Sister Kaylee Brooks: BEST WEEK OF MY MISSION SO FAR!!!!!!!!!!

Email time!

Oh my goodness!!!!! I can't wait to tell y'all about my week. I have way too much to tell, so hopefully it's not long, but I'll try and make it a little shorter. It has been probably one of the best weeks on my mission. God is way too good to us and I am amazed at how many miracles we have been able to see. The Chippenham YSA (Young Single Adult) area is blessed!!!

The joys of working with YSA are that you get to go to family home evening! We were able to have a quick spiritual message and then played some crazy weird chair game that my team dominated in. That was cool! It's also cool when they let you know Thursday that they want all the missionaries to speak in church, there are 5 of us total, and you only have to speak for about 4-5 minutes each. Sacrament meeting was the best yesterday :)

Hermana Rodriguez, a temple square missionary that came outbound here, I LOVE HER TO DEATH, had to leave to go back to temple square on Wednesday morning. :( She stayed the night at the mission home on Tuesday night and President and Sister Smith asked us if we would be able to stay with her. We, of course, totally accepted the offer. We had dinner with them and then went to a baptism with them. Holy cow, I love them so much. President Smith is seriously so darn funny and doesn't sugar coat things. We were laughing the whole time we were in the car. We had a wonderful night with them and went to bed with a huge thunder/lightning storm.

Holy cow, Wednesday was amazing!! We didn't have time to plan for our day because we stayed the night at the Mission home, so we just planned on walking around campus pretty much all day. Our phone didn't have service at the mission home, so as we were driving away, we saw that we had a voicemail. Elder and Sister Moe are the senior couple that works in our ward. They are the cutest ever!!! They go around and work with inactives and help the ward with their family history. Anyway, they gave us a referral and told us to contact this girl they ran into, her name is Kaylee... So she's even cooler. She was moving and going out of town for a few weeks, so we decided we would try to help her move. We jumped at the opportunity and went to her house. We were driving down to her house and the GPS took us down a one way street, my life flashed before my eyes, so we decided we needed to park and we will walk the rest of the way. As we walked to her house, we met this guy named Rashawn. Holy miracle!. He has had a really hard life and just said earlier that day he wanted to learn more and get closer to God. We talked to him, set him on date and set a return appointment. We know God wanted us to meet him because if we didn't go down that one way street, we wouldn't have walked to meet him. God works in mysterious ways haha. Long story short, Kaylee wasn't home, but her roommate gave us her number. We called her and she was so excited to hear from us and set an appointment with us for when she got back!

Right when we were done talking to Kaylee’s roommate, we checked the phone and we had about 6 messages from people asking us to meet with them today. THAT NEVER EVER HAPPENS!! Tuesday afternoon, we texted a few members to come out contacting with us, so it was awesome because we were able to have a member at every single lesson!! We were booked; we seriously had one lesson right after another! So, for the rest of the day, we just sat at the church building and people came to us. It was AWESOME!!

The other night we met a guy on campus named Aubrey. We started talking to him and sharing a brief summary of the restoration and wow it was awful. We were so jumbled up and the member we had with us just went on some random subject.. Aubrey has a religion already, but he surprisingly agreed to meet with us again. We met with him the next day and asked him, why did you meet with us again? He said he felt bad for us and he made a commitment to meet with us so he was going to stick with it. So in a roundabout way, he said he felt sorry for us. Anyway, we shared the restoration with him and as we started sharing the Joseph Smith story and reciting the first vision, his faced changed, he was so engaged and the spirit was SO STRONG!! We asked him if he believed that could ever happen and he said he knew it could. He said he wanted to learn more, be baptized and come to church. He was out of town this weekend, but should hopefully be coming to FHE tonight. It was the coolest lesson.

The mission just got a new projector, so the elders had the idea to get all of our investigators, less actives and anyone else who wants to come and see “Meet the Mormons”. We did that Saturday night. We had a pretty good turn out and had lots of food and were able to have some of our investigators learn a little more of what we believe. It was a really good idea!

Okay, I'm sorry this is a mile long, but wow, I could go on about my week. It has truly been amazing!! We have been able to set 6 people on date this week that are pretty solid! We have a possible baptism this weekend, #miracle, I'll explain her story later next week if it happens. We have a definite one next weekend. His name is Marcus, (story will come next week as well) and a few potential good people on the 20th. We and the elders have so many people on date right now and we are just trying to help them learn and grow more and get them excited to be baptized. Our mission is doing crazy good with baptisms! This past weekend we had 13 and next weekend we will hopefully have 18. It's awesome!! The Lord is blessing the VRM!!!!!! (Virginia Richmond Mission)

I can't tell you how much I love my mission. It has been by far the best thing for me and has blessed me so much. There is no place I would rather be than serving in Virginia right now!

Scripture: Matthew 16:19- I am so grateful for the chance we have to be sealed for eternity in this earth. I am grateful we can be with our families together and we have the knowledge of the plan of salvation.

I love y'all so so so so much. Have a wonderful August!!!!

Love Sister Brooks :)