Christmas trees

I got the package with the stocking and the Christmas presents this week and Sister Ericsen's family sent us a live Christmas tree. 

The temperature around here has been jumping around as well.  Only it ranges from low 60s to slightly below freezing.  My coat is nice and warm.  I was the only one who wasn't freezing during the Christmas parade.  The fact that I was warring tights and leggings might have also helped.
My hand is still hurting but other than that I'm doing good.  We're teaching one investigator that is planning on being baptized in January!!  Her boyfriend is a member and we've been teaching them together.  
So far our plans for Christmas are church, lunch, more church, visit some of the ward members, have dinner and Skype. Our dinner appointment hasn't gotten back to us on whether or not we're skyping at their house or not so we have  two people lined up as backups.  It also means we don't know what time we will be skyping at.  It will be in the evening though.  
  The ward party for Summer grove was this week; they did it polar express themed and the young women did the hot chocolate dance.  It was impressive.  We also went to the stake Christmas fireside.  They sang Christmas songs and read scriptures that went along with the song.  
Tracting it depends on how far apart the houses are and how many people talk to us.  I'm still not driving, we have someone else over cars now so I'll see if I can talk to him about it.  You, Dad, Grandma Clark, Grandma and Grandpa Bender, and other missionaries are the only people that email me.  Ruth Little and little buckaroos sent me Christmas cards and the young women sent me a poster at the beginning of my mission.  
 Well my times up.
Love you,
Sister Clark

Christmas parade

I got my meds refilled a few weeks ago.  Sorry I forgot to write that earlier.  Thank you for  the packages.  I got the City Harbor album and the prismacolor pencils.  

I've been having slight pain in my right hand and wrist that flairs up when I do a lot with it.  I thought I was just crocheting to much but it hasn't been going away and it's starting to hurt when I write now.  We think I hurt it in my bike crash and just didn't notice it until now.  We're going to have it checked out as soon as missionary medical approves it.  

On a happier note, we were in the Christmas parade and the ward float won first place for the church division. We handed out light the world cards with candy canes taped to them and 2 Books of Mormon.  It was a lot of fun. 

Love you

Light up the world

We have a Christmas tree  that a member is letting us use. I crocheted the star for it. The other picture is of me helping decorate the bishops house.  I'll write a letter when I get home so I have more time to think.  We're still trying to figure out a time to Skype, we have a family that signed up to have us over but I think they forgot that our families are in a different time zone.  We're going to see if we can Skype in the evening.  I let you know when we figure things out.  I've had bad days but I've also had a lot of help from The Lord.  For example this Saturday was rough but one of the LIGHTtheWORLD things for that day was to point out a virtue in others that they don't see in themselves.  So we ended the day by writing sticky notes to each other with all are positive atrabutes.  It was a lot of fun.  Today we're decorating the mission home for Christmas so that'll be fun to.  For the Book of Mormon I was planning on it being for me in one book, but it would be cool to have them to give away too.  Love you

Thanksgiving

All we ate this week was thanksgiving food. Before Thanksgiving we had 2 meals where the family had celebrated Thanksgiving the Saturday before the actual holiday and gave us leftovers.  Then on Thanksgiving we had late Thanksgiving lunch and Thanks giving diner.  We were so full.  Then on Saturday we had another Thanksgiving lunch.  In that family they had mostly cookies for desert.  They were good.  One Southern dish that everyone had was a green casserole with onions on top.  The other thing that everyone made was homemade macaroni and cheese.  No one had apple pie though.

One thing I learned this year is the difference between stuffing and dressing.  Stuffing is made with normal breadcrumbs while dressing is made with cornbread crumbs.    

If you haven't already seen the new light the world Christmas video you should look at it.  I'm going to be doing a lot of stuff on the 25 day calendar and I think it would be a fun thing to do as a family.  

For Christmas I would like the city harbor album, adult coloring book, origami, and a Book of Mormon with everyone's testimonies in it.  

Tell Ammon to get better soon

Love ya

Brit

I like to look for Rainbows

Brandi got baptized this week!!!!!  The musical number the relief society president didn't show up, long with everyone we asked to bring refreshment but other than that it was good.  We (the sister missionaries) sang I Like To Look For Rainbows for the musical number so that was fun.   

There's not enough Sister missionaries to go around so I'm going to be with the Newnan Sisters and we're going to be covering both areas.  This is effective the day before Thanksgiving.  They have a Thanksgiving dinner scheduled and we have a Thanksgiving lunch and dinner scheduled so we're going to be eating most of the day.   

Temple trip and a Baptism

We still have all of the trees.  Probably one of my favorite things to do is study the gospel.  I'm in the Christmas chapters of Jesus the Christ and it's really cool to see how all the prophesies were fulfilled.  It also makes the bible easier to understand, witch is nice. 

We have and investigator getting baptized this Saturday!!! Her name is Brandi.  She's married and has 2 kids, a girl and a boy.  

We got a ride to the temple with Elder and Sister Collins, along with the Newnan, Peach Tree, Whitewater, and Fayetvill sisters.  We found out Trump is going to be the next president so we talked about that for a little bit but since we're all out of the loupe on politics we switched over to things we know about.  Such as who is teaching who and napping.  After the temple we went to zone training and learned about this years Christmas initiative called #lighttheworld.  It's a video and a series of service activities starting the day after thanksgiving.  

Other than that things have been fairly normal.  Transfers are the day before Thanksgiving. 

Treats and Temples

My asthma is doing good.  So far I've only gotten asthma attacks on days I've forgotten to take my preventative.  It's now occurring to me that I don't actually know how to refill those...

   We didn't get any trick or treaters, so now we have a bag of candy that we're eating. We went shopping on Halloween and I found a green rain jacket that I really like.  They didn't want us out during trick or treating hours so we went in at 7 and watched Mountain of the Lord.  Sister Thompson told her mom we didn't have a dinner appointment that night so she ordered us pizza.  We had a lot of fun. 

   I got your letter and the temple names.  We go to the temple this Wednesday so that'll be fun.  I set Danny a letter so let me know when she gets it.  

   I don't remember if I already told you this, but the Saturday before fast Sunday we have a mission wide conference call where each companionship texts in three names and we have a mission fast for them.  I put Megan on the list.  Keep me posted on that.  

Love you

Britney

Halloween

I just realized I forgot to send this last week.  So here's last weeks letter.

Sounds like y'all had a fun week.  This Saturday was Sister Erickson's birthday and the ward Halloween party.  We got to judge the desserts and then go home and eat cake.  We ate to much but it was fun. I think the best costumes I saw was a family dressed as characters from Wreck it Ralph.  

The cockroach population is down! Not completely gone yet but we're getting there. Our next temple trip is on the 9th so if you get those names to me I can do them then.  We saw a woodpecker yesterday.  Sister Thompson got a video of it but we cant figure out how to get it on to the computer.  I got the package you sent me. And a pare of shoes that I left in my last area.  It's fun opening something everyday.  So far the favorites are Calvin's box and the rubber duck. 

 

 First off sorry again I didn't send that email last week.  I can't believe I didn't hit send.  I didn't get a jacket yet.  There's been a bug going around the mission so we cut shopping short and let everyone sleep.  

Every 5th Sunday the missionaries get to teach gospel principals.  So this week we got to teach about eternal marriage and why it's important.  Why they had that as the lesson that missionaries, who are neither married nor thinking about getting married, is beyond me.  In spite of that I think it went fairly well. 

At one of our dinner appointments this week I walked in the door and saw a Harry Potter trivia game on the table, The entire Lord of the Rings series on the shelf, and one of the girls had on a Robin t-shirt.  So I found some of my people.  

One of our investigators, who's planning on being baptized soon :) , said in one of the episodes of Supper Girl one of the characters figures out that the guy from and alternate universe is a supper hero. When asked how he figured it out he said "With morals like that you're either Mormon or a supper hero."  

Looking forward to Halloween pictures

Love 

Sister Britney Clark

Pictures

Thanks for the Halloween package.  What were transfers like on your mission?  

The pictures are Atlanta skyline, 
me and my companion, 
us at the Halloween party, a woodpecker​.  

Newnan Lakes

I got moved to the Summer Grove ward with Sister Thompson (my MTC companion). My new address is  Newnan GA.  We're in a four man with the Newnan Sisters.  A family of cockroaches decided to move into the fridge before I got here.  All the food is in the living room and all the dishes are piled on the table so they can spray the kitchen.  It's almost impossible to find anything but there's a lot less bugs. Other than that it's a pretty average apartment.

I mentioned that I like to make fudge and Sister Thompson immediately texted the elders and told them that I make fudge.  A short while later I had a peanut butter fudge recipe with the agreement that I will be making it in exchange for french toast.  

 

How much we spend specifically on food depends on how much members feed us.  Our monthly budget is $165 for sisters and $160 for elders.  This covers food, cleaning supplies, notebooks, pencils/pens, stamps, ect.  Hopefully that helps.

Well the computers about to kick me off,

 

Love ya,

Sister Britney Clark

Peachy

     Georgia was the first state to box and distribute peaches on a large scale, which is why it's called the peach state.  Most of the peaches aren't actually grown here, just processed.  We do get some at the farmers market, but its not any more than you would get anywhere else.  We do get a lot of blueberries though.
      We get 1 ensign per companionship so we have to share.  I just got a new notebook, my last one got filled up at conference.  All the hotels are full from people evacuating the hurricane area.  The temperature dropped about 20 degrees, which has been very nice, and it started raining when we were biking and stopped shortly after we got home.  We probably should've gotten me a rain jacket, but I'm transferring out of this area so I can probably just use my umbrella.  If you want to send me one of my less formal jackets for exercise in the mornings that would be great.
     At general conference we were talking to Sister Foote and Sister Francom mentioned that they (the PTC sisters) were trying to cut back on biking because Sister Hines only has 1 3/4 lungs.  Somewhere in that it got brought up that I'm asthmatic and also in a car/bike share.  Now we're both getting transferred.  We're planning on dropping off some of our stuff off at the church today so we don't end up with the same fiasco as last transfer.

    I got your letter. Not the package yet but yesterday was Columbus day and the mail hasn't come yet so I might get it while I'm here.  If not they'll forward it to me and I will get it eventually.

   In other news one of our members is knitting scarves and hats to sent to kids in other countries that don't have any.  She frequently invites the missionaries over to help and the last two times I brought my crochet hooks and finished a scarf yesterday.  It was fun.  They have a dog who is also named Chewy.  He decided we were paying to much attention to the yarn and stole Sister Simmons yarn.  

 

    We also got four new senior missionaries, Elder and Sister Collins and Elder and Sister Imlay.  As far as I know they're not related to our Imlays.  The Collins are in to jamming and brought a 2 year supply of homemade jam with them.  One batch didn't thicken up right so they also have raspberry syrup. Something we can relate to.

 

Thank you for everything, your support means the world to me

Love Britney 

Conference

Conference was awesome.  We went to the stake center to watch it.  The first secession on Sunday had some other members but the rest of the time it was mostly just missionaries.  One thing I really liked from general conference is that joy has little to do with the circumstances of our life, and everything to do with the focus of our life.  I've found that to be true in my life.  When I'm focusing on everything that's going wrong or that I'm not good at I am not a happy camper.  But when I'm focusing on Christ and the countless blessings in my life I'm a lot happier.
I can't remember if I told you this but when we went to the temple with Sister Simmons recent convert I got a mini scripture set for when I'm biking.  They're compact and don't weigh as much as my other set.  The only downside was they didn't sell scripture cases that size so I decided to crochet one.  We only had pink yarn and crochet cotton so I decided to Irish crochet a hummingbird for decoration.  At the store I ended up picking a sparkling dark blue yarn for the case.  It looks really good but it doesn't match the hummingbird. I finished the case a few days ago. Since I had already started the hummingbird I decide to work on that during general conference.  One of the Elders saw the hummingbird and asked if I could make a penguin.  I told him I could probably figure it out, so I might start that today.
The weather decided to drop 10-15 degrees all the sudden witch is really nice when we're on the bikes.  I could use some more deep blue, I used a lot of it on my arm.  Transfers are on the 12th so plan around that.  Also we have a recent convert with 3 year old twins that would like some ideas for keeping them entertained during sacrament meeting.   One of them likes eating crayons and the other one likes coloring on anything but paper so not coloring. 

Thanks for the pictures.  My camera needs new batteries so I will send some next week.  

Thanks for everything

Love Brit 

Music

My arm is doing better, it doesn't hurt unless I bump it or try to lift anything heavier than my purse. I did get the recipes, and we do have a DVD player that also does CDs and has a flash drive reader.    I like listening Jenny Fisher and EFY music if you want to send me that:) The rules on music is: 

Listen only to music that is consistent with the sacred spirit of your calling. Music should invite the Spirit,help you focus on the work, and direct your thoughts and feelings to the Savior. Do not listen to music that pulls your thoughts away from your work, merely entertains, has romantic lyrics or overtones, or dulls your spiritual sensitivity by its tempo, beat, loudness, lyrics, or intensity. 

We got to do baptisms for the dead with one of Sister Simmons' recent converts! Also today is Sister Francom's birthday:)

The pictures  are us in our apartment, us in our car, me and my companion, me and the other Sister Clark

Love you!!

Not broken

So this week I decided to crash my bike.  I didn't realize there was a turn at the bottom of the hill so I was going to fast.  The good news is my arm is not broken, I just have to ice it for a few days.  Pluss we got the car untill my arm gets better.  

Later in the week we were trackting and ran into another behemoth spider, right above the door.  We were debating on weather or not knocking on the door would make it fall on us or if we were ok.  I finally knocked and we didn't die, though I about had a heart attack when it moved.  I included my picture of the last one I saw just in case anyone forgot. on a more spirital note. I got to meet more of the ward since they were here as apposed to Louisiana. The had a lot of good stories about helping people affected by the floods, but one speaker took it a step farther and talked about helping our neighbors. It's good to help those people in other states but it's also important to help people locally. He also talked about developing good relationships with the people in our neighborhood before you're all stranded at the one house that isn't flooded.

Well I'm out of time at the library, sorry that was short.  

Bike's and prayers

This week was transfer week and for transfers everyone that is getting moved and there companions meet up at the stake center, find out where we're going and who we're paired up with then lode our things into there care and head to our new area.  Normally this is not a problem but we have a shortage of sister missionaries at the moment so they pulled sisters out of Flat Creek.  And we were in a threesome  for the last week.  This meant that we had to cram three peoples stuff, all the perishable food, and us into one car.  The only truck in the mission was unavailable at the time.  Fortunately we kinda knew where I was going so we had the Peach Tree City Sisters pick up my stuff and the food.  They also took food that was meant for the elders, so they were not happy.  Even after that we still had to leave two boxes that we had planed on dropping off at the mission office at the apartment.  Option number two was have someone sit cross legged with no seat belt, but we decided that was a bad idea.  

Our cars have a tiwi (teenage eye witness) in them that makes sure we're not speeding, staying in the mission, and who's driving.  We have cards we scan in so it knows who's driving.  Sister Welch scanned hers and started on the road.  As soon as we left the the tiwi said no driver, meaning no one was logged in.  So we scanned it again, and again and again.  When we got to a stop light we put it in park and rescanned it over and over and over again.  Still nothing.  We tried pushing the restart button and calling the Senior Missionary in charge of the cars.  Restarting it did nothing and the call went to voicemail.  We tried restarting it again and Sister Welch dropped the tiwi card.  I was reaching over the center and everything piled on it and Sister Leyba was trying to reach over the stuff piled on her lap and get it.  At this point the tiwi had reset properly so all we needed was the card.  Sister Layba finally dove under all the stuff and grabbed it.  After we scanned it and it finally logged in Sister Welch said "Guys, I thing I know why this is happening.  We didn't say a prayer before we left."  After that I prayed and we didn't have anymore problems getting to the stake center.  

Anyhow I am now in the white water ward.  We are in a car share meaning we're on bikes half the time and share a car with the PTC (Peach Tree City) sisters.  Georgia does not believe in sidewalks however there are golf cart paths all over PTC so we bike on those.  I'm good with biking long distances but it's a different experience in a skirt.  We have shorts underneath them but you still have to make sure they don't catch on anything.  Since their's  only to biking areas for sister missionaries the bikes stay in the area.  On the one hand it's nice because I didn't have to buy one.  On the other hand the bike doesn't like shifting into 6th gear on the back and flat out won't shift into 3rd on the front.  I'm planning on taking a look at it today and seeing if I can fix it.  Other than that it works pretty good and the hills around here aren't very steep, especially compared to the mountains and foothills that I'm use to.  The scenery is amazing.  Most of the paths are through the woods and a lot of them go by lakes.  Should be a fun area.  

Allways pray before you travel

Sister Clark

Spiders and transfers

Mission life is having things not go the way you planed.  No matter how hard you try or how many backup plans you have, things are not going to go the way you expected.  But if you're doing your best and listening to The Spirit things will go the way God has planned.  And that's better then anything I could come up with on my own.  

Most of this week we had Sister Leyba as our third companion.  She's serving in the Fayetteville ward but her companion is coming home early, so we have her until transfers on Wednesday.  In the mean time we are covering both wards.  Fortunately we didn't have any set plans at the same time, other than dinner appointments.  We both had plans to help with different parts of the stake women's conference, so we helped out a lot.  My favorite part was painting rocks that said "Seek Pray Come" and heart themed doodles on the side.  The lesson for that was about surviving life's changes.  

Seek the words of Christ,

Pray for help and guidance,

Come: to church, and serve in you callings.

It reminds me of what we tell our investigators, only we call it CPR (Church, Pray, Read the scriptures) and it does help us through life's changes and life in general.  

Another speaker talked about Temples and how we don't know how much we are blessed by attending the Temple.  She challenged everyone to do family history work for twenty days by the end of next month and visit the temple for our family.  I'd like to extend that challenge to everyone reading this and to pay attention to the blessings that come from it.  

In other news, the Flat Creek area is getting closed for sister missionaries so I will be heading to Peach Tree City while teaching a few people in Flat Creek that the elders would need team ups for. I also took a picture of a giant spider that was in one of our investigators yard.

Baptism!

Tiffany was baptized on Saturday!  It was so wonderful.  She couldn't stop jumping up and down with excitement:)   Unfortunately she's in my last area so I couldn't go to her confirmation, but it was great to see her get Baptized!  

On the down side of this week Sister Welch got an infection from her wisdom tooth surgery and had to get another surgery to get it cleaned out.  We've been eating a lot of smoothies, soup, ice cream and pudding.  I've been a little stir crazy but were back to full days and solid food (as long as its not hard).  

Exchanges and interviews were this week so I was back in Sharpsburg for a day and helped contact YSA members that have disappeared off the face of the earth.  Interviews is where we sit down with President Foote and talk about how things are going and how we're doing.  We also have district meeting while these are going on.  This was the same day as Sister Welch's surgery so while a member took her to that I went back for second helpings on district meeting.  I took second place in the scripture chase. Other than that, things have been as normal as they get on a mission.  

Sister Clark

Journals

Happy belated birthday Mom.  I did remember, and I got you a card at the beginning of the month and still haven't sent it. 
     I've been journaling better to.  I don't know if I told you, but I bought a journal with Angel  Moroni on the cover and scriptures at the bottom of each page.  When Calvin starts his mission, remember to get him a journal for his companions to write in.  I didn't know that was a thing until I got to the MTC.  

This week all the computers at Delta airlines crashed and stranded about 23 missionaries.  8 of them were heading home and just got their flights delayed. 15 were adopted by the mission and were in tros for a day or two.  We had Sister Ashenbaker who was on her way to the Brazil MTC.  She's awesome. When we were visiting people she was quick to share her testimony and eager to share the Gospel.  She helped us with our chalk Book of Mormon/ Bible chalk art and helped a less active that had lost her husband.  It down pored as we were dropping her and the other refugees who had flights that day.

     On Friday we were prompted to go back to Shamrock Park and draw another chalk art. This time we did a city on a hill and wrote the scripture that talks about a city set on a hill cannot be hid.  Partway through we noticed a girl watching us work.  I asked if she wanted to help us draw houses.  She eagerly joined us and after a little wile her brother started helping too.  He drew a red tornado in the sky.  There family comes every Friday so we plan to do more chalk art on Fridays.  If you have any suggestions for chalk art, let us know.  We could always use more Ideas.  

Love you 

Sister Britney Clark

Temple

I was able to go to the temple this week. It was wonderful.  There is nothing better then going to the temple and feeling the peace there.  

I took some pictures of the flowers there and some reference pictures for the chalk drawing we did later this week.  It kinda got whitewashed in the pictures, but I did a lot of shading in the drawing.  I'm glad Sister Welch thought of this. It's a good way to use my talents to share the gosple.   

The moth picture was at the Elders' apartment: we ran out of butter.

Our mourning schedule is wake up and do exercises, normally that's me teaching karate.  Then we get ready for the day, then do studies.  After that we go to appointments, do service, drop in on people, contact referrals, and go trackting. For service we're usually at a thrift store called Close less Travailed.  The person in charge of linens has a friend who's a member and we helper sort, fold, and label things while  answering any questions she has.  The other thing we've been doing for service is helping a member that just moved in unpack and get everything organized.  

This week and last week everyone has been out of town for the last week of summer vacation.  We have two backups for everyone we plan to see and we've still had to look at our roster to see who's close to where we're at.  School's starting again so this week should be better in that regard.  If we have a dinner appointment we eat around six.  If not we eat at eight. The elder who wrote the dinner calendar for this month has Monday at the beginning of the week instead of Sunday.  So far we've only found one person that signed up on the wrong day.  We call and remind people a couple days in advance, so it shouldn't be problematic.  

On Fridays we have district call, which  is when we get on a conference call with the district and talk about miracles we've had how everyone's doing.  Tuesdays we have district meeting (unless it's zone conference like this week) where the district meets up and we have someone give a training, witch is just like a lesson, but about missionary work. We talk about how things are doing in our area and pick a topic for next weeks training.  Fast Sundays we text in up to three names or families and have a mission call were Sister Foote reads the names and we have a mission fast for them.

Love, Sister Clark

Salvation and Chalk Art

August 1 2016

 

This email is going to be all over the place.  Sister Welch is from Kaysville Utah. She is the youngest of four, has a cocker spaniel (black and white), and likes baking.

  Neither of us brought a chocolate chip cookie recipes. Could you send me the Burgers? 
 

    Congrats on not killing the flowers :)
 

    The weather has been staying in the hundreds with 70-80% humidity, when it's not raining.  The rain likes to come down like a waterfall, so I have gotten drenched walking from someones porch to the car.  The next house we went to asked if we wanted a towel.  We're better at not leaving our umbrellas in the car now.  

      Normal school starts in Georgia this week.   One of the old schools is reopening as a charter school so for our service hours this week we helped set up the library.  It was fun. 
 

    Also this week we drew the plan of salvation in chalk as a way to contact people.  It was huge! I'll send pictures.  We're planing on making this a regular thing so if you want to send suggestions, that would be great.  This week we're drawing the Atlanta Temple. 
 

     Next time you send a package can you send my crochet hooks?  One of our investigators started crocheting an afghan and wants us to finish it.  We're borrowing one of her hooks, but I would like my own.  It's kinda like the one that Grandpa started, but without the texture and more rainbowie.  She has all the peaces made, but doesn't have the motivation to put them together.  Also some of them are longer and some of them are shorter. 
 

     The fudge was a big hit.  Elder Roberson hit his year mark and his companion's birthday is today so we sent them home with a chunk.  They called us and said they put some of the fudge on the cake and ate it that way.
 

     Thanks for the addresses, I will be sure to write them.  

Love 

Sister Britney Clark