August 19th

Family:

Sorry the email is very, VERY late this week! Transfers are next week and about 10 of the sisters in our mission are leaving. Another 10 will leave the transfer after. To say goodbye to all of these amazing sisters, we had a gigantic Sisters' P-Day activity. The P-Day was fun (we got to take a plane all the way to Melbourne for the day! Then took another plane back that night), we tied dyed shirts, had way too much delicious food, and played games, but I am glad to be back in Tassie! Being surrounded by sisters can sometimes be a little depressing. Example: There was a unity game that we played where all the sisters would write down on a sheet of paper a question that begins with "What if", put the paper in a box, and have someone else answer that question. Then, we went around the circle, having one person read their question and then have the person beside them read their answer. It was a relatively fun activity, but about 10 of the "What if" questions were something along the lines of "What if I get fat on my mission and never get married?" An insightful peek into the psyche of a sister missionary haha. 

We got an referral from one of our investigators this last week! His name is Sam and he is such a nice guy! We were able to go to his home with one of the members of our ward and teach him. One of his roommates, Lee, was nearby when we came in and asked if he could sit in on the lesson as well. He had no religious background, but seemed to enjoy the message we shared. Lee was especially fascinated by the concept of the Holy Ghost. Every time we would start to talk about something else, he would stop us and say, "Thats good, but I'm still interested in the Spirit thing. Can we talk about that again?" haha :)

We had a training in district meeting on comp unity today that I loved. A scripture was mentioned from Amos 3 that states: "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" Over the course of my mission, I have really realised how true this scripture is! There really is no way to work together with a companion and have the spirit unless you are agreed. And what does it mean to be agreed? It means to compromise and yielding to your companion when necessary. The training reminded me of another great quote I've heard on in a previous training on comp inventory: "It is more important to be one then be right." 

Love you all! Have a great week!

-Sister Bennion

August 11th

Hey Family!

A busy week! (Which is the best kind of week as a missionary) We were able to meet with a couple investigators that had been swamped with studies for a while and we were finally able to start a free English class! Only two people showed up, but still...its a start :) One of our investigators who came felt bad that attendance was low and ran into the hallway outside the library we were meeting. We called her to see where she had gone and she told us that she was "recruiting". She went up to all of the people who looked like they were international students and tell them to come study English. She told us "Everyone is ignoring me! What was that word that you taught me yesterday?" We thought about it for a second before answering "Apostacy?" She responded, "Yes! They are all apostates!" hahahaha. Oh man. I love these people so much.

I really have loved the area I am in and the companion I am with and, as transfers get closer and closer, I started to get a little apprehensive because there is a big possibility that I will get transferred. Then, I read a talk in the last ensign called, "Act upon this land as if it were years." It is based on a scripture in D&C that states:

“And I consecrate unto them this land for a little season, until I, the Lord, shall provide for them otherwise, and command them to go hence;

“And the hour and the day is not given unto them, wherefore let them act upon this land as for years,‍ and this shall turn unto them for their good.”

The writer of the article later states: When we “act upon this land as for years,” we begin to recognize opportunities we may not have seen before. We may also see that some ofthese opportunities may never come our way again. Then we think, “As long as I’m here, I’m going to get involved, do the best I can, and choose to be happy. I’ll continue to hopefor the future, but in the meantime, let me do some good here.” It’s the difference between treading water and actually swimming.

Love it! Make the best of every area!

                                                               View from Sarah's flat
Letter to Rachel & Mary:

So. Crazy story. Before we came to the area two months ago, the elders who use to live in our flat were playing soccer with a sunkist bottle and put a hole the size of a baseball through the window. We called the mission office to get it fixed, but, 2 months later, there was still no progress. And it was the middle of Tasmanian winter. So it was pretty chilly. But, moving on, one morning, we were coming back from our morning run and realized we had locked ourselves out of our flat. We quickly realized that we were in bit of trouble. We did not have our phone, had no idea what the zone leader or district leaders phone number was, the mission office was closed that day, and the nearest members house was about 1-2 miles away. And, even if we did somehow contact the zone leaders, there was no way of knowing if they would have a spare key. We tried to open all of the windows, but they were not budging.

Final solution? Remember how the window was a little broken.....

....Now it is very broken. We kicked it in to make a Sister S-sized hole.

Moral of the story: A hole in the window can sometimes be a blessing.

August 4th

It rained 5 out of 6 days straight this last week! It made finding a little difficult, because Chinese people in Hobart Tasmania evidently hibernate when its at all rainy/cold, but we still had a fairly good week. We were able to meet a lot of great people and see a lot of progress with the ones that we are meeting with.

We have an investigator named Christina who is so awesome! She was the one that texted us a few weeks ago asking for english help and "to know the purpose of life." We have been teaching her ever since and she is one of the funniest people I have ever met. 

Some of the best Christina lines:

- "When you're promoted, do you become nuns?"

- We took her to dinner with us yesterday and went to get our shoes on to leave and left her in the living room because she was still talking with one of the members of the family and we didn't want to interrupt. She raced in after us and said, "You left your costumer!"

 - (After we talked about Jesus being the Only Begotten Son of God, which in Chinese, translates as only child of God) "Aha! One Child Policy!"

I read a great quote on prayer this last week, it is from a guy named Dale Evans. It states: "I think the best way to arrive at the right decision is to first pray about it, placing it in God's hands. Then, sleep on it. The next morning, when you get up, I believe that the 1st solution that comes to your mind will be the right one - that is, if you have complete confidence in God's guidance.  ' But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.' "

I love you all so much! Have a great week!

-Sister Sarah Bennion

July 28th

THIS WEEK. Oh my goodness, where to begin! It has been the craziest, most stressful, and most completely and utterly amazing week I have experienced on my mission!

For the last few weeks, we have been teaching this girl from Shanghai named Emily. The elders who were in the area before us found her and she is one of the most prepared people I have ever met. She goes to church just about every Sunday, knows the Book of Mormon is true, and has a super strong testimony that God lives and loves her. However, she was really hesitant to get baptized. The elders had set a couple baptism dates with her, but each time the date approached, she felt unprepared or a concern came up. About a month ago, when we first got into the area, Emily let us know that she was going to move to Sydney on August 1st and told us that she had decided she wanted to be baptized there, because she felt like it would be a fresh start for her. We told her that we would respect her decision and continued to teach her the lessons over the next few weeks. However, this past week, both Sister S and I got the feeling that we should invite her to be baptized again. So, we went over tithing with her (the last thing she needed to know) and afterwards, went over the Baptismal Interview Questions (without telling her they were Baptism Interview Questions :) ) and she passed it with flying colors. We let her know that she was prepared and invited her to be baptized the coming weekend. She went home, prayed about it, and sent us a text that night saying she wanted to be baptized that Sunday! We spent the next 3 days scrambling to get everything done, but it was SO WORTH IT! It was amazing to see her dressed in white and looking so happy!! Ahhh. I love this work.

Love you all! Look for miracles, they happen!!

-Sister Sarah Bennion

July 21st

Crazy week!!

 

Sorry, because of all of the BYU application stuff, this will not be the best email (let us all take a moment to dwell on how weird it is that I will have to apply to BYU classes again soon...ahhhh...real life). But here is a few really cool experiences from the past week!

 

1. We got a text from a roommate of a less active that said, "my name is Christina, I want english help and also to know the purpose of life. Can we meet this week?" so awesome.

 

2. We met a less active named Michael a few weeks ago. He is a really nice guy, just super busy and stressed about tests and visa stuff. He said that we could contact him after a couple of weeks so, last Saturday, we texted to see how he was doing. He responded, "Great! See you at church tomorrow!" and then he came! For the first time in a year! Everyone in the ward was so happy to see him.

 

I was reading through the Christlike attributes session and noticed in the introduction that it said "All Christlike attributes are a gift from God." I think it is interesting that the first Christlike attribute mentioned is faith in Jesus Christ. My companion and I were talking about it later and discussed how we both have always felt like faith is our job. It is something that we have to work on and then eventually develop. But, according to preach my gospel, faith is in fact, a gift from God. Great faith is not the finishing line to a life of living righteously, it is a gift bestowed to us along the way by the Lord to motivate us to do and be better and must be asked for through "great prayer and fasting." 

 

Love you all!

-Sister Bennion

July 14th

Thank you so much for the emails this week! I got a total of 46, RECORD BREAKING! I love you all and I felt very very loved in return :)

 

I am so happy the whole family got back together! And I loved loved loved the Michael narwhal shirt story. Oh my goodness. I am still cracking up.

 

Another great week in Tassie! We had a complete miracle day last Wednesday and were able to find two rock solid awesome people as we were on our way to a lesson! Their names are Hank and Joe. Haha, some of the names the Chinese exchange students pick are so random, I love it. We invited Hank to come to dinner with us at one of the member families' home. He just came to Australia a few weeks ago and so his English is still not the best, but he seemed to really enjoy it. He told the husband that he thought his mustache was very handsome. Good times. :)

 

I realized this last week that it had been about a year since I got my last priesthood blessing and felt like I needed to get one. Sister S said that she wanted one as well, so we were able to ask our Zone Leaders for one after District Meeting. It was exactly what I needed. Some of the things that the elder giving me the blessing said was a direct answer to my prayers. It definitely strengthened my appreciation for the restoration of the priesthood and made me realize what a blessing it has been throughout my life. I love this Gospel!

 

Love you all!

 

-Sister Bennion 

July 7th

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

I realized last Friday it is the first time in my life that I have not been in America for Independance day! Super weird. Luckily, we have rocking members who got us a 4th of July package with Oreos, Tim-Tams, Antac biscuits, and sparklers, so we still got to celebrate the holiday in a very American fashion :)

We had a really great week. We were able to contact and meet with a lot of former investigators and met with some of the people we had found in weeks previous that have a ton of potential!

Two miracles of the week:

1) We met with this Chinese guy from Inner Mongolia who is a member of one of the local Baptist churches. He has really great English, so he started off just talking to us completely in English and was asking questions "How much success do Mormons have with the Chinese people in this area?" "Do people actually want to meet with you?" "Where do you go to find people?"  and other slightly awkward, seeking intel kind of questions. Finally, he asked, "Why do you use a Book of Mormon? Isn't one Bible enough?" We started to explain to him about prophets and asked him if we could speak Chinese to explain more clearly. He was pretty shocked that we could speak Chinese well (well for foreigners at least :) ) and, after we started speaking Chinese, he started really listening to what we were saying. In the end, he agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it was the word of God, as well as meet again this next week.

2) We had a ton of contacts in our phone that we had not been able to get a hold of and knew nothing about. So, for weekly planning last week, we took the time to send a mass text to all of the investigator contacts in the phone saying that we were the new missionaries in the area and asking if there was a good time we could meet next week. We got a text back a minute later from one of the contacts we had texted that said "I am coming to church on Sunday!" And she did! Her name is Catherine and she is one of the most prepared people I have ever met. She said that she had met with missionaries for the first time about a year ago, but, because she had gone back to China for a few months, she had lost contact with them. She already believes in God and Jesus Christ and is eager to learn more! So cool!

Love you all!

-Sister Bennion