adventures with aubrey: #TheRISE

Ok guys, so apparently whatever I say on here comes true because guess what? It was cold this week. Like so windy and freezing and Sister Schmidt and I were dying. Please stop Florida. I prefer the heat honestly. BYU is going to kill me, but other than the freezing wind we had a great week! (shoutout to Jack who apparently prays for us to have fun because it works dude.)

This week was full of meetings. I was so done by Friday. We drove to Fort Lauderdale again this week for a zone conference and let me tell you... this really is the best mission in all the land. President and Sister Richardson are` amazing and all of the missionaries are fabulous. Sister Schmidt had to give her "dying" testimony with 6 other sisters and an elder and it was great. President quoted it all conference haha #shoutout This zone conference was titled #THERISE of the FFLM and how we are bringing it back to its former glory and all that good stuff. It was really pumped. So cool. We have the best leaders guys. (I have like 0 other vocab words apparently). We had a conference call with all the leadership in the mission and it was just so pumped. We are 100% hitting 100 baptisms in April. We all signed this cute flag too.

Then, the next day we had DT and also interviews so we got to see Pres a lot this week. Interviews were great and I just love President. He's literally the best. When I walked in and prayed, the very first thing he asked me was, "How is Sister Soza?" I was like... uhhh she's great? He was like "oh right sorry. I miss her" SAME. I do too but it was a fantastic interview after.

We are seeing miracle after miracle here in Estero. Literally just so many miracles. We met a woman named Sade (pronounced Shaw-day) and literally as we are teaching her the resto she stops us and goes, "So, how can I get baptized?" *cue the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah* music to every missionary's ears. We said, "well, we can help with that." She is set to be baptized on April 9th!

We also saw so many miracles with our YSA Round Up. This week was branch conference so we went hard rounding everyone up to come, enlisting help from the active members too. We got a TON of people there and we got some Less Active RM's to be there and that was really all that mattered. It was a great conference and the stake president talked about how the Book of Mormon can apply to each of us. It blesses every single one of us!

Lots of miracles this week guys. We met with our Brazilian investigator who is coming along super well. He lives with a recent convert who is just always talking about the church because he loves it so much and our gator said "yeah, I have a missionary in my house that answers all my questions." NICE. Love that.

Schmidt just reminded me that it happened this week because I thought it was last week because mission time is ridiculous. We were OYMing on FGCU campus and there was this group of people gathered around this man who was like yelling but we couldn't understand him. So we asked a student who he was and she was like "oh he's preaching, but not well." So we had to see who else was preaching right? Well. This guy was doing it all wrong guys! He was literally standing there screaming at these kids that they were going to hell. Wrong move. They were screaming back and we were just standing there and we knew he saw our tags so we just listened for like 2 minutes and then walked away just laughing. The spirit wasn't there. It was totally wrong. It was really cool to see, as we continued to talk to people that as soon as we opened our mouths, even if you could hear him yelling in the background, the Spirit was right there testifying to those YSA about our message. It was really a testimony builder for both of us. As we were standing there listening to him he said, "The Lord tells us in the bible to go out and preach the gospel to all nations.." I just looked at Sister Schmidt and said, "Yeah He did. We're right here!" It was interesting to see the 2 sides of preaching. One with love and the Spirit and one with contention. It was a sight to see y'all.

It is amazing to be a missionary. Even on the hard days when literally nothing goes your way there are seriously ALWAYS tender mercies waiting for us. Read the Book of Mormon every day. Pray. Go to church and remember that I love you.

1: Freezing