Sister Kaylee Brooks: Happy Hallo"clean"! :)

Emailing at the library

Happy Halloween!!

I hope y'all have a wonderful and safe evening!! Our mission president doesn't want us out on the streets tonight, so we have to be in our apartments by 5. Because some missionaries’ apartments are super disgusting, we are having hallo"clean" (our mission president is pretty clever.) We are going to be in our apartments cleaning all the goblins and spider webs away. Hehe

This week has been really good; we are starting to really build up our teaching pool. The struggle with YSA is they will show they are really interested and we get a first lesson with them. We get their contact information and set up a return appointment and they either don't show up, won't answer their phone or try and be clever and give us the wrong phone number or we call/text them and they just block us. (It happens daily) BUT, in the midst of it all, we are finding really solid and cool people right now. Let me tell you about two:

Kayla, she is so cool. She was walking on campus and we commented how much we liked her sweatshirt. She turned around and was really happy and told us how she got it on sale and all this funny stuff. We, of course, took advantage because we had her engaged in conversation and she hadn't run away yet. We then started talking to her about religion and she commented on how she had a friend who just got back from her mission and is a Mormon. (You HARDLY get that in Virginia. We are lucky if they know about our church.) She was religious but wanted to explore different religions and find out what best fits her. She was dealing with roommate drama, so she couldn't stay very long, but we set up a return appointment. She actually texted us back and met with us a few days later!! It was really awesome. We went through the restoration with her and she really liked it. She said it all made sense! We set up another return appointment and will be meeting with her again this week :)

Sarah. She was a cool miracle. We were out with a member last night and weren't finding much success. We talked to people on campus for a whole hour and they would either straight ignore us or we would talk to them for a little and then they would just make up an excuse and leave. Super lame. We decided to try a different part of campus and walk around a little more. We walked by Sarah and said hi. She was super happy and bubbly and said hi right back. (Again, that doesn't happen very often) We started talking to her about her religious belief. She had little to no belief in God and Jesus Christ. We really focused on how much God loves her and is aware of her. Our member, Colton, bore super strong testimony of how much God does love her and how we are His children. She looked at us and said, "Wow, I really needed to hear this." We set up another time to see her this upcoming week. She seems really cool; we are super excited to meet with her again :)

We had Ward missionary meeting this week. We just had all our ward missionaries released and a whole bunch of new ones called. Our bishop is amazing. He is so missionary minded and wants to help us in any way that he can. We got together and talked about how we can further the work in our ward and how we can all be member missionaries. I am so grateful to be able to be in this ward. I love it here in Chippy.

Ward missionaries, missionaries, ward mission leader
and our bishop and his wife.

We had some major drama this week as well... we were supposed to go on overnight exchanges with the Powhatan sisters this week, but we ended up just going to their area for a few hours due to some drama with a recent convert in the Ward. She called us telling us it'd be the last time we'd talk to her as she was going to kill herself. She was kicked out of her house because she stole a big amount of money. The Boswells spent the day with her trying to help her find a house and calm her down but she ended up running away from them twice... resulting in us walking around downtown trying to find her. She threatened to jump off a bridge by the freeway (she posted a video on Facebook and some members saw it and called the cops). After the cops searched for her for an hour, they took her to the mental institution where she has been ever since. Thank goodness she is safe now!! So that was stressful... but we had a good time in Powhatan! Sister John's and Johnson are so cute.

Scripture of the week: Mosiah 2:12- "I say unto you that as I have been suffered to spend my days in your service, even up to this time, and have not sought gold nor silver nor any manner of riches of you". We have been reading Mosiah with a recent convert and this scripture really stuck out to me. I love how our church is not a paid ministry. We don't go out seeking for money and doing things because of money. We do it because we love the Lord and we want to serve Him.

I love y'all so much!!

Love Sister Brooks :)

I can't remember if I mentioned we are making a music video....

hahaha this is a screenshot of one of the parts

Sister Johnson and I, rescued a turtle.

Jessie and us at Costco.

Colton, one of our ward missionaries.

Virginia waste service is cool.
Hahahaha, I just thought it would be funny.

This is what a normal wall in Virginia looks like.

We were super lame and didn't wear costumes to the Halloween party.
The Elders suggested we switch name tags. We did.
Say Hi to Elder Genduso and Elder Kauer.