Aug. 28, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Hello!!

This last week T. came to church again, and we had some awesome experiences with him! We taught the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, and Tithing. He accepted each, and we threw away a bunch of stuff while we were there as well as dumping out all his beer with him! It was so awesome, it was incredible to see someone who really just wanted to repent and be worthy. He has set a baptismal date of September 23rd, but will need to move it to the 22nd as the ward has some other activities that day as well.

We also had a new investigator named R. at church. She is a really nice lady who we met on the street. We were able to visit her and have a really powerful Restoration lesson. She was going to try to make it to the other Elders baptism, but then she had to take care of her sister who suffered from a stroke years ago. The following day however she came to church and had a great experience.

M. would have come to church too, but apparently she missed her ride because she didn't see them and missed their calls, bummer! M. and J. were out of town this week and Je. had to work, but it was a pretty great week still! :)

We had several meetings this week and lots going on, as well as President Blair's birthday! We sent out an email to the mission asking them to send in short video answers to a question, like what one thing he taught them is, or why he is the best mission President in the world. We also got a bunch of fun things that a mission President would need or that had a funny story behind them and made a "Mission President Survival Kit". It was great and President Blair really liked it! :)

This week we have some Zone Conferences and lots going on so it'll be a wild one! Two cool announcements are that we are going to be getting social media as a mission, more details to come, as well as that we will be having an Apostle visit the mission in a few weeks!!! It will be a crazy and really exciting next little while!! :) 

Love you all and thanks for all the love and prayers!
Elder Hunter Branch :)

Warheads challenge video...

Aug. 21, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Hey everyone!

We have a big meeting tomorrow for all the Zone Leaders and Sister Training leaders, which took most the day to plan so this will have to be a short one.

M. and J. are doing well, didn't make it to church this week cause of babysitting. :/ However, Je. came to church again this week and will be setting a date for his baptism! M. and T. came to a baptism in the other ward and loved it!! Both of them came to church and have set baptismal dates! M. for the 16th, and T.'s will be the 23rd. J.'s sister, B., is doing well too, but she is really busy with work so she struggles with keeping appointments or making it to church. There are a bunch of other awesome people we're working with but those are the highlights of this week.

B. fed us some really spicy African food this week which was neat! We found a few other families, but going into these weeks of meetings and planning and office work we hope we can keep in contact with them! There are some big changes and exciting things going on in the mission! There are TONS of young missionaries right now, and it is so cool to see them all grow.

I know God leads this work and he watches over all of us! One new thing I've been doing to study is that I will go to the book True to the Faith and go topic by topic, studying latter day revelation from conference. For example, the first topic is Aaronic Priesthood, so I search the Gospel Library for Aaronic Priesthood, go to conference, then download the 7 talks that mention Aaronic Priesthood the most times. I just play one a day while I'm in the shower and it has been really cool! I need to start a notebook with what I am learning so I can have my own personal record of each.

Love ya all! :)
Elder Hunter Branch

A few pictures from the mission facebook page...

They were all in the MTC together...

Aug. 14, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Hello everyone!

Today new missionaries are arriving to the mission and we'll be busy with them, so I don't have a lot of time to email.

People are doing well, M. and J. are still setting a date to get married, and we're excited to keep seeing them and their family!

We have a recent convert who hasn't gotten to come for a while, and yesterday she and her sister who we are teaching came to church! We also had M. at church with us again which was awesome! She is so busy and so are we so it makes teaching her super hard, but she is so ready for the gospel and we hope she'll get baptized this transfer. A guy named J. who Elder Br. and I met on exchange came to church as well which was fun! He is young and had to work, but still came for the first hour! He is loving the Book of Mormon too! :) ALSO, we had a great man named T. S. He is a really nice middle aged man who has been going through a "crisis of faith" and he feels like our doctrines can help him out.

We have 19 missionaries going home and 17 missionaries coming out, as well as 2 Portuguese Sisters who are waiting for visa's. New missionaries are so cool! We get to take them out on the streets tonight for like 45 minutes and I'm excited to see what happens! :)

Life is so good!! Elder B. and I are staying together this transfer and we're going to work on getting all the people we find to church! We found a ton this transfer and need to help them to do the things that lead to true happiness, which are prayer, reading scriptures, and going to church. :) That is what helps us learn and know that God is there and loves us, and that His gospel is true. It is like a science experiment, and to "test" God, we need to do those things and see what happens! :)

Sure love ya all, hope life is great! Thanks again for all the prayers and emails, I never have time to respond to them all but know that I am so grateful for all of you and the impact you've had in my life.

Love,
Elder Branch :) 

Aug. 7, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Hello! :)

So this week was pretty sweet! It was the first one we have had in a while where we were able to work in our area a lot! We found a TON and just had a great time!

So we taught M. and J. about the Law of Chastity this week which God has given us to strengthen families and marriages. I love the resource of The Family from the prophets, and I really like the quote, "Successful families and marriages are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." They were really hesitant at first, but now it sounds like M. is still nervous, but they want to get married and J. will say yes if he asks, so hopefully we'll be wedding planning soon! :)

We also set baptismal dates with two of J.'s siblings! They are really awesome and one of them has a cute little family! We're excited for them! The other one, C. turned 20 this week and invited us to her BBQ party thing! We showed up at like 8:30, but because of rain it had to be pushed back. We talked to them for a while then lots of teens and young adults started showing up and it was pretty funny! At the beginning as people were showing up we were surrounded by a group of little kids who wanted to draw on our iPads and watch Mormon Messages. We mostly talked with the kids and eventually had to go before the food was ready, but it was still good to go to show our support and they were glad we came! It sounded like the party got crazy later on too so the Lord is smart for having a curfew for missionaries! :)

One cool experience this week was when we were walking by a park and saw some city grounds crew trying to get something out of a pole electric box. A lady had dropped her phone down it and they couldn't get it. They tried unscrewing it, but that didn't work. They tried a little grabber thing but they couldn't get their arms down far enough to reach it, and they tried a stick with lots of tape, but gravity was stronger that their electrical tape. So after chatting for a while and them trying lots of stuff they were thinking they might have to put in a permit to destroy the pole because it is so old it is an antique and they would have to go though a special process. It is made of cast iron so that would be no easy task. Either that or just have the lady give up on the phone, but she was in a bit of an attitude. I felt like I should ask to try the grabber thing and I was able to reach the phone. I almost got the phone all the way up, so we wrapped the ends with tape and then I was able to pull the phone out! One of the workers had met with missionaries before and we were able to teach them about the Book of Mormon right there and they thought it was great! We will be able to go back and visit one of them, and it was cool to see how we were at the right place at the right time and able to help out! :)

We also had exchanges this week up in Maine and it was fun to go back to a small town for the day! We had been having a rough day and people wouldn't talk to us, but we had faith and kept talking to everyone, and at the end of the day we were blessed with a couple really awesome people who were searching! We just had to have faith and not get discouraged, and the Lord will let us be part of miracles.

Love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Branch :)

July 31, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Hello hello!!
This has been another great week! It feels like the most relaxed one I've had this transfer, which is funny because we still had a Zone Conference in Vermont,

New Missionary and Trainers Meeting also in Vermont, and 2 exchanges! 

I got to go to Lowell on one of them which was wild!! Lowell just got added to our mission a couple months ago, and it is bigger than Manchester! I was there with a missionary who has only been out for 3 weeks and that was really cool to be with someone so new and excited and nervous! :) That was me almost a year ago! I have been refreshing on Spanish a bit for kicks! Yesterday I actually got the opportunity to invite someone to learn and got their information in Spanish to refer to the Spanish elders here in Manchester! That was pretty neat! :) 

The other exchange was with Elder B., my trainer!! He is a Zone Leader in Vermont now and only has 8 weeks left on his mission! That was pretty wild and fun to be with him for the day. :)

This week M. accepted a baptismal date for September 2nd! It was so cool, M. is the best! M. was playing in a soccer game this week so we went to support him and get to meet people. It was fun to be around a soccer field and feel the energy of a game, I wanted to get out there and play too! :) The game ended up not being the best place to get to talk to people because they were too into the game. We did get to talk to M. for a while though so it was good. We had to leave pretty quickly because we had another lesson, but it turned out M.'s team won! The family all went out and celebrated after and apparently they were out till 3 in the morning! They were all supposed to come to church, but it started and no one was there! We were way bummed because we thought we would have around 7 people there with M.'s family and M. and E., but they all had stuff come up. But like five minutes into the meeting M. walked in! He said he just had to come to church! :)  He loved church again and everyone is getting to know him and wants to come help with his lessons! :) 

We met this awesome guy named L. this week because we were walking down his hall and heard him playing Sonic the Hedgehog loud enough we could hear it from the hall. At first he only seemed like he was indifferent whether we came back or not, but when we came back for our return appointment he was awesome! We explained how after Jesus left and the apostles were killed off that the church was lost and those truths slowly got broken down, so the world went into apostasy. L. was like, "Ya I see that today. After Jesus left it was like one of those chain letters getting retyped a few times and it kinda lost its original meaning without the prophets." We were so blown away that he was able to understand that and explain it so well back to us, what a guy! :) He understands the importance of acting on what we teach because he wants to see if Gods promise is true, that if you seek and ask, having faith and repenting, then God will answer your prayers and let you know!

This week will be our most calm of any weeks so far so I'm looking forward to it! There really is something so cool about being able to work all day to help people learn of their Savior!

Today is also Zone Pday which is always a blast!

Sure love you all, have a super week!!
Love,
Elder Branch :)

Check out this video from our training about how to be brave and open our mouths and share...

Bravery in opening your mouth video - click here...