ALOHA!

  Here it is:

1. So, my new sister is Sister Brandenburg! She is from the Netherlands! Her and two other sisters came from Europe this transfer! Pretty neat! Sister B served for 9 weeks in the Netherlands/Belgium mission while she waited for her visa, but now she is here!!!! I'm pretty sure she had to wait for her visa, so that I could be companions with her. She is awesome! Such a diligent, hard working, missionary! Aah. I am so blessed. 😂 She is fluent in Dutch, so that is just another language I will add to my list that I would like to pick up some phrases from. 
2. The work is moving along! We have seen a lot of, who we thought were, our most solid investigators not keep commitments and drop us, but it has left the ones that are really looking to have the gospel in their lives shining brighter than ever! The people that we are working with, and focusing on, right now have big hurdles ahead of them, but we know that they will do wonderful once they get there! 
3. One of these individuals is struggling, because her husband wants to be the same religion as her, but he wants her to baptize Catholic (He doesn't want to change to be Mormon). So, she asked us what she should do, because she knows that the church is true and that the priesthood is necessary, but she doesn't want to be different from her husband. We read James 1:5 with her and asked her what the scripture was saying to her. She responded that it was telling her to ask God. We then asked why God would be the best person to ask, to which she responded that He would be able to answer her question better than anyone else. We then invited her to read Mosiah 18, as well as any other scripture from the BOM that she felt prompted to read and to pray specifically to receive answers to her specific questions. She is really so wonderful. I pray that she will be open to the spirit directing her to the path that will bless her and her husband's life the most. 
4. Here is a really humbling experience I had this week: Several times this week, Sister B and I have needed our Preach My Gospel in different situations, but we didn't have it with us. I kept getting the prompting, also just common sense, that I needed to have my Preach My Gospel with me all the time. Well, this happened several times, and I just never made it a priority or wrote it down, so I kept forgetting. Well, on Sunday, Sister B spoke and I sang in sacrament meeting. Also speaking was Elder Auna (area of the seventy). He had the YM sitting near us ask if he could use one of our Preach My Gospel. Of course, because I had been to lazy to remember to put my PMG in my bag, we had to respond that we didn't have it with us... I felt so silly. Of course Elder Auna was very kind and humble about it, but how different of an experience would it have been to have a General Authority use your PMG in their talk.. I even had the line that he read underlined. Oh well... it was a learning experience for sure. :/

Well, it was another wonderful week in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission. Lots of ups and downs. Lots of opportunities to learn something new. I love being a missionary. :)

Love, Sister Sydney Barber