One Year Mark

June 22, 2015
No Hej Cześć,

This past week has been really busy with lots of activities yet good. At the beginning of the week I had a really good exchange with Sister Gustafson, she is great! We got to go tracting out in these beautiful houses in the countryside and then almost got eaten by a giant dog. You know that big dog from the sandlot, yeah I think we found it on Tuesday. We also had a wonderful lesson with a member named Maria. She has two beautiful daughters both married in the temple with kids and she blew me away with just how much she understood the gospel. I love it when members just get it! We have been meeting and sharing "Preach My Gospel" books and lessons with our members lately, which has been a wonderful opportunity to get to know them more and help them fulfill their missionary responsibilities.

Thursday June 18th I hit my one year mark on my mission. Wow can you believe it, one year in the mission field. I remember one year ago getting ready to go, being terribly nervous, and sad to leave the family. Now here I am in Poland, and it has been quite the journey. I still miss you all so much but I know I need to work hard and push through these last 6 months and we will see each other soon. I am so grateful that I decided to serve a mission; this has been one of the best decisions of my entire life. I look forward to the coming months and pray that they will be months of love, joy, growth, new friendships, work, and great success.

We didn't really do much to celebrate on Thursday for my year mark, but boy did we celebrate on Friday! I have been looking forward to culture night all month! We have been preparing for an open house at our chapel on Saturday, so on Friday we got together with my district and practiced some hymn arrangements to sing at the open house. Then we spent a little bit of time out contacting and inviting people to the open house. Then it began... For dinner my district went out and ate at Manekin (typical I know) where we had a really good dinner. Afterwards we "waddled" (because we were so full) over to the theatre of music to watch Fiddler on the Roof. The performance was so good! Even though we were in the last row of the top balcony in the nose bleed seats it was still such a good experience. Good actors, singers, and I actually undersood the Polish which was really cool. When they sung "tradition...." it sounded so much better in Polish haha... "tradycja"!

Saturday we had an open house at our chapel. An open house is basically where we open up our chapel and have members present on different topics like the restoration, plan of salvation, and what our meetings look like. Introducing the "Mormons". The past couple of weeks we worked hard and passed out hundreds of fliers and the members were all supposed to come and bring someone with them. Well... we had two new people come, then one of them had to leave early haha, so pretty much one new guy. The elders did manage to get his number though. We luckily had some good stalwart members there though. We spent the morning at district language study, preparing our segments to teach, and baking cinnamon rolls in prep for the open house. I had this recipe that one of the Elders had given me. I forgot that he had told me to half the recipe, so I start making them and was like dang... this is a ton of flour and yeast. Needless to say I ended up to my elbows in a giant vat of dough. We cranked out these delicious cinnamon rolls for the open house and ended up with two pans to spare.If we only get one new person from the open house, then that is good enough for me!

Alright well enough of my ramblings. I just want you all to know that I love you dearly and am so grateful to have each of you in my life. I know that this church is true, and I also know that humility is so key. In my study of the Book of Mormon lately, pride has stuck out like a sore thumb. Honestly it is not necessary in our lives and is so detrimental. I need to work on not being a proud and stiffnecked servant in the hands of the Lord. He needs teachable and humble followers, He has enough proud, He needs more willing and meek children. We are so blessed, I wish you could see some of the things that I have experience on my mission. Observing the world and people around me has opened my eyes to the wickedness of this world and the meaning of having God in your life. This past year has shown me how blessed I am and I am so grateful to my Father in Heaven for the knowledge I have in my life of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. I am ever grateful for those who have helped me to be on my mission! I love you all, have a wonderful wonderful week.

Sister Benson