Happy New Year!

Dear family

It was soooooo good to see your beautiful faces, and bellies and armpit hair. . .  KONOR! haha

I hope that yalls christmas was awesome and that you enjoyed being together and had fun!

We hung out with some old people, imagine that :) but it was good. i ate way too much food cause they all just stuffed us. I have lots of ma-maws and pa-paws now they are all so cute and tell me the same things everytime i see them. :"Oh i have family that lives in pleasant grove!" ahah so cute.

WEll the day after christmas i was dead. I didnt move all day and i didnt eat anything i jsut layed perfectly still in my bed. my back was killing me and my head hurt so bad i almost had sister young take me to the hospital. but i survived and i am good now. my back hurts still, Sister Crawford said its from all the stress i am going thru. so thats not good but i see my counselor tinight so we will see if that helps. but president crawford came to see me friday and we talked and things are going to be ok.
I am trying my hardest to love the area and the people. I love our next door neighbor. he is 31 and he tells us everything. his birthday was saturday so we made him a cake and last night we were talking to him and he told us that he got put in jail for a DWI and he is really sad now cause he has all these fees and stuff but he is ready to take the lessons seriously now. so that will be good. He tells me that i look like i have a dark past and that he can tell i havent always been perfect (i didnt know i was perfect now?) but he is funny. he tries to get me to tell him all my deepest darkest secrets. haha he is funny. but i feel bad for him but I just know that the gospel will help him so much. everything he says im just like AHHHHHHHH you need this so bad! and he tells us all the time that he wishes he was like us when he was our age. so he wants to change and be a good example for his kids. he just needs to do something. And then our other neighbor marissa is getting baptized on the 11th. she is really sweet. And then this cute girl names L is getting baptized on the 1st of February. So things are going good. It has been so cold here lately! but i love it. im not complaining cause i would much rahter have this then the summer!

So i have been thinking alot about my attitude of being here and such and i am trying to hard to just be here and love it here. I have been thinking alot about something that this crazy black guy said to me in beaumont, he said that we didnt come to earth to prove ourselves to god. he already know the outcome and what we will do in life, we are here to prove to ourselves that we will follow God and do w2hat he asks. And that is really what i am trying to do. God already knows what im going thru and what i will go thru, I need to prove to myself that i can do this hard thing and that i can come out on top and learn and grow from this experience. I am obviously here for a reason. 

I hope that yall have a happy new year! i love you soooo sooo much! 

Make 2014 a year that you really look outside yourself and do what the prophet and apostles have asked us and bring someone into the church! we can do it. its time to step up and help the Lord with his hastening work.

I love you! 
Love sister Hamilton

Christmas is HERE!

Dear Family,

i wish i could say i am feeling better then when i wrote last week, but im working on it. I dont know what is wrong with me. But i will tell you about my new area. 

So it is a small small country town in the east part of Texas. I was in the farthest south east part of the mission in Louisiana, and now i am in the farthest north east part of the mission in Livingston. This was an elders area untill 4 transfers ago, so the apartment still smells like stinky boys and it is really gross. But we have a washer and dryer so that is something positive. there are a couple main roads but then everything else is dirt roads. all the roads to get to members houses and dirt, and they are bumpy and its like going on indiana jones ride whenever we are driving. i think i am getting shaken baby syndrome. There are so many rednecks and hicks here i dont know what to do with myself. This is the exact reason why i didnt want to come to Texas and i have avoided it till now. haha i guess i have to face it at some point.The ward is 90% old people, so i guess that is good since i love old people but its just weird going from a singles branch to an old folks home. haha My companion is sister Young. she just got done being trained. her trainer was very controlling so that is how she tries to act with me. So that has been a challenge. But i am pushing her to be more outgoing and to talk to people. the first time we went tracting she wouldnt talk so we just sat there till she was ready to talk. Im not trying to be rude but i am not going to help her at all if i just do everything for her. I have been having really bad anxiety being up here all alone. I never really felt lonely before because i was in cities and there was always people around, but now there is no one and it has been hard for me. But i am trying my best to just put myself here and do what i need to do. This is definately not like anything i have ever experienced in my mission so far. Christmas is almost here and the only thing that makes me happy is that i get to talk to yall! i cant wait. i am going to bawl my eyes out, so im warning you now. haha. it has been really cold here the past couple days and we are so far north that it snows here, so maybe it will be snowing on christmas. 

Im sorry that i am not being spiritual or very positive, but i am just in a hard place right now and i am working on getting over it. So excuse me. But i am still grateful to be a missionary. We have an investigator getting baptized on the 11th, marissa. and then paula who i left in Beaumont is getting Baptized on the 25th. So things are looking up as far as that goes. I hope that yall have a very merry Christmas 

Love you!

hard week

Hey family.

Well i dont really have much to say today. and what i have to say is really depressing so bear with me.

This past week has been the hardest week of my entire mission.

On thursday I found out that J Passed away.

I know it is better for him that he is gone but its hard for me. I truly loved that man and i really felt like i was sent here to help him and to teach him and bring him unto christ and I feel like i failed him. Maybe if i had been better he would have got baptized before he passed.

But i have hope and i know that he is being taught in the spirit world, by missionaries far better then me.

I pray that he will accept the Gospel on the other side.

I hope he had a great reunion with his dear wife.

I still pray for him.

On friday i had the flu and was throwing up all night and was miserable the next day.

I was so sick.

On saturday i found out that i am being transfered.

My heart has never hurt this bad.

I feel empty inside.

I have never cried so much and had to say so many hard godbyes.

I ask alot why i cant stay as other missionaries get to stay in their areas for longer amounts of time.

I ask why i have to get transfered right before christmas and go to a new area with a new companion while having my first christmas away from home is already going to be hard enough.

I have so many questions running thru my head and tears running down my cheeks.

I pray for the strength to be able to not sink into another depression and to be able to go and do what i am here to do.

Please Pray for me.

I love you all.

Oh the weather outside is frightful....

Family!

I hope you had an awesome week! It was fun to get all those pictures. yall are getting so big and grown up! i cant believe it!

So  i need to start out with a funny story. yall migh not think it is funny but maybe you just had to be there.

So on monday we went to meet our recent convert N at mickey d's close to his dorm to have a lesson with him. So we were in there and no one else was in there just us three so the whole restaurant was empty. well a while later a scary looking person comes in and sits like two tables away from us even tho the whole place is empty. well we were watching it and decided it was a girl, but she looked like a mix between michael jackson and ET so it was pretty scary. And she was obviously a crack head cause she was doing all sorts of crazy stuff and she was talking to herself and then she got up to go get more drink and there was a fly on a chair and she flung her whole cup of ice at it and it went all over us. Then she went and got more drink then went back to her table, then back to the fountain and got napkins, then back to her table then back to get napkins and she did this about 5 times in two minutes. then i noticed that one time she didnt come back so i turned to look and she was about 2 feet away from me with her hands like a gun pointed at my head! i just looked at her and said what? and she muttered something that we couldnt understand, so i said what? again and then she pretended to shoot me in the head and muttered something again and then walked off to her table. Hahahahaha I was dying! i almost peed my pants. it was sooooo funny and it was so random. only in beaumont Texas would i get shot up by a crack head at mickey D's. hahahah so funny.

Well anyway besides the fact that i dont have a head anymore cause i got shot up this week was pretty good! I went on exchanges fridayand we decided that we need to use the branch more and get them more excited about missionary work. and we already did the willing and brief message with them so now we are gonig to start meeting with them indivudally and follow up with the challenge that we gave them. I hope it will be good and we are going to really try our hardest to help them trust us and want to refer us to their friends and teach them. So i hope and pray that it will go well. They have such an awesome opportunity to share the gospel everyday with all the kids they see and go to school with.

This week has been pretty slow and its so hard for us to find new investigatiors. Its so cold and so noone is outside and nooone wants to talk they just want to stay in their houses and keep warm. But we were able to have a really good lesson with P on thursday. she hasnt quite grasped the whole importance of the priesthood yet and why she needs to be baptized again but she will get there. I love teaching P because she is so ready for the Gospel and she hangs on our every word when we teach her. She looks you right in the eye and she is always giving us her full attention. She was out of town yesterday so she wasnt able to make it to church but she did come to our ward christmas party. that was good. she was able to meet some ward memebers and get used to the church and now hopefully comoing to church will be easier.

R has finals this week so we were not able to see him. He apologizes all the time and says that he still wants to see us and meet with us, he is just so busy. I think that is how alot of people are. The holidays are a busy time and just like our church leaders last night said, we need to make sure that we are thinking of Christ and who this holiday is for instead of running around busy all the time and getting caught up in other things.

I loved the christmas Devotional! it was inspiring and uplifting. I love christmas time so much. I love how everyone is so nice to each other and the spirit of the holidays is the best. I hope that we will be able to find more people because i feel like they would be more open to the spirit during this time. but most people tell us to come back after the holidays. I know that there are people our here tho that need the gospel. We just have to find them. Its like an Easter egg hunt. Sometimes you have to look at it different so it is fun instead of a drag. cause knocking doors in the freezing cold isnt very fun sometimes, but when you think about all those people who need to hear the gospel and you think about how you are that person who needs to bring that to them you feel a sense of ergency and you want to work hard and make sure that you find those people. I love what i do and i love being a missionary. Watching paula and the light in her eyes as we teach her is worth all the doors shut in my face and all the raw knuckles from knocking in the cold.

I am so blessed to be the one to bring the gospel to these people. I dont ever want to stop.

I hope that yall have a good week! i love you soooo sooo much!

Love sister hamilton

December what? (from 12/2/2013)

Hello my darling family!

I hope that yall had a good thanksgiving and you ate lots of food. Cause we sure did! we had three dinners but only ate at two of them. It was a good time and I am so grateful for the ward members who took us in as their own and let us join with their families and spend the day with them. The Lord truly blessed me because the day was not as hard as i thought it would be, being away from all of yall. But i still thought about you and i still missed you. but i am grateful for I am grateful for this time that i have to be away from home serving my Savior. This time has truly blessed my life and i will forever be grateful for it.

I cant believe that it is december already! The time has flown by. the leaves are just barely starting to change here so it doesnt feel like december. We were biking on wednesday and it was soooooo cold! i was frozen from head to toe, and i was thinking about how the next day was thanksgiving and i was away from home and my family but i was so happy! i had an overwhelming feeling come over me that this is where i need to be and that i am doing what my Heavenly Father wants me to do. Maybe i need to bike more often ;)

This week was pretty slow considering the holiday and such but we tried our hardest to not let it get to us and to work hard. Its so sad how we have to start over because almost all of our investigators have dropped us or gone missing and they wont get back to us and they are never home. But we still have R. But he will not be getting baptized saturday. he still hasnt made it to church. and we were not able to meet with him again this week. but we talk to him a couple times a week and he is still doing good. We asked the branch fast for him yesterday. im not sure if anyone actually did, but I felt assured as i was fasting for him that all will be well and that Heavenly Father is aware of R and he loves him.

We were able to get back in contact with P, and we are going to keep teaching her. Things just got really crazy with her bed bug infestation and she struggles financially so her phone got shut off. The day we Biked Heavenly Father blessed us with so many miracles. It was a great day.

I have been thinking alot about what im grateful for and everyday that i am out doing my Fathers business i am reminded more and more of all the blessings i have. Especially as we were at a recent converts home the other night and there was roaches crawling EVERYWHERE!! they were in our cups that we were trying to drink out of, we were killing them on the floor as they were crawling past, we were smacking them off the couch when they were trying to crawl on us. I felt so bad for them. my heart was broken that they have to live like that. I guess there is alot worse things then bugs but it was really really bad and instead of being discusted i just wanted to cry. I am so blessed that i dont have to live like that. Althought i have occasionally killed huge wood roaches there has never been a million of them crawling everywhere. I am so blessed. And i have noticed that i take alot of things for granted. I complain because our apartment smells like smoke, and the neighbors keep us up all night with there screaming and loud music, and its not as nice as the elders, and its in the Ghetto. But atleast i have a nice apartment that isnt full of bugs, i have a bed that doesnt have bed bugs in it, i have hot water to take a shower in, i have clean clothes and food to eat. I really am blessed. I hope that yall take the time every night when you are praying to give thanks for all the many things that we are blessed with. Especailly the gift of being members of the church! that is one of the greatest blessings we have! 

I love yall sooo sooo much and i am so grateful for you! have a good week!

Love sister Hamilton 

Hard Week

Dearest Family,

Well this week was pretty tough. Basically all of our investigators dropped us :( I decided that because i was being so puffed up with pride cause i showed the ZL's whats up that now i am being punished and put in my place. But yeah it was really hard. Tracting is not working. noone is ever home. we knock doors for hours and maybe three people will answer. We are working really hard trying to help the members do missionary work and help us find people to teach but that isnt really working either. Richie is the only investigator that we still have. and he is doing alright. he is still just scared about getting baptized. James is not doing well. His countenance is dark now, and he is not the same person. his daughter is living with him and she is really baptist and told him that he doesnt need to be baptized because God has a plan for us and it doesnt matter if you are baptist mormon catholic or anything it doesnt change your fate. So taht was really hard for me to hear. and he told us that we are just wasting our time cause he is not going to change and he loves us too much to have us waste our time. so we dont really know what we are going to do to help him anymore. 

At least on the bright side i am getting really good at contacting! hahah that is all we do is just try and contact people all day everyday and we havent been finding very much and we havent been teaching very much. But i have faith that things will change and get better. We are trying to think of new ways to do things. we are going to just ride our bikes around everywhere and try and find people and then we are going to go store contacting when its bad weather. I want to have a sign that says free hair cuts and then they have to listen to a message if they want one but i dont know how well that would go over. haha 

Our neighbors broke into our car friday night. I was so scared because all my hair cutting stuff was out of the bag and flung everywhere and i was so sure that they stole it. but everything was still there. the only damage we had was they smoked inside so it smells like smoke. but nothing was stolen. That same night they woke me up cause they were outside screaming at each other. it was a crazy night. Oh the adventures that we have in the ghetto. its so fun! hahah

Well keep praying for Richie that he will get baptized and pray that we can find new investigators! I hope that yall have a happy thanksgiving and you take the time everyday, not just thursday to pray and thank heavenly father for those things that you are grateful for! i love you!

What? its Wednesday

Heeellloooooo!

Well its wednesday and its been crazy week already!

Monday the librarys were all closed and then yesterday was transfer meeting so we were basically in kingwood all day. so i am just now finding the time to email! so dont worry. im not dead or anything.

So i now have a new companion, Sister S. she came out a transfer after me and she is really awesome. i am excited to get to work with her and to do some serious work! Tonight we are teaching FHE in the branch and we are talking about missionary work (obviously) but we are doing what is called the willing and brief. you ask random people that you talk to and even your frineds if they would be WILLING to listen to a BRIEF message about. . . . whatever you think they need or would be interested in. it works really well and that is how we got R. alot of people are not interested or even want to listen but they may be willing. so if you use willing they are more likely to say yes. so its pretty much awesome and it works so well!

Well R has a baptism date! he is going to be baptized on december 7th. he is really nervous because he said that his family will disown him if he gets baptized. but he believes everything we are teaching him and he really loves the gospel. so we just need to pray for his family that their hearts will be softened. but we had the most amazing lesson with him. we wathced the restoration video with him and then after we talked about it and i invited him to be baptized and he accepted but then we talked about his family and how he was scared but we had our recent convert Nick there who his family disowned him when he got baptized so he was able to talk to him and really help him. the spirit was so strong! it was amazing. so we are just praying that he will have the courage and strength to go thru with his baptism.

J is doing so awesome. we havnt set a date with him yet. the spirit just keeps telling us the time isnt right yet. but he is super open to everything and he tells us that he believes that everything we are teaching him is true. His daughter is in town so we taught her too and that was really good. I love J so much. he is so sweet.

the primary program was on sunday and Marily was in it, but her mom didnt come. not even to watch her in the program :( it was really really sad. so we dont know if they are actually going to progress or not. we might have to have a make it or break it lesson.

Sister A, our most amazing less active lady we work with has her non member nephew, J, living with her. so we talked to him the other night whenwe went over and we are going to get him involved inthe YSA. he went and played soccer with them last night and the boys said that he loved it and wants to go again. so now we just need him to come to church! he is all tatted up and he has had a rough life but he is changing things around and wants to get in a new group of people so it will be so awesome for him to get involved with the boys. there are some really awesome guys in the branch so i am happy.

Elder C our DL went home yesterday. it was sad. he was a great DL. he is so funny. after the ZL's were being rude to us he was alll mad and kept telling us that we were better then him cause we were over it and he wasnt. haha but he is sweet and he was all worried and wanted to know if he had ever done anything to hurt us or make us upset. he is a big guy and when he stood up yesterday on the stand to go and bear his testimony his belt broke and everyone saw it. so he goes. dont buy belts from walmart. haha But our district is awesome. we were all supposed to teach 20 lessons last week wich is the mission standard and so we were all on board and then we were the only ones who actually ended up teaching 20 lessons. we sure showed the ZL's who is purpose driven. but we had a good time monday. sister clegg wanted to throw flour in all of their faces since she was leaving and she cant eat gluten. so that was pretty funny. we got elder chaves really good. but i love my district. the spanish elders are OBSESSED with us. they call us everyday and want to go to luch or do something. crazy guys. but we all do work and work hard so that is good.

Im still cutting hair like a boss and i dont miss many mondays without cutting hair. Things are going well and itis super! coldhere so that is awesome. I am happy and i am so glad taht i am here serving a mission. its the best thing in the whole world.

I hope that yall are doing well and that you are enjoying life. life is good. Know that i love you sooooo much and i pray for yall fer dayyyyys! have a good week!

Love sister hamilton