You experience every emotion in one week as a missionary!

Hello Family and Friends!

This week has been fun, crazy, weird, frustrating, spiritual and tiring. You experience every emotion in one week as a missionary I swear. haha. To get the fun news out of the way, we had transfer calls Saturday. We were scared out of our pants. The AP's will call you between 6-10. If they call you, you are getting transferred, if you don't hear anything from them, you're safe. So we had 4 hours of completely horror, lucky us WE DIDN'T GET THAT CALL!!!!! We are so happy we are both staying here and get to spend another transfer and Christmas together :)

Last Monday, we had lunch at our Stake President's House. He is so funny and he looks exactly like Mr. Bean. Ahh man, too funny!! But it was a lot of fun, we had it with our whole zone. We had chicken and hamburgers and all those expensive things missionaries can't afford. It was great! After we ate, we had zone p-day. We just went to the church and played a bunch of different games. Not to brag, but I smoked everyone in speed.. twice. holla! 

On Tuesday, we went to the care center, We went and sang Christmas songs to random people. We sounded awful but we made a few people cry. I don't know if we sounded that bad or they were touched, we will pretend they were touched and loved it haha. 

Vicki, just had shoulder surgery, so we have been helping her out a little bit with cleaning. She tore her rotator Cuff and has been in a lot of pain for over a year and just decided to go for it. We have been helping her get meals from the ward and doing everything we can to help her. She is so sweet and doesn't ever ask for help, but us missionaries can get the job done fast ;)

On Thursday and Friday, we had Sister Fuhriman come and spend the day and a half with us. Her companion went to her mid-mission meeting (a training/meeting you go to when you're half way done with your mission) so she needed someone to be with, so she came with us! it was fun to be with her again but really weird to have 3 people in lessons and sleeping in a tiny room. It was really fun though.

Friday night we had our ward Christmas party. The girl in charge went above and beyond. I will send pictures. But she did a polar express theme and wow it was amazing. We helped decorate almost all day. The party was really fun and great food of course! 

We met this guy named Wayne the other day. He is around 40 years old. We went back the other night to teach him, he was excited and ready to learn more, but his girlfriend that he lives with is atheist... haha. He invited us in and his girlfriend was sitting in the front room on the couch, and she started yelling at him and us saying we weren't allowed in the house because it was her house too. She was not nice at all.  He told us we better leave so he could calm her down. ugh. He was so interested in learning but we just need to soften his girlfriend up-  my dream is to baptize an atheist. Oh and Wayne was the first white guy we have taught in the last week. I love Virginia. hahaha

We had two AMAZING miracles this week. We were teaching this girl named Nicole and she was looking for a church. We were teaching her the restoration and came to the part about Joseph Smith. She sat there with a stunned look. We paused for a second and she was like "no way, I'm just like Joseph Smith, I have the same question." Then we started talking about the Book of Mormon and how it's another testimony of Jesus Christ. She looked at it and said, "no way? I have that exact book in my Amazon cart." We told her she could have the book and she was so excited and said she would start reading it that night. It was so awesome. We hope she continues to have this much excitement as we continue to teach her. 

We then were tracting and getting very frustrated because people were not interested at all and were starting to get more rude as we went along. We were about to give up and go somewhere else but I saw this house and knew we had to try it. This sweet lady answered the door and let us right in. We just sat there looking at each other and didn't know what to do, this doesn't happen often. haha But we walked in and talked with her for awhile. She told us she has met with missionaries before, 8 years ago, but they were transferred and she moved a few years later and hasn't talked with them again. She was so excited to see us and gave us a bunch of food to take home and invited us over Wednesday to come roast marshmallows and be with her kids that are coming home for college. It was awesome. We are excited to meet with her again. She is best friends with David Osmond, I think that's his name. But it was so amazing and definitely little Christmas miracles! 

Scripture: Doctrine and Covenants 104:80- it just says and means to me, if I am diligent, humble and exercise faith in prayer, the Lord will soften the hearts of those around me and deliver them to me so I will be able to share this wonderful message and Gospel with them! 

I love being a missionary, it is the best thing in the world!!! 

I love y'all so much, I hope y'all have a wonderful week and know I love y'all so much :) :)

Love Sister Brooks :)