Nov 17 Hamilton in Hamilton

So this week was one of the best weeks of my mission! While it was the best I definitely had struggles as well!!! :) The beginning of my week was fantastic full of lessons and all sorts of good stuff then on Wednesday I got to go on exchanges to Hamilton (yes its a town) and I was with Sister Wood and Sister McCormies and it was the best time of my life!!! They are probably the coolest sisters ever and we just had loads of fun!! The first day all the appointments fell through and I told them Heavenly Father was just teaching us a little bit of patience and endurance, but the day was still a lot of fun. In the mission right now member missionary work is being stressed a lot and so that night we worked with a lot members and just got in their homes and got to know them and shared a lesson with them, and it was a lot of fun! Then Thursday we had a lot of great appointments and we had a meeting and that was amazing and it was just a really good day. Well the mindset for exchanges is that we are supposed to show the sisters that miracles can happen and to have faith in their areas.... well I praying for miracles! The theme of the exchange was members and missionaries (imagine that) well then Friday during weekly planning we texted a couple of the members and with in 30 mins we had 3 people say they would come out with us at different times during the following week, one of which was a member they had been trying to get for a while now and she finally said she would..... MIRACLES! Then later that day we went and visted a less active family and shared a message with them and then at the end asked if they would come to church this week and they said.... YES!!!! for the first time in over 3 1/2 months that they had even said yes.... Well yes's dont mean a whole lot out here cause everyone backs out of everything well on sunday the sisters called me and that family CAME TO CHURCH!!!! So we did see miracles and it was such a blessing.... and not only did we see a lot of success we had a ton of fun in the process we had a snowball fight and we went and got hot chocolate and we placed a book of Mormon. I just want you all to know the church is true! I wouldnt be out here if it wasnt!! Lately we have had an investigator ask us a lot about our living prophet and thinks that we dont need one... well over exchanges Heavenly Father softened him and when we met with him again he told us that all his reservations had been cleared and that he thinks Mormonism is for him... He still wants to do a lot more research (he is just that way) but he is now praying for a baptismal date... we are hoping December 6th before transfers!! But anyway the reason I did not email yesterday is because we had the chance to meet with Elder Kacher of the Quorum of the Seventy and that was so incredible it was an amazing training and I simply loved it all!! He said that we are made to be weak and simple... Why? Because then we can be humble and depend on the atonement... Learn how to turn to the Savior! That was my favorite thing he said! There was so much more though but at the end during testimony meeting an elder that has only been out 2 weeks said "We are not here to fail, but we are not supposed to perfect, and we wont be! But He will make up the rest. Our investigators aren't here to fail either, you have the sacred opportunity to help them succeed. We think our lives are hard.... they aren't when you think of what the Savior went through. He wouldnt have gone through that if we weren't worth it. You are worth it, they are worth it, everyone is worth it. You are here to SUCCEED!" Elder Bench! Now go and succeed because you were not sent here to fail! and remember "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get, what you've always got."- Elder Bednar 

I love you all! and I know this church is true with all my heart. I know we indeed have a living prophet and he is necessary! I love this gospel it blesses my life everyday. I have a huge testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, its teachings are priceless! We have been blessed to live in such glorious days and we have the tools to help our brothers and sisters around us make it back to their Father in Heaven. Heavenly Father loves all of us and he wants us home with Him. So keep trying and when you fall, get back up dust yourself off and use the atonement "You dont need to be your own savior" -Sister Wood. Christ atoned for us, not just for our sins but for our sorrows, our pains, everything you go through he has felt.... find refuge in the arms of your Savior! I love you all have an amazing week and remember to always pray Heavenly Father wants to hear from his children!

Love Sister Hamilton

Oops update on those we have been teaching:

Sarrita is doing amazing still coming to church most the time and progressing really well she is praying about a baptism date

Adam also is doing amazing and praying about a baptismal date YAY!

Lisa and mom (susan) they have been UBER busy and we have been gone so we havent met with them in a while so no progress really

Kim - the amazing one well yeah we kept trying to see her and she txted and said she didnt want us to see her anymore... :( no bueno 

Angie also said she didnt want to meet with us so that was a bummer :/ she just needs more time is all 

and I think that is all LOVE and MISS you ALL!!!!!!

All the Sisters from exchanges this week

Utica my hometown, Mitchell family we love them, snow in Hamilton, Me on exchanges with Sisters from Hamilton, they are the BEST!

Nov 3 Transfers week

So this week was just simply...incredible!!! I love missionary work! You can have the hardest week ever and at the end of the week you just look back and you honestly can't remember the bad things! So to start off,  Monday we taught Lisa and Susan they are so amazing! At the end of their lesson Lisa prayed and she asked if this is what she should be doing. After the prayer she just lit up with a huge smile and said "I got goosebumps when I asked! I know this is what I am supposed to be doing. I am going to keep you girls coming over" it was such a neat experience and I just love her and her mother so dearly her mom (susan) cant read or write and forgets everything but she sleeps with her book of mormon because it makes her sleep better at night! How neat is that? 

So later that night we stopped by this family that us mortals thought had no potential. They haven't been a priority for the missionaries but Heavenly Father corrected us, don't you worry ;) When Demitry opened the door we apologized for coming over unannounced and he said no no I texted you 3 times (to the wrong number) and asked you to come over tonight. That was amazing to see Heavenly Father chastise us for thinking we knew better. 

Then Brother Williams... well we met with him on Tuesday and he was super sad because his boyfriend had broken up with him, so that was actually an answer to our prayer! However, later in the week his mom decided that he couldn't meet with us anymore! That was super sad and hopefully that turns out differently soon!  

We also had a referral from headquarters and his name was Adam Brooks. He requested a book of mormon and we took it too him. As we were talking with him, we asked why he wanted one and he said that his professor studies mormon politics and had written 2 books on Mitt Romney that he was reading and they were interesting and also there was a south park episode on how living the mormon standards makes people happy or something like that.  Well needless to say he told us he would have it read in a week and then he would like to start meeting with us.... ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?! Well 2 hours later he texted us with questions from 1 Nephi 13 SERIOUSLY? and they were legit questions too. We are so stoked for him and way excited to tell you more next week!! I cant wait! 

Also we went and raked leaves this week and jumped in them and it was SOOO fun! We did cartwheels and front flips and all sorts of good stuff!! So yeah New york is pretty legit I would say!!! :) Then when we stopped by a less actives home the little girl that thought we were models was there and her friend was like hey are those girls the  super models you was talking bout? And the girl was like yup thats them! It was so funny that we ran into them again and they are still calling us super models. That it is fun! 

We do service at a nursing home every Tuesday and Saturday and on Saturday this week there was this music thing that we did with the old people and we ended up doing the chicken dance and a bunch of different dances and it was WAY fun lol. Then later we went to a different head quarter referral and she looked out her window and said oh its the church people (she had requested a bible but naturally we brought a book of mormon as well). Anyway, she opens the door and just hugs us... no introductions or anything just a massive hug and then the first thing she says is "I Love Mitt Romney" and she said her son told her to get a bible and she was just like I'm gonna get my bible from Romney's people haha. It was so funny but she told us we could come back so that was exciting!! 

Well those are the highlights of my week! I can't believe it's already November. I have been gone 2 months... Im gonna blink and this mission is going to be over, it is so sad!!  I just want you all to remember that you need to take time each day to just smell the roses!! Life is way too short to constantly be stressed and as a missionary we are constantly stressed, so President Wirthlin constantly stresses the importance of just remembering to have fun! So "It may not always be perfect, but it will be what you need" Love Life we are not here just to endure but to find joy!!! Men are that they might have joy!! I love you all and miss you something fierce!! Stay strong!

Exchanges

Love Sister Hamilton

Cartwheels in the leaves

playing in the fall leaves

Oct 27 Life of a Model

Me, Sister Barley, Sister Gass

Me in beautiful NY

Me being crazy with the glasses 

      

Well Familia and Friends,

How are you all? I am doing fantastic.... better than fantastic!!! I love everything about my mission and serving! There are trials and miracles and by the time the miracles are over you dont even know you had trials, its pretty much the greatest thing ever! So to start off we FINALLY were able to get into the home of a family we've been trying to tract out forever ago, and they are SO ready, it was a miracle it really was! So we talked with the mom (Lisa) and grandma for a bit and they said we could come back. We were stoked, so we walk out and sister Barley says "We'll see ya later" to the 12 year old son Raymond and he in reply says "Yeah we'll see ya in the magazines" then this black girl (his friend) says "wait ya'll are models?" hahahahahha Sister barley states "No we are missionaries" and the girls says "Well y'all are dun gorgeous" It was one of the funniest moments ever. We laughed super hard!!! It's a pretty great life as a missionary and a pretty interesting one as well haha!! We will be teaching Lisa again tonight and she is very interested and we are super excited about that! 

We have been THOROUGHLY going through our area book and by then end of this transfer it is our goal to contact every person in our area book ,its gonna take awhile but I am stoked about it! So this leads me to transfers, they will be this wednesday and.... I WILL BE STAYING IN NEW HARTFORD WITH SISTER BARLEY!!! YAY I am so excited and so relieved lol! I am just getting to know the people here and love them and I am not ready to leave yet so I will be here for another 6 weeks. I CANT believe it is already transfers, time has FLOWN by!! I have come to realize that the more consecrated you are the less you think about time. I call this my concept of time.... Because we are out here fully devoted to the Lord it is easy for us to lose track of time and then suddenly an entire transfer is gone and you are wondering where the time went I love it!! 

Something else major this week was return and report which is just with the people I came out to the field with, it is a special training for us and it was SOOO fun to see all my MTC buddies again they are so awesome.  I missed them all so much!! So I wanted to share some quotes I got from that training.... "Feel your life with so much food that there is no room for evil to be there" -Elder Empey

Make working hard a habit!

"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard" -Kevin Durant

"If you tempt temptation then you will probably succumb to it" -President Wirthlin 

"What measures your success as a missionary is how you raise your family" -President Wirthlin

I loved the training it was truly inspirational!! Everything about serving a mission is amazing. It teaches me things I would never learn anywhere else! 

One thing I have been working really hard on is love.... I watched the Because of Him video and it made me want to be more like Christ... I am literally His representative, I wear His name everyday, I act in His name everyday, I am supposed to be as He was.... I want to be the type of person the people run to, and fall into my arms without knowing me and know that they will be loved. That is something I feel like I am struggling with is showing my love to people that I really care about and like. President Wirthlin says "if nothing else on your mission, become converted yourself". President is all about finding the one and converting the one even if that one is you! I want others to know I care I want to love as Christ loved and I want to act as if Christ was sitting in the passenger seat of my car at all times! Well, I think that is all for the week many miracles everyday!! I love you all thank you for your support and encouragement!

Remember "I told you it would be okay, I told you it would be alright" -Holland

Love Sister Hamilton

Oct 20 Miracles Really Do Happen

So wow this week was incredible!! So to begin, on Monday night we taught a girl named Serrita. She is 21 and dating a guy in our ward and she is stoked about the gospel and probably the happiest most bubbly person I have ever met. We committed her to baptism and she is praying about a date she is seriously the greatest though and she has already been to church .(Thats where we met her way to go Chris) and she loved it so yay!!! And yeah pretty much she is just top notch!!! 

Then on Tuesday nothing too exciting happened but we got the door slammed a couple times and just really wasn't a successful day so then wednesday we weren't having the best day again and I said to Sister Barley I know that we aren't supposed to get discouraged but doing missionary work does not make that easy and then.... Heavenly Father sent a miracle our way. Sister Barley wasn't feeling good (sick) but she also felt "trapped".  I suggested that maybe we should just go home and get medicine and she was like but that's more miles and then we both decided we needed to go get medicine. Well after grabbing the medicine, I walked out and was talking to our neighbor Mark as Sis Barley played in the leaves for a couple minutes. Then our neighbor Kim, who we had never met walked out, she asked us about being missionaries and what we believed etc. Then she said she had something to help Sis Barley in the apartment so we went up and she told us how for years she has felt like she has been missing something in her life. She has ran in some huge races and bought a dog etc to try and figure out what she was missing she told us she didn't like her religion (catholics) cause she thought they were hypocrites and then she talked about how happy we were and how much fun we had and she said "I want what you have" and yeah holy cow this never happens moment!! So we taught her the restoration and she is scheduled to be baptized Dec. 6. I am so excited, it was  such a blessing!! She is so amazing and SOOOO prepared Heavenly Father is amazing in the way he works through us!! So yeah that was way way exciting then we went on exchanges this week and that was super fun! 

Saturday we went to a funeral for the grand daughter of a lady in our ward she died at 15 with cancer, they thought she had beat it but it came back all over and a year after celebrating her cancer free party we were at her funeral. Sister Barley had to sing for it, it was super sad then we had stake conference which was AWESOME.  So many amazing quotes which I just happened to leave at the apartment sorry. At stake conference we had a lady bring  her sister who needs us and so she came to stake conference. Her name is Angie and she is awesome so miracle #3.  I couldn't ask for more, so even though there were hard times this week I can't even remember them, so I hope you are all having an excellent week and remember that the Lord smiles upon each of us differently!!! Stay strong!! I love you!

Love Sister Hamilton



My quilt I made from High School t-shirts.

Just me again in Utica and a sunset in NY