Super Bowl Parties?

Hello! So basically we have been in downtown Minneapolis all day at Super Bowl events! It’s been super crazy and fun! Today is super cold though so I’m frozen! They have so many fun free things. hahaha We got our faces on marshmallows! I’ll add some pictures of that! We also ate at Five Guys and one of the workers was a member of our church and he gave us so much free food! Tender mercies from the Lord!

Anyway, this week has been pretty crazy. We have had so many random things going on this week that has made regular missionary work weird. We went to Eau Claire, Wisconsin for a couple nights to go on exchanges with some sisters! That was fun! Wisconsin is super pretty. It was weird to be out of the twin cities since I haven’t left in over a year. The cities feel like home now!

Last Monday we had a crazy snow storm. Our car got stuck in the snow and it took us, two kids on a 4 wheeler, a lady with car mats, another woman, and another guy to get our car out. Then it took over an hour to get home which is usually a 10 minute drive. Everyone was just getting stuck in the snow. Every time we were in standstill traffic and someone by us was stuck, we would just get out and push it out! Then when we finally got home, we put on our snow gear and walked out to the main road and just pushed a ton of cars! We were so sore the next couple of days. It was such a neat experience to see everyone coming together to help each other. There was seriously just so many people that would help people get unstuck. It was really fun to help people get out of the snow. There were times that I know angels were helping us push! There were a couple times where it was just Sister Hicks and I trying to push big cars and we were pushing as hard as we could and the car wouldn’t budge, then all of a sudden when we were about to quit, it was like 10 people were behind us pushing with us and the car would move really easily. It was amazing!

Another cool thing, Mae Paw’s mom came to church yesterday without anyone prompting her to! The whole time I’ve been here, we’ve only gotten her to come to church twice and we had to reeeeeally push it. But she just came! It was so good! 

Sorry I don’t have much time! I’ll add pictures! Sorry there’s a ton of pictures!

Muko Paw Heh Law

Hello! Sorry I don’t have much time to write a group email this week! It has snowed so much today! The roads have been super bad! (Brooklyn sent us a video and the snow was crazy! They were stuck in their car not able to drive because of how deep the snow was, after they finished their laundry! I wasn't able to get anything back after the video, so I'm assuming they got the help they needed. Fun, fun, fun!)

This week the youth in our ward had a temple night and Mae Paw (13 year old member who’s basically my best friend, also the only member in her family) has 4 younger sisters that we teach as well. One of her sisters is 12 so they invited her and us to come to the temple with them and teach her in the waiting room. It was so good! It was so cool to teach her one on one. She basically taught us the whole Plan of Salvation. When we teach them at their house it’s crazy because there’s 5 little girls and there’s just a lot of distractions. But for this, there was no distractions and we were in the temple, so the spirit was just super strong. In the past Sher Paw has been hesitant about being baptized because her parents say she’s too young and because of the stigma that Karen people have with young people getting baptized. But during this lesson she just opened up and said that she really does want to be baptized. However, we need her parents permission for her to get baptized. When Mae Paw got baptized about a year and a half ago, they also told her that she was too young, but she prayed and had other people pray for her parent's hearts to be softened and eventually they said yes! So we talked about that with Sher Paw and she is praying for her parents to let her be baptized by March 24! We have been praying every day for her. I know that God can help her parent's hearts be softened again! Also, can I just say how grateful I am for the Plan of Salvation? I know I say this all of the time, but I love it so much. The whole Plan of Salvation is such a testament to me of how much God loves each and every one of his children. We are always worthy of God’s love. Even when we don’t feel like we are. There is nothing we could possibly do, to make God not love us. This doesn’t mean that we can just do whatever we want though. We still have to try to do the things that he has asked us to do. When we follow God’s commandments, we are showing him that we love him. 

I hope you have a great week! 

Here's a cool painting of Karen people in a library!

Gooood afternoon!

This week we had a cool lesson with some of our investigators. This family are relatives to some of our other investigators and that’s how we met them. So this week we went over to their house and they are always just super respectful. It’s super cool to see how the family works together. As soon as we come in, all of the kids in the house are just expected to come participate in the lesson, and they do. Their kids are all older teenagers and early 20’s and we can tell that some of them are more interested than others, but it’s really cool to see that they have so much respect for their parents that they will come and participate. Two of the children are always super involved. Their names are Day Mu and Eh Soe. Day Mu is a 21 year old girl and Eh Soe is a 18 year old boy. This week we taught them about the importance of the sabbath day and of coming to church. Day Mu and Eh Soe said they were going to come to church with their mom yesterday, but something happened and only their mom was able to come. But she came with her cousin so that was cool! Hopefully they will start progressing more soon!

Last week I started reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning again. Man I love that book. I’m reading it with a focus on diligence. I think Nephi is such a great example of diligence. He has so much faith and trust in the Lord, that he is always striving to do what’s right. Even when his brothers are giving him a hard time. He does whatever the Lord asks of him and I would say he’s always “anxiously engaged in a good cause”. I’ve really been thinking about how I can apply this more in my missionary work. Nephi always follows the promptings he gets from the spirit. My favorite thing about Nephi is that he never complains. He goes through some really hard stuff. He has to leave his home and go into the wilderness, then go back to get the plates, go back to the wilderness, then go back to his home to get Ishmael’s family, go back to the wilderness, build a boat without having the tools or ever having done it before, travel across the ocean to the promised land, and during all of this, his brothers are super mean to him and complain the whole time, they even try to kill him! And Nephi never complains. He places all of his trust in the Lord and is constantly thanking the Lord for everything. This is something I really want to apply more to my missionary work and to my life. It’s so easy to look at the negative things in our life and complain or murmur, but when we do that, we overlook the things that are good in our lives and the blessings we have been given. God has blessed us with so much, and he knows what’s best for us. I think Nephi was able to put so much trust in the Lord because he knew that he was doing what the Lord wanted him to do. He was trying his hardest to live the commandments and do what’s right. It’s the same for us in our lives. If we are doing our best and trying to do what God wants us to do, we don’t have to worry. We can put our full trust in God and know that no matter what happens, everything will be alright. 

Hope you have a great week! :)

Sister Brooklyn Hermansen

Sorry, I didn’t take pictures this week. 

Mom notes: There was something wrong with email this week and the one I sent Brooklyn didn't go through. It made me sad when I found out she thought I didn't send her an email. I tried re-sending it, but eventually had to copy and paste it as a reply to her general email so she could get it. By the time she received it, she had to leave and didn't get a chance to write back. Huge bummer for me! I'll have to wait till next week to get some questions answered. 

Since Brooklyn didn't send any pictures this time, I thought I'd add a couple. The following is a screenshot of how many times their Christmas caroling in Karen has been viewed, liked and shared. Holy moly! Look at those numbers!!!

The weather man was talking about the warm temperatures for January we've all been having. Minnesota got all the way up to 7! It's one of the coldest areas in the country still. 

Cute P-day picture--with jackets and no heavy coats. Guess that's what happens in Minnesota when your temperatures aren't below zero! hahaha

Private Concert

This week was super cool! We got in with some investigators that we haven’t seen for a while and had some good lessons with them! I’ll just tell about one of them!  

We had a cool lesson with Sue and Eh Hser. Sue has still been coming to church and everything. Eh Hser still hasn’t been coming to church because of all of her extracurricular stuff. We had a lesson on doing the basic things. Church, Praying, and Reading scriptures - CPR. We read the story in the Bible about the manna from heaven and how our spirits need spiritual food just like our bodies need food. Some things I really like from the Bible story - They have to collect the manna each day, they couldn’t store more than they needed. Just like how we need to feed our spirits every day. We can’t just read a ton of scriptures one day and call it good for a week. Another thing, on Saturdays, they were to gather enough for themselves for that day and Sunday. Everyone is different and just like we all eat different amounts of food, we each have different things going on in our life and need different amounts of spiritual nourishment. Some people only have time to read a few verses of the scriptures each day, and that’s okay. They will be blessed for making that effort. Sue and Eh Hser really liked the lesson and Sue committed to pray more, and Eh Hser committed to come to church. (Sadly neither one of them came to church yesterday haha) but we were able to promise Eh Hser some really cool blessings. We promised that if she will make the effort to come to church and do the things God asks of us, she will have help in school and all of her extracurricular stuff. I know that when we make God our number one priority, he will bless us in every aspect of our life. 

Something super cool this week, there was a bunch of super famous Karen singers from Myanmar in Minnesota for the last couple months, and we’ve met them a few times around town. So last Friday, the elders were tracting and tracted into the house where they were staying and they invited us to a party that night because they were leaving the next day. We went that night and it was so fun! They were just all making and eating food and singing songs about God. It was such a cool night. We basically got a private concert! Super sick. 

Anyway, gotta go! Love you all! 

The ties we made the elders out of Karen material for Christmas! Cheesiest district. 

Saw Black and I. Super famous Karen singer. He's so talented! I asked Brooklyn if he's the Karen version of Justin Beiber and she said, "Probably! They're super famous and it was sooooo cool!" haha

 

 District picture because Elder Evans is leaving the area to train a new Karen Elder this week. 

Someone else posted this picture on FB of them with one of the famous singers from Burma.

Brooklyn made her famous caramel brownies for Elder Evan's birthday! I'm sure he enjoyed them!

One more picture that was taken at the concert. They all sat in a big circle with lots of food in the middle. Brooklyn sent a video of the concert. It was really fun to see them all eating and enjoying the music together. She said they sang lots of songs about God--missionary appropriate!

2018!

Happy New Year! It’s so crazy to think that another year of life has gone by. 2017 was definitely the fastest year of my life! Sorry I haven’t emailed in a couple of weeks, it’s been crazy with holidays and stuff! 

On Saturday, a Karen member from our ward went through the temple for himself! He is the first Karen member from our ward to go through the temple. The elders translated everything into Karen for him so he could understand the promises he was making with our Father in Heaven. It was such a spiritual experience! He was so happy the entire time and just beaming! I know that temples are God’s house on earth and I’m so grateful for the blessings we receive from the temple. 

Something funny that happened, we went to a Karen New Year celebration and there was a ton of people there. They were doing different dances and performances in the front, and right to the side of where the performers were, they had a table with a ton of food that the dancers and stuff would get to eat at. We were just standing watching and a Karen guy came up to us and asked us to go eat up there! So us, 7 white missionaries in traditional Karen clothing, all go in front of the whole audience, right next to the live performances, and eat rice. At one point I turned around because our backs were towards everyone, and there were like 10 people standing taking pictures of us haha. During the whole celebration people were coming up to us and asking to take pictures of us or with us. It was weird, but a good way to contact people! Hahaha we found some pictures that people put on Facebook of us at this event, I’ll put them at the end of this email. 

Now I want to share a little experience I had that left a big impact on me. I’ve been a little bit sick the last couple of days and a couple of nights ago I could not stop coughing. It was the kind of cough that just feels like you’re coughing up shards of glass in your throat. I could not fall asleep for the life of me. I’m glad Sister Hicks fell asleep and didn’t wake up to my coughing, because I was up coughing for at least 2 hours. I was so exhausted and just wanted to sleep. As I was laying there being frustrated, I had a thought to say a prayer. So I prayed and told Heavenly Father that I was tired, my throat hurt, and I just wanted to sleep. I asked him if he would help me fall asleep. Almost immediately after saying amen, my throat felt so much better. It felt soothed! The next thing I remember is waking up to our alarm. I woke up and just had an overwhelming feeling of how much God loves each of his children and really cares about every aspect of our lives. It seems silly to pray to God to ask for help falling asleep, but he doesn’t think it’s silly. He loves us so much and cares about us more than we can even imagine. He wants to help us in our lives, sometimes all we have to do is ask! 

Love you all! I hope you’ve had a good holiday season!

A picture we found on Facebook of us eating rice!

The stuff on Elder William's face is thanakuh. It's Karen make up/face treatment. They wear it for fun, or as sunscreen, acne treatment, etc. I wonder what the ingredients are?!

Two of my favorite people! (Mae Paw and Sis. Hicks)

All of us with another one of my favorites! Da Da!

Mer Ler moved to Texas this week. :(

I had to add a picture of our Christmas Skype. I LOVE technology that allows us to see and feel her sweet spirit. I also love that our missionary countdown was down to 100 on Christmas day. We are now in the double digits!!! 

 Her view of us wasn't as sweet! hahaha 

 The picture below shows the items Brooklyn sent us for Christmas. She made the ties herself! They bought a tie at a Thrift store, cut it up to use as a pattern and the material is from a Karen skirt. She made them on P-days with some help from their Bishop's wife. I was so impressed! She bought the other items at a Karen market. The cute larger bags were for all the girls and the smaller bags were for all the grand daughters. The little red dress is for Noelle to wear at Brooklyn's Homecoming and the little white onesie with the sewn on tie is for baby Eric to wear! 

P.S. Brooklyn translated what she had written on the outside of the box for us. It said "from your favorite daughter" and a few more phrases that pretty much meant the same thing! hahaha

 I thought this was interesting. These are the name tags Brooklyn has used on her mission. In order: English, Mandarin Chinese with Sister Woo and Sister Ching, Burmese and then Karen since Burmese could be considered offensive to the Karen people. Crazy, huh?!