Not Getting Rid Of Me That Easily ;)

Hello everyone! I hope that all of you have just been doing wonderful. I am so sorry that I am so bad at doing a post every week, but oh well I am a very busy missionary so that is a good thing ;). There has been a lot that has happened so I have a lot to catch all of you up on. It has been crazy, but good!

To start off I guess I will tell you about the crazy thing that happened that has been pretty hard for me lately. Today it has been about three weeks since I found out that my best friend Colt who was serving in Mexico died. It was on Monday that we got a text from President Cutler asking us to go to the mission home so that Sister Cutler could tell me the news. When I found out I was really upset. I was mad and confused. I just thought about his family and friends and how all of them must be feeling. I couldn't imagine how hurt they must feel. Luckily this whole experience has just brought me so much closer to my Heavenly Father. It was hard at first to want to get out and work, but I did. Me and my companion went out and decided to do service for others. We put on some work clothes, grabbed some rakes, and went out asking people if we could rake their yards. Getting out and trying to help others is what helped me to feel just a little bit better. I realized that by turning outwards it was helping me to better get through what was happening. I have since been able to feel my testimony of the plan of salvation become so real to me. The atonement has played such a huge role in helping me deal with what happened and my testimony of that has deepened. I have been able to go out and use that strong testimony to help others. There are days where it is still hard, but I know that I will be able to get through. This trial has been one that has been hard to overcome, but one that I have been able to really appreciate. I know that Colt is happy and that he is in the spirit world preaching the gospel to those who didn't have the opportunity to hear it. I have been able to feel the power of the atonement and become even more like my Savior. He has been here for me every step of the way. I know that with him I can overcome anything that will come my way!

     

So this past Saturday we found out about transfers. I found out that I will be staying in Brookfield for another 6 weeks :). Me and Sister Reed will also be staying as companions. We have been through a lot together and so I am grateful that we will be getting another six weeks together to get some work done and have fun. I am also grateful that I will be with this ward a little bit longer. By the end of this transfer I will have been with them for about 6 months!! Crazy!! That's a third of my mission all in little Brookfield. My heart is definitely here and so when the time comes to leave it will be very hard. The ward members have become my family. Especially with everything that has happened, I have been able to lean on them so much. I am hoping to just become even closer with them as time goes on. I hope that I never forget them! :)

These past couple weeks me and Sister Reed have been focusing a lot on finding. We have had some interesting experiences where we have been able to really see miracles happen with finding people who are interested in hearing more. Not all of them want to keep meeting with us, but that's ok. Since I have another six weeks we are hoping to find even more people that we can teach.

I am going to be kind of random with this post, so sorry in advance. I wanted to share a funny/cool/short experience that I had the other day. My companion and I were in the mall teaching a lesson to this guy named Larry. When we were done we were saying a prayer and by the time we were done saying the prayer there was another lady standing next to us who just joined in our prayer! She said Amen and then just walked away! I thought it was pretty awesome :)

If any of you were wondering Alex who was just recently baptized is doing AMAZING! She truly has just blossomed so much. She is coming to church every Sunday and is always ready to learn. She has helped me so much to become the kind of missionary that I want to be. Every time that she makes a comment everyone comments on how smart and intelligent she is with her gospel knowledge. She points out things that normally we wouldn't be thinking about. She is just amazing and I am grateful for her. She is also just a great missionary. She is really working with her family to help bring them the happiness that she now has. She brings her niece to church with her every Sunday! She is such an inspiration to everyone.

Well I should probably go now! Oh real quick though there is one other thing that I wanted to share with all of you. Something that I have been learning a lot about :). I have been really studying more about the spirit and how to recognize and feel it. Something that really clicked with me is that the spirit is anything that invites us to do good! How have I not gotten that before?? For some reason now it finally clicked! I am just really trying to listen better to the spirit and trying to really act on what I feel it is telling me I need to do. I know that if I am able to learn this now it will help me so much on my mission and also for the rest of my life. I love Preach My Gospel because it has helped me learn so much about this. Also the Book of Mormon is amazing.

I love you all and hope that you have a wonderful week. If you ever have any questions for me please ask! My email and address should be up somewhere for you to find it. I love getting letters, although I don't always write back right away, which I am sorry about! I just love letters though so if you want to send me anything in the mail I would be happy. I hope you have a miracle week :)!

Love Always,

Sister Brewster <3

 Sister Reed and I spent our last P-day in the park admiring the change of seasons!!

 This leaf is about as big as my head!!

 Me and Robin!  She is going to Italy on her mission soon.  I love her :)

 Being a missionary is the best.  I am so excited for Robin, she is going to be a great missionary! ;)

My First Baptism!!

Alex's baptism was on Saturday!! It was so amazing. I felt like before the baptism everything that could go wrong for Alex was going wrong with me and my companion. Sadly leading up to the baptism I got sick! I just did not feel good. Then the night before the baptism I was so sick to my stomach and just didn't feel like I would even be able to make it to the baptism. Luckily, that night I was able to get to sleep and the next morning I didn't feel horrible. I was able to be there for the baptism and just really enjoy it. There were so many ward members there who were able to support Alex, it was amazing! I felt so privileged to be able to see how happy she was when she came out of the water. When we handed her the towel she just kept saying how happy she was and that she couldn't stop crying. The spirit was so strong and I know that she is going to be a great member of this church. She is so caring and really knows how to lift others when they are feeling down. The gospel has helped her to change her life and even the way that she views herself. I know that the gospel can do this for everyone if they just let it into their lives. This week was hard, but it led up to something so amazing. The Lord is always with us and I know that I can rely on his atonement in my life to help me. I will never be able to fully understand the Atonement or full how to use it, but I know that I can use it to help me and that it will always be a lifelong process. I love this gospel and I can't wait to get out this week and share this with others. I love you all and hope you have an amazing week and never forget all the many wonderful blessings that the Lord gives to us :).

Love Always,
Sister Brewster :)

Reid, Alex and Elder Hafen

Alex's Dad, Alex, Reid (Alex's fiancee who baptized her), and her Mom Karen!

Elder Hafen is the one on the very right, he is the one who started teaching Reid and they have a really close relationship with him.

Alex with me and Sister Reed!

 Alex with her parents

Alex with her Sister Ariel and her Mom

 Reid and Alex!

P-day at Miller Park

My district went to visit Miller Park last Monday and I wanted to post some pictures for everyone.

Sister Reed and I at Miller Park.

 A picture of Chase Field during the All-Star game.  Makes me miss home a little!!

 Sister Reed doing her best Bob "Mr Baseball" Uecker impression out of the press box!!

 It says "Brat Patrol" as in hot dogs, not "Brat Patrol" as in ungrateful kid!!

 Hey I am tall enough to touch the roof of the dugout!!

 OK, so who thought I was not five feet tall??

 Sister Reed and I in our room preparing to teach the world!!

 Sister Reed getting in some contemplation time with our favorite Buddha

 Sister Westra and I at Miller Park.  She is our missions sister training leader and she is awesome!!

 Our beautiful white board where we prepare all that we are going to do every week.

Thank you so much to the Ferrell's for sending me this AWESOME Halloween package!!  I am so happy!!  You are both the best!!

Miracles Happening!!

Hello everyone! So I said that I was going to be emailing my parents a blog post every week, but so far that just has not been happening, so I am sorry about that! It's more like every other week. Things just get so busy and I have so many people to email, but today I am making the time for it.

So just like the title says, there are miracles happening. These past two weeks have been so amazing. I got a new companion and her name is Sister Reed. She is so amazing. I love her, we are basically already best friends. The only downside is that we have a problem with getting sleep because it is very tempting to just stay up and talk. We are better at it though! She is from Herriman, Utah and is 20! We are definitely working miracles in this area. Alex who we have been working with is getting baptized on October 12th. She has made some amazing changes in her life and it is just amazing that she is going to be getting baptized so soon! Not only that but she bore her testimony yesterday in sacrament meeting. It was amazing! I felt the spirit so strongly. She just makes me want to be a better person. She also is so great at missionary work. She brought her mom on Saturday to the broadcast and her mom loved it. She had tears in her eyes afterward because it was so touching to her.

Another miracle that happened was surprisingly while we were tracting! We had prayed that morning so that we would know where to go. So we looked at a map and found a spot and picked a street. When we started out, nobody was home! We kept knocking on the doors, but no one was answering. It was a little discouraging. We wanted to give up, but for some reason we knew that we were supposed to be on that street so we kept going. Finally someone was home. It was an older guy and immediately he came out and just start talking to us. Finally I asked him if we could come back sometime to talk to him some more and he just said that he could pull up some chairs and we could talk right then! He is agnostic and is a very logical thinker so he had some hard questions. Luckily my companion did a very good job at answering them. We could tell that he was really feeling the spirit! We had to leave and so he just told us to come back next Friday and he said that if he wasn't busy he would talk to us some more!  It was so awesome that we didn't give up and go back, because if we did then we wouldn't have found him.

Other than those things we are just trying to work hard and find some more investigators. Brookfield is awesome and I am starting to wonder if I will ever be leaving this area! We had a mission tour this past Tuesday which was pretty awesome. Elder Perkins from the Seventy came and talked to us. I was able to receive a lot of personal revelation from that meeting and it really made my week go by so much better! I am loving it out here. It is starting to get colder though and so that is one thing that I am not too excited about :/. It is fall though and so all of the leaves are changing color and falling off of the trees and so it just looks so pretty outside. I am not used to it since Arizona is just all dessert!

I hope that all of you are doing well. I am missing the Arizona people and the weather, but oh well! This week is going to be great and I hope all of you enjoy conference, it's going to be amazing, I love the Prophet, Thomas S. Monson! :)

Love Always,

Sister Brewster :)

Transfer number 2!

Hello everyone! Ok, so I need to just say that I am really sorry that I have not posted anything in a while. Things these past couple weeks have just been a little crazy and so I have not had much time to email. Although today I have time so I am glad I can update everyone! :)

Well the most exciting thing that has happened has been with our amazing investigator, Alex. She is just the best. I think I already said that she was a referral? Well we have been able to have the privilege of teaching her and just a couple weeks ago we asked her if she would be baptized on October 12th and she said yes!! I was so excited. She had not been to church which worried us a little, but then she came that Sunday! She was able to really enjoy being there, except she didn't stay for Relief Society. This week she has been reading the Book of Mormon everyday and she keeps praying about her baptismal date. She said that she knows she will be ready for that date. I am so excited for her and know it will be a great day. She has already grown so much. She has a love for the gospel and just wants to know more. She is an example to me! Sadly she didn't come to church this Sunday because of her sister’s birthday, but next week she will be there! I can't wait to keep teaching her and being able to just be a part of this journey with her. It makes me think of when I was just 8 getting baptized and how excited I was to be able to really take that first step in living the gospel!

Other than Alex we are just still trying to find more people to teach. The Herman family sadly we don't think are interested. We have been trying to set up a time to come and teach them again and they keep having to cancel. The funny part about it is that we keep running into them! We are just going to keep trying out best to find a time to teach them. Hopefully they will want to learn more and be willing to keep a time to meet with us!!

The ward has been great as always. The dinner appointments we don't seem to get as often anymore though. It's hard since there are two sets of missionaries. Also I think all the excitement of having sister missionaries in the ward has gone down.

There is not much else for me to talk about I guess. My companion now is going home and I am really sad about that! We have been together for about 3 months now. That is a long time to be with someone 24/7. I am grateful for all that she has taught me and for the time that I have been able to be with her. My new companion is Sister Reed. She was actually in my district so it's really exciting that we now get to be companions!! She is so nice and I am happy to be getting someone who will have some fresh ideas for this area. I love living with the Jones and I am SO happy that I get to stay with them for one more transfer. Which just means about a month and a half. Something exciting is that this next week we are having a mission tour. Elder Perkins from the seventy is coming! I am excited to meet him and to be able to learn all that I can from him.

I hope that all of you are doing well. I am loving my mission and all of the experiences that I am having. I know that this church is true. It is amazing and has blessed my life so much. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I love being able to have the time to read it everyday. It really does give me the strength that I need throughout the day. I love you all and I am so blessed to have the support and love that I have. I hope you have an amazing week, and hopefully I will be able to post again soon!! 

Love Always,

Sister Brewster :)

P.S Something kind of funny that happened that I don't know if I mentioned was that the other day it was P-day and we were walking up the steps to the house and I was holding groceries, and for the first time ever, a bee stung me!! Not only did it sting me, but it stung me on my bottom!! It hurt so bad, but it was pretty funny that it was the first time I had ever been stung and it was on my bottom! Just thought I would add in that funny story ;)

Slowly Progressing

Hello everyone! Sorry about last week, things were just crazy again. That seems to be my life now, just crazy! My schedule seems to always be changing, but that's ok, I love it! Well things here are going great. I was able to invite my investigator last week to be baptized and she said yes! She even said yes before I finished asking her. It was a great experience to be able to see the joy on her face about getting baptized. She is so sweet and I know that the gospel is just going to help her and bless her life! Other than that we are just trying to go out and find people to teach.

I have probably said this many times already but the ward that I am in is amazing. I feel like they are family already. We are always having a dinner appointment being fed wonderful food by the members! I know they want to do missionary work, but just don't really know how to, or some of them are scared. I hope that I can help them to be able to share the gospel with their friends. Just two weeks ago I was able to go to my very first zone conference. While there near the end of the meeting we were able to hear from Brother and Sister Allgaier who are from my ward. Sister Allgaier is a convert and was able to share her story. Then Brother Allgaier is the stake president and so he spoke on ways that we can help members with their missionary work. One thing he shared that I never thought about was that just by serving others in small ways, we are sharing the gospel. If I were to help a lady with her groceries, but not say anything about the church, I would still be sharing the gospel. Just by our examples we can share what we believe! I thought that was amazing. After hearing this me and my companion have been sharing this with the members and just committing them to do an act of service during the week so that they can share the gospel. It really is a blessing being able to come into the members homes and just to see how grateful they are that we are there. They always tell us that we bring a special spirit with us that they love to have in their homes. I am grateful that we are able to join there families even if it is just for a short time!

Well other than that not much has been going on. I do have a funny story that I wanted to share. It's pretty funny and definitely sounds like something I would do! Well this last P-day that we had I wanted to go to the stake center to go play some sports with some other Elders and Sisters. So we went and when we got there we decided we wanted to play missionary tag. While playing I was being chased by an Elder (Elder Obi), and I am really competitive so I was running as fast as I could so that he wouldn't tag me. While I was running I tripped and fell flat on my face! I kind of just laid down on the ground for a while just because I was so embarrassed. Luckily I wasn't too hurt, but for a couple of days I just had a little scar and bruise on my face! I think my ego hurt more than my face, because my fall wasn't too graceful. So, this was my funny story for the week, definitely something I would do, I am just grateful that I didn't get hurt :). I hope you all have an amazing week, and thank you for following my blog. Please send letters!!! :)

Love,

Sister Brewster

Just Keep Swimming! (or in my case, sharing the gospel :)

Hello Everyone! How are all of you? I hope you are all just doing amazing! I want to again thank those of you who have written me. A missionary lives for their letters, or at least I do. It is the best way to start my day is by seeing the letters that I have gotten. Please keep it up!

So I am sorry that I didn't put a post up last week. It was a very hard week for me and a lot was going on! I hope that this post will make up for it! So this past week was transfers. Luckily I am staying in my same area with the same companion. It's kind of crazy though because after this transfer she will go home. Part of me wishes that were me, but I know that I have so much more to learn so I definitely need to stay out here. I am also glad that I get to stay with this ward and get to keep living with the Jones. Like always the ward is so amazing. I feel like they are all family. On Sundays they say that we are like celebrities because they just love having sisters. The Jones are great as always and taking good care of me. Brother Jones also keeps us entertained with his many stories that he loves to tell us. So this transfer we got a new Elder in the ward! His name is Elder Kapstad. He is from Norway! So cool, right? He has a heavy accent, and I think he is a great Elder so I am excited that we get to work together in this ward.

Well in other news not much has been happening with the work in this area. It has been very slow and is continuing in that way. I am just hoping that we are going to find someone soon to work with. The family that we were working with doesn't seem to be interested anymore. We have tried to get in contact with them, but they don't call us back? We are going to try our best to get in contact with them, so fingers crossed!  The other lady we were working with, Melanie, she also seems to not want to get back in contact with us. She is always very busy, but we are also just hoping that she will also try and contact us here soon! 

Other than that news there is not much to tell about. The mission has been going great. I feel as if I am changing so much and I have only been out for 2 months! I can't even imagine what I am going to be like by the time I come home. I am also so grateful for the blessings that I have been given through my missionary service. I know that my family is being taken care of and that I don't need to worry about them. Of course I think about them all the time, but I know they are doing well. There are just so many great things about serving a mission. One of the things that I have been so grateful for lately have been the hours that I get to spend studying the gospel. In the morning for an hour we get to do personal study, and then we have two hours of companion study.  I also, whenever I have extra time after lunch, dinner, or before bed, get to have some more personal study time. I love studying! I didn't before my mission, but now something has definitely changed. I feel as if I am just learning so much. I open up the scriptures and only get through about 2 chapters in an hour because I am just marking so many things and taking so many notes. The Book of Mormon is amazing and through my study of it my testimony has grown. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. It really can help us through difficult times. I hope that all of you will turn to the Book of Mormon for strength. It has helped me more than ever while I have been out on my mission!!

I love you all and hope that you have an amazing week. Please know that I am doing well. I am being so blessed by being out here and I love every minute of it! The people that I have been able to meet are amazing and the experiences are a once in a lifetime. I can't wait for what lies ahead. Hopefully I will have some better stories as time goes on. Bye!

-Sister Brewster :)

                                                        A Day at the Wisconsin Zoo!

                                                       "The work is so slow... treading water"

                                                         Gathering the flock.

                                                   Waiting for great things to happen.

                                                           Patience is a virtue.

                                                    Hey you "Have you heard of Moroni?"

"

I don't have all day.. Commit already!!