Week 3 in Stroud

I cannot even express my gratitude for you and your sacrifice that I could be on a mission right now! I am ever so grateful. I don't know why I didn't just go right away because this is great. I love it here. I love the people. and I have never been so happy. Sister Hedemark always laughs at me because I am always humming something. I have never hummed so many hymns in my LIFE!! half the time I don't even realize what hymn I am humming until I am about half way through. They just pop in my head and then they come out of my mouth. She says that i am like an ipod shuffle! I hope that it doesn't get annoying because I don't realize I am doing it half the time.

Well this week has been wonderful. We had a baptism on Friday and it was just lovely. It was a small quiet service and Emily was so scared. She is absolutley terrified of water but the Bishop gave her a blessing before and after she was confirmed on Sunday she said that she just felt very calm. The calmest she has felt in a long time. That's always a good thing. We also got two new investigators this week named Tim, and Rob. They are both very special and I am so excited to teach them more! Rob is paralyzed from the chest down from a motor bike accident and its amazing that he is alive! I guess according to the screens when he was in the hospital he did die but somehow he still lived. He shared with us a very special experience that he had with the spirit. Heavenly Father still had a work for him to do apparently and I am glad that we met him. He told us that before when he was riding his motorbike he had a thought that he should turn around and go home but he kept going on and then that thought came to him a little stronger but he was having a lot of fun. When he turned a corner there was oil on the road and the bike just slipped out from under him and he had a major crash. Anyway he was interested in the resurrection and in the middle of our lesson he asked when church was and wanted us to come see him again! :) I LOVE HOW THE SPIRIT WORKS! needless to say we didn't see him at church because he had a remote control sail boat race thing. Since he can't do much anymore he just makes model cars and boats. He has a ton of cars in his house. I got pretty excited about them. Tim is an interesting man. He goes off on the most random tangents. We were teaching him about the Plan of Salvation and he strated going off on his dad's old shaving brush and how much he loves it and how he keeps everything. That was interesting. But we met with him again last night and the spirit was strong and we surprisingly stayed on topic. He went off a few time but he always brought it back. My favortie tangent that we went off on was the history of the phrase, "in a nutshell" which he has absolutely no concept of. But he was really engaged in our discussion and asked really good questions and was nervous about praying because he had never done so before and asked if we would pray with him...well kind of pray with him. He didn't want pray while we were there but he wanted us all to pray at 10:15 that night to help him out. It was a great experience. We left his house so pumped and ready to shout to the world what we know!! We rocked out to some missionary music on the way home and sang really loud! :) That's how we party....be jealous. :) Today we had a zone p-day in gloucester (pronounced gloster.....don't ask Brits are weird...) We played football to practice for mission football next p-day. Its weird cuz when we would play in rexburg we woudl just run into each other and pretty much do anything to get the ball. that's how i was used to playing soccer....football. but in the MTC we wer absolutely NOT allowed to touch the elders. fair enough. so i got into the habit of not playing basically. But then today when we played the elders kept telling me to just keep pushing forward. because when one of them would get close to me I would back off. So I will have to reprogram myself again. haha Don't worry we will be safe. :) I am so excited for General Conference! It's going to be so good! AND we should have 2 investigators there. Keep your fingers crossed. I am getting more comfortable with driving here. I still cring when I go by big trucks or vans on narrow roads but I am getting there. OH! we met a boy from afghanistan while tracting and we asked him why he moved to England and he laughed at us! Of course he moved here because of the war and the Americans. I tried not to talk too much because I didn't want him to be mad at me beacuse I am American. :) He was really nice and we will stop by him again soon.

Oh! I am having a bit of an identity crisis. We went to see a less active member named Alex and I asked him how he was doing and he lit up and said that I sounded thoroughly English......ok. But THEN at church this lady visiting from Oxford told me that she thought I sounded Irish. I definitly do NOT sound Irish. I hear american when i speak. So do most people but I thought that was kind of funny!

Well the time is far spent and I fear I must leave you once again. Until next week!

As always, Love, hugs, and fist bumps,

Sister Benson

Mosiah 2:41

Week 2 in Stroud

Ok so I don't have a wholelot of time but we are heading out to the real world tomorrow!!! I love it here and I am going to miss it!! But I am so so excited to hear from all of you and am anxiously waiting to write to you so much more and to write you guys letters!! REAL letters! 

LOVE YOU ALL!

I LOVE ENGLAND!!

HELLO!!!

I didn't think that I would get to email you until Monday, which I will still, but my trainer, Sister Hedemark is letting me email to let you know where I am. I am in Stroud. A cute little country town amidst rolling hills of beautiful greenness! Transfers went well yesterday. We were on our way to the chapel after having lunch with the President and the AP's told us not to talk to, look at, or acknowledge any of the other missionaries, as they were al there for the transfer meeting also. It was quite strange. They made it sound like we were going to be attacked by an angry mob or something. Which we almost were....well they weren't angry but we were shouted at and cheered for and they were like running at us. It was really very funny. I have decided however that I do not like the term "greenie". But what can you do? After the transfer meeting we, all the new missionaries, stood on the "rameumptom" (a brick wall in the parking lot) and told everyone who we were ,where we came from, and where we were going. I think all the other missionaires were just waiting for us to pronounce something wrong. But we all said the name of where we were going correctly and they cheered so loud everytime. Seriously I felt like we were being initiated into a Sorority or something.....I guess it would be a fraternity for the elders...but anyhow. Sister hedemark is from Sweden and se went to BYU-Hawaii for a year. She is really nice and very punctual, and very obedient which is good. That's why she's training I suppose. :)

On the transfer bus to cheltenham I met a lot of the Elders in my area and they are awesome! Everyone is so excited for mission football which is october 3 and I am getting really excited for it to. Just hearing all about it makes me want to play right now...but I will wait. I guess the team who lost the previous game has to wear pink. Personally I don't mind weraing pink. But I guess that's a good punishment for the elders. 

When we got to our flat we quickly dropped off all of my stuff and then we went out to the center of town to an appointment they had scheduled for a lady they contacted while tracting. i guess when they went to see her the first time she was busy so she told them to come back. And she wasn't home so we went to visit a few less actives. I guess there are a lot of them here. We had a member with us and thank goodness we did because we wouldn't have gotten into maria's house if Sister hawes hadn't been there. They were friends from when she joined the church years ago so It was good that she was with us so that we could visit with her. MEMBERS ARE SO IMPORTANT!! We also visited a potential investigator named Tim. Which I have decided that I already love him. He has so many questions and doens't know where to start, but we were able to set up an appointment with him which they have enver been able to do before and he straight up asked us what God's plan was. Sister hedemark both looked at each toher and just smiled. WE KNOW what His plan is!!! So we will see him on Monday night prepared to teach him about God's plan for us.

until Monday!!

Love, hugs, and fist bumps

Sister Benson

MTC 2

 Ok so I don't have a wholelot of time but we are heading out to the real world tomorrow!!! I love it here and I am going to miss it!! But I am so so excited to hear from all of you and am anxiously waiting to write to you so much more and to write you guys letters!! REAL letters! 

thanks a ton!!!

LOVE YOU ALL!

I LOVE ENGLAND!!

MTC

Hello Family!! and Friends! :)
This week has been brilliant and I am sad to think that a week from tomorrow I will be leaving the MTC! I am excited to get out of 16 hours of class everyday but I will miss the constancy of the spirit and all of the fun times that we are having here in the MTC. There is this one elder who, by some miracle, eats loads of food every meal and he is still as skinny as a bean. Seriously this kid is going to eat his investigators and the members who feed him out of house and home. EVERY meal he sits down with a mound of food on his plate! Today he had four 8 inch subs and loads of vegetables. So its good that he eats healthy things but still.... Let's see, where to begin. This week we continued to teach James. We were struggling with him because we have been focusing on teaching people not lessons but we couldn't figure out how to cater the lessons to his needs, becuase he apparently has none. haha He was just very hard to figure out. But we feel confident that we got him yesterday. I can't believe we didn't see it but we are pretty sure that his wife is the key to us getting through to him. His wife is an inactive member but we found out that she was happy that he was talking to us because then they could get married in the temple. He doesn't understand why they need to get married there since they are already married but we will get to that point later. :) Andy, another "investigator", these are really all teachers playing investigators but...anyway Andy threw us for a loop the other night because he read the introduction to the Book of Mormon and all of the testimonies and he asked about the Urim and Thummim kind of out of nowhere and our lesson went downhill from there. I am glad that they make these so real but that was just crazy! I am glad that this is a period of learning becuase if that whole situation were real I would have come out of it just feeling awful!
I felt like I have learned a ton about the spirit and how it works in teaching people and in studying and learning! I absolutely love it! I have always enjoyed the scriptures but now I feel like an hour of personal study isn't enough. There is so much that I don't know and I am sad when I have to stop. 
On Sunday we got to go on a church history tour of England....well at least the parts of England that are closest to us. We went to Market Square in Preston where the missionaries would go to preach. Then we walked over to the river ribble where the first baptisms occurred. Sister Wheatley's great grandfather was the second one to be baptized in England. that was a beautiful walk! We also got to go to 15 Wadham road where Pres. Hinckley stayed while he was on his mission and the flat where he got the letter from home saying, "Forget yourself and go to work" That was fun to hear Sister Walker talk about that. We also went to the apts where Heber C. Kimball and all of the other missionaries who were first in England stayed. There is quite the story behind that flat. We were actually able to go inside which has never happened on the church history tour before. So that was an adeventure! We also went up to Downham and found a telephone box that we were all so excited to take pictures with. We got my whole district in one. Well...sort of. It wasn't quite appropriate for the sisters to squish in there too so we just stayed in front. :) I absolutley love my district! We have so much fun!! The church history was beautiful and  it made me love this place even more! I think I could live here. AND!! it was not raining on our tour. Sis. Walker prayed fro nice weather. She was saying that whenever we need good weather that's her job to make sure that we get it. ;) On Friday we had a finding journey in Manchester! Sister Wheatley and I went out and got off the train station and started to talk to as many people as we could about the gospel. It was scary but it was so fun! Those three hours went by so fast! I was amazed at the number of people that don't even believe in God! I was thinking that we would get at least some sort of religious background but for the most part we were starting from scratch. We were talking to this one guy who was greek orthodox and then this other guy came up to us and was like, "Are you talking about the Bible?" It was awesome we talked to both of them for like 45 minutes and left them both with Book of Mormons... Books of Mormon...whatever :) and they said that they would pray about it!! It was a great learning experience and in some ways it made me nrevous for going out in the mission field but in other ways it made me that much more excited! It was fun to talk to just anybody and everybody about the gospel! There was this one guy who was selling wooden ducks with shoes on their feet. They were cute! I asked him why they were wearing shoes and he said it was because they had sore feet. haha
We had beautiful weather for like 3 days in a row so we got to go out to the grass field and play football. real football. not American football. Elder nicholson, our zone leader, is from scotland and is really intense about football. It was fun to play with them. The elders are so nice when playing with sisters , probably because they get in trouble if they run into us but..... :)
anyway, I am drawing a blank....so I guess until next time! I love you all and hope you are all doing well.
PS- DAD!!! I am so sorry I forgot about your birthday!!! HOW WAS IT? I sent off a letter to youtoday so.....
OH! have you guys been looking at the pictures that Sister Williams should have sent to you? She said she sent all of the parents a  link to a website that she has been putting up pictures of all of us at the MTC!
Love, Hugs, and Fist Bumps,
Sister Benson!:)

 yup i live here....be jealous. This is Pres and sister walker on our way to the river ribble

District boys!: Ammon elders I love these guys! 

Telephone box: AMMON DISTRICT!!! 

beautiful!

this is what all of the exit signs look like....they make me chuckle

Pam, one of the cooks, likes to feed the ducks corn flakes

They say this is the prettiest veiw from a church in England 

Pres Hinckley's Flat 

this is Elder Bensige from Sweden who eats a TON!! this was just his first plate. And yes he ate all of that and went back for more! this was actually a light eating day for him lol 

Temple trip