CHRISTMAS!!!

Hey y'all!!!!
            I hope that y'all had a very Merry Christmas!!!! Mine was great! Definitely a Christmas I will never forget!!!! But we will get to that in a bit ;)
            At the beginning of this week we had our weekly District meeting, but at the end we had a white elephant!!! It was so much fun! The funny thing was that in the end up with each others presents (meaning I got the present that was brought by the person who got my present. And that happened with everyone ha-ha!). Definitely a highlight of the week!

            We had another lesson with J. This time we had a young man from the Ward come with us that goes to the same school as J. It was really cool to see how much better J. was able to understand the lesson when it was being taught by both us and a boy his age. So that was awesome!!!          
            Wednesday there was apparently a tornado warning, but as missionaries we don't really have access to that kind of information ha-ha! Luckily we had just barely gotten into our car when the storm hit and we were able to just stay there for a few minutes until it passed!  We felt like we were driving on a river after because of how much water was in the road ha-ha!   
            Thursday was Christmas Eve!! We spent the afternoon/evening with our bishop and his family and the Elders! We had a lot of fun playing games and eating dinner and just overall having a good time! Their daughter has a tiny harp which she let me play! So that was awesome!! Friday was Christmas!! We woke up, opened presents, had brunch with an active/less active member family! Then we came home and took a quick nap! Then we went and visited some of the members who are in the long term care at the hospital and sang some Christmas songs for them!! Then we went and had dinner with a big extended family where some members are in the Camden Ward and some are the Elgin! So that was a lot of fun! Then I got to FaceTime with my family!!!! Definitely a highlight of my day!!! Best Christmas present EVER!!!!!! Then we visited another member and then came and went to bed.
            That night I woke up about one in the morning to Sister Harvey throwing up. We were up most of the night with her throwing up. We have been inside since then trying to help Sister Harvey feel better. She has stopped throwing up, but she's still really week and really tired. She has been sleeping majority of the time. I have been entertaining myself with things like coloring, music, conference talks, cleaning, reading the scriptures, writing M. from Lake Murray, more cleaning, more music, doing a puzzle while listening to conference, learning hymns on the guitar, etc. Although the past two days have been long, they have been good! It's given me a lot of time to reflect and ponder on life which has actually helped answer some questions that I have had!! So I learned a valuable lesson that when we still try to make the most out of each situation and fill our time with meaningful things, God will always help us in these endeavors and bless us to recognize truth that we may not have seen otherwise!
            Sister Harvey was feeling good enough this morning for us to come and email, but we're going to go right back in after and get her a nap ha-ha! We have had quite a few members call in and check on us which has been super nice of them! It helps me remember that it doesn't take much to show others that care about them!
            So that's been this week! It's been a great adventure and I'm learning a ton!!! I hope that y'all are doing well and have a blessed week!
Talk to y'all next year (ha-ha)!

Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett

 

Christmas Eve Harp Playing!

 

Look what street we went onto on Christmas!!

Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve Games and dinner with the wonderful Bishop's family!

Christmas Morning

Christmas!

Face timing the family showing Sister Harvey's Christmas gift!

Family Picture with Sister Bennett on face time and the Hassell family on Skype!

 

"Loving Yourself and Others Even When You Do Silly and Stupid Things"

Hey y'all!!!

      Sorry today's email is so much later than usual!!! We have had quite the crazy day!! But I'll get to that in a minute haha :)

      So this week has been good! A little slow, but good!! Last Tuesday the mission nurse (who works in Camden) took my district out to lunch! That was a lot of fun and I even found food that I could eat! Wahoo!! I was glad that she did because that ended up being the last time I saw the Elders that got transferred. Later that evening while we were walking into our apartment I tripped over a tree root and my ankle started to hurt like crazy. But as a strong independent missionary (haha) I didn't think much of it.

The rest of the week continued as usual. We got to meet our two new Elders! Their names are Elder Belknap and Elder Eberhard! Elder Belknap came out with Sister Harvey and this is Elder Eberhard's first transfer! They seem nice so far and we are excited to get to know them better!

      We hold a Book of Mormon class weekly each Thursday. For a while the class had died down and for like 3 weeks in a row no one came, not even all the missionaries. This week we had the biggest class ever! I think somewhere around 12 people were there, total! It was sooo cool! We taught on 1 Nephi 3 and 4 this week!

      Friday and Saturday were pretty typical days in the missionary world! We tried a few people, taught a couple lessons, smiled, and worked hard! Oh, we did have a lesson with J. again on Friday! He is doing great, but his mom did pull us aside and tell us that she doesn't want him getting baptized, but we could still come over and teach him. So we're putting baptism on hold for now, but not his learning! At the end of the lesson we were sitting there and he asked us if it was hard to be away from home for Christmas. We told him that it was pretty hard, but that it was okay because we were serving God. He looked down for a moment, in thought about what it would be like to be far away from home for Christmas, and then he looked up and told us he had made us something for Christmas. He walked into his room and pulled out a small nightstand he had made in his woodshop class! He was very excited to give it to us and I was very excited to have a quick woodshop conversation with him! I will send a picture of him with it later! Sister Harvey and I thought that was about the coolest thing to happen to us!!

      Sunday we had church!!! Which is always great! One of the girls we have gone out teaching with a few times is about to go off to college. She gave a talk on Church that she titled "loving yourself and others even when you do silly and stupid things." She gave a great talk on how we all make mistakes in life, but through Christ we are able to overcome our own dumb things as well as forgive others for the dumb things they do. It was a great talk and I loved the Title so much I stole it hahaha :) After Church we got to go to the family Christmas party of a family that lives in the ward! The parents and 4 of their 5 children live in the Camden ward and many of the grandchildren and even great-grandchildren do! Their 5th child lives in the Elgin Ward (which is the other ward that meets in our building) so it was a great big party and a lot of fun! We were there and the Camden Elders and one of the sets of Elders in the Elgin ward too! They had a little talent show at the end and they asked us missionaries to sing called to serve in it! It was a lot of fun haha :)

     Update on B.: She is still doing great!! She came to church again on Sunday and just loves every minute of it!

      Then we get to today!! So back up to Tuesday when I rolled my ankle. It had swollen up pretty big and was bruised all over. It hurts to put pressure on it, even if it's just resting my foot on the ground while I am sitting down. And instead of starting to feel better each day, it's been feeling worse.  On Saturday the mission nurse asked us to stop by the hospital she works at (which is the same hospital as my ER visit a few months back) so she could look at it. After moving it around and poking it a few minutes she asked me to go get it x-rayed to make sure there wasn't a hairline fracture. The urgent care was already closed by then and we didn't want to go on Sunday, which led us to go today. Luckily the x-ray came back looking good, just that I have a very sprained ankle. They gave me a very fancy brace with a built in ice pack that I am to wear for at least the following week. In accordance with their advice, we have been trying to locate a pair of crutches for me to use! (This way I can stop asking Sister Harvey to keep slowing down haha! We are still looking around. Our adventures even led us to the house of an ex-boyfriend of a girl in the ward because she left her crutches there. haha! We decided to take a break to actually buy our groceries and finally come and email! It's been quite the adventure today haha, but those goes the life of your average missionary!!!

      I hope that y'all are having a great week and a very Merry Christmas!!! In honor of Christmas this week I want y'all to go to Christmas.mormon.org. There are so many magical things on that website! There are a couple really great videos, but also at the bottom there's a thing called the "12 days of social" what these videos are are different youtubers preforming songs or skits or other such fun things to get you in the right Christmas Spirit! They are awesome! My favorites are the studio c skit (yay for mission approved skit I can watch haha) and the last one which is Rob Lands version of "I wonder as I wander/O come O come Emanuel." It just so happens to be a brilliant medley of my two favorite Christmas songs!!! Wahoo!!! But I hope that y'all have a very Merry Christmas and know I am thinking of each of you this week! I miss and love y'all so much!!!

 

Love always,

Sister Amy Bennett :)

 

Lunch with the Mission Nurse

Saying Good-bye to the Camden Elders

"J" With the gift of his nightstand... so amazing!

Lunch datewith 2 of the wonderful Sisters in the Camden Ward!

 

 

Early Christmas!!!!!

Hey y'all!!!!

    This week was awesome!!! It felt so much like an early Christmas!!!

    Last Tuesday we had a member, Sister Lewis, drive us to the temple in Hopkins where we had a lesson on the temple grounds with B. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot Brenda started talking about how calm and peaceful she felt! It was awesome for both her and us missionaries to be on the temple grounds and feel the strong spirit that it brings! It was very powerful :)

    On Wednesday we had our Christmas Zone Conference!!! It was a two zone conference so it was the Columbia Zone and the West Columbia Zone (which is 1/3 of the mission). I got to see the Sisters that are in Lake Murray! it was fun to ask them how everything was going there!! We had a few trainings, then we ate lunch, then the fun began!! Each District performs a skit (and they can be live or prerecorded). We laughed because all the districts did a prerecorded skit! My District did a take on "Ferris Bueller's day Off." So it was about these missionaries that are pretending to be sick to get out of zone conference! It was pretty funny!! Then we got to watch a movie! We watched the BYUtv production "Silent Night" which is the story of the men who wrote the song Silent Night! I loved it, but it felt really weird to be watching a movie again haha!

    Something that was fun is on each Friday we have a long planning session to get ready for the next week! These usually take around 3 hours haha! This week we decided to be fun and take a time lapse of it! We had a good laugh about that :)

    Saturday, B. was baptized!!! She was so excited! It was really cool because she was actually sick, but still made the effort to come! She is also terrified of water , but worked to overcome her fears! It was cute after her baptism she first told us that she felt great! Then she said, "I have overcome my fear of water... NOT!" We laughed really hard! But it was a really cool day and we are excited to continue to work with her!

    We had a lesson this week with a 17 year old boy named J.!  He has a really cool last name (Hint: it's Bennett)! We have been meeting with him for a few weeks now and we were talking about baptism with him. He told us that he doesn't feel ready for baptism yet. Then we asked him if he would set a goal of working towards January 16th. He said he could be ready before then and would like to work towards January 9th instead. He also wants to invite several of his friends to meet with us! It's really cool to work with a teenager and see how open and excited he is about learning!

    Also exciting thing as far as transfers go... (background, Transfer are a week early this time around so they aren't two days before Christmas) But me and Sister Harvey get to stay together another transfer here in Camden!!! Unfortunately, both of the Elders are getting transferred. One is going home and the other is going somewhere else in the great state of South Carolina! So we will get to welcome two new Elders in just a few days!

    So yeah, it's been a great week to say the least! I hope that y'all are doing great! A quick spiritual thought is a Mormon message called "A Mother's Hope." It is SO good!!! My favorite part is at the end it talks about how faith overcomes fear and hope overcomes despair! I think that it is helpful to remember that Christ will help us overcome all things if we turn to Him and let Him take the reigns of our lives! I love y'all so much and hope y'all have a blessed week!

Love always,

Sister Amy Bennett!

 

On the Temple grounds with "B"

ON the Temple grounds with "B"

"B"'s Baptism!!  Early Christmas!!

 

Christ was born so that we can live and have light in this world.

Hey y'all!!! 

I hope that this December morning finds all y'all doing well and with a smile on your face!! We have had a good week, but it just flew by! I can't believe that it is already Monday again!!! 

Short overview of this week:

Not a lot unusual happened in the beginning of the week, we worked hard at our usual missionary work.   But the end of the week was quite exciting!!

            Our wonderful  B.  is back in town (finally) and is still prepared and eager to be baptized on December 12!! She is so excited for that and really looking forward to Saturday! We had a couple lessons with her this week to continue to help her get ready and make sure that we get everything taught in time! So that was super exciting and certainly a highlight of the week!

            Friday we had another Zone Meeting! We were trained on "asking inspired questions" during lessons so that lessons are more like conversations instead of us sitting lecturing investigators. We also learned about making sure that we are having good planning sessions. Every night we plan our schedules for the next day and we always want to make sure that we are where God would have us be! So it was a great meeting!!!

            Saturday we had our congregations Christmas party!! It was so much fun!!! We had dinner and sang songs and then got to meet Santa Claus! The best part was the Sister Harvey and I wore matching Christmas penguin sweaters! We laughed pretty hard and figured we would get a lot of really weird looks, but actually everyone loved them! So we were pretty happy!!!!

            Yesterday we were able to see the first presidency Christmas Devotional! I really loved the talk that Elder Bednar gave. I liked how he focused on the first Christmas as it was experienced in the Book of Mormon. I thought it was really cool to remember that that first Christmas had a big impact on people that weren't even close to the city of Jerusalem. Just like we are not present for that first Christmas, the results of the birth of the Savior can bless us each and every day. Christ was born so that we can live and have light in this world. I hope we all can remember that every day, but especially in this Christmas Season!

            I love y'all so much and I hope that y'all have a blessed week! Sorry this email is short. We've got a very busy day today! But never forget that I love you and that God loves you!!

Love always,

Sister Amy Bennett :) 

PS Going off dairy too has been helping a ton.  It is pretty challenging but I know it will help with my health so it is worth it!  Thanks for all your prayers!!

 

 

Thankful for Ya'll!

Hey y'all!
I'm a little short on time, so this email is probably going to be
short haha! But this week was good!! The highlight was Thanksgiving!
With the holidays being this week a lot of people were out of town or
were too busy to meet haha!

So for Thanksgiving we had a sports day with some of the Sisters from
my zone and the neighboring zone! That was a lot of fun!!! We mainly
played soccer! Y'all would be so proud of me! Not only did I actually
play, but I even kicked the ball a few times! Wahoo!! Then we had
dinner with two different families! That was a lot of fun!!!! One of
them lived right on the edge of a lake! It was beautiful! It looked a
lot like Pineview so that was fun!!! The next family we went and had
dinner with had a fun tradition of doing a Christmas craft each year
after dinner! They were cute and had a craft for me and sister Harvey
as well! They were these fun wooden door wreaths with out last name
initial that we got to paint! I forgot to take a picture of it, but
I'm very proud of how it turned out!

That was really all the went on this week... It was pretty slow haha!
One exciting thing is that it was 80° a few days ago! I'm having a
hard time believing that it is actually November!

In honor of this last week being Thanksgiving, I want to let y'all
know just how grateful I am for each and everyone of you! Each of
y'all has played a significant role in my life and helped me in so
many more ways than you know! Thank y'all so much for the support you
give me on my mission! It helps a lot!!! I hope that y'all have a
great week! And a fun Christmas season!!! Yay Christmas!!!!

I sure love y'all!
Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett

1. sister sports! Please notice mine and Sister Harvey's matching t-shirts haha!

2. A beautiful field!

3. Thanksgiving Day

Turn outside ourselves and look for ways to serve :)

Hey y'all!!!

I hope this Monday morning finds y'all safe and warm!!! It feels like
last Monday was a long time ago, but it can't already be Monday again
haha! time is such a crazy thing!!!

Quick run down of this week!
Monday:  Camden was occupied by Britain for a year during the
revolutionary war, so there's a revolutionary war site about 2 miles
from where we live. We finally went last week! Turns out the tour and
the inside of the buildings are closed on Mondays, but that meant we
got the outside of everything all to ourselves! We had a lot of fun!!
(Hence the subject line)

Tuesday: we had a special zone meeting where our Mission President
gave us some extra trainings! That was fun and always makes me excited
to work!!!

Wednesday: we finally got to hold our Book of Mormon class! So each
Wednesday the missionaries have a Book of Mormon study class, but
for the past few weeks we haven't had anyone show up, but this week we
did so we were excited!!!

Thursday: we went out teaching with one of the women from the Ward! It
was super fun and nice of her to take sometime out of her day to go
with us!

Friday: we taught B.! Brenda is doing sooo amazing!! Each time we
meet with her she is more and more excited for her baptism! She had
been doing a ton of extra reading and so she had already read up about
the things we had been planning to teach her about! So that was
awesome!!! She's going to be out of town next week, but we scheduled
with her all the remainder of the lesson appointments we need so she
will be ready for December 12! She also told us she was planning of
teaching her family the things we've taught her during thanksgiving
dinner! That made us laugh and put a big smile on our faces!

Saturday: we went around visiting a lot of the single Sisters in the
Ward! It was fun to hear their stories and spend time with these
lovely people!

Sunday: church was as good as always and was the highlight of the day!

For my Spiritual thought this week I want y'all to go online to
LDS.org and find the new Mormon message titled "reflections". As a
missionary new Mormon messages are super exciting and I absolutely
love this one!!!! Not to spoil it, but at the end it talks about how
when we turn outside ourselves and look for ways to serve then it is
easier to get through the hard times of life! It's just such a good
reminder to me and it is so true! I get to see every day either from
being a missionary or from the example of others what a huge
difference service makes is the life of everyone! And this video does
a really great job of showing that!

Also!! The 9 year old boy I was teaching in Columbia (J.) is going
to be baptized on December 19th!! Wahoo!!!

Well that's about it for this week! I hope y'all are doing well and
have a blessed week and an amazing Thanksgiving!!!!!!!! Eat lots of
extra food for me! (Especially pumpkin pie!!!)

Love y'all!
Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett :)

A few pictures from the revolutionary war site!! We took sooo many :)

The glory which shall be revealed in us!

Hey y'all!
     While trying to come up with the perfect subject line I decided it
would be fun to have it be "Jack Frost" because we had the first frost
of the year here! It would also have been perfect if we had taught
somebody named jack this week. But unfortunately we didn't. So it is
no longer the perfect subject line, but I'm using it anyway haha!
     So this week was great! Nothing too out of the ordinary, but I will
give y'all a few updates!
     On Tuesday we had a Relief Society activity where we learned how to
make scarfs via loom knitting! It was so much fun! We had such a great
time! Sister Harvey and I got into the most of anyone there!
     One of the exciting things was that last Wednesday was transfer
meetings, but since neither Sister Harvey or I got transferred we
didn't go!! Yay!!!!!
     Thursday we had another lesson with B.! She is doing so great! She
is so excited to keep learning and loves to read from the Book
of Mormon! She was telling us when the previous Elders told her about
the Book of Mormon she expected it to be some crazy new things but
then when she read it she was like, "hey! This ain't new! This is just
like the Bible." (Direct quote from her haha!) I though it was really
funny but also really cool how she was able to recognize that God's
teachings are the same in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon! A lot
of people struggle with that, so it made for a happy missionary moment
:)
     Saturday we got to do service for a lady who had several trees fixing
to land on her house. They got broken during the rainstorm/flood from
a few weeks back! That was a lot of fun and the lady was very
grateful!
     Sunday B. came to church which was so exciting! Everyone was super
friendly to her and she loved learning with all the other women in
Relief Society!

     As for a Spiritual thought this week a scripture that I have been
thinking about a lot during this week and we've been sharing with a
lot of people. It is Romans 8:18 which reads, "For I reckon that the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory which shall be revealed in us." I love this scripture for so
many reasons! The first is it is really comforting to remember that
hard times don't last for ever. But I also really like how it talks
about how there is glory within each and everyone of us just waiting
to be revealed and the individual worth that we each have is so much
greater than our pains that we cannot even come close to comparing
them! It's just such a good scripture!

     I hope that y'all have a blessed week and know that I love and care
about each of you so much!

Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett :)

At the Relief Society Activity

Charity is understanding the eternal worth of a soul!

Hey y'all!!

 

I wanted to start of by saying a HUGE thank you for all of y'alls prayers and support for me this week!! I could really feel it making a big difference to me during this week! Between consulting with the mission doctor, nurse, and my genius parents back home we decided to take me off of dairy and see if that would help. The must have been the problem because I have been recovering more and more each day as I have gone off of dairy! Yay for finding solutions!!!

This week was great getting back into the regular routine of missionary life!!! This week was pretty exciting! On Wednesday we had exchanges (changing companions for a day) and I got to stay in Camden and work with Sister Bowman for a day! I lived in the same apartment with Sister Bowman in my last area so it was super exciting to get to work with her again!!!!

 

On Friday we had a big zone meeting. So all the missionaries that work in and around the Columbia area all got together and we were trained and inspired and uplifted! My favorite part was one of the zone leaders gave a training about what it meant to have Charity. He gave a definition that I really liked. He said that "charity is understanding the eternal worth of a soul." He continued to go on about how once we recognize how everyone is valuable to God, then everything else falls into place!

 

On Saturday was the dreadful thing most commonly known as transfer calls. So the Saturday before transfers a voicemail goes out to the zone saying who is leaving. Due to my track record of leaving at every transfer, I was pretty nervous that I was going to have to leave Camden and Sister Harvey. But the good news is that both me and Sister Harvey are staying! The funny thing is that in my entire zone there are 3 missionaries going home and then other than that only 2 are getting transferred. It means that my entire district of 8 missionaries gets to stay together another transfer, which is pretty unheard of! So I'm really excited!

 

The other exciting thing is that the main person we are working with right now, B., has decided to set the goal of being baptized on December 12! We are excited to continue working with her!

So that's it for the exciting news of this week! Thanks again for all y'all do for me! I hope y'all have a blessed week and now I pray for every single on of you!

Love always,

Sister Amy Bennett :)

 

Teaching...

Camden in the fall :)

 

Trusting God's actions, and also His timing! :)

Hey y'all!
This week has been fun and filled with lots of adventure and not what
you would call the usual missionary week. Last Monday I got struck down
by an unknown plague. My stomach was really unhappy each time I ate and I got
this massive headache that caused me to be extremely lightheaded and unable to
stand most of the week. Sister Harvey has been a huge blessing this week to me
in helping me out with a lot of things! My illness kept increasing until Friday.

 Saturday for Halloween I felt slightly improved! I had a great day on
Halloween!!! We had a fun Ward party with games and food and fun
and hayrides and home made apple cider! One of the fun things with that
was a woman dressed up as Indiana Jones and was carrying around her
live snake! I got to hold it for a few minutes so that was a blast!
Sister Harvey noticed a street on our map named "Haunted way" and we
decided it would be the perfect street to go to on Halloween! We took
the long drive there seeing a few people on the way and when we got
there it ended up being a creepy looking dirt road with a "no
trespassing" sign! It ended up being even better than we expected!

We were put into "lockdown" for the evening and Sister Harvey and I had
our own Halloween party! It included glow sticks, scary food, superman
t-shirts, and a whole lot of fun!  We went to church on Sunday and then were able to go
see a few people! We came in about an hour early because my abdomen was
starting to hurt like crazy. When we got home I was in so much pain that all
I could do was lie down in fetal position. Sister Harvey called the
mission nurse that we had been corresponding with this week and since
I had all the symptoms of appendicitis she sent me to the ER. We got
the fun adventure of being there in the middle of the night! My
symptoms were so similar to appendicitis that everyone was convicted I
had it. The only one that didn't was my appendix haha! They ran some
tests including a CT scan of my abdomen. The hour and a half leading
up to my CT scan they had me drink this contrast dye
thing that was supposedly vanilla flavored. It tasted like a really nasty
vanilla milkshake. They didn't find anything and then sent us back home.
We felt like such rebel missionaries getting home at 4 in the morning
haha!

But moral of the story is they didn't have to remove my appendix
so I get to keep my unnecessary organ! Yay! Haha! So that was my week
in a nutshell
:)

There were a few tender mercies this week along with my sickness.
The biggest was with the timing of my ER trip. It wasn't on Saturday so I
was still able to have a fun lockdown party with Sister Harvey! Also
that it was late enough in the day Sunday that we were still able to
go visit a few people and help encourage them! So even when things are
hard, the Lord's hand is guiding all things. I keep learning more and
more to not only trust God's actions, but also His timing. I'm so
grateful to have an all knowing Heavenly Father who loves me and helps
me in my life! He's the best :)

So at the end of the day I am doing good! I could be doing better, but
I also could be doing a whole lot worse. I have felt God and His
angels supporting me so much. There were times when I could literally
feel hands helping to hold me up. I hope y'all are doing well and have
a great week! I love y'all!
Have a blessed
week!!!!!
Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett :)

Lunch with Katie and Martha on Tuesday

Halloween Party Crafts!

Our favorite Halloween Costume at the Party!!

"Tracting" on Haunted Way on Halloween

 

Our Lock-in Halloween Party

Festive Dinner

Super Sisters!!!

Yes, we have Super Powers!

Dinner Table

Leaving the Hospital at 4 am.

 

God is looking out for each and every one of us!

Hey y'all!

I'm short on time this week, so sorry about the short email!

This week was good! We did a lot of finding and so we have our fingers crossed for a few people we will hopefully start teaching soon!

 

We spent another morning in Columbia helping with the house of a girl whose parents are in the Camden Ward! So that was a lot of fun!

 

We also got to go deliver a Bible to a lady at the very edge of our map in a tiny town called Bethune! It took us about 2 minutes to drive through the entire town! It was cute and a lot of fun to get to see!! The lady we went to go see ended up not being home, but we talked with her neighbor who used to work with a member that we were actually seeing later that same day! So that was pretty cool!! 

On Friday the young women had their fundraiser where they did a baked potato bar! It was a lot of fun and it's great getting to know more and more people!!!! 

 

As for a tender mercy this week! A few weeks ago I ordered a spare name tag just in case I lost the one I had. It came in the mail last Monday. Later that evening my name tag fell off without me noticing until we were home! It was such a blessing that the very day my name tag came in the mail was the day that I lost my original name tag! I know that God is looking out for each and every one of us! He does what ever he can to show us of His love. Sometimes it's as small as a new name tag showing up in the mail the same day you lose yours!

I hope that y'all have a great week! I invite y'all to look around more for the ways that God shows you His love! I promise you He does daily, we just need to look around! Y'all have a blessed week!

Love always,

Sister Amy Bennett :)

 

Sister Harvey and I in Bethune

I caught a lizard!

 Amy's Hero Halloween Package arrived

Sister Harvey and Sister Bennett with the Super Hero Package

A familiar gnome! :)

"But what could I have done more in my vineyard?"

Hey y'all!!

This week has been another great week in the world of Camden!!

 

It started off with right after emailing last week we got a call from our Bishop asking us to go with him and a few other members to do more service in Columbia! We had just enough time to make a quick trip to Walmart for food and run to our apartment to tidy up and then change into service clothes! We spent the rest of the day continuing to clean!

 

Tuesday we had interviews with the mission president! We talked a lot about faith and how when we rely on Christ then our faith has the power to cause righteous things to happen! We related it to the story of the Brother of Jared from the Book of Mormon. How he is praying and His faith is so strong that Christ is no longer held within the veil and the brother of Jared gets to talk with Him face to face.

 

Wednesday we spent the entire day in Columbia again doing service! We made it back and I got ready in 15 minutes (including showering and blow drying my hair) so that we could still make it to the Book of Mormon class we hold every Wednesday night!

 

Thursday we did service at the Library that's right across the street from us and then taught a lesson to a lady named B! She is loving reading from the Book of Mormon and has lots of great questions!

 

Saturday we talked with a lady who moved here about 6 months ago! She was baptized in the 70's when she was a nurse in New York. Between work and religious differences with her husband she fell out of the habit of going to church. She was very excited to have us there and loved talking with us! We read a conference talk with her! She lives on a ranch now and owns these horses and loved telling us about each of them! I loved getting to hear all her stories!

 

Sunday we went to church and are continuing to meet more and more members! After Church we went with a member, Sister Lewis, to go visiting teaching with her! It was exciting because we got to go all the way to the top of our area, which was an hour away! Because of the limited miles we have we thought that we would never get to go to that part of our area and visit the members up there, so we were really excited that we got to do that! We had this funny realization that the city of Columbia is closer to us than the top of our map!

 

And now we are back to Monday!!

A Spiritual thought for this week actually comes from my studies this morning! This morning I was continuing my journey of reading Jacob 5. This chapter is where the prophet Jacob is relating the allegory Zenos gives of the olive trees. The very basic outline of this allegory is that there is a vineyard of olive trees and the Lord of the vineyard is pruning and grafting and nourishing the vineyard to produce tame olives. At one point in this allegory all of the trees are producing wild olives. The Lord of the vineyard says several times "what more could I have done for my vineyard?" It hit me very strongly this morning of how that is what Christ says over each of us. Because He Atoned for us He knows what we all go through in our lives. He knows all of our pains, mistakes, weaknesses, and sorrows. And He went through that for all of us so He could literally do everything for us. He knows exactly how to help us, it is just up to us to turn to Him. There are times in each of our lives when we fall short and Christ is standing there saying "What more could I have done?" He doesn't want to lose any of us. He wants us all to return Home to Him. That is the strength of His love. So I would invite all of y'all to read the chapter Jacob 5 this week and think about how the Lord of the vineyard works hard and individually on each tree. And notice the repeated number of times He says he does not want to lose any of His trees.

I love y'all so much! Thanks for all y'all do for me!!!! I hope y'all have a blessed week!!!

Love always,

Sister Amy Bennett :)

Sister Harvey and Sister Bennett unintentionally matching for church

 

Sister Bennett and Sister Harvey serving in Columbia

 

 

Sister Bennett and the cow!

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up!

Hey y'all!
For starters I hope y'all are doing great and staying nice and dry!

Things are going good here over on the east coast! A little soggy, but good! We got released from lockdown on Tuesday morning (yay!!) and set out to start meeting people and see how the storm had affected them. Luckily Camden is not a flood area and the ground is all sand, so water is basically just absorbed into the ground as it falls, so there was not much damage at all from the storm!

Wednesday we had a service project at habitat for humanity helping them sort through clothes to donate and also went out and tried to teach! Thursday we planned for this week and had a pretty typical day! Friday we had a zone meeting and then a zone service project!! For our zone service project half of us helped in Windsor lake (about ten minutes away from Columbia) by filling orders of food and clothes for those effected by the big storm. And the other half went into Columbia to help for clean up. For some odd reason which we never figured out they had Sister Harvey stay in Windsor lake and they had me go to Columbia. In Columbia we went into my old area (which was a little weird going back so soon after leaving) and go to an area where the flooding had gone over the roofs of the houses. We went inside the houses (with protective gear such as hard hats and masks) and started shoveling out every thing inside. There were very few things that could be salvaged from the damage. It was sad walking down the street because there were spray painted yellow "X's" on the houses that were condemned and basically every house in the neighborhood we were in had the yellow x. After finishing one house we went to a second lady's house where she was a retired professor/historian and we were trying to help her save all of her books and pictures and artifacts. It was a pretty special day.

The fun thing was we got to go back to Columbia again on Saturday! They kept me and Sister Harvey together that day! The exciting part was it was raining really hard again. This time we were out helping sort the piles of the gutted houses so that the city could start coming and picking everything up. We were very wet and tired by the end of the day but it was really great to be out helping there again! Sunday we got to go to our Ward for the first time and start to meet the people there! That was a lot of fun and the people here seem really great!

As for a spiritual thought this week. During service in Columbia it was interesting to see what people were and weren't trying to salvage from their flooded houses. People didn't care about the furniture or their big TVs or their clothes. What people were trying to save were their pictures. And these pictures were for the most part all of their families. It got me thinking of if I was in that situation what I would be trying to save, and I came to the conclusion I would also really only be caring about family pictures. I got thinking of how important families are to everyone and how at the end of the day, the memories we make with them are what is most important. I am grateful that we know that families can be together forever. That no matter what we go through in life, that if we are sealed in the temple that we can see our loved ones again. It made me want to go out and share this message with even more people! Good thing I'm on a mission then ;) Well I hope y'all have a blessed week!
 Keep Columbia in y'alls prayers please!
 I love y'all!
Love always, Sister Amy Bennett :)

 Happy Mormon Helping Hands!

 Sisters Serve!

 One of the homes they cleared

 Serving at a home

 Flood Destruction

 Serving

 I only got a little muddy during service ;)

Serving in the rain!

 Halloween Package made with Sarah

Halloween package to Sister Bennett

 Sister Bennett's happy sheets she bought