PEACHIN' THE GOSPEL: July 2016

HELLO MY PEEPS!

July 5, 2016

hey fellow peeps!

i hope y'all had a great fourth of july & were able to spend some time grillin' and chillin' with all your favorite people! we had so much fun here in thomaston yesterday. :) the maddox family prepared a special lunch just for us! we sure did eat our hearts out. my favorite was the strawberry shortcake. to die for! then for dinner we went over to the keddingtons and had some kabobs & corn. SO GOOD. it was a lot of fun & it definitely made things feel like home.

this past week has been crazy!! CASYIA & QUAY GOT BAPTIZED!!! yay!! it was so special, the both of them shared their testimonies at the end and i just wanted to cry. i loved it! it has been so fun teaching them and seeing their love for Christ grow! it is exciting to also see their whole family come back to church, what a blessing for all of them. i sure do love them.

speaking of baptisms.. jake and megan are planning on being baptized on the 16th! they are SO incredible. the change in them has been night and day! jake keeps talking about how he wants to get a study group together every wednesday night & that he will keep it going even after we leave. he is practically already a member! we have had some powerful lessons with them this week & i just can't deny that the Spirit has made a huge impact on them. it makes me so HAPPY!!

one miracle from the week:

so, there is this less active member, Bonnie Atwater. we saw her when we first came to thomaston and she wasn't very nice. Bonnie has tons of medical problems and suffers from major depression,

she tried hard to run us off and show us that she wasn't interested. after time and time of going over there we decided it would be better to give her some time and just keep praying for her. she is a cute southern black women and grumpy as ever. well time went on and randomly her visiting

teacher called us up and told us that Bonnie asked her to let us know she was interested in having us come over again. so we went over on that note. turns out prayers really work, Bonnie felt a change in her heart and decided it was time to come back to church. so we read scriptures with her and talked about what it would be like to come back to church after years and years of inactivity. she mentioned that she didn't have any clothes & she wasn't going to come without having something nice to wear. (these people are so poor around here, so it is a huge sacrifice.) we talked about how we would love to go shopping with her and help her find something if she would like us to and if she could come up with a little cash. she said that most of the time her "grandyoungins" steal her cash but she has about 50 bucks hiding she could come up with and so we decided that we would come back over on Saturday and take her to a little thrift shop and we could find something. so Saturday roles around and we come to pick Bonnie up. she gets in the car and directs us to the thrift shop that she wants to shop at. when we go in we look and find about 6 outfits that she would be able to get. nothing special or fancy just simple clothes and things she could afford with her sacrifice. we go up ready to check out and the cashier looks and Bonnie and asks, "are you starting over?" Bonnie replies, "yes, getting ready to head back to church." then the women looks at her bags up her items and says "here you go, take it." she simply gave Bonnie all the clothes for free. then she looks Bonnie in the eyes and says, "God loves you!" wow! what a blessing that was to Bonnie. the Lord knew the sacrifice that Bonnie was making. He knew this was hard for her. & to this depressed women he sent this miracle. i will never forget that moment. she looked great walking in church this Sunday in her new clothes for the first time in a LONG time.

the Lord just continues to keep on blessing us! it is so special to me that i am able to serve Him and help all of Heavenly Father's children here in thomaston. i often think to myself how much i have changed since i have been here, not in a way that i am no longer myself, but that i am more of who i really am. the atonement really can do that for each of us, we just have to trust that God knows us better than we do.

i love you all so much! keep having a great summer!

love,

sister bell.

IN THE GEORGIA MISSION WE SWEAT AND STEAL KITTIES

hey y'all!

i hope it has been another amazing week for y'all like it has been for me! there is just something about the summer that makes me so happy. i think all the fireflies here have something to do with it :) there is nothing better than being out late and the sun still being out! it warms my heart like no other! speaking of warming.. IM ALWAYS HOT. HUMIDITY IS FROM SATAN. don't talk to me about it.

this week was crazy! expect a lot of pictures coming your way! we went on exchanges with some other sisters from the mission and boy did we get a lot of work done! we counted that night how many people we saw & i think it was in the 50's. yeah, we were exhausted. needless to say, that hard work paid off. we witnessed so many miracles! i was on cloud 9 by the end of the week. whoo!!

this week we were able to spend a lot of time with the bailey family. quay and casyia are getting baptized on saturday! i am so excited! when we first got here their family wasn't even going to church, and now they have been there the past 4 weeks. it makes me smile!! they have been using their prayer rocks every morning and every night. i just love them. their sister missy who is 15 has autism, and she brightens my day every time i see her. we love to dance and sing with each other. :)

also, MEGAN & JAKE! biggest miracle right here. we were able to meet up with jake & when we did he had read 13 chapters in the book of mormon and loved it. we were in shock! that never happens as missionaries, fyi. he remembered all the details and everything! we challenged him to come to church with his sister megan on sunday, he said they would if we just came by and made sure they were awake. so sunday comes around and they were so excited to come when we came by!!! they LOVED church. & both of them kept mentioning how good it felt to be in a place where people believe the same things as them. GOLDEN. they mentioned how they were probably going to go home and take naps after church, but when we saw them later that night they said they actually went home and read more of the book of mormon. WHAT. i love them.

so... sister mckee & i may have also rescued a stray kitten. we are trying to find it a home. pray for us that we can give it to someone who will love it like we do! we really need to stop getting up to nonsense. we only give ourselves more problems.

well y'all, those are the highlights from this week! love you all! keep on keepin' on!!

love,

sister bell :-)

The Bailey Family

Just cookin some bacon in front of the church.

Makin some cream corn.

Elders. Enough said.

Jonathon and the new kitty

Service project with horses.

HOLA!

June 20, 2016

hello, hello!

it has been the LONGEST week ever!! we have had so much going on this week so it feels really good to take a day to finally catch up on the little things that have been put on the back burner of life. needless to say, it has also been an inspiring and great week! we have been able to see so many great miracles. it is wonderful to be out doing the work of the Lord. :)

since it was such a crazy week i'm going to just talk about what i did each day & try to explain real simply what has been going down!

monday: after p-day we went to see our investigator megan. we scheduled to meet her at ron's house (the less-active we have been working with). thankfully they were all there when we pulled up & we also got to meet megan's brother jake. we had a great lesson about the restoration and the need for all of Christ's teachings to be on the earth today. it was super powerful & megan and jake seemed to be soaking it in. even though ron was making homemade wine the whole time... i don't even know. he is crazy.

tuesday: we had a super awesome miracle! we had about 20 minutes before we were meeting up with a member to stop by some people's homes & so we decided to stop in the neighborhood next door to hers and do a little tracting. we specifically prayed for an opportunity to teach someone about the gospel on first contact, and sure enough, it happened! the first door we knocked on was jimmy & alice's door. she told us we could come in and share a scripture. gotta love the south :) so we went in and talked about how Christ has delivered us from our afflictions. we started to explain where the scripture came from (the book of mormon) and alice was like "oh let me go get mine really quick!" what? i guess alice knows about the gospel.. CRAZY! she told us about how she had been to the temple open house & loved what she felt there. we explained to jimmy what the temple was & he said "man, i really need to go there! how can i?" well jimmy, we can teach you!! it was a great experience. & my testimony grew knowing that God really does answer our prayers. later that night we went and taught the bailey family. quay who is 11 and casyia who is 8 are going to be getting baptized! their mom joined the church along with the 3 older siblings about 8 years ago & now the two youngest want to also! so we have been teaching them and they are so cute! they give us the biggest hugs whenever they see us. :)

wednesday: sister mckee wasn't feeling too good so we stayed in most of the day. her lack of gallbladder was giving her some probs.

thursday: mission tour! we had a huge zone conference with elder cardon from the seventy in fayetteville. it was so good to see so many of the missionaries and to see president and sister foote, i love them more than life! we talked a lot about recognizing the Spirit in our life & repenting! i have learned to love repenting. it has always seemed like a scary word or thing to do, but it really is a huge blessing to ask the Lord to help us change! that night we had a lesson with johnathon at the maddox's house. we talked a lot about repenting and prayer. it was really good, the maddox's have such powerful testimonies! johnathon finally seemed to realize what the gospel could mean to him & it was awesome to see him start to think about it. we feel like his mothers even though he is 29. he just needs a little kick in the rear! lol.. just kidding, sorta.

friday: we had another awesome lesson with jake! he really wants to read the book of mormon & come to church. we left him with like 5 one hundred and one things to read and watch. he REALLY wants to learn more! while we were at his house we also went and tried to catch these huge worms! they use them for bait for catfish here. they are huge!! jake's daughter addi was having a ball over them. i tried to pick one up for her & it literally spit on me. i had green slime on my shirt! not okay. but we had a hoot messing with them!

saturday: we went to the bailey's and made prayer rocks with casyia and missy (her older sister). it was fun! they are praying everyday now!! yay! we also went and visited a less-active member, felicia, and her daughter river in the hospital. river had a bad virus and needed some fluid! so we spent some time with them.

sunday: church! we pounded on johnathan's window so he would wake up :-) he wasn't too happy, but hey, he came to church!! later that night we had a good lesson with our investigator josh. he is basically agnostic, but is going to read the book of mormon this week, so we are excited to see what he thinks. he opened up about a lot of stuff and he has been through way more than anyone should, he really needs the gospel!

it was a super eventful week and i saw so many tender mercies of the Lord. i am grateful to be apart of His work and to be SO HAPPY!!! i love you all so much!

love,

sister bell :)

ps. WRITE ME!