Sister Kaylee Brooks: Wonderful week of miracles! Watch out for guys who speak in Shakespeare language and need a kiss by midnight! :)

Emailing from the church

Hello sweet family and friends!!

I hope y'all had a wonderful conference. I loved and enjoyed every minute of it. I received a lot of revelation for our investigators and for myself on how I can become a better missionary. I am so excited to apply and teach our investigators and share this wonderful light, happiness and truth with the wonderful people of Powhatan. One of the many talks I enjoyed from conference was the one from D. Todd Christofferson. He talked all about fathers and it really made me start thinking, and of course missing, my sweet dad. I am beyond grateful and can't even express my gratitude and thanks for my dad. He has and always will be my biggest hero. I sure love you dad!!! Thank you for being the best role model, example and dad a girl could ever ask for!! :) That talk really touched my heart. There were so many other wonderful talk. I would talk about each, but that would take centuries.

After the Saturday session, it really made me think and made me sad how many people had "opposing" votes against the prophet and his apostles. It made me really thing and realize how lucky we are to have a wonderful prophet, Thomas S. Monson, here on this earth, to be our guidance, mouth piece from our Heavenly Father, and good example and teacher. I love him and know he is called from God and has the power and authority to lead and guide us. We need to always support and sustain him and follow his wonderful direction and guidance.

This week has been such a wonderful week. We were able to see a lot of miracles and teach a lot of lessons!!! It's been kind of frustrating the past 3-4 weeks. We haven't been seeing very many miracles or finding very many new people to teach. We have been really trying to be effective while we tract because it doesn't do much good when we just walk around and don't get any lessons or help anyone. Sister Mailata and I talked last week and decided we are going to work so hard this week and teach many lessons. We just need to be obedient, work hard and continue to be diligent in God’s work. Our mission, yes you may think it's strange... But it works, we always invite everyone to be baptize on the first lesson and every lesson after that, and we try to get them to work toward a specific date. I have been pretty hesitant about setting people on date the first lesson, but decided to work on that this week. Here are a few miracles of this week:

1. We were tracting last Monday and saw this guy outside smoking in his front porch. We went and approached him and explained who we were and what we do. His name was Adrian. He said, "Oh, I've met a lot of those boys, they are like elders or something?" We nodded. "Yeah, they would come to my house every once in a while and try to talk to me about Jesus, but I never gave them the time of day." Instant feeling of, oh great... Haha. He then mentioned something about Joseph Smith. What a great lead into the restoration- he helped us start teaching and he didn't even realize how much he helped us ;) He then told us to share our message with him. He wanted to hear it and would give us the time of day. I'm not sure if he said that because we were girls or he really wanted to hear it. J We started right away teaching. As we got to the Book of Mormon, he said he heard about it and always wanted one. He asked where to get it. We told him we had one we could give him. At the end of the lesson we invited him to be baptized on the 30 of April. He said if he came to know it was true, he would totally be baptized. We asked him if there was another time we could come by and teach him more. He said "can I give you a specific time and day to come so y'all don't drive all the way out here?" Shocked he said that, we told him that's exactly what we wanted to do. He told us to come back on Thursday at 6:30. Well, Thursday rolled around, we got a member and knocked on his door... NO ANSWER. His lights were on and his car was home but he didn't answer, so that was a bummer. We decided to try him again on Friday. We were on exchanges that day and Sister Patching and Mailata went and tried him. He apologized for not being there cause "something came up" but they were able to teach him and talk more with him.

2. Miracle 2. It was Wednesday morning and we had just gotten extra miles at the beginning of this month of March, yay us, and had a few extra to spare because it was the end of the month. We decided to go to an area that we don't normally go to because of the miles. We got to this one street and off we went. We were tracting for about an hour and nothing was happening, it was spring break this week so TONS of people weren't home. We were heading toward one of the last houses before we had to leave. They had this really big dog who was barking like crazy. (Sister Mailata is terrified of dogs and almost jumped on top of me she was so scared) I decided we couldn't let this dog scare us! Wee had to get to this house. I felt really calm and knew we needed to do it. When we arrived at the door, this sweet lady answered. Her name is Pat. She invited us right in!!!!! She explained that she was home from work today because she wasn't feeling too well. She said she hardly takes days off so it was a "coincidence", (More like God leading us to her, that she was home.. Because she hardly is.) She told us she would love to hear our message. She was so excited that we gave her a Book of Mormon and told us she would love to meet with us again.

3. One day we were just sitting at home eating lunch when we got a text from a member. He told us he knew someone we needed to go tract into. They really needed happiness in their life and the girl needed someone to talk to. He gave us the address and we grabbed our stuff and went to go find this mystery person. When we arrived at the house, this sweet and really pretty lady answered the door. We explained who we were and what we did. She got really excited and said she would love to talk with us, but someone was coming to look at her house so that moment wasn't a good time. She gave us her number and said she would love to hear more from us. That was really cool. Member referrals are the best!!!

We went on exchanges this week, I usually don't look forward to exchanges, even though I end up having fun, but I was so excited for this one to get away for a little. I went with Sister Schenck and Sister Madsen and went to their area. They are in VCU campus, so we would just go around and talk to random people about Jesus Christ. It is really fun. Funniest thing, we were just walking around campus and this older funny guy, he reminds me of this guy named Doug at DSU, Ty and Chris will know who I am talking about. We said hi to him and he stopped us. He looked right at our name tag and said, "ugh, never mind you're Mormon." We were curious why he said that, so we turned around and asked him what he needed. He start speaking in some weird Shakespeare language telling us he needed to find someone to kiss at midnight. He started getting closer to us and we took the cue we had to leave. We were laughing way too hard as we walked away. We had a really cool miracle though. We were talking to this one guy and we noticed a girl was standing right behind us just waiting. Once we were done talking to him, we turned around and Sister Schenck noticed that she had met her a few weeks back. She told us how depressed and sad she was feeling and needed a little "pick me up". We went and sat down with her at a table and started talking about the restoration. She LOVED every second of it. She really related to Joseph Smith and wanted us to keep telling her more. Out of nowhere, she said, “I don't have anything to do this weekend, I wish I did.” BINGO!!! We told her about conference and how she would love it. She was so excited to go and learn more and to see that we did have a prophet. I texted our STL's last night and they said she went to General conference and LOVED it. It made me so happy!!

We ran a 5k today woot woot!! I almost died, but I'm still alive baby!! Haha it was really fun. We ran it with our zone, so it was fun to be with the sisters :)

Scripture of the week: Mosiah 2:17- I loved the woman's conference and the theme of service. We are truly serving God when we serve those around us. We need to strive to always find those who need our help.

I love y'all so much, have a wonderful week!!

Love Sister Brooks!