week 1

Well its about time! i feel like it has been ages since i got to email home. haha maybe it was just a really long week. super stressful for me and i have been running on maybe 2 hours of sleep a night. so that is fun too. but im not complaining. i am just trying to take everything in stride and do the best i can to learn from all my experiences.

So transfer meeting was good. I got to see two of my favorite elders go home so that was good. They opened two more sisters areas in our zone and flushed the elders out, sisters are slowly taking over THE mission! its crazy. Our favorite LA lady drove us and we had a nice talk. i love her lots. she is returning to church after being away for 20+ years. when we got home we went to this huge event at the civic center here in beaumont called a Tasting. its a fund raiser for the food bank here. so all the churches in beaumont set up a booth and serve some kind of food. tons and tons fo ppl go and eat lots of food. and we served bread at the booth that the church had set up. it was pretty fun. we got to meet lots of ppl and pass out lots of mormon.org cards. haha then we had a social at the instutute to go to because we cover the singles branch here as well. i dont know if i told you that or not. but we cover the family ward with the ZL's and then the singles branch also. so that is keeping up busy.

Karen had to practice her baptism for 3 hours on wednesday. she is really scared and now it isnt even happening anymore. it is really sad and i am really frustrated because i feel ike it is my fault because she says that i am a horrible teacher and i am making up al of these commandments and we should tell ppl about them before we try and get them to get baptized. so keep praying for her. she knows the book of mormon is true, she just needs to have a deeper testimony of Joseph smith.

James is doing good. he is still as cute as ever. He told us that he is going to start going back to his wifes church just to make sure about everything. he is really impressed with our church and he loves all the ppl and he feels good when he comes even tho he cant hear anything. he just wants to make sure he knows everything because when he commits to something he puts in 110% so he wants to make sure he Knows what we are teaching him is true. But keep praying for him.

We are having a hard time finding, well finding those who are ready and want to commit. We have a lot of potential investigators but none of thm want to keep commitments and are never home when we come back for appointments. But this is all part of the work and it happens so i just have to keep working harder and harder. maybe if we knock on every single door in beaumont we will find people who want to hear about the Gospel. We are trying really hard to help our members get excited about misisonary work because the investigators that are the most solid are the ones who have member friends. so that is what we are working on is member referrals.easier said then done. I think that everyone is afraid of misisonary work. whenever they hear that word they stop listening. haha but i guess i have no room to talk cause i wasnt doing misisonary work before i was a missionary. haha but that is going to change when i get home!

Well I had to sing in STAKE CONFERENCE on saturday. ahhhhhh i didnt eat anything all day because i was so nervous and my tummy was all churny. i was so sick. haha i hate singing. but as a misisonary you do whatever ppl ask you to. and being on a mission in general is out of my comfort zone so i might as well just do everything that makes me get out of my zone. haha at least i am a sister missionary so even if i sounded horrible everyone says you didi good cause your a missionary. haha but im glad that is over!

So i wish i had some awesome thing to tell you about all the amazing things that i learned this week but all i can thing to say is that i have a long way to go when it comes to charity and patience. I thought i was doing my hardest to be full of love and patience but when it got put to the test i learned that i didnt have as much as i thought i did. As missionaries we cant get complacent. just when we think we are doing good, getting the hang of things, and we think we know what we are doing things change and everything you have and are is put to the test and you are given a new challenge. i think the same thing happens in life. We shouldnt ever be comfortable where we are. there is always room to grow and improve and if we think we are doing good we must not be looking hard enough. Acknowledge the savior, increase our commitment to follow him more each day. That is what i am trying my best to do. it is hard and sometimes the things i go thru are painful and they break my heart and tear at my very foundation of what i am, but at the end i always turn to my savior and he helps me tru the lessons that i have to learn as a missionary. "And now my beloved brethren after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path  i would ask if all is done? behold i say unto you nay for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him relying wholly upon the merits oh him who is mighty to save. Wherefore ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ having a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God and of all men. wherefore if ye shall press forward and endure to the end behold thus saith the father ye shall have eternal life." 2 Nephi 31; 19-20. This is so true. All is not done. we have to do more then just be on the path. And that is my hope and my prayer to all of you, that you will do all you can to bring others onto this path and do more then just be there yourself. There are so many people out there who do now have the gospel and we need to share what we have with them!

Amazing Week!

Dearest family,

Well this week was amazing. that is all i have to say. So many great things happened! It was a hard week tho too. but i am focusing on the good. We face alot of ppl who are not willing to keep commitments and they will talk to us and be like yeah yeah come vack! and then when we go back they are never there. But we have two progressing Gators James and Karen

K let me just go off about james for like 5 years. I LOVE HIM SO MUCH!

He is the cutest old man that i have ever met. he is by far my favorite ever! He is the man that we met tracting and he was a miracle from day one and the more we meet with him the more we see how much of a miracle he really is. He loves calling us sisters, he thinks its cute and it has become his pet name for us. We had a lesson with him monday, wednesday, and friday.

On wed we were all crying! even the member that came with us. He was talking about how he can tell by looking in our eyes that we truly know that the things we are telling him are true, that he can see that we love God, we love our brothers and sisters, and that we love him. And that means the world to him. He can tell that we are genuine and truly care about him. Then on friday our member cancled two minurtes before our lesson with him and we were already in the driveway so we called him and we were going to cancle but he was so sad so he brought chairs out onto the front porch so that we could sitll go over. and he brought us cokes on a silver platter with straws and napkins and he was like " yall are young so i got you baby cokes!" ahhh so cute! Then he told us that he was having sucidal thoughts because he is all alone and he doesnt want to become a vegetable like his mom and wife did. and he told us that we were tyruly sent from God and that he know God loves him because he sent us to him. He melts my heart. I cry over him everynight pleading withthe lord to help him and comfort him. James likes to pretend like he is hard core but he will always do what we ask him. he just likes to give us a hard time about it. haha he told us he wasnt going to come to church this week but surprise! in walks james. haha that makes two weeks in a row! and he wants to start paying tithing. We are going to commit him to a date tonight. We had him read alma 32 and he read it 3 times and he was telling us about all the things that we have taught him that he is going to "Plant" in his heart and let them grow. it was amazing! he is truly ready for the Gospel. It is such a testimony to me that the lord really does prepare people everywhere to receive the Gospel. We bought him a plant to remind him of the seeds that he is planting and on the pot we are writing a quote from the bible dictionary about faith. it says. Although faith is a gift, it must be cultured and sought after until it grows from a tiny seed to a great tree. So please keep James in yalls prayers!

Next is Karen. She is getting baptized on the 31st and she has been telling us that when she prayed about the book of mormon and if it was true her whole day went better and she felt at peace, and then when she committed to her date she said that she just felt peaceful and warm, and comforted. So she is doind awesome and the Lord is answering her prayer. She is so funny. she calls us a milltion times a day and leaves us 10 minute long messages. She loves us and tells us that we are her daughters that she never had. She made us dinner of saturday. it was really good. she grew up jewish so she says she can cook really good. I believe her now. haha but i love karen, she is a sweet lady.

Now about my comps. So sister Kempton is getting transfered and i am really sad. Once she opened up to me and i got to know her we got along really well. and now i can truly say that i love her. she still does things to bug me but everyone does. And i am staying in Beaumont with sister clegg. I am kinda worried because she is not motivated at all and i have to drag her around everywhere. But i will make it work and do my best in the situations that i am placed in. I am going to miss sister Kempton, she is a hard worker which i love because i love to work hard to and its nice when you dont have to be dragging someone around all the time. But things are going great. I am laughing everyday, I am happy, the work is hard which is good. I love Beaumont and all the people here. I am so blessed to be a missionary. I miss you lots but this is where i want to be and where i need to be. I hope yall have a good week and have fun with school starting!

Love sister Hamilton

Tears all around (from 8/12)

Dearest Family, Oh how i love you dearly. Can i just start by saying how much i love you? I really do. and I hope you know that. I hope you know how much i pray for each one of you individually and plead with the lord for you and the different things that each one of you are going thru. Words cant express how much i care for you. Yall are the best.

So this week has been a CRAZY week. I think i have felt the most different emotions this week then i ever have my whole mission. it was crazy. but i have learned alot about myself and also my companions. So first thing i learned is that I am SUPER out of shape. haha on monday at our zone pday we did all sorts of sports but i almost died. i just like to think that it is because it is so hot. haha but we had fun and i got a good workout. The nxt think i learned came over the period of about two days. on tuesday we had zone conference combined with the orange zone(my old zone) so i got to see my baby and all my old pals from Louisiana so that was fun. I miss sister Barton alot. we had alot of fun together but we also know how to work hard and do work. but anyway after we had to talk to pres about our companionship problems because they got so bad to the point that members could tell that things were not good and the zone leaders could tell so they called president and told him and then i guess sister kempton was complaining about things so she told him that we needed to talk. so we had a 2 1/2 hour companionsip inventory with president and sister Crawford. It was a bunch of Bologna at first but i decided that i needed to do my best to just get over it and i put on my big girl pants and realized that noone can make me feel any way. i am in control of my emotions and i control how i feel and how i choose to act. so after my two comps cried to pres for ever(I didnt cry once!) he told us to go home and just talk and get to know each other and work out our problems. so we went and got food and just talked and got to know each other better (Kinda) so that we can understand eachother better. I dont really feel like we got any better on a personal level but we did decide to be more open with each other. so when someone isnt happy we are going to talk about it instead of just letting it fester inside. So then the next night, wednesday night, i got a call from president telling me that i was going to get emergency transfered because a sister was going home so he needed me to go and be with her companion and help her get back on her feet cause i guess they had been having a really hard time. So i was totally taken aback because we were just getting to the point of our companionship working and then i was going to get taken away. So we just kinda sat there for a minute after i hung up and then sister kempton was like, No he cant take you away, I screwed up the whole transfer and i thought i was going to have one week to try and make things better. Then she started crying so i gave her a hug and reasurred her that she didnt mess things up and it was ok (even tho that was not toally true i decided to forget about myself and my hurt feelings) we just cried forever and she told me that she was going to miss me alot. So taht was a shock. i didnt even think that she cared about me. So i cried all night thinking about all the people here that i have learned to love and how i didnt get to spend that much time here but also knowing that i will go where ever i am needed but wishing and praying that i could stay. So it was a rough night. But in the morning president called again and said that he decided that i needed to stay where i was. so that was a huge relief! iwas so happy tha ti started crying again. haha Then during comp inventory it got a little heated between sister kempton and sister clegg. which i never know what to do. I dont want to but in there problems but i feel weird just sitting there watching. But We are alot more open with each other now and sister Kempton told me that she has really learned this past week how much i love the people around me and put my whole heart into the work and really truly love the people and her. So taht was nice. I guess taht is the one thing i am good at cause all three of my companions have said taht to me. that i am good at loving people. So atleast i am doing something right! But we have had lots of miralces this week. it is amazing for me to look back at the end of each day and write in my journal about the many miracles that happened that day. It is humbling to really see that we are just tools in the lords hands. one of the sweetest old ladies in the ward put it the best i have ever heard it. (She was talking about how she helped a family in need when the mom was going back to school and teh dad was working all the time so she went over to cook and clean for them.) She said "I didnt do anything, The Lord did it. I just had to be there because it wouldnt look dignified for the Lord to be carrying around a mop bucket." THis is so true! so many times we are just a tool in the lords hands. it is amazing for me to be able to see this in my everyday life. I love it! We found an old man Named James who let us in after 32 years of turning ppl away because he said there was something different about us and he needed to know what we were all about. he came to church on sunday and he has started reading the BOM. Karen Told me that she is so glad that i was unselfish enough to put my life on hold and come outand teach people about the gospel because she needed me. She told me that i have grown on her and she will never be the same after meeting me. We got a referral for a guy who found the gospel while in Boot camp because one of guys in his group was a member and he opened his mouth and shared the gospel with him. He came to church on sunday and we have started teaching him. These are but a few of the many miracles that have happened this week. These are the moments that make all the pain and heartache worth it. These are the moments that make me pour out my heart in gratitude each night to my Heavenly Father that he found me, Alexis Hamilton, worthy enought to labor among his children and share the gospel with them. I am the luckiest person i know, but it is more then luck. it is truly a blessing that i will be eternally grateful for. My quote from last week that i forgot is this; If you want the blessing, dont just kneel down and pray about it. Prepare yourselves in every concievable way you can in order to make yourselves worthy to receive the blessing you seek.- Harold B. Lee.  

I love you all! have a Great week!

ALLLLLLLLLLLright

Well Fam-bam what a great week i had! It really was a pretty good week. aside from being sick and. . . well i dont want to get to graphic but yeah i was pretty sick. The stress is getting to me, but Im alive which is all that matters right? So I have been thinking alot about alot of things, like usual so if this is all scattered and random, i forgot my planner which is my brain. sorry i will try and remember everything. Oh and this might be short cause we are having zone pday and we are going to go play mud football and a bunch of stuff but i will hit the high lights of my week.

So Karen, basically our only progressing gator is doing awesome! we started teaching her the POS yesterday and she had so many AH-HA moments and it just made me so happy! moments liek that, when you see an investigators face light up and they see the truths that htye have been missing and everything makes sense to them. those are the moments that i live for as a missionary. they boost my spirit and show me again why i am here. I was so happy. i was smiling all day :) she is gong to get baptized on the 17 if we can teach her all the lessons by then. so hopefully we can. she is crazy and loves to talk and go off about random things so it takes us along time to teach her. It took us 4 visits to teach L1 so yeah. we gotta work fast. 

We have seen alot of miracles this last week. during the hour of power sister Clegg picked the street and then when we got there she changed her mind and said that we needed to go somewhere else and sister kempton was really mad but we went to the other street anyway and we started knocking and the third door we knocked on the lady let us right in and we talked to her forever! she had met with missionaries before and she was super open to us coming back. she is AMAZING.  She has 11 kids only 2 of them are hers and the rest are kids who were in foster care that noone else wanted because they were too old or they have disabilities. and she was basically quoting the family proclamation to us while we were there. so she is mormon and she just doesnt know it yet. so that was awesome. we are going back to teach her tuesday.

We found an old man yesterday and his wife died last year and he wanted us to come in but we couldnt and he siad that tons of people have knocked on his door but he just noticed somthing different about us so he decided to let us in. so that was pretty cool. we are going to teach him on tuesday also.

Things are starting to pick up for us. We are trying really hard to get our investigaors to progress its hard to get pl to keep commitments but weare working hard.

We talked in zone meeting about buring our weapons, again. i seem to always talk about that. because it is so important. And i need to have my desires be more focused on the lord and the work. I sometimes dont have my desires focued totally on the work and i let the natural man take ahold of me and i get lazy and i dont have all my heart and soul into the work. so the weapon that i am burying is the desires of my heart. My desires always need to be focued on the work. In Preach my Gospel under faith in Lesson 3 it says that God can help us change the desires of our hearts. I have to work. God is only going to help me. he isnt going to do it for me. I have to pray and work hard to get the blessing that i want. I had a really great quote but it was in my planner that i forgot so i will send it next weeek.

I have been being really hard on myself lately because i see all of these awesome missionaries around me all the time doning really awesome things and todya i had some personal revelation during studies when i was looking over my notes from the MTC and trying to decide what my weapon was that i was going to bury. And I realized that God just wants us to work to improve ourselves, he doesnt expect us to be perfect but he does expect us to work hard and to keep working and never give up. I can try and try my hardest but i will never be perfect, I am a work in progress, a construction zone, a Glorious being Capable of becoming. Becoming what my Father in Heaven wants me to become. Becoming the missionary that he expects, Becoming the Sister, daughter, wife, mother anything that i am called to be, i am capable of becoming. We all are. We are all Glorious beings and our heavenly father loves us and wants whats best for us. And its better to be a contruction Zone then a bumpy pot hole filled road where no work is going on. Remember that.

Love sister Hamilton