Miracles!

Hello to my friends and family! This week seems like it was a month long. I sometimes think about things that happened tuesday and feel like it happened last week, or think of things that happened last week and think that they happened this week... The days and weeks are starting to blur into each other mucho! Weird to think however that this is the last week of the transfer. I don´t feel like I have felt the time much. I can´t say it went by fast, but it also can´t say it went by slow. It´s just simply been... haha

This week we made another visit to San Pedro Sula again, and this time Hermana Klein was so nice as to take us to a big store that had lots of American Products. I was in heaven!!!! I just wanted to buy the whole store!!! En fin (in the end), I bought string cheese (i think out of everything that i miss, i miss real cheese more than anything.... haha), golean crunch triple berry (mmmmmmmm......) cocoa powder to make no bake cookies, and the shampoo and conditioner that I used back home. She also bought us some american ice cream and we had a nice cupful. It really was so thoughtful of her and helped to relieve the stresses of the week.

 

This week was Hermana Aparicio´s birthday! It was fun because at our zone meeting all the missionaries surprised her with a cake and candles. Then the sister´s that live above us decorated the house with balloon animals (one of them worked at party city.... haha). Lots of people called to tell her happy birthday as well. I think it turned out to be really good for her :)

 

Hermana A's Birthday!!!

 

 

 

 

 

M's baptism

On Friday, we had the baptism of Maria! It went so well. I just love her. She is very wise and has a beautiful way of expressing herself in a very quiet, reverent and profound way. She talks pretty slow and you have to pay really close attention to listen to what she says but she is very excited about the gospel. She recognizes that she still has a lot to learn but she is excited to get going! The other day in a lesson she told us, I was was reading in the Book of Mormon where it talks about angels preaching the gospel and I thought to myself... The missionaries are my angels! This means I´d better be baptized :) haha The baptismal service was beautiful. When she came up out of the water she shouted praises to the Lord and you could just feel the happiness that she felt :) It was an honor to be apart of it. We had 3 investigators attend! One, J, also from Las Flores, will be getting baptized this upcoming saturday. Though he doesn´t know how to read, he has recieved a very real testimony of the Book of Mormon through his prayers, and is determined to learn how to read so he can continue learning and progressing.

 

 

 

 

 

On saturday, we put on an activity for our ward that turned out to be really great! One of the sisters in our ward is a returned missionary and had done the same activity while on her mission that was really successful. We put on a carnival and passed out 15 tickets to everyone in the beginning. They were told that the tickets were precious and that they needed to take care of them, but that they could choose to do with them whatever they pleased. We had a beauty station for the females with hair, nails and eyebrows (which turned out to be a hit... haha), a station with card games and nintendo, basketball, and a room with dancing. In these stations it cost them tickets to participate. Then we had one station, called the station of learning, where they could come and earn tickets by answering a spiritual question or giving a reference to the missionaries. We didn´t give them a specific time frame and so we stopped all activities suddenly and had them divide themselves into groups. 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16+. Then the groups went according to the amount of tickets they had to 4 different rooms that we had predecorated (Outer darkness, telestial, terestrial, and celestial... hehe). In the rooms we talked about priorities and not letting the things of the world get in the way of our eternal goals, and we talked about sharing the gospel with others to help them reach the eternal goal as well. It turned out to be really great and fun at the same time! In the end, we all gathered together to watch a video about giving references to the missionaries, and the spirit was really strong. It was a really great activity!

 

Now for the miracle of the week. As we were decorating the capilla (chapel) for the activity we realized that we needed some balloons and crepe paper from a pulpería. My companion stayed with Hermana Turner to decorate some more and me and Hermana Ramirez hurried and ran to the pulpería in la paz to get some balloons. On the way there we decided to contact some houses. We stopped at one house and there were a bunch of people in the front. When we introduced ourselves and our purpose they said hello and continued talking as if we weren´t there. It was a little uncomfortable standing there, haha but finally a jovencita (young girl) said come in hermanas I´ll listen to you! The rest of the family dispersed and the neighbors took their leave, which happens a lot so I wasn´t surprised. We sang her a hymn and started in on the message when she told us about a dream that she had a the day before. She had dreamed that 2 young ladies would come to her house and preach the word of God to her, and that she would go to the church with them. She had told her sister of the dream and thought, ¨hmmm... how strange¨ and then lo and behold, here we were! We invited her to the activity and she accepted. We also invited her to be baptized and she was taken a little off guard but she said she´d start preparing! She came to the activity and even invited her sister along. The whole time she practically stayed in the spiritual section, learning and reading the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet and then explaining what she learned to the missionaries. She seemed very content the whole time and kept saying how much she liked it there. At the end of the activity she came to us to tell us that this was her dream. The activities, the people, the chairs, the floors, it was all in her dream. How crazy is that? She made us PROMISE to come pick her up for church the next morning because she wanted to come. This was a huge testimony to me that miracles really do exist! I never ever thought I would experience something like this, and it´s still crazy in my mind! I´m excited to see where things can go with her :)

I found a scripture in Acts 18:9-11 the made me smile. I changed a few words to apply it to me. 

  9 Then spake the Lord to Hermana Bennett in the morning by the scriptures, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace:
 10 For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city of Honduras.
 11 And she continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.


I love you all so very much! I hope this finds you all in great health, and happy :) Until next week!


Hermana Bennett