Viajando! (traveling)

Wow, where is the time going? This week has FLOWN by. This transfer is FLYING by. I feel like the time is getting away from me a little bit! I´m super sad because I left my post it note with all of the points that I wanted to cover at the apartment :( so I will try my best to remember everything that I wanted to tell you.

 

 

This past week has been interesting. Lots of nursing stuff still. On Wednesday we went to San Pedro Sula early early in the morning to help an elder with a visit to the hospital. After that we went to the office to help Hermana Klein make all of the personal first aid kits to hand out in the upcoming zone conferences. It was quite the project! But we had fun smashing all the boxes and organized the kits for the missionaries. Even though being the nurse calls for extra responsibilites, I really do love it. I love getting the chance to not only serve the people in Honduras, but to serve the missionaries in my mission as well. In a way, I feel like I am helping the work move along by helping the missionaries stay heathly. I´m so incredibly grateful to Hermana Klein and all of the support that she gives me! It helps to know that I am never alone.

 

 

On Saturday we had Mini-MTC camp for all the primary kids in the stake. It was quite the activity! We traveled to a fruit farm in Tela, which is about an hour away from here. It was beautiful! It got to the point where the buses couldn´t go any further and so we had to hike the rest of the way.  I felt like I was right in my element. Seriously, it was so rejuvinating to hike! Even though I was in church clothes :) It gave me a moment to just breathe and enjoy my surroundings. It was so fun to see all of the little kids in their church clothes. They all were given a name tag that was practically an exact replica of our own, except it said futura misionero instead of Elder or Hermana so&so. When we got there all of the missionaries spread out along a trail and groups of kids rotated to each of the companionships for a 5 minute lesson. In ours, we hid a bag of candy and then had them look for it. When the child found it, we talked about how great it was that he had candy and how sad it was that none of the other kids had any. In almost all of the groups, the child with the candy wanted to share it with the others! After giving each child candy, we compared it to sharing the gospel. We all have something so precious that brings us so much joy, but there are so many people that don´t have it. It´s important for us to share it with everyone so they can be happy too! It went really well, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. After we all were finished it RAINED.... which meant hiking back in pure MUD. We were filthy! haha but it makes for a good memory to look back on. I have so much more respect for people who work in the primary. It´s a tough job, but so rewarding at the same time.

 

For the zone conferences that have been this week, I´ve been giving a presentation about health for them all. Which means lots of traveling! Me and Hermana L left Sunday evening to travel to La Ceiba, which ended up taking us 4-1/2 hours... It was amazing to me how many little miracles we saw along the way. Super little ones but to us they made all the difference. Heavenly Father seemed to put the right people in our path at just the right time in order for us to arrive to our destination without any problems. It´s amazing to me how calm I felt in a completely foreign country traveling to an area far away that I had never been to and trusting that the Lord would guide us there. And he did just that! It was fun because we got to spend the night with Hermana D and her companion! It was fun to catch up with her and remember our times in the CCM just a short time ago. I´ve loved getting to hear President Klein give his spiritual insights more than once, as I have gotten different things out of it everytime. He mentioned to us that the church is no longer calling the work ¨Missionary Work¨ but rather the ¨Work of Salvation¨. And it is so true! It´s not just about baptisms, it´s about saving souls and bringing people, our brothers and sisters, to Christ. (D&C 138:56) For this next little while our mission will be focusing on retention of new members, and I am so excited for it! President talked about how he wants us to focus on a "change of heart". Not only in our investigators but in us as well. Right now there is a war going on between the adversary and Christ - the prize to be won is each and every one of our hearts. Satan wants our hearts to be hard (1 Nephi 12:17), while Heavenly Father wants our hearts to be pure (D&C 64:22 Helaman 3:35). So it leaves us to ponder, who has my heart right now? We can be obedient and still have a hard heart, just like Laman and Lemuel or the Pharisees and Sadducees. Or we can be obedient with a pure heart, doing it to show our love and dedication to our Heavenly Father and Savior. In the end, it is a pure heart that will endure through all the trials, hardships, and struggles in this life. It made me want to recommit to doing this work out of love for God and love for others. It´s not just about numbers, it´s about names.

 

On the bus ride home from La Ceiba, I really felt like I needed to talk to the man sitting next to me, but struggled to find the way to start a conversation. So I said a prayer to Heavenly Father that if I was supposed to talk to the man sitting next to me, he would ask me a question. A little while after he turned to me and said, ¨So what church are you apart of?¨ Through the course of the next hour I was able to talk to him about the Restoration, give him a Book of Mormon and read a little with him, and invited him to receive the missionaries in his home. He agreed to read, pray, receive the missionaries and go to church on Sunday! I know that it was an answer to my prayer. It´s incredible to me how much our Heavenly Father loves us enough to answer even the most simplest of prayers.

 

I´m sure there were lots of other things I wanted to say, but at the moment I can´t think of them all.... Just want you to know how much I love you all! I really appreciate the support and the prayers. I couldn´t do this without it. This Thanksgiving I think I am more thankful for my family than I´ve ever  been before... haha love you all. Until next week!

 Hermana Bennett