This past Friday marked the one month anniversary of when I entered the MTC! It feels like years have passed, but it can't possibly have already been a month haha! I am doing great!
The work is really picking up here, so I'm excited to see what the future has in store! For some excitement this week we got 2 new investigators!! One of them came up to us at the library and asked what our name tags were for. We were able to teach him the restoration and then set up another appointment for tomorrow! Our second new investigator is a man named Max. We found his name in the area book and set up an appointment with him. When we came to his house he told us that he's been reading and praying about the Book of Mormon every day. We taught him the restoration and he agreed to be baptized saying that this is what he has been waiting for. We were really excited and we hope everything goes well with him!! The next exciting this is we were able to meet with Skyler again last Tuesday! When we arrived at her house she told us she just found out she was leaving town in 20 minutes, but that we could still teach her! We gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to read it. We texted her a few days ago and she said she had! We are really impressed by her! She doesn't get back in town until half way through August though, but we are glad she's reading!
We also had a pretty awesome miracle at Fort Jackson! We've set a goal to have 4 baptisms a week. We've been talking a lot about how we can accomplish this goal and what we as missionaries could be doing better. Last week we had four on date, but two of them didn't show up. This week we also had four on date, but then one of them didn't show up. We were feeling a little sad because we'd been working extra hard this week to meet our goal. Then one of the soldiers came up to us about 15 minutes before we were starting the baptism service and said how she's been coming to church and had some of the missionary lessons and decided she wanted to be baptized that day! We were really excited for her and it meant we made our goal!!
Another story from this week, but this time a funny one. One night at about 8:30 we came outside from a lesson and we were talking about how good it felt outside. Sister Ward and I declared that it should be that temperature all the time because it felt so nice. We got in our car and looked down at the thermometer and it was 95°! We laughed really hard and declared it must be hot when 95 felt really good!
So yeah the work continues to go on and we are keeping strong faith. This week I've learned the importance of goal setting. As missionaries we set goals every day and we work towards them. We have found that we don't reach our goals every day, in fact it is rare to meet them. But if we set these goals and pray for them and work really hard to accomplish them, that is when the miracles happen like finding Max in the area book or Private Smith coming to us to be baptized. I was also able to help a soldier on Fort Jackson understand this. He was talking about how he's not opposed to the idea of being baptized, he's just not sure he's ready yet. I was able to tell him about how when we set a specific goal, the Lord is able to help us in specific ways. He agreed to work towards the goal of being baptized on August 2nd. The Spirit really seemed to touch him about the importance of goals, but I would appreciate it if y'all could keep him in your prayers.
I am grateful to be a missionary and I am excited to see what the Lord has in store for the people of Lake Murray! I love y'all so much and I hope that all is well for you! Let me know if there's anything I can do for y'all!
Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett :)
I was really excited about how big the leaves on this tree were. We named him Momma Steve :)
