but she didn't understand that she needed to pray out loud. When she was finished praying herself we asked her how she felt and she said peaceful! We had just talked a lot about peace as well. It was so cool to see how God can answer prayers so quickly. And she said she will be baptized when she knows it's all true! 

This week I also started the Book of Mormon over to follow President Nelson's challenge to all the women. At first I was a little sad because I was studying prayer and loving it so much but six months ago as I sustained him as a prophet and as I have studied his words I made the decision to always follow him. So I set my other Book of Mormon aside and started a new one and it has been the greatest thing ever! I have not only come closer to Jesus Christ but have learned more about prayer. I know that as we follow the prophet we will receive so many blessings. I know President Nelson is called of God and by listening to his words we will receive greater strength.

Thank you so much for all the support you give me and missionaries everywhere! I can promise you it helps us every day knowing we have people supporting the Lord's work. I felt the prayers extra strong this week. Thank you so so much!

I love you all and have a great week!

Love,

Māsa Brūnere

Pics:

1: We made bbq chicken yesterday, definitely the best meal I've eaten here haha

2: Spreading the love of the gospel

3: These things are called svetlanas. They are from heaven

4: random graffiti

Visparejā Konference!

Sveiki!

I hope everyone had a great week! 

This week flew by! On Monday we had a lesson with a new investigator. She is the cutest! Her love for God and Jesus Christ is so amazing. She mainly did all the talking haha but it was a great lesson!

We also got to meet with three of our members this week. I love them all so much. We had dinner at one of their houses and they fed us pumpkin, I don't know how she made it but it was so good and she brought some of her family who aren't members of the church, so cool! 

I also went on exchange this week and it was super fun! She's the best and we had tons of fun and we were able to talk to one about family history, my favorite thing!

Saturday and Sunday we watched General Conference! So good! Saturday President told us to watch it in English (woot woot) and then Sunday we watched it in Latvian and it was cool to see how I've progressed. My first Sunday in the field was watching General Conference so to actually be able to understand what was being said this time haha. 

This week I was just extra grateful for this opportunity to be a missionary and for my testimony of Joseph Smith that he was a prophet of God and that we have Jesus Christ's church on earth today and I am so grateful to be a member of it and have this opportunity to share it with others. 

Thank you for everything and have a great week!

Love,

Masa Brunere

Pics:

1: We were just outside of Riga and found this!

2: I just love living here

3: We found a lady who speak Portuguese and one of the American families speak that so we went together to go give her this Book of Mormon

Random Acts of Kindness

Sveiki visiem!!

I hope everyone had a great week and I hope General Conference was great! 

This week was pretty normal haha. Last Pday we were in Sigulda and that was so fun and so pretty. I love that place. Latvija is very flat but in Sigulda it kinda looks like you're in a canyon! It's so pretty! 

One thing you learn as a missionary is that sometimes people say they will come to lessons but then they don't haha. That happened a few times this week but it's okay because we gave them the chance! But we did find some really cool people this week and I'm so excited to meet with them!

We are trying new ways of contacting and this week we did Random Acts of Kindness. We set up a whiteboard that said do you want to do something good today? and then they chose a piece of paper that said like give someone a flower or call your mom and say you love her. Then we would do it with them and it was sooooo cool! It was just so fun to help others smile.

This week as I was studying I learned a lot about trust and putting our trust in God and just how important that is. God not only knows us best and loves us so much more than we can understand but He also knows everything and has an eternal perspective. We need Him! This week as I put even more trust in God things turned out better. We need Him and He's waiting for us to talk to Him. And we can through prayer! I'm so grateful for prayer and for a loving Heavenly Father who still communicates with us today.

Have a great week!

Love,

Māsa Brūnere

Pics

1: It's getting cold!

2: All the riga masas!

3: I live in the prettiest place

4: Contacting in the park

Lietus, flooded bathrooms, un vairāk lietus

Sveiki! Sveiki!

I hope you all had a great week!

This week was full of my favorite thing, rain! Itš getting cold and always raining haha. Kind of scared of the winter but super excited!

We had two lessons with new people this week and the first one was good and the other lady was a little crazy haha, but one came to church and is progressing well! Sheš Russian though so we passed her off the Russian sisters and are excited for her to continue to learn more.

We met two of our less actives and had little lessons with them! It was such a brinums [miracle] and they are so sweet! I'm so excited to keep working with them!

Okay hereš the best story. So we got home Thursday night and we noticed our bathroom floor was wet so we just put a towel down to dry it. Then we went back around 10:15 and it was soaked. Our shower was full of water and a pipe was leaking and we were flooding haha. So we quickly called our zone leader and we got a hold of our land lord and he came over at like 11 at night and didn't like until like 11:45 haha. We got the water stopped and cleaned up the water and then the next morning someone came and fixed it but we couldn't use any water or anything haha. It was definitely an exciting night.

I have a talk for everyone to read! Itš from the last general conference and itš called "Family History and Temple Work: Sealing and Healing"by Elder Renlund. Please read it! Family History is so important. I've really realized that this week but I'm so grateful for the opportunity we have to do family history and then to go to the temple. This last week itš been my link to the temple. Please read the talk. We receive so many blessings by doing family history and temple work and I've never really been good at it but itš never too late to start. If you have any cool ideas of how to help when on a mission please let me know! We thought of some cool contacting ideas to try and incorporate family history and thatš one way I'm going to try and help.

This week has been a week full of miracles and answered questions. I love the gospel and I know God is there and He does answer questions in His time and in His way. Itš honestly the coolest thing  haha. I love you all and have a great week! I love this gospel and I know itš true. I feel so blessed to be here in this beautiful country sharing the gospel. Serving a mission is the best decision I've made and I'm just so grateful to be here and to be learning so much. God is so good! 

I hope General Conference is great for everyone! Have a great week and thank you for everything! 

Love,

Māsa Brūnere 

Also all the weird symbols are supposed to be apostrophes sorry idk how to fix it :)

The computer isn't letting me send pictures this week so next week I will have lots more to share with everyone!