Hola family and friends!
Writing to you from the wonderful land of............ Mezapa! Still here :) Me and hermana olivas didn´t have transfers and are super happy and excited about it. This will be three transfers together, which is actually a long time to be with the same companion. It´s a good thing we get along so well! I think that being together so long has helped us to be able to really open up and be honest with how we are feeling and our hopes and desires for the work here in Mezapa. We are learning a lot from each other and helping eachother overcome weaknesses and be a little bit better each day. I feel like I´m learning what it means to really enjoy the mission! Were are a like in so many ways. She has become one of my closest friends here in the mission and I am very grateful for her :)
We had a baptism on Saturday! Yefri (Jeffrey with catrachan spelling), the son of G, got baptized and confirmed on Sunday. It was a wonderful experience.
I love this family with all my heart and am so grateful that the Lord led us to them. He was so happy afterwards and told his mom that she needed to go and get him a white shirt and tie to wear to church on Sundays! Now starts his preparation to receive the preisthood next year and he is already talking about when he serves a mission :) His little sister is 4 years old and every time we come she gets super excited and wants to say the prayer and even has the first verse of "we are all enlisted" memorized and sings it over and over again. I know that little by little their dad will see how much the Gospel is blessing them and will choose to join the family in their spiritual progression. We´ve also been teaching a 16 year old joven named JE that was also supposed to get baptized on Sunday morning. He has been coming to church every week and all of the activities that we have and is super excited about the gospel. We´ve been teaching him for about 3 months now, and the other day we went with him and he said, "hermanas I think I´m ready to be baptized!" It took us a little off guard because he had been going back and forth about it, but we prayed about it to see if he really was ready and when I opened my scriptures the first thing I read was "and thus they were prepared..." haha and I just felt a lot of peace. He has been so excited to be able to receive the Spirit and go to the temple. We just had a little set back in the fact that for someone younger than 18 we need a parent´s signature, and unfortunately we haven´t been able to get one. The dad feels that it is too early and that he needs more time to prepare for a baptism. He was super bummed, but didn´t lose faith. We know that miracles exist and that very soon he will be able to get baptized. Just need lots of prayers, patience, and faith! M had some conflicts with his work but is preparing for this Saturday. He is completely firm in his decision and says that he knows that this is the true church of God!
I ate an iguana this week. They live in the palm trees so they knock them out of the trees, kill them and eat them. .. Yum!
I love this family with all my heart and am so grateful that the Lord led us to them. He was so happy afterwards and told his mom that she needed to go and get him a white shirt and tie to wear to church on Sundays! Now starts his preparation to receive the preisthood next year and he is already talking about when he serves a mission :) His little sister is 4 years old and every time we come she gets super excited and wants to say the prayer and even has the first verse of "we are all enlisted" memorized and sings it over and over again. I know that little by little their dad will see how much the Gospel is blessing them and will choose to join the family in their spiritual progression. We´ve also been teaching a 16 year old joven named JE that was also supposed to get baptized on Sunday morning. He has been coming to church every week and all of the activities that we have and is super excited about the gospel. We´ve been teaching him for about 3 months now, and the other day we went with him and he said, "hermanas I think I´m ready to be baptized!" It took us a little off guard because he had been going back and forth about it, but we prayed about it to see if he really was ready and when I opened my scriptures the first thing I read was "and thus they were prepared..." haha and I just felt a lot of peace. He has been so excited to be able to receive the Spirit and go to the temple. We just had a little set back in the fact that for someone younger than 18 we need a parent´s signature, and unfortunately we haven´t been able to get one. The dad feels that it is too early and that he needs more time to prepare for a baptism. He was super bummed, but didn´t lose faith. We know that miracles exist and that very soon he will be able to get baptized. Just need lots of prayers, patience, and faith! M had some conflicts with his work but is preparing for this Saturday. He is completely firm in his decision and says that he knows that this is the true church of God!
I ate an iguana this week. They live in the palm trees so they knock them out of the trees, kill them and eat them. .. Yum!
Happy fourth of july! I celebrated in a very unexpected way when we were walking towards a members house and ran into the other sisters that were going to the same members house to teach a lesson so we decided to do it together. They live right next to where they butcher cows and we just so happened to walk by right as they were butchering a cow.... Blehck!!!! It was graphic. The poor thing, the look on his face was so sad. Almost like he was looking at all the men surrounding him and thinking, "ouch that hurts... why are you doing that to me???" I´ve always eaten cows but never watched one die. Then they skinned it and chopped it up and threw it over there shoulders and tossed it into the back of an old pickup truck. Yummy! Can anyone say Sopa de Mondongo?? (please no...)
Funny story. We were teaching one of our investigators who has felt like he hasn´t been able to receive an answer to his prayers about the Book of Mormon and he told us, "I even slept with the book of mormon on my face to see if I could have a dream or something but... nothing!" We all had a laugh about it and then were able to explain how we receive answers to our prayers and also about praying with real intent, not just out of curiousity but with a real and true desire to know if it is true or not. I really have a firm testimony of Moroni´s promise, but there are key words in the scripture. We must to pray with real intent, being willing to act on the answer that God gives us, in order to recieve and answer. Today in the transfers meeting a recent convert bore her testimony of how she came to know that it was true. She said she was on her knees for 2 hours, pleading with God to give her an answer, with tears running down her face the whole time. She refused to stop until she received her answer. It almost reminded me of Enos - then when God answered her in a very real way she kept on praying in gratitude. She said when she opened her eyes the world looked different. More bright, more hopeful. She was able to say that she KNOWS this is the true church of God because it was Him that revealed it to here. Such a powerful experience!
I know that this church is the only true church on the face of this earth, with living prophets and continued revelation. I know it now more than ever before! I am so grateful that I get to be apart of this work!
Hope that you all enjoyed the independence day festivities and that you continue to enjoy the summer! Shout out to Bart and his engagement, as well as Dakota with his farewell coming up!! So exciting, I couldn´t be more happier :) I love you all and think of you often (in a good way!)
Until Next Week,
Hermana Bennett
PS - don´t let the bed bugs bite has taken on a whole new meaning to me. They actually exist! And they actually bite! This week we had a big problem and me and my companion were dying.... (sometimes if we sit on a couch that has them, we can bring them home in our clothes) We´ve had to leave our mattresses out in the sun and put our clothes in dark bags out in the sun to kill them all as well as our suitcases. That´s one thing I WON´T miss... haha I counted the other day out of curiosity and I had 55 bites... no joke
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