Fire, New Friend & Miracles

HELLER!

I am sure you are all wondering about the fire up by Alva. So here is the low down from a missionary stand point. Once upon a time a random Oklahoma guy, We'll call him "Guy" was driving down highway 64 between Alva and Freedom Oklahoma. Something blew on Guy's vehicle causing a spark which caught the grass on the side of the road. Now you have to keep in mind that this is Oklahoma and the wind is blowing, of course. The wind caught the fire and the fire started rolling throughout the plains. At one point we were told that the fire was 40 miles long and the mouth of the fire was 4 miles wide. A few towns up in Kansas were evacuated. Then came the game changer. The wind decided to start blowing south. At this time the fire was directly North of Alva. The fire crews didn't have a chance to fight the fire so they got all the equipment they could to dig ditches so the fire would stop spreading. We had a member text us an estimated 15 text messages in a row telling us that they were going to start using city water to fight closer fires and the power may go out. She was explaining protocol for doomsday and we simply told her that if we had to evacuate we would go to the missionaries apartment in Enid. Alva was completely surrounded by smoke for a few days. It has mostly cleared out now and we are getting back to the normal amount of smoke filled Oklahoma air. Homes, Land, and animals were lost. Please keep those affected by the fire in your prayers.

On Tuesday evening we got to take the trek to Jet, Oklahoma to have dinner and a lesson with Gwenna and Tim at the Johnson's. This week a lot of our plans have been falling through and so we decided to head for Jet even though we were going to be early. We ended up stopping to take some scenic pictures and we still ended up being there a little early. Sister Johnson was so happy we were early because she wasn't ready for dinner so she had us helping her finish preparing dinner! We taught them the Word of Wisdom and committed them to live it. Gwenna told us that she decided that Sunday would be the day she stops forever!! Now this was a surprise to Tim because she didn't tell him..yet. Tim understood the lesson but he is still struggling with accepting Joseph Smith. Please keep Gwenna and Tim in your prayers so that they will be able to be BAPTIZED!  

Does anybody remember our crazy investigator Jay who we made muffins with? SURE YOU DO! I mean how could you forget Jay? Well on Thursday we helped his son load a U haul because he is moving to Shawnee, Oklahoma. Having Jay there made it quite interesting! At one point he was sitting in a chair and started smoking so I told him to spit it out and he threw it into the drive way and gave me a sad face and I just smiled! 

Sister Smiley's son Isaac was here from Vernal for his brothers baptism this weekend. On Friday he wanted to come out with us so we took him out. He had so much fun! We asked him after a while of him knocking doors and what not if he wanted to go home and he said NO! We went to teach a guy named Gene who is a total Okie talker! We were in there forever and Isaac fell asleep for a minute. Gene didn't see it but we did and it was funny! Isaac became one of our new best friends!!

On Saturday morning Alva had some Easter activities in the morning and we saw it as a great opportunity to talk to everyone!! We actually ended up participating in one of the activities! They had a forklift with a truck bed lifted high in the sky, red neck right! They dropped eggs and you had to catch it without it spattering everywhere! Elder McVey caught his and then Elder Richey and I were so close but it bounced out of our hands. Luckily it didn't splatter all over us. Keep in mind that we were wearing our suits during this shin dig. Elder McVey was doing good and made it down to the last 6 people. We had the crowd chanting "Utah!" but unfortunately the egg splattered all over him! He will forever have an egg stain on his suit coat and tie. We got a lot of exposure though!!  

Because of the baptism on Sunday there were a lot of people visiting. We had a grand total of 67 people at church!! WAHOO!!  We had a less active member bring 2 of her friends. Member missionary work!! The fact that it is Easter contributed to the amount of other visitors that attended as well.

Like I said earlier, a lot of our plans have been falling through. After Church we had about an hour where we had to figure out what to do and we did not want to go knock more doors but we knew we had to do something. We dragged our feet towards a street we thought we could knock and then Elder Richey said we should say a prayer first. We folded our arms and Lo! Joy Brown called us and she wanted us to come over and study the Book of Mormon with her! MIRACLES DO HAPPEN!! We got super happy and started RUNNING back to the truck! Joy is a life saver!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter Holiday!!

Go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back for reading this whole email because it was just a wee bit long..

Sincerely, Elder Brisk 

That is all.

Isaac and I found a snake at the baptism!! Look at my little prodigy! 

You could say I am his favorite (He is wearing my name tag) 

Tim and Gwenna Kimball are awesome!!! Pray for them because they need your help! 

We made this cake for a family that just moved into the Branch! Pretty fancy cake right!?

I really wasn't lying about the fire....Alva was surrounded by smoke!!

This is where the fire started..

Instead of saying Happy Easter everyone just said Merry Christmas!

Oklahoma is growing on me :)

Muffins with Jay

HELLER!

Greetings from Alva Oklahoma! I hope you are all enjoying this spring time weather!! Well I don't know about where all y'all are at but it is pretty warm here! I had to break out the short sleeve shirts!!

It don't even remember the past month!? Tuesday I will have been out for 8 months! Time flies when you are having fun and working hard!!  

This week we had to go to Enid Oklahoma for a meeting. I still think I spend to much of my mission driving to meetings.... We had 2 appointments set up for Monday night too! We went to see this guy we knocked into. His name is Michael and he is super nice! He asked us why we didn't show up Monday and we told him that we tried to contact him and that we had a meeting so we were able to reschedule with him. He seems super interested in our message and we are excited to share it with him!

The other appointment we had was with Don Harzman. He is one of my favorite people. He tells us that his home is always open to us and he always wants to make sure we are doing alright. He is so nice! We went by and taught him and his 9 year old son Gabriel on Sunday night and the lesson went very well! His son was listening the whole time and we invited both of them to be baptized on April 23rd, they both said YES!! That gives us a grand total of 5 baptism dates for April!

On Friday we went on exchanges with our District leader Elder Dayley. He came to Alva and Elder McVey went to Woodward. For some reason it was all warm and we were enjoying the weather and then out of no where Friday was the coldest day of my entire mission!! OK maybe I'm exaggerating but it was really cold and now it is warm  We called one of our investigators Jay and asked him when he wanted our help making muffins and he told us to come over and we would have omelets and make muffins so we said OK! 

Lesson 1: NEVER MAKE MUFFINS WITH JAY!

I don't think I have ever laughed so hard making muffins in my life. We started out with a recipe and Jay didn't have all the ingredients. We didn't have enough oats so he added some wheat cereal. Then we didn't have apple sauce so Elder Dayley and Bob had to cut up apples and try to saucify them. Didn't work very well so jay threw it all in a blender. Then he peeled a banana, took a bite from it, and threw it on the table and said cut that up and put that in it! I was laughing the whole time! He had me cut up 500000000000 prunes to put into the mix. Then he added molasses to it and he put A LOT in it. We got halfway threw and Jay decided to change recipes!? You can't just do that in the middle of a recipe dude!!  We all had a muffin and surprisingly we didn't die!? They didn't really have a taste to them but the whole bottom of my muffin was prune so that was gross! We had a lot of fun making muffins though! We talked about the gospel too and tried to relate it to his muffins to make him more interested. He is a tough cookie. He is super interested in the church but won't admit it.

We had another dinner/lesson with Gwenna and Tim this week. Gwenna has a brother who is a bishop in Utah and she hasn't talked with him in years. We convinced her to talk to him and let him know she is meeting with missionaries and he was so happy for her! She was scared he wouldn't talk to her but it was the complete opposite! She told us that he wanted to see pictures of us so we had to take a big group picture and then individual pictures with Gwenna. Afterwards so told us that she has a niece and she is trying to set us up for when we get off our missions. Gwenna is pretty much our mom! We extended their baptism date for April 16th. Gwenna just has to give up smoking and she will be set! Tim on the other hand is going to be a little more difficult but he is progressing!

The girls basketball team won state this year for the 3rd time in a row! One morning we were studying and we heard all of these alarms and thought it was world war 3 in Alva. We looked out the window and say 3 cop cars, fire rescue, fire truck, the girls tour bus, truck full of cheerleader, Alva citizens behind them. They were cheering "3 PEAT 3 PEAT 3 PEAT". They were honking like crazy! The good thing about small towns is they can send their high school off to state like that! When they got back from state it was even worse!! It was 8 pm and horns and sirens were going crazy! We were at a members house and jumped in his truck and met them at the high school. We tried talking to people but they were "Busy".

That was my exciting week! It was fun but now that spring break is over we will be able to have more lessons with people. For some reason people don't want to stay in Alva when they get a week off of school!?

With Easter coming up we are focusing our finding efforts through the Easter initiative video #Hallelujah at FollowHim.mormon.org If you have not had a chance to watch it STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND WATCH IT! It is a really good video that can be shared with anyone!

Easter isn't as commercialized as Christmas but we still need to remember why we celebrate it. The Easter bunny and candy can be fun but there is a better reason to celebrate. This coming Sunday we will celebrate the day our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was risen. Christ conquered death for all of us so that we will be able to be resurrected. Christ didn't have to do this for us, but he loves us so much that he wanted to. He took the pains and sufferings of the world for us. Remember Jesus Christ this holiday as you partake of the sacrament. I challenge everyone who reads this to read Luke chapters 22-24 in the New Testament. It will increase your love for the savior and help you have a greater appreciation for what he did for us.

My favorite scripture is John 3:16

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ loves you. Have a great Easter!

Sincerely, Elder Brisk

That is all.

Muffin making with Jay at it's finest 

Hurray for drives to Enid!!! 

Nothing like playing Bingo with a bunch of old folks 

Knocking doors!

HELLER

Once again I had another great week!!

Monday evening we tried to see a few different investigators we don't meet with regularly and they dropped us so that is cool... NOT! That left us with 2 hours to knock doors! Knocking doors as a missionary is fun until you have to do it for a long period of time. We ended up parking the truck back at our apartment and started walking to the street. I told BOB and Elder McVey that we need to say a prayer so we said a prayer and all pointed what way we needed to go and it was the same way!! We ended up knocking almost the whole street and we got so many potential investigators! Unfortunately a lot of them are attending North Western Oklahoma State University and since it is spring break Alva is now population 3 (missionaries)

We were able to meet with Shyann and we found out that her family is against her being baptized and that is what has been holding her back. It's not because she is waiting for other missionaries to come back and baptize her. We challenged her to be reading and praying everyday. We also challenged her to pick her own baptism date because she wants to be baptized before she transfers schools on May 7th. Please pray for her to get baptized!!!!! She is so ready! She can teach us every lesson we have 

Gwenna and Tim are doing awesome! Gwenna should be baptized yesterday but Tim isn't as far along as she is. Tim is going to take a little more time then Gwenna but he is so excited when we come over! In fact as I am writing this email Tim is texting me telling me I am lazy because he woke up at 4 to go to work and we woke up at 6:30. He is so funny!

Joy hasn't been doing so good. She has been having a lot of medical problems and has been suffering depression so if you could also keep her in your prayers that would be great!

Well we set a baptism date with Jimmie on Saturday and then Sunday we found out that what we had heard about his past is actually true so....We may be losing an investigator and baptism date. I guess it will all depend on what our mission president says!

The past few days we have had a Thunderstorm and it is so cool!! The street by our house is pretty much a river so now they dug up the road and are trying to fix it. Tornado season is approaching us really fast and I am so excited!! I just want to see a tornado plop down in a field outside of Alva and not destroy anything or kill anyone 

I'm not sure how many of you remember around Christmas when the church put out the video "A Savior Is Born". For this Easter the church has released another initiative video! It is called #Hallelujah

You can find the video at 

FollowHim.mormon.org

Check the website out and watch the video! Check the website everyday for new videos and things about Jesus Christ that will help you remember what he did for us.

I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. I know that he loves us and through him we can return to live with our Heavenly Father because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The new Easter initiative video is a great finding tool! Share it with your friends, family, members, non members, EVERYONE!

I hope you have a great week! As President Walkenhorst would say.. 

"LOVE AND APPRECIATE YA!"

Sincerely, Elder Brisk

That is all.

I forgot how much fun jumping on a trampoline is!! 

Thanks to the Smiley's for feeding us dinner and letting us use their trampoline 

Everyone likes when we coordinate our ties for some reason! I guess our white shirts aren't enough.

Rainy Days are always fun! Even when you go to McDonald's for lunch with Shyann!