Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places: Week 52 - Latta, SC

My Dear Family and Friends,

Yup. I'm hitting my year mark this week! I can't even believe it! I'm silently panicking because I feel like there's still so much to do in 6 months! That's such a short amount of time! This is just madness!

Well this week, we went by one of our former investigators, T's house to give her a letter that the previous Sister wrote to her. They dropped her because she had some Word of Wisdom problems and wasn't ready to keep commitments. When we went by, she told us she's been clean since they had the drop lesson with her and that she was ready to commit! She didn't make it to church this week unfortunately because she had to work but she was totally going to go if she could! She was so upset when her fiancé reminded her that she was working on Sunday! But there's always next week!

We met our new mission president and his wife this week, the Turner's. They seemed super nice! And they gave us gourmet suckers. They've pretty much won me over already. Haha. We'll have interviews with him on Wednesday and I'm excited for it!

The 4th of July was good, I guess. It seemed like any other day except we had to be in by 7:30. While we were in we ate "Red, White and Blue Bell" ice cream and made star sugar cookies... That's pretty much it. But there was also a pink, white and blue sunset that day! That was pretty patriotic! The members in our branch told us yesterday that South Carolina is the most patriotic state in the country apparently! So that was why I was sent here because I'm the most patriotic person that I know! Haha.

We went out to eat with just about the whole branch on Saturday at this place called Shuler's Barbeque. My goodness! It is the best Southern buffet I've had since being here! That's saying a lot! Well when we were there, there was a camera crew just filming the inside. When we asked what was going on, someone told us that they were filming a reality TV show called "The Profit." I thought they said they were filming "the prophet!" I was like "President Monson is not even here!" But yeah. When that show airs, look for an episode where he goes to Shuler's in Latta, SC. I'll probably be in there, just saying!

Just yesterday, I was talking to Sister Parker about when I put in my mission papers. I wanted to go Spanish speaking so bad mostly because then I'd be bilingual. I never really realized why I'm English speaking until yesterday though! I remembered going to a hand off lesson with a set of Spanish elders and one said "I don't really know how to teach The Restoration in English so you'll have to take the lead on this!" I know that the Lord has called me to this English speaking mission because I needed to learn how to be comfortable with sharing the gospel in my native tongue.

Oh guess what? There's only one piano player in our branch and she was gone yesterday. I couldn't really play the piano because well I haven't practiced in nearly a year. But they asked us to play in Primary yesterday and it was so bad it was hilarious! Sister Parker played the right hand and I played the left! We were cracking up the whole time as we were playing "America, The Beautiful." But then the kids wanted to sing "We'll Bring the World His Truth." It was so neat because the 10 kids were like belting out the song and you couldn't even hear our bad piano playing! They brought the Spirit so much with that song! It got me all pumped to go out and do missionary work again! Then in the closing prayer, the oldest primary kid got up and was like "Thank you for the Sister Missionaries coming to play the piano for us today." It basically melted our hearts! Needless to say, I'm going to need to start practicing the piano again.

Well that's all I've got for this week! Thank you for all your love and support! I wouldn't complain if any of you wanted to send letters... Just saying ;) Haha. I love y'all and keep you in my prayers! Have a blessed week!

- Sister Amy Christensen