New Kent!

Well, here I am, in Providence Forge, VA! I never dreamed of being in a place such as this on my mission, but here I am and here I will stay for at least the next six weeks and probably for the new four to five months.

Anyway, before I get into that, here's how my last few days in Elizabeth City went, plus lots of pictures!

Last Sunday we saw Lola! I think maybe I already sent a picture of her last week, but I don't remember. She's the best. And she said that she would start coming back to church! So hopefully that actually happens.

On Monday (St. Patrick's Day) Sister Anderson took us out to lunch at Taco Bell. She's a member that we have spent quite a bit of time with. I will miss her!

Then for dinner we ate with Brother Jackson and his wife, Sissy. She made crockpot chicken taco chili from skinnytaste.com just for me :) It was sooooo delicious and was comfort food to me because I made it like every other week in college. Yum. Poor Brother Jackson though hates anything delicious, so he made a turkey and mayonnaise sandwich while us three women feasted on chiken chili and salad with avocado lime dressing. :) I am so sad to leave Sissy behind. She is great.

On Tuesday the Pendletons, the couple that feeds us lunch every Sunday, had us over for breakfast to say goodbye! They used to own a bed and breakfast in Homer, Alaska, and are so cute. They made us fruit cups, french toast with real french bread, eggs, jowls (a bacon-ish thing made from pig cheeks), and homemade mashed potatoes. Sooooo delicious! Even the jowls. I love them.

Here's Kelly and Nadia Begazo, our only two "Hispanic" children, even though they refuse to speak Spanish. They are so cute. Kelly is my mini-me and I told her that she can come live with me in the west for a summer when she gets older :)

On Wednesday we had dinner with Luz and Pilar, two other Hispanic members here. They are so funny. They made sooooooooooo much delicious food for all six of us missionaries. It was delicious!

 

That dinner was held at Sister Hughes house, who I absolutely adore. I want to adopt her as my third grandma.

I could add more pictures, but I'm running out of time. Grrr and now I tried to put one of Hermana Brugman and I together as companions for the last time, but it won't send. She is hilarious and I miss her guts! We were together for four long, hard months, which made us really close. Leaving your companion is so hard! It feels like we were married and now I had to divorce her and marry someone else. It's weird.

 Other things:

On Thursday I was feeling kind of nervous to leave, and opened up my Book of Mormon randomly. The first verse I read was Helaman 5:47, which says something about, "Peace, peace be unto you, for I the Lord am with you." or something like that. Wow.

Hermana Johnson is training, which makes me a grandma!

And now this:

On my very first night in New Kent we got STUCK IN THE MUD. Bad. Mom, you would have died. We were driving home from a dinner appointment and it was already kind of late, around 9:15. Dark as pitch because there are no street lights out here in the forest. We're going along just fine following the GPS when it tell us to turn down a dirt road. I looked at my companion and said, "Have you driven on this before?" "Yes." So I think, "Ok, well, the GPS is set to take us the route that uses the least amount of miles, so I'm sure this is just a little dirt road that will lead us out quickly." So on and on we drive. Pretty soon I start seeing a few little muddy areas and I say again, "Now are you sure that you've driven on this before?" "Yes, I think so." To her benefit, she's only been in the area for one transfer, so she's learning everything too. A few minutes later I say, "I'm just worried about us getting stuck in the..." we come to a quick stop "...mud."

Now when I say stuck, I mean STUCK. Bad. The mud was like a foot deep and we were right in it in this little teeny corolla. And I was MAD.

So I try and try to get us out.. forward, backward, forward, backwrad. Wheels spinning like crazy.

I think, "Well, we got ourselves into this mess, we can get ourselves out." I take off my shoes, step out into the orange mud in bare feet, and start trying to push the car IN A SKIRT. Useless. Utterly useless. I literally started crying. I told Heavenly Father, "I am in New Kent, Virginia, where I don't really want to be. I am tired. I am wet. I am cold. We are stuck. Please get us out."

Finally my companion starts making calls and gets a hold of the relief society president, who calls a man called Brother Adams, who comes and finds us on this random dirt road and pulls us out with his big truck. At 10:15 at night.

Thank goodness we didn't get eaten by wolves.

NO MORE DIRT ROADS FOR ME!

Haha.

Have a great week!

I LOVE YOU!!!

Hermana Bennett