Miracles All Around

Well this week was Pretty darn good! Lots of miracles all around. it never ceases to amaze me. I wish yall could be here with me and seeing everything cause its so hard for me to explain especially in an email. but i always try my best.

But today is sister C Bday! yay! we are twins. she is so funny. she gets really tired at night and so i tell her to tell me a story when she is like half asleep and i always end up peeing my pants cause she says that most random funny stuff. and she is OBSESSED with honking the horn. she doesnt like to drive so i always do but she will always reach aross me and honk the horn. so on saturday we were sitting at a stop sign looking at this creepy dog when all the suddenthis horn honks and freaks me out, it was sister clegg she reached across me and honked and it freaked the dog out too and so the dog pooped. we had some good laughs for days about that one. But yeah i have been laughing alot this week, or at least trying cause when i laugh then i am more positive and happy and i can have more joy in my work! Our neighbor is a drug dealer so there is always stuff going on next door. its so crazy. and they blast there music all night long. haha its soooooo funny the things that happen to you. it is seriously an adventure and i love every minute of it! its so fun to look back and rememver all the crazy stuff that happens to you! but sister cleggs parents sent us pepper spray for our birthdays so we are safe!

So we have ALOT of gators now. like i have no idea how we got them all. its just because we are blessed and we have faith and we trust in the lord that he will provide a way and help us find those who are prepared for the gospel! not all of them are super progressing but we sill have alot that we are teaching and working really hard on helping them to progress, but all we can do is invite and it is up to them if they want to put action into it or not. But James is not really doing so well anymore. he is so sick and stubborn. he fell the other day and sliced open his head. poor little guy. he is just a skeleton with skin onit. but i stiilll love him and i pray that one day he will accept the gospel.

S and L are doing AMAZING!!!!!  we taught them last night and we were planning on doing a BOok of mormon lesson but they just started asking us all these questions about the plan of salvation so we were like well we will just teach you that. so we did and the spirit was sooooo strong! it was incredible. They both were very into the lesson and had lots of questions that we were able to answer and they are both really pleased with the church and what we have taught them so far. We sang I am a child of God to them and they were both in tears. I loved it. THen we committed them to come to church! it may not seem like alot but htat is a big step for thme. sandy tells us everytime that she has a church that she is happy with but i know that she is just telling herself that because she is scared cause she feels the spirit and knows that what we are teaching is true. so that is good. we will get her. i specifically fasted for them yesterday because i feel so connected to them and i know that they will get baptized if i put forth the faith and do all i can to help bring the spirit.

We got a really solid new investigator this last week. she was a referral from a less active man in the ward. her name is P and she said that she has seen the difference that the church has made in her friends life and she wants that for her too. so we had a really good lesson with her saturday and she begged us to come back! it was a great lesson.

The A family is still struggling but we are doing our best to help them progresss. the little girl still wants to get baptized and come to church but noone else in the family does. its so sad. it breaks my heart.

We are teaching a 92 year old lady named M and she is so sweet! she always holds my hand the whole time we are over there and she tells me that i look like an indian! yes. that made my whole life! finally someone sees me for my true self! haha But we are trying to get her to come to church but she only leaves her house to go to the store and the doctor.

It was a great week! we also got a new investigator in the singles branch which is very exciting for them and they were all so happy!

THings are going good in Beaumont, i am happy that i got to stay for a transfer longer and i am so blessed to get to work with the people here. I love them so much.And we are teaching a bunch of old people andi love old people so i am happy! but i truly am grateful for all the experiences thati am going thru. easy and hard. they are all helping me so much and changing me in ways that i didnt know that i needed to be changed. but i am happy and loving life. I am truly blessed. I love you all soooooo much! i am so grateful for each one of you in my life and i pray for you on the daily! hope yall have a good week!

Love sister Hamilton

I'm not a teenager anymore

Dearest family,

First of all, thank you so much for my letters and my package! i do have to say that i bawled my eyes out reading all of the letters and sister C took some nice pictures of me wiping snot off of my face, haha i will have to send them next week. but i really do appreciate it. and I do have to say that i think it was the best birthday i have had! it was so special. and i dont know if i will be able to explain it. but being able to watch conference as a representative of Jesus Christ on your birthday is pretty awesome. We also got to teach S and L a little Book of Mormon lesson that evening and i got to testify about the truthfulness of that book. it was the best birthday ever!

I have been thinking about my life alot this week obviously and then after conference i had even more to think about. But i was so inspired and uplifted by the messages that we heard. lots of  things really stood out to me but a few of my favorites was from elder Holland when he was talking about depression and hard things we go thru and how he was talking about christ and how the cup could not pass from him and sometimes that happens to us, the cup can not pass so we need to "drink it and be strong" that really hit me. That is going to be my new motto in life. Drink it and be strong. I am going to try and do that more as i face hard times and challenges in my service and in life in general. Another thing that brought great peace to my heart was (i dont remeber who said it) but they said; "Its impossible for us to fail when we do our best when we are on the errand of the Lord." I think that was meant just for me. Alot of times i look around and i am not having as much success as those around me and i feel like a failure of a missionary, but as long as i do my best it is impossible for me to fail because i am on the errand of the Lord. I really needed to hear that. We had one of our Less active members come to conference on saturday. she cried the whole time. President Uchtdorfs talk really hit home with her. she wanted to take us out to lunch for my birthday but she couldnt stop crying and she told us that she just needed some time and she needed to go sort some things out. So i am praying that she will work hard to change those things in her life that are preventing her from coming to church and being worthy to take the sacrament. I love her so much, she has become a dear friend to me and it broke my heart to see her like that, but the words of the prophets and apostles are true and Heavenly Father knew what she needed to hear. On sunday we had one of the little girls in our family come to conference with us at a members home. She stayed home from her grandmas cause she wanted to come to church so bad! so we didnt get the whole family because they were at grandmas but she came and i hope that she felt the spirit, she told us that she knew they were talking about important stuff. she is 9 and so cute! the family just took her right in and we all played conference bingo. I felt like i was home over there. they have 7 kids and their youngest little boy who is 20 months old was all over me. I just attract little kids for some reason. haha and then i get in trouble because i am not supposed to hold them or let them sit on my lap but whenever i sit down they just come flocking! haha but it was fun to be with a family to watch conference. S and L are amazing! they are the couple that we found a couple weeks ago during our hour of power. S called on saturday morning because she was trying to read the Book of Mormon but the words were too small and she couldnt see them. so she asked if we could get her a larger print one so she can read! then she told us that L is also very interested which is very surprising to her because he has never been like this with religion so she is happy and told us to keep coming over. she also said that she has a church that she is perfectly happy with and she doesnt want to mislead us but L is super open. But i have no doubt in my mind that once they read the book of Mormon that they will both feel the spirit testify to them of the truthfulness of it and they will both get baptized. I had a dream about them, both in white and we were taking pictures infront of a picture of chirst. So i know that the Lord has plans for them. Our family is having a hard time progressing, the 9 year old is the only one that has any interest in progressing and reading from the book of mormon and coming to church. But we are still working with them. J is really sick again and told us that he just wants all this to be over with and he just wants to die. I just want him to get his answer so he will be baptized. All of our other investigators are experiencing alot of pull from the advesary. T, who was doing so well had an ex boyfriend come out of nowhere and got her to start using drugs again. It never ceases to amaze me how hard satan works to keep us from doing what the Lord wants us to do. It is so hard to not give in and to be strong and withstand temptaion, but we can do it if we put our trust and faith in the Lord.

Something else that i learned from conference is that misisonary work is easy! so yall need to get to work! I hope that you have an awesome week! i love yall soooooooooo much! thanks again for the birthday wishes!

Love sister Hamilton

Blessed (from Sept. 16)

WOW!!!! that is all i have to say about this last week. it was full of miracles and i think i have used more faith this week then i ever have. which is sad because i should always be using tons of faith. but it was really put to the test this week. so i dont have time to tell you everything but i will do my best.

So tuesday i had the worst migrain ever mixed with sinus stuff. so i didnt even move untill 5 pm. sister clegg thought i was dead and when i woke up i thought it was like 11 but no it was 5. so i felt really bad and i was really depressed because i just wasted a whole day with my migrain. but i was determined to work super hard the rest of the week to try and make up for lost time. so wednesday wasnt too good it was a struggle and noone was home. we went tracting for hours and noone answered. so we tried some less active members of the singles branch and nothing. But we got a referral from the spanish elders that we were supposed to contact on friday. so thursday President crawford called to talk to sister clegg and then we talked to president about Karen cause she is just crazy and is not progressin and just streassing us out. so he told us to drop her and to just move on. so it was really hard to think about dropping her because she was one of our two investigators so if we dropped her we woule have one gator and that was stressful. but we decided we needed to. so we went over and i told her that when she is ready to keep the commandments she can call us and we will come back but for now she just needs to keep reading the Book of moron and praying about it. so she was REALLY REALLY mad. she told us taht we let the Devil into us and then she slammed the door in our faces. it was interesting. but we could take a deep breath after. so then we went home cause sister c wasnt feeling well. so i decided that i needed to pray. so i got on my knees and plead with the lord for about two hours to help us. i told him that i know he can do anyting and i really needed help. I feel frustrated with my companion who doesnt want to work as hard as i do and if i have to do this on my own i need his help. i told him that i know he could help us find a new investigator that night during the hour of power to replace k. It was the first time in my life that i think i have ever prayed that hard and with so much faith. it was draining, but then i woke up sister c and we went to go meet with a member who was in the hospital and to do our hour of power lesson with her. so then we went to the street that i had prayed about and felt like we should go there. so we went and it was a dud. there was no housese on it. then  the back up one was exactly the same. so then i was super frustrated cause i prayed so hard about what street to go to and they were both duds. so i was just like ok lets just go to the one inbetween the two of them cause it had houses on it. so we started and no success, and the hour was starting to get towatrda the end and stll we hadnt found anything. but i kept praying and praying in my heart and i KNEW that we would find someone. so we knocked on a door and the woman let us right in. we talked to her and her husband and they both had had good interactinos with the church and were familiar with it and they had SO many questions about our church and the BOok of mormon and Joseph Smith and then the husband tells us that he believes Joseph smith is a prophet. then they ask us to come back, and the husband, L tells us that if we dont come back he would come find us so that we could teach them! we set a return appt and as soon as we left i just started crying becasue my prayer was answered! and not only did the Lord bless us with one new investigator to replace K but two! and they are so awesome! Then the next day we contacted our referral from the spanish elders and it was a family of 10! and the mom, na was so excited to have her kids come to church on sunday. So taht was another miracle! then on saturday sister A who is a less active that we work with alot had us over for lunch and she had a friend there that she had been sharing the gospel with and she wants to learn more! so another miracle! then on sunday our family came to church so we had 6 investigators at church! The Lord works with our faith and when we have little faith he cant do anything. My testimony was strengthened so much this week. i asked the Lord to help us find one, ONE new investigator to replace K and i dont know if you counted but we got EIGHT new investigators this week. I am so humbled and so full of gratitute for a Heavenly Father who hears my prayers and my cries and my broken hearted pleas and he answered them in a way that was so much more then i asked for. I am truly, truly grateful for this gosple.I dont know wehre i would be without it and i am so blessed to be a representitve of Jesus Christ, a missionary. I have the privledge of sharing the Gospel with everyone around me and i am so grateful for that. My heavenly Father has truly helped me change the desires of my heart. I love being here, Iove riding my bike in the heat, i love coming home every night sweaty and tired, but most of all i love when i get to see the light of the Gospel enter the eyes of those that i am blessed to teach. I hope yall have a good week! i love you so very much and i am so blessed to have such an awesome family. I love yall!

On a side note, J is not doing very well and is going to pass away very shortly. Please keep him in your prayers and pray that his heart will be softened and he will get baptized before he passes. K came to church and caused a huge scene. she is trying to get an answer that she is exempt from all the commandments and she wasnt getting that from us, or the elders, so she is talking to all the ward memebers trying to get them to tell her that she dosent have to keep the commmandments. So that was interesting.

Good Week (From Sept. 23)

well this week was a pretty good week! its hard to follow after the week that we had last week but it was still good and there are miracles happening everyday!

So i went on exchanges with the sister Training leader, Hermana Arcila on tuesday. it was a good day. I love when i get to work with other sisters and learn from them. We had a good day. noone was home that we wanted to see but we got to spend some time with a recent convert who is in our area but the elders baptized but we are helping with the new member stuff. she is so funny. She has a strong testimony and she is ready to work and help build up the church. she got a calling on wednesday and she put it all over facebook before they announced it in church. haha it was funny but she was so excited! she has the same calling as you mom! We taught teresa again and she is so awesome. when we teach her she just cries and cries the whole time because she can feel the spirit. when i invited her to be baptized she said, well i was christened as a baby, and i was baptized in the methodist church, so i guess one more time wont hurt. haha so we need to talk more about the priesthood so we gets the importance of the decision she will be making. but she likes everything we ahve taught her so far and she is excited to read the book of mormon. We taught are family on wednesday and it was so awesome! all the kids were so excited to read the book of mormon it was so cute! they got their mom excited about it too and they asked if they can read a chapter of it together every night before they go to bed. I realized that i need to be more excited about reading the Book of Mormon! it is such an amazing book we should all be excited everytime we get to read it! on thursday we were at the college down here, Lamar, and we set up a table at a student fair and we were trying to contact people and get more investigators for the YSA branch. It was pretty fun but i am so awkward when it comes to talking to people my own aget. I can talk to older people no problem but when i have to talk to people my own age i get all awkward. it must be because i am a missionary. haha but we contacted alot of people and hopefully we can get some of them to become investigatiors. we are still working on the member of the branch to bring their friends to activities and such. During the Hour of Power we were able to find alot of potential investigators and we are going to start teaching one of the ladies taht we found.she just moved and her neighbor before was a lady in the ward, and so she knows mormons and was excited to have us come back. so that was pretty cool. and we are trying to use these family history cards that the stake made so we were useing those during our contacting and we found the cutest little old lady who had on a shirt that was taling about geneology so she told us that she loves the church cause we have helped her trace her ancestors cause we ahve the most records. so we are going to start teaching her too. so it was a pretty good night! lots of miracles. SO the recent convert in the YSA branch is super awesome. we ahve been teac hing him his new member lessons and he is so smart and has the strongest testimony. i am always inspired by the people that i meet that leave their families to join the church because they know it is true and their families want nothing to do with it and disown them if they join.  i have wondered if i have the courage to do that if i had to. i would like to say that i do but im glad that i never had to go thru that. I could battle with Nephi about who has the best parents, and im pretty sure i would win :) James is doing a little better. he is still being fiesty and giving us a hard time but i know that he knows the church is true, it is just a matter of him needed to accept it. I love when i get to share my testimony! that is one of my favorite parts about being a missionary. When i get to testify about what i Know is true, noone can fight that. because it is a testimony, and it is what i know. James tells me all the time that he can tell by looking in my eyes that i really do know that the things i am talking about are true. I think that is the biggest compliment that i could ever get. Im glad that he can see the love that i have of the gospel in my eyes. Becasue its there. I keep thinking that my testimony is strong, and then something will happen and it will test me and then my testimony will grow in  ways that i didnt know it needed to. But i am so grateful for every single experience that i go thru. They have all helped me in ways that my Heavenly Father knew i needed and even if i didnt realize it at the time, at the end i can look back and see what i have learned and how i grew from the things that i go thru. The desires of my heart are truly changing. because i pray for that every night, i am getting the help that i need. I may not ever come home, i love being a missionary too much. But i love yall sooooo much and i couldnt be doing this without all of your support. You willl never know how grateful i am for all that yall have done for me, words cant express how i feel. But i do hope you know that i love you! Hope yall have a good week and dont get robbed again! Love you soooo much!

Love sister Hamilton

Staying in B-town

Well i dont have much to say this week cause it was a really bad week for me. Im on the rebound now so hopefully this coming up week will be better.

I had high hope for this week because we got to go to the temple on tuesday, which was amazing. i really miss going to the temple often. when we only get to go once every three months you really start to notice. But when i was in the temple i decided that my mind is on too many other things besides the task at hand. I had to force myself to concentrate and not be thinking about other things. I have been having a hard time with that lately. I Feel like i have depression, but for no reason! im super frustrated, mainly with myself. But i just need to trust in the lord more that he knows what he is doing. I tell myself that all the time and i know it, but it is easier said then done. And i am workin on making it a part of my everyday life. I was sick on saturday and i didnt have the energy to drag myself out of bed. i think it is because the weather is changing. but i was thinking as i was reflecting on my week during sacrament meeting that i can do this. The savior fell on his face in agony for me in the garden of gethseme, and i am denying him when i am not using his atonement in my everyday life. I think because i am a missionary that i am different and i use the atonement in different ways, but no it is the same for everyone and i need to let my savior help me more then i currently do. I tell people all the time to use the atonement and let it heal them but then i am not really doing so myself. i dont think that i will ever to fully comprehend everything that my savior felt, and went thru for me while he was in that garden, but what i do know is that he loves me and he wants me to be happy and know that as long as i do my best that is enough and that he is proud of me. and sometimes my best is just getting out of bed in the morning and keeping a smile on my face during the day even tho nothing goes how i want it to or how it is supposed to. Even when inside i want to scream and give up, And when my companion is driving me nuts. I can do my best. I am so grateful for all of the prayers coming my way. Sometimes when i want to give up i feel strength come and i know it is because all of you are praying for me. Our family is doing well and will hopefully be getting baptized on the12th of october. We are working really hard with them and praying that everything goes well and they will keep progressing. what a blessing it is to be able to listen to general conference this weekend! i hope that yall will really listen and pay attention to the words of our prophet and go with a question that you need answered. Because they are always answered. look at me! my question was answered and it has come to be one of the greatest blessings of my life. I am sorry this is short but just know that i love you and i am praying for you always!

Love sister Hamilton

Eaten Alive

Well this week was a pretty good week. things are going good and I'm alive!

So it has been super super rainy all last week which is awesome because then it is not so hot! i love being wet from the rain instead of my sweat. hahah we had a lot of miracles this week and I'm trying harder to see the hand of the lord in our everyday work. We have to sent a miracle of the day to our DL who then sends it to the ZL and then the ZL sent out the best miracle to the whole zone. so that makes us think back over our day and find the miracle.

So i guess the biggest miracle of the week was with La's

One of our main LA ladies is working really hard with her friends getting them to take the lessons. so we had a really good lesson with one of her friends and he is super excited about the book of mormon and keeps asking us what is next. so hopefully we can continue to help him to feel the spirit as we teach. then during the Hour of Power it was dumping buckets! it was crazy but it was super fun. this tree 5 feet away from us got struck by lightning! it was so crazy but it was awesome. we were basically walking around in 3 inches of water. it was fun! but then it stopped raining and all the mosquito came out and i got eaten alive.  i am basically just a giant mosquito bite! haha but the very last house we knocked on the lady let us right in and was like i know who you are and then she was like i was raised mormon. so we talked to her for about an hour and she told us her life story and she is married to a non member and she wants to come back to church and she wants her husband to join cause she wants to raise her kids in the church and she is 6 months pregnant. so that was super awesome! hopefully we can start teaching her husband soon but we have to wait till after football season cause he is a coach and he is never home. but one day we will get him baptized. it was so amazing. that is the first time that i have just come across a member that no one knew about. the lord really does guide us to his children, especially the ones who have strayed.

Then on Sunday I decided that we needed to go check on this LA guy in the singles branch that we have been trying to contact for 6 weeks. so before we went to knock I prayed so hard and fervently that this guy would be there. so we went, and he was! we had a really good talk with him and we were able to laugh and get to know him a little and make him feel comfortable with us and then he opened up and told us why he hasn't come to church and i just decided that i needed to be bold and i told him that he needed to come to church especially because he just got a new job and doesn't have to work on Sundays, I told him that it was a message from God that he needs to go back to church. and he was like ok ill think about it. and he wouldn't commit. then i gave him our number and told him to text us if he ever needed anything. but he wouldn't write down our number or put it in his phone so i was getting frustrated but i just kept praying that we could help this guy. then we left and right after we pulled away he texted us and told us that he would see us at church on sunday! it made me so happy and i immediately started a prayer of thanks for the blessing i received. so he better keep his promise and come to church sunday! oh and we taught RS in the singles branch yesterday, it was really fun. this is a good branch and the Singles are awesome. we have alot of fun with them and they are working on bringing non members to activities so we have more people to teach.

The church is true! things are hard and i get frustrated with myself everyday but i know that the Lord isnt giving me anything that icant handle. so i just have to have faith that i can handle this and try and find a way to accomplish everything! I love yall so much! have a good week!

Becoming

Well family, sorry im a day late but hope yall had a good labor day. We just hung out and we watched the elders play dungeons and dragons. whatever that is. but it was a good day.

So i dont really know what to say about this week. It was a really hard weeek and it felt like everything was working against us. But i have had alot of weeks like that on my mission and i just need to get over it and keep workin harder. So we only found one new investigator this last week which was frustrating  because we desperatly need more people to teach! But aside from all of that i will talk about the highlights of the week.

So the Elders had 4 baptisms on saturday, it was supposed to be five cause Karen was supposed to be getting baptized but that obviously fell through. But it was a good day and it was so awesome to see how happy those individuals were when they came out of the water. I was in tears the whole time and i felt the spirit so strong! it was a good time for me to reflect on my own baptism and the promises and covenants that i made with my heavenly father. James came to the baptism which was good. we told us he wouldnt but we went back over to his house a couple hours before and invited him again and he said he would be there. I hope it was a good exsperience for him and that he felt the spirit. I Have decided that the hardest thing for me as a missionary is getting my investigators to recognize the spirit. Their conversion would be alot easier if they could recognize and acknowledge the spirit. I do all i can to help them but i could obviously be doing more or they would get it. I guess i just need to work on my teaching skills more. I have so many things that i need to work on that i feel like i will never have enough time to work on them all. And most times i feel overwhelmed and dont know where to start. That is why my email is titles becoming, because i decided that i am not becoming the missionary that i want to be and i dont feel like i have progressed very much. so i am going thru my life and everything and deciding what i need to give up and what i need to do bettor on. I am scared and it gives me anxiety because of some of the things that i decided that i need to give up but i am willing to make this sacrifice so that i can become the missionary that i want to be and the missionary that the Lord expects me to become. So just keep praying for me that i will have the strength and courage that i need to follow thru with the goals and decisions tha i have made for myself. Missions are hard but they are alot harder if you dont do your best. If you do your best even when they are hard you can be assured taht you did your best and the Lord is happy with your work. I am not yet at that point and i dont know if i will ever get to that point. It has to start with me accepting myself and knowing tha i have worth and that i can do this hard thing that has been placed before me. I know that i am a daughter of God andt that he loves me, but i am still struggling. This has been a hard week but i am doing my best. Just know that i love you and i pray for all of yall and i am so grateful for all the prayers coming my way. I can feel them and i am so blessed to have such an amazing family. Have a good week! i LOVE YOU!!!

Sister Hamilton