It's That Magical Time of the Year

December 1, 2014

Hello Everyone,

I was surprised that the lesson I learned most from this week was about prayer. We pray a lot as members of the church, and we pray even more as missionaries. The bad thing is that I was starting to let my prayers become automatic, not as meaningful. I spend hours on my knees (much to my knee's chagrin), yet how much of that is actual true heartfelt communication with my creator, my Heavenly Father. When we pray, we are not just praying to nothingness, our prayers are always heard and we need to take them seriously. Thus I have started to revamp my prayers. We always pray only in Polish, but I’m really trying harder with grammar and wording which has already upped my Polish game. I have already noticed a difference in less than a week. For example, the other night at the end of planning I said the prayer in Polish. I felt this really heartfelt prayer just come pouring out of me and the words just flowed.  When I finished Sister Tobler and I both look up and each other and burst out laughing. She was like... "no way, where did that come from!" Super cool. Anyways, my challenge of the week. Never underestimate the power of prayer.

Thursday was Thanksgiving; my first away from home. Missionaries don't get the day off, but we still made it a fantastic Thanksgiving Day. I have to just add, that I absolutely love my district right now. Everyone has just such a different cool personality, put it all together and there is a ton of character in this group. We planned a district white board on Thursday afternoon, went out and preached it hardcore for two hours and then went and had Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment. Sister Tobler and I cleaned our apartment all up and then put two huge leafs in the table and decorated quite festively. We had rotisserie chickens from Biedronka, mashed potatoes, bread, fruit, salad, apple crisp, brownies, and ice-cream. Not bad for a hastily thrown together missionary Thanksgiving dinner. During the middle of dinner, I don't even know what happened, but everyone just had a huge laughing attack. Everyone was laughing so hard we were choking and couldn't even eat dinner. It goes to show that the spirit of holiday's comes from within, even if you are thousands of miles away from home and family, the magic of the holiday's can still be there.

So guess what... Anita got baptized on Saturday. There was just such a sacred feeling at her baptism and sitting there during her baptismal program I couldn't help but think of how much it all meant to her. To have gone through so much, and struggled so much and then finally it is all washed away, clean. I can't even express coherently in words what it is like to watch someone go through all of that and then be able to see the relief and change that baptism brings. Then add the gift of the Holy Ghost on top of that, and it is a beautiful sight to behold. Very touching.

Sister Benson