August 17th-24th, 2015

Family!

Another great week in the St. Louis YSA. I love your emails, don't worry about switching it up mom and dad! Even though you tried they were pretty much the same I was cracking up. But it's totally fine, like seriously. So you all ask the same questions every week so I'm going to try and address them: Food is great! We eat at a members house or apartment pretty much every night. So we're really grateful. This week a member gave us a smoked pork roast that we've been having for lunch it's seriously so good haha. Yeah there have been some fun storms! I like them! But we have a car so we don't get too wet. Don't worry dad, we pretty much avoid the mess about shootings or the confederate flag issue. Our area is huge so we're in the city some days and in the suburbs other days. Yes we exercise every day we just run laps around our apartment complex and then get ripped in our apartment gym. We've really got it made here. I think that's all the questions you asked....

This week has been awesome! So last week our Zone Leaders (oh yeah dad you asked about meetings... we have district meeting every week) ANYWAYS our Zone Leaders challenged us to contact 100 people within the week. Well initially we saw some unfair advantages because we are over only people from 18-30 and we don't really ever ride public transpo (there we go, another question) so we don't see a ton of people. BUT we weren't going to let that stop us. We contacted 101 just for good measure and it was so fun! If we had anything fall through or if we had an awkward half hour before an appointment we would just go to a college campus (because there are like 40 colleges here no joke) we hit the jackpot on St. Louis University freshman move-in day!! Haha missionary harvesting am I right or am I right. It was so cool. We would just walk up to people introduce ourselves and then start droppin straight doctrine! Jk (kinda) but it was cool. We were successful! We got a couple return appointments and even one of the people we contacted came to church! (I felt prompted to invite him, it obviously worked) so he's super interested! So that was a fun part of our week.

We didn't get a chance to meet with Dominique and she also couldn't come to church so that was super sad for us. She's been busy and dropping appointments, but we're hopeful for next week. But we met with Pascal the genius!! He's sooo cool i can't even tell you that enough. He's so hilarious with his Nigerian accent. He told us he actually was studying for 5 years to be a Catholic Priest but now is studying other faiths because he feels some of the puzzle is missing. (It is, we have it) This week we invited him to church again and he said "i don't think it would be good for me to attend your SundaySchool because my questions are too good you might lose members" haha we've been laughing all week. His questions are really good, but our branch is even stronger!!! It would be good for him to go. We have continued meeting with Ashley and Zach. Ashley wanted us to meet her mom, her boyfriend, her cousin, her sister, and zachs mom. So that lesson was fun!! haha she fed us "party food friday" and we had a lesson with all of them (except sadly zach and his mom couldn't come) but we are regularly teaching Ashley's sister now too! Her name is Jasmine and she's super funny, their relationship is exactly like me and Tara's. They are the bee's knees. So we have a couple new investigators from our little contacting activity so we're really excited for the coming week. OH YEAH so at the mass lesson at Ashley's apartment (btw we're going to refer her mom and her boyfriend to other missionaries that are not ysa) it was so hilarious because the second we got there Ashley's mom, Ms. Banks, started talking about how she looooves games and she brought all these games and she's so excited to play haha. So first we ate, and then struggled through the Restoration lesson because Ms. Banks kept reminding us about the games we had to play hahaha. So we finish and she whips out all these games, Sister Walker graciously reminded her we can't play board games or card games so she proceeds to make up all these games using the pieces from connect 4. It was HILARIOUS. I had no idea what was going on but I kept winning prizes hahahaha. She would move all the pieces around, shake some in her hands, and then be like okay you have 3 guesses to guess if there is a red piece or yellow piece in my hand hahahaha THREE CHANCES so i would guess, and if it was wrong i still had 2 more chances so i would guess the other color and would get a prize haha everyone would cheer! So we got some ultra-fab prizes. I'll send home pics. Oh man so hilarious.

We had a great week. I'm amazed every day at the experiences we have, and I don't know what I did to deserve them. We are so lucky to have this Gospel, and to have a Savior. The District Leader asked me to give a training on Positivity. (yipee) They started using my name as a verb on how to be positive and cheerful lol "just go all sister broadhead on them" So I've been preparing for that. And honestly at the end of the day, all we need to be positive is what we already have. The truth. Sometimes missionaries need a reminder that when things are hard, when people mock us, or reject us... we're just standing shoulder to shoulder with the best life that ever lived. Our Savior. I'm excited for the training.

We are short on time because we're going to the City Museum today. Everyone has been telling us how cool it is, so we're going.

I'm so grateful to be here, so grateful to be able to feel the love that God has for the people here. Keep being missionaries at home!! I love hearing about your experiences.

OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT THE FUNNIEST THING. So we were asked to teach Gospel Principles with about 2 seconds notice. The lesson was on Prayer but the conversation started going more towards trusting that everything will work out in life and all that good stuff. And OH MY GOODNESS haha... Dad, sorry in advance. So I was talking about the last year of your life and how you went through these surgeries and a change of employment and how you always had faith that everything would work out! And I said "yeah so he had been a police officer for like my whole life, and now he does money laundering and it's awesome he's doing great and everything is working out" while i was saying that people's eyes got big and they were like laughing and I had no idea why. Then after the class my pal Humberto (from Nicaragua) asks me what I meant and so I was like "yeah I actually don't know what money laundering even is but he like tries to prevent it" WELL I DIDN'T EXPLAIN THAT haha now everyone thinks you're a criminal lololol I forgot to say "anti money laundering" so sorry!!! But i'm sure everyone knew what I meant.

Love you guys! Have a great week!!!!!!!!!