Hey y'all!!
This week was filled with many adventures that would go under the classification for out of the ordinary life of a missionary!
The first was that my companion Sister Webb was sick. On Tuesday we spent half of our day at the urgent care as we had all sorts of different nurses coming in and out and running many different tests on her. In the end none of the test came up as positive and so they gave her a z-pack and cough syrup and then told her she needed to get plenty of rest. So the rest of that day and the next day we stayed in for the most part. Sister Webb took really long naps on those days, which helped her to get better so that was great for her! It just meant that Sister Bennett was left with not much to do haha! I ended up spending majority of the time redoing out area map we have on the wall (which we have been meaning to do for a long time)! It was actually really fun and now I know my area (or at least the map of it) pretty well! That's been really useful for this week!
The next out of the ordinary adventure was on Saturday and will lead into an even better story! We had a fun service opportunity on Saturday evening to help one of our investigators, C., put together a little kitchen set she bought for her son! It was so fun to be building again! It almost felt like I was back in woodshop again! Here's where the story gets good! We had ridden our bikes over there to save on miles and we locked them up to the stop sign that's actually right outside her house. The sun had already set and C. had been asking us for the past like 20 minutes if it would be okay for us to ride our bikes home. We assured her that we were in a really safe area and lived only like half a mile away. We said goodbye to her and she walked us outside and the stop sign we had left our bikes on looked strangely empty. I was like, oh my eyes must be playing a trick on me in the dark. But as a car drove by, the shining headlights left undeniable proof that our bikes had in fact been stolen. There was no sign of them! The chain had been cut through and taken with the bikes. Which is really quite a shame because the Church bought them only 3 months ago. Luckily we were able to call the Sisters we live with to come pick us up. It was quite an unfortunate moment to have to call the senior missionary about our stolen bikes and then have to face him the next morning at Fort Jackson haha! He was able to laugh about it after a while and we told him that at least we still had our helmets (which we had brought inside with us) haha! But then he told us we had to make a police report, which we weren't exactly sure how to do that. Luckily there is a policeman who is a member (I actually knew him in my old area) who likes to park in the church parking lot to catch cars. We were able to call him and tell him what had happened. He called the deputy who has jurisdiction over the area our bikes were stolen from and we were able to make the report in person! We had a fun conversation with the deputy trying to explain how we don't actually own these bikes, but rather they are owned by the Church, but we are the ones who are in full use of them. She was very confused when we said they were owned by the church. She looked at us and said, "Well I can't put the victim down as Jesus." We wanted to tell her that she probably should since they are the Lord's bikes, but we figured that would just add to the confusion! Sister Webb and I have just laughed about this entire experience haha! So that's the story of how Columbia Sisters are no longer a biking area hahaha!!!
The other out of the ordinary experience we had this week was at Fort Jackson. During testimony one of the soldiers stood up and said a rap (that I'm assuming he wrote) as his testimony. Turns out he isn't a member and thought he was at a different church, but he's planning on coming back next week! But it was hard to keep a straight face, especially since I had never heard a rap testimony before! It was definitely one for the journal haha!!
Well I think that sums up my week pretty well!! Everything else was the usual... knocking on doors... appointments falling through... teaching our really cool nine year old investigator named J.! Well I guess we did have Zone Training Meeting which was out of the ordinary as well haha! It was good and we learned about serving the Lord with all our mind! Also we were asking J.'s mom, K., if she would give permission for J. to be baptized and she said she would if she thought he understood why he was getting baptized. He sat there and then explained baptism and the symbolism of it and answered all of his mom's questions, including what the sacrament was and why we need to take it every week! That really stood out to me and will be my spiritual experience for this week! I think a lot of times people get caught up in the complexity of things and we get to focused on what's this or what's that or who knows what, but really this Gospel is simple. When we break it down and focus on the basics, everything else falls in to place. We have been teaching J. in a totally different way because he is nine, but he's understood everything (even hard things) better than most of our adult investigators! He's a pretty special kid and it has taught me a lot about teaching simply!
I hope that y'all have a great week! Know that I love y'all so much and am so grateful for your support! Have a marvelous week and hopefully you'll not have too many out of the ordinary adventures haha!
Love always,
Sister Amy Bennett :)
Sister Webb and I with a member who was being squished.
Me with our investigator's really cute little sister! :)
