Sister Benson: 3/6/23

 

Week 68: President Pushup, Peaches and Answered Prayers

Hey hey yall!! Welcome to another episode of the life of Sister Benson. Lynn Haven is popping off like nobody's business lately and its so cool to see. This week was awesome so lets get into it :)) 

We drove 5 hours to Jacksonville this week so that we could go to MLC- mission leadership council- and have a big long meeting. It actually was a really good meeting where I felt like I learned a lot. The Spirit was really strong and it was so cool to see how much each of the leadership teams wanted to move the work forward. It was fun to be there, but it was also like really weird and sad because the majority of my friends who would usually be there, have gone home. So i was like.... who do i talk to..... Such a strange feeling. But it was great. Now for the first part of our title, President Pushup. So President Elbert was discussing with us something... to do with exercise? Anyways he was like well i can do a burbee. and we were all like wow yes please show us your burpbee. so he did. in his suit. wonderful form. THEN. sister elbert is like AND HE DOES PUSHUPS and suddenly p elbert i taking off his suitcoat and saying okay okay which elders wants to beat me in a pushup competition. So elder applegate gets up and YALL. WE WERE SHOOK. the man pumped out 30 beautiful pushups. perfect form. kept pace with elder applegate who had to be like.... in the army or something it was wild. he didnt even slow down at 30 he just decided he was done. anyways we were all like um what in the world. it was awesome. 

after MLC we had a 5 hour drive home to make. so we wanted to stop and get a snack. and here comes part 2 of our title. peaches. we wanted something fresh so.... we went to publix. which is like smiths but in the south. so we wandered around and got some peaches then went and checked out. well these two cashier girls were standing there and they started talking to us. we ended up talking to them and ones name was sarah. well sarah was the cutest and she asked why we were all dressed up and we told her we were missionaries for our church. she thought that was awesome. we asked if she was religious and she said she used to be, but hadnt been to church in a long time. but that she still believed in God. I told her thats kind of how i used to be, but then really finding this church totally changed my life. so she said okay... what time is church? i dont work on sundays. so we got her number and then we handed her over to the orange park elders in jax!! so fun. such cool missionary miracles. 

heres just a couple more awesome moments we expirienced this week. 

- sherry gave us ALL her sweet tea. no more of that!! 

- we had an awesome lesson with jason. his brother is a member, so his nieces and nephews are members. Well we had those guys help us teach jason the restoration. and it was AMAZING. im always blown away with primary kids. its so cool and such a blessing. well at the end of the lesson gabe- 10- asked how we can know that this is Gods true church. so we read moroni 10:3-5 with them and the Spirit filled the room. We asked the kids how they felt and they said things like warm, good, happy. we asked them what that was and they said it was the spirit. we reminded them that the scripture said that the Spirit testified of truth, so we asked them what it meant that they were feeling the spirit. and Jason says, it means its true. exactly :)) 

- we had an awesome lesson with malia this week and her aunt tanzi sat in!! she said shed listened to the whole plan of salvation last time and was interested in being baptized. it was awesome. so we taught the gospel of jesus christ to both malia and tanzi and they loved it. we set a bap date for malia for march 25th and she was so sad it wasnt sooner haha. and tanzi said she wanted to work on her faith so she could be FULLY committed for the rest of her life before she got baptized. which i think is admirable.

- sherry, selvin, malia, tanzi and jason ALL came to church on sunday!! what a miracle 

Now my spiritual thought for the email. this week i am amazed at the fact that God really does answer prayers. I feel like watchnig sister ashby, swain, petersen and morley go home was a big reality shock for me. That i was almost done. suddenly all the stresses and anxieties of reality came in. the mission is such a beautiful place where i dont have to worry about real adult life haha. but its been cool to see that God cares about what i care about. That he answers my prayers and calms my fears about things that i think are important. So. my testimony to yall is that God knows you. he loves you. he wants to help you and he knows how. Ask. he answers. 

love yall!!