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!!