October 27, 2015

Hello everyone! Well some of you may be wondering why I didn’t email yesterday. We had interviews with our mission president so we got to have our pday today instead just for this week. The interviews went well President Miller is great! He is funny and smart and will do great things for the mission! In my interview he said "when we get pad’s..." so fingers crossed that we get them soon it would be so nice! 

Well honestly its been such a long week I cant even remember half of what we did.

We had zone conference which was fun we got to see everyone in the zone and got a training from President Miller. one thing i loved that he spoke on was that "the sheep are important, but what would we do if we lost the shepherd?" i just thought it was very motivational. 

at zone conference we got these things installed in our cars called the "tiwis" they suck. they track  our driving and speak to us/tell us to "check our speed" when we go more than 10 over. they are so annoying but hey safety first right? 

we had the primary program this week it was nice to listen to the little kiddies sing they have such sweet testimonies. Sundays are so stressful here. at home Sundays were so relaxing and a day to rejuvenate  now they are hectic and I’m so stressed about making sure people come and have a good time-the live of a missionary. 

sis w and i went to go see Danielle (from Wendy’s) she said she was coming to church and was so excited she had a ride and everything... but she was sick and didn’t come.... ugh!!! that was a big let down but i really hope we can meet with her this week and she can come next week to church. 

well Halloween is this week and so we have a branch trunk or treat which should be super fun, I’m getting to know the members really well which is fun and on Halloween all missionaries have to be in at 6 so sis w and i are going to party! just kidding we will probably eat candy/cookies, regret how much candy/cookies we ate, then go to bed early! Yay! 

Key principle :

Hope is abiding CONFIDENCE that the Lord will be with us in our work 

Have confidence in the future and you will have hope. 

Moroni 10:20 

Everyone be safe and have a great week! Love you all

XOXO

-Sister Brooks 

Oct. 19, 2015

Hello Everyone!

 Well I don’t have a ton of time this week but just a few things my mom is maybe setting up a blog for me so you can ask her about that. Also I feel like not much of what I say can top the news of Lauren and Hunter getting engaged! Like really I am so sappy (sad I won’t be there but so happy for you) for you two! 

Last pday we went to the submarine base museum it was super neat we went with most of the zone it was the first nuclear sub. 

On Tuesday we went to "return and report" which is a training meeting for all the greenies! The meeting was alright but the best part is that we got to go to the temple! It was so awesome we drove with some elders from our zone and one of them I sat to on the plan ride to Boston he is funny Elder Black he is a straight cowboy from Southern Utah and him and his comp Elder Packer, love to make fun of me and we had the "privilege" of spending 5 hours in the car with them... it was interesting.

I taught my very first real investigator that I found this week it was super scary and the lesson wasn’t the best she asked so many intense question but hey we can always get better right? 

How is big mama doing? I thought about her the other day because we go visit this really old lady who is a member she is so cute her name is Hazel but she always tells us how strange mysterious things keep happening like things go missing etc. but I’m pretty sure it’s just because she forgets things that she moves it’s kind of funny. 

So this week we were having a really rough day because literally everyone kept cancelling on us we planned out our week/day so well and all our plans fell through... I was feeling pretty down so I made sister Williams take us to get a frosty from Wendy’s because frostys cure everything right? Anyway the lady taking our order said how cute we looked because we were matching (which we don’t do on purpose it just happens) anyway I told her we were missionaries for our church, she asked what church and i told her, she said she had been searching for a church to go to ever since she moved from Virginia and she liked how we had Jesus Christ in our church name because she believes in Christ. Anyway we got her info and boom! Miracles people Miracles! 

Okay also everyone has jeeps here and it kills me because I want a jeep so bad!

also we go on exchanges this week so i am going to Norwich for a day it should be interesting  

key principle:

Be grateful for the plan of salvation and learn all you can! 

seeing people without the knowledge of the gospel is so crazy like I can’t imagine my life without it i see how lost they are and confused I don’t know how i could make it through some days without it. trials are easier with the knowledge of the gospel and the plan Heavenly Father created for us! 

All my love,

Sophie

Hello family and friends!

   It's been so good to hear from all of you! I loved seeing the photos from conference weekend of the family and the pictures with Hunter's parents I have to say my favorite picture was the one where everyone is wearing one of my shirts..... its a good thing I'm across the country.

Alright some things I did this week

    I learned how to do digital missionary work, it is so cool we basically go online to an open chat room and just talk with people from all over the world about the gospel its so neat i talked to people from Russia, France, Chile, Argentina, Hawaii, California, everywhere! Then if they want to learn more we Skype them and teach them the first discussion. Bringing the gospel to all the world! It would be a lot nicer if we got Ipads they said they are working on getting them for us.. so maybe soon!

this week was suppose to be a hurricane but we just got the side effects from it-  very humid, really muggy, lots of rain, kind of chilly, tons of wind!

Our branch president called us on Tuesday and told us we might be getting a building in Westerly so that our branch members don’t have to drive 20 minutes to Groton to go to church. So he asked us to go and clean it. Its a tiny store front that we will transform into a chapel. He asked us to just go sweep it. So we went on Wednesday and it was so disgusting and needed so much more than a good sweeping, so we cleaned like the whole day but it looks great now... well not great but better.

   The the next day was an open house for the anyone who wanted to see what the building was going to be. We had a bunch of people come and complain. But there as a lady who came with her great granddaughter... yup great granddaughter. Anyway she was really interested in the church and basically said she wants to be baptized! So I guess it was all worth it just for her, Hopefully we will meet with her this week.

 

  Well GENERAL CONFERENCE was so GOOOOOOD! Seriously so good. Sister Williams and I went to members homes to watch the first three sessions and one of the members Kate, who is a recent convert, sent mom a pic of Sister Williams and I. in between the sessions on Saturday we went to the Clyde cider mill it was fun we got some hot cider so yummy! For the last session we went to the Groton chapel because we told some people we would go and watch with them there.... but they didn’t even show up :( we asked some recent converts to go and watch we even brought activities for her daughter and she told us she was coming, we gave her directions and everything we could possibly do and she didnt come!!!!! Honestly it was so upsetting. Then we went this week and visited a less active couple at their home, they are so great, they love the scriptures and know that the church is true but they say they "aren’t  the church going type" so we invited them to come watch conference and said we would meet them at the chapel to watch the last session they seemed very interested and they said they were for sure going.... but they didnt come either and if you watched the last session of conference you would understand why this is so devastating because D. Todd Christofferson's talk was made for this couple. He spoke all about the importance of going to church and "uniting our selves in the body of christ." ugh!!!

everyone who we are with emailing just made fun of me for writing so much so i apologize its so long but you all know i cant tell a short story.

okay key principles for this week

1. "bring one soul unto Christ and how great shall be your joy"

 the most important person that we convert to the church is ourselves our conversion is facilitated by going and participating in church- be more converted, fellowship others at church.

2. i think that everyone should do Devin G. Durrant's challenge and "ponderize" one verse of scripture a week. we need to know the scriptures better so... family each week pick a scripture and tell me so i can learn it too and it can be my scripture for the week. I will start you off this week ponderize the scripture Mosiah 2:41 its so good!

also it was so neat to hear all the talks about women and our important role and responsibility in the church and how much we are capable of.

alright well thats all for this week love and miss you all! Have a wonderful week

xoxo- Sophie

Oct. 12, 2015

Dear Family & Friends,

Well thank you all for your emails this week I really do love reading how everyone is doing keep me updated! 

Well it has been a busy week, each time i think ill write less than last time then i think about everything i did this week and how can i not write about it all?! seriously the weeks are so long and jam packed!

alright well lets see this week was seriously full of so much disappointment, i dont mean to sound pessimistic but it was kind of rough, just to name a few.... 

the meeting to get our own building in westerly got postponed till Nov 4! ugh! we sat through a 2 hour long town council meeting (super boring) just to have them postponed our hearing :(

we had a recent convert temple trip on Saturday and one of our recent converts was all ready to go she had her names to do, we arranged a ride and we would get to join her at the temple and what’s better than that i was so excited?! then that morning she totally bailed on us! she also bailed that Sunday cause she wasn’t feeling well so we had to do her yw lesson with no preparation at all (good thing there are literally two girls in the YW.) 

we had a meeting set up with one of our potential investigators, which was surprising cause when we called her she said her family told her not to associate with Mormons but she said she was still interested. she called as we were planning her lesson and canceled :( i was so excited to teach her but it’s okay cause she did reschedule to this coming Tuesday! Fingers crossed!

Sometimes we get referrals from church headquarters of ppl requesting a BOM or bible or a visit from the missionaries and we got one this week! i was really excited and hopeful. We stopped by 3 times and the third time someone answered! We explained who we were and why we had come, they laughed and said someone must have recommended them as a joke they laughed and shut the door..... not funny.... but as we drove away all upset i started to laugh and sister Williams looked at me and i said i thought it was sort of funny that someone did it as a joke like not funny for us but kind of funny if we weren’t the missionaries. I’ve learned you have to let stuff go or else everything would suck! 

We had a zone meeting this week it was fun to get together with all the missionaries in our zone. our challenge is to find three new investigators each week which in our mission is like really, really hard.... like right now we only have one investigator so we have to try extra hard and talk to everyone! 

Okay sorry one more bad thing everyone has cats here including our only investigator, Barbara, okay so her cat died this week and we were there with her when she got the call. some may think its only a cat but no this cat was like her best friend. it was super sad and she hasn’t met with us because she is so depressed, which is unfortunate. i already don’t like cats but this made me dislike them even more also if you didn’t know i am super allergic to cats so every time we go somewhere with cats, which is everywhere, my eyes swell up so bad i can barely see and i sneeze like crazy, but hey its all part of the experience right...? 

okay sorry for the negativity here is the GOOD from this week!

okay so this week i hit one month!!!! yay! on that day i got a package from my lovely mother with some cute Halloween stuff and yummy chocolate treats! my comp took me to Mel’s creamery and we got ice-cream! i got graham central station flavor seriously so good it’s like speculous ice-cream Emma would love it! 

a little bit about sister Williams everywhere we go people tell her she looks like brook shields which is pretty true, i think it’s mostly because of her eyebrows but anyway we teach this 10 year old big black kid who is pretty funny and while we were talking to him he paused and said "sister Williams can i touch your eyebrows they look so comfy" it was hilarious... sister W is also super competitive and one of the members we have dinner with invited her to complete the grinder challenge the challenge was to eat this humongous grinder (sandwich) which no one in her family had ever done before... and these people are big black people who love their food like really love it! no one had ever done it before and sister Williams did! I couldn’t believe it i could only finish one quarter of it! it took her two hours and lots of tums that night but she did it! (let’s just say we did not work out the next morning)

so since we didn’t get to go to the temple we went with some members to the christening of a submarine! a ton of people here work at the sub base/ build/ engineer the subs. it  was seriously so cool... very long but really cool Groton Connecticut has the biggest sub base in the country and guess who christened the sub?! Michelle OBAMA! cool uh? you should look up the video of her doing it took her three tries but she finally broke the bottle the subs name is the USS Illinois and it is sponsored by Michelle Obama. also this Sunday a convert who used to live in the area but moved away called and invited us to dinner at their beach house so i had Sunday dinner on the beach it was awesome! 

Coming up

I’m so sad i didn’t get to go to the temple this week but I get to go tomorrow for return and report, a big meeting with all the new missionaries and we get to go to the temple! Also we have to go to the dentist this week because sis Williams has a cavity!

i know it may seem like it’s all fun and games here but it’s really not a mission is hard work and it comes with lots of up and downs. I’m lucky to be here in this wonderful area and yup fall is here just gets better and better the leaves are gorgeous!

KEY PRINCIPLE

this week is about how being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is an everyday thing not just Sundays. I watched a Mormon message called LIFT you should all watch it. 

We have a lot of part member families here in our area and it amazes me to see how difficult it is for them because their families are split they still love and respect one another so it is possible but it brings more struggles because being a member of this church is a way of life and it should and does affect every aspect of the way we live. 

I’m grateful for all of you and your love and support keep reading your scriptures and be good 

All my love 

xoxo Sister Brooks