I am the light which ye shall hold up....

March 24, 2014
Hello family and friends! 

Another week come and gone here in Mezapa. I feel like I´ve learned so much in this last week. But then again I´m pretty sure I say that every week :) I feel like lately I´ve been starting to see my mission in a new light. I recently had an interview with my mission president and he talked a lot about setting goals, and I realized that for my whole life that is one subject in which I´m just not that good at! He talked about making my own personal vision of what I wanted to accomplish here in the mission, with real measurable goals that will help me to focus on the task at hand. He said that if I wanted to be genuinely happy, that making a vision was the key. So for the past few weeks or so I´ve been really contemplating and thinking about what my vision could be here in the mission, and I finally finished! My objective here in the mission is the same as every other missionary, "Invite others to come unto Christ," but how could I PERSONALLY do that? I studied my patriarchal blessing to find my own personal talents and gifts that I can contribute to help these people, our brothers and sisters to come to know of the truth. And I found a scripture in 3 Nephi 18 that talks about holding up your light, and that Jesus Christ himself is the light the we should hold up. 

So how can I hold up the light of Christ? By becoming like him. So a lot of my goals are focused around studying the life of Christ, studying his attributes and trying to apply them into this work and into my life. It´s incredible how different of an outlook it has given me. I feel more of a genuine desire to talk to people and am starting to love them even more! 

This week we´ve had the opportunity to do a lot more service! In the beginning of the week we helped a recent convert pack up all of her things so that she could move. On another day we passed by a house in which they were moving a bunch of boards so we stopped and helped them. They invited us to lunch later on in the week and we helped them paint their house. It was fun and it´s a great way to talk about the gospel.

A couple of weeks ago, all of our citas fell through and so we said a prayer to know where to go. A house with blue and brown paint came to my mind so we went to find it! When we got there, there was no one home.... So we put our names on a pass-a-long card and tried to put in on the gate but it ended up falling through and landing on the ground. We left hoping they would find it. Yesterday we were passing by and they were actually home so we stopped and and introduced ourselves as the ones that had left them a card a few weeks earlier. She was super excited and said that her little two year old son had found it and that she had saved it. We were able to teach her an introduction to the gospel and she was super receptive and we have a return appointment with her! It was a testimony to me that we should always follow the promptings we get from the spirit, even if at first they don´t make sense and we don´t see the fruits of it right away. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, months, years, or sometimes we don´t even see them at all in this life, but that doesn´t mean there wasn´t a purpose for it! For example, my companion shared with me her conversion story. She was sitting on a bus with a bunch of other jovens when a missionary stood up and bore his testimony to all that were on the bus and said, "I´m going to give this Book of Mormon to the first person that asks for it!" Someone a few rows ahead of her rose their hand, he handed them the book, and then sat back down. Something about the missionary stood out to her, even though she had never been religious. Where she lived their weren´t missionaries, but she had found a book of mormon in her backyard a while back. So she went looking for them, found them, and then asked them to be baptized. And now she is serving her own mission! She has no idea who this elder on the bus is, nor does he know the outcome of sharing his testimony on the bus had on her life. No effort goes wasted! We never know who is listening or who is watching and who´s lives we can touch if we listen to the Spirit.

I hope you all have an incredible week and that you are getting pumped up for Conference!!!!! I´m so excited. Can´t believe it´s already time for another one. What a blessing we have to listen to the prophet and the apostles! I love you all dearly. Have an amazing week :)

Hermana Bennett