Busy missionary work makes for a fast week!

Sorry, No Sister Tadd with me right now (while emailing). She had to go to the restroom.

Hello sweet family and friends

This week has gone by so fast, holy cow!! I seriously blinked my eyes and now it’s already preparation day!! YAY :) This week has been crazy, busy and fun, so that's why time went by so fast. I love it when it’s busy!! 

We have been tracting so much these past two transfers, but we have met so many cool people and many who are progressing very well. But of course, there are those few who don't progress and aren't too interested and we have to drop them. It’s so sad but it’s not their time right now. It will come soon though :) 

We met this sweet girl tracting earlier this week. Her name is Michel'le (pronounced Miss Chalet). She was really excited to see us. She told us she met with missionaries about eight months ago, right before they took the sisters out of this area, and hasn't seen any sense. She is really interested in learning and should be having a baby any day now and wants to have the baby grow up in a church. She is so sweet. She was definitely a little miracle :)

We also have been meeting with this 17-year-old named Malik, but we call him Leek. We also tracted into him. When we first met him, he was kind of hesitant, but we set a return appointment with him and started with the lessons. We realized that he knew NOTHING. He was asking us who God and Jesus were, so we have had to take it really slow with him. After every lesson, he sets a return appointment and will text us the day of our appointment to see if we are coming still. He has progressed so much the last two weeks. We have been teaching him a lot about prayer and at first he didn’t want to pray in front of us at all, but now he asks to pray. His prayers are so sweet and sincere and he always makes a point to pray for us and our safety. He is a nice guy. We have taken some laurels in our ward to his lessons. He has been liking that a lot, haha. He is a really nice kid. 

We met this guy a few weeks ago named Brandon.  He is in his 30's, and he has had a really hard life. We started just talking and getting to know him. He then mentioned something about the Mormon church and we were so confused because we didn't tell him anything about us being Mormon. He then explained he knew who we were because he grew up as a Mormon and was baptized when he was eight. He fell away from the church a little after that because he went through so many hard things with his parents and he didn't believe God was there anymore. He is now a Jew and has a CRAZY big brain and knows everything about every church on this earth. He is very smart. Anyway, we have been trying to get him to come to church for the past three weeks and he texted Friday night and said he was coming to church and HE DID!!! He said he really enjoyed it and wants to start coming more. He has a little boy and he is dating this girl who doesn’t have any religious beliefs and she has two kids, so he wants us to come over one day and talk with them! We are really excited :)

We have been teaching Jesse, Jo's boyfriend, the blind lady we take walking. The Elders were teaching him, but he was in our area and too far away from them so they gave him to us. It’s been about a month now and we just started the lessons over again because he had no idea what we were talking about half the time. I am not sure what the Elders taught him.  He said we explain things way better than the elders do and go at his pace, so he is really liking to meet with us instead of the elders, haha :), We have him on date for baptism, but because he is living with his girlfriend, he can’t be baptized until they are married. But they honestly are more like roommates than actual boyfriend/girlfriend. We talked about marriage with them, and because they are both on social security for their money, if they get married, their money will split in half and they won’t have enough money. So marriage is out of the question right now. But, he is so ready for baptism. We talked to President Wilson about it and we are going to have someone that is in the mission presidency come to a lesson with us this week to see their situation and to see if he can get baptized or not. Pray that he can, he is so ready!! But if he can’t, we will understand!! 

Now... for the funny stuff. . . . 
We just got out of a meeting Thursday night and we had about 20 minutes until curfew, We decided to tract really fast and hoped to find someone who was really cool and interested. We found this sweet girl and she invited us to come back, so we were excited. Then.. we knock on this last door. This big old black guy comes out and just starts YELLING at us and telling us how "john smith"
hahahahaha, was a false prophet and he was on drugs. He then started saying some random things and just bashing on the church. He said the only reason we are out here talking about Jesus is because we are getting paid to. We told him that we didn’t get a penny for doing this and we had to actually pay to be out here. That made him quiet... for a little. Sister Tadd and I were getting so frustrated. I prayed so hard after we talked with him and just thanked Heavenly Father for not allowing me to punch him in the face. Ugh, he made me so dang upset!

We were at dinner the other night and this little boy (he is 5 years old) was chasing his little 3-year-old sister around the house trying to kiss her. Next thing I know he LUNGES toward me and just lays a big wet one on my cheek. I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my life. He was dying of laughter too and his parents were so embarrassed. 

Oh man, y’all will laugh at this one. We were driving down to Monica’s and I saw this guy walking down the street dancing, with this dress on and bows in his hair. I told Sister Tadd to pull over right now. I just had to give him a mormon.org card. I couldn’t waste this opportunity. I walked up to him and boy, he was more of a girl then I was. But I gave him a card and he kindly accepted, then, as we were walking off, it blew out of his hands and he started running for it. HAHAHAHAHA that’s all I can say, I died laughing! I love being a missionary! 

With Hermana Unga

I went on exchanges this week with Hermana Unga, I think Heavenly Father is trying to tell me something because I went to their area again and (tried) to speak Spanish again. This is 3/4 now. It’s a sign. It was so much fun though, I had a blast with her. 

With Hermana Ward

We had district meeting this week and I had to give a training about bearing our testimony more frequently. It really made me realize how important sharing our testimonies are. They are so powerful and we need to always strive to share it with others. Go read the scriptures in Doctrine & Covenants 62:3. I LOVE IT! One of the Elders gave another training and he said something that REALLY stuck with me. He said (I can’t remember the exact phrasing but something like this), Our parents gave us our first name, we can do what we want with it and use it how we would like, but with our last names, we share them with our family, we need to live up and honor our last name and not make a bad reputation to the last name. But for the next year and a half or two years, we are wearing Christ’s name on our chest.  We need to do everything we can to be the best representative we can of Him. Tell everyone about Him and show our love for Him. I loved that!  It really made me think to make sure I really act and be a good example.

Our mission had 506 baptisms this year of 2015, HOW COOL IS THAT?!!!! 

Scripture of the week: Romans 8:5, it says even though we are sinners, Christ still died for us and loves us so much. He loves us so much and went through everything for us even though we are sinners, THAT IS SO AMAZING!!!!! WE ARE SO LUCKY AND BLESSED.


Man I love being a missionary!  It’s such an amazing blessing. 
I LOVE Y’ALL SO MUCH!!! Have an amazing week :)

Love Sister Brooks

Christmas Tree that we helped decorate

With Gina