March 25, 2013
When you read this email you may all be together! That's great! I'm so excited for Jordan and Amanda to get sealed in the temple this week. I am so grateful for Amanda and how good she has been to Jordan. He's a redhead, so he deserves someone great and Amanda is definitely great. She is a really great example of patience and faith...so it seems to me, at least. I'm excited to have a new addition to our perfectly imperfect family ;). Congratulations to you both! Wahhhhooo!
We got a new missionary from temple square this week, but we also lost one. We said goodbye to Sister Lupashko on Wednesday morning. We, Sister Lillywhite and I, drove her to the airport early that morning. She's now back at temple square and her replacement is Sister Di Liberto. She is from Italy! She's amazing. We did some training with her when she first arrived and were able to drive her to her area. That gave us the opportunity to get to know her better and answer some questions. Sisters from temple square are amazing, so I'm grateful to have her in our mission. Plus, I'm so excited to get to go on exchanges with her this transfer.
Well, we got our "transfer calls" this morning. My new companion is Sister Burwell. She is from Pennsylvania. I love her. I've worked around her a lot and I always wished that we would become companions at some point. Now my prayers are answered and we're going to be traveling together! That's so great!!!
On Wednesday, Sister Di Liberto was doing some paper work before we took her to her area so President Castro had me come into his office and we had an interview. He basically talked to me about my role as a traveling sister. He gave me a lot of good counsel and said that there is a lot riding on me and how I lead the sisters. Basically, he said it's time to step up. Yep. He talked a lot about how this is the moment that the Lord has been preparing me for and that it's my time to "shine." He also thought that I had said I wanted to go to the Bakersfield Mission. I almost threw up!! AH! But he said that is a good goal, it's ambitious, but the Lord has more in store for me than that. Man...President Castro is like a magic crystal ball. He basically KNOWS my future! I need to know! Haha. Well, you all know what this means....you REALLY have to keep me in your prayers now. Pray extra hard....especially Ammon because he's great.
Ok, now onto more important things....aka THE PEOPLE AND THE WORK!
We had a great week! A LOT of miracles! The work in the Second Ward is picking up fast, and I'm super excited about it. I'm sad that I'll be seeing Sister Lillywhite go because we've worked hard here together to get the area to this point that it's at now. I wish she could stay one more transfer and just see all of the fruits of her labors here in Ventura. I guess I'll need to keep her updated! I'm excited that my new companion will be Sister Burwell! I knew it would be her. I'm not sure why, but of course I was trying to think about who it would be and it just made complete sense to me that it would be Sister Burwell. We will have a lot of success together, I already know that. Getting a new companion always makes me excited because there are so many new things to learn from them. I'm excited to recognize the reasons that the Lord would like us to work together and to learn those things that He would have me learn from Sister Burwell. Yess! I'm just so excited for this new transfer! The work is picking up like crazy and I'm so blessed to be a missionary at this time. This is the most exciting time probably in the history of the WORLD to be a missionary!
This week we taught Lisa, Rita, the Rabagos, Kristyn, Brother Dumond, Jessica, Brother Wages, Cryshauna, Julia, the Heaths, Lena, Sister Rous, Jose, Bob, the Pellums, and the Blanks.
As miracles have been happening here, there are still some hard moments. We had another lesson with Kristyn this week and she just isn't willing to make any commitments. It's heartbreaking to me because I have been there at her home many times when she has felt the Spirit and she knows that she has felt the Spirit. I can't imagine what our Father in Heaven must feel when some of His children get so close but they allow things in the world to keep them from Him. I know that she has a relationship with her Father in Heaven, but I also know that that relationship could be a million times better through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. That's hard when you realize that you have to let someone go, but trust in the Lord that He will continue to prepare them and give them another chance to have the joy in their lives that you have in your own. Hard. I guess at this point I will just continue to pray for her....Alma 6:6.
We have gotten some great new investigators this week. On Friday we were talking to an investigator, Cryshauna, outside of her apartment and some lady leaned over her balcony and yelled down at us asking "Are you LDS missionaries?!" We answered in the affirmative. Then she told us that she is a member and just moved into that apartment. We told her about church and then continued to teach Cryshauna. As we were talking to Cryshauna, the member's little girls kept coming down the stairs wanting to say "hello" to us. I told them that we would come up and say "hi" when we were done....so they would stop interrupting our lesson. When we finished teaching Cryshauna, we went upstairs and met the Heaths. Sister Heath is a convert and she said she hasn't been going to church that often, but she wants to get back to going regularly. She then said that two of her 5 daughters are not baptized, one of which is 8 and one is 9, and that she would like us to start teaching them this week! We didn't want to so we just left....just kidding! We said, "Great!!" All of them came to church yesterday, including her 14 year old son, and Sister Heath seems very excited to start meeting with us. That was a major miracle and answer to our prayers because the night before I had prayed, before we went to bed, that we would see a great miracle the next day. I prayed that we would find someone new to teach that would get baptized and that would have an open heart to listen to the gospel. Amazing!
We also had a really neat lesson with a less-active lady, Dawnia, and her two children who aren't baptized. Aubrey is 16 and she is actually deaf and Tyler is 10. Dawnia has been wanting to get back to church. There are two people in the ward who know sign language, but both of them were unavailable. Well, Sister Lillywhite doesn't know sign language either, and I definitely don't know it....so I was praying for the gift of tongues or something. When we got there we told Dawnia that she would need to interpret for us. She wasn't too excited about that because she said she struggles with interpreting. I was thinking "Yeah right, you're her mom. You have to sign all the time with her." Well, she struggled. We weren't sure what to do because Aubrey has no sense of God and who He is. We brought the restoration DVD with us, so we decided we would try that with the subtitles. When we got to the menu we realized that they have the movie in ASL....so there is a man signing with the movie playing in the background. That was such a huge blessing! At the end of the lesson we taught Aubrey how to pray and she gave the closing prayer. That was really neat. I'm really excited to keep teaching them and help their family come in to the church.
Last note: Yesterday, Bob blessed the sacrament for the first time! It was so great to see him up there. He has changed so much from the time we started teaching him until now. The atonement can really change people's lives.
Well, new week...new transfer...so much new stuff it's great. I'm excited.
Love,
Sister Bennett
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