¡Feliz Día de Independencía!

Monday September 15, 2014

Hola famila!!! I hope that everything is going well with you. This has been a great week :) We´ve had lots of good experiences and miracles. A little nuts, but those always end up being the best weeks.

On Monday, EVERYTHING fell through... (I think this is starting to become a common phrase in my emails... haha) We were walking around passing by investigators and no one was home. It was a little frustrating but I had a prayer in my heart that something would work out! We went to try and find a menos activo (less active) and on the way we saw a man running with his dog, so we stopped to talk with him. Turns out he was a Catholic Minister.... haha but he was super friendly. We told him that as missionaries we are always searching for those who need our message and asked him if he knew anyone we could visit. At first he said no, but then as we were about to walk away he said, "wait! there is a family that lives on the corner that I am always trying to invite to church and nothing.... but maybe the Lord will help you guys" :) So, we went! It was late and so we were a little apprehensive to contact, and there was shouting coming from inside the house, but.... we took a deep breath and contacted them. A little girl came out and ran up to us all excited and said, "do you guys read the bible?!" And then she let us in and her mom was super excited to talk to us and sat us down and we shared our message. They are GOLDEN! Super receptive. We taught them about the restoration and gave them a Book of Mormon. The next time we came to visit the daughter told us that the mom wouldn't let them sleep because she was reading the pamphlets and the BoM outloud to everyone... haha They weren't able to come to church on Sunday because it's a law here that the kids have to march in the parades and her daughter had to march Sunday morning. But seriously they are so prepared! Thank you Catholic Minister for your reference! That's why in the back of Preach my Gospel it says to ask for references from EVERYONE in big bold letters :) 

We did a lot of traveling! Lots of buses! We had divisions in Olanchito with two sets of sisters and it went SUPER well. Olanchito is amazing! On Wednesday with Hermana S we just did contacting all day to find new people and at every single house they let us in. All we had to say was, "hi we're missionaries and we have a message about Jesus, can we come in?" and immediately "SURE, come on in! Have a seat, here's some juice..." haha a different world from La Ceiba! On Thursday I went with Hermana V and we had a great day, too. Her trainer was Sister B as well so that makes us sisters :) We taught with a lot of unity and had some really powerful lessons with her investigators. She is a teacher in her country and so she has a really good way of teaching for understanding. She also showed me a technique to finally learn how to roll my rr´s! I just have to put a pen under my tongue and speak outloud... super hard haha but little by little I'm starting to be able to do it.

Met a man on the bus back to Ceiba who reminded me a lot of Grandpa Cook, just the way that he looked and his personality. He talked to me the WHOLE time.... haha turns out that he used to live right across the street from the LDS church and had met with the missionaries a few years back and has a Book of Mormon. By the end of the conversation he told me that I had awoken an interest and that he was going to read the Book of Mormon and go to church on Sunday... haha I didn't even have to invite him! Even though I probably won't ever know what will happen with this man, I sure to pray that he will come to know the truth. It's so sad to me just how hard it is for people to accept or even listen to our message. We went back with the 7th day adventist and he told us that unless we could PROVE to him that the sabbath was on Sunday he couldn't accept our message. We did the best we could with the scriptures and all the evidences that we have, but in the end told him that the only way he would be able to know is by praying and asking. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he would read it but he said that he couldn't accept anything other than the Bible as the word of God. It made me so sad! Because you can just feel how good of a man he is and how much he loves God, but he just wasn't willing to open his heart up to the spirit. I was reading in an old Liahona yesterday and found this quote by Joseph Smith (translated from Spanish to English so it might not be exact) "There are too many learned men and women among us that are too wise for them to be taught. Therefore, they must die in there ignorance, and in the resurrection,will  discover their mistake" Doesn't that just rip your heart out?? The only way people are going to be able to accept our message is if their heart is open to let the Spirit teach them. It reminds me of the scripture in 2 peter 3:16 where it talks about how the people don't understand the scriptures and they wrestle with them unto their own destruction. It's just a huge testimony to me of the truthfulness of this gospel, and just how necessary it is to have the GIFT of the Spirit and modern day prophets to guide us and help us to know the true meaning of the scriptures and the will of God in our day. I can't even express my gratitude to be a part of the only true and living church on the earth today! We are so blessed!

Sorry once again for the novel... haha I love you all and I hope you have a great week! This week I'm going back to Roatán for divisions :) Pretty excited! 

Until Next Week,

Hermana Bennett

Road to Recovery

Welcome Home Hermana Bennett!

Hello Family and friends! 

Just wanted to start off thanking you all for your prayers and your support. Thank goodness I am better now for the most part. Me and Hermana S were able to start working again on Friday and it was nice to get out into the fresh air and stretch my legs again. I was in the hospital for 2 nights just for observation and fluids. I couldn't keep anything down and I had zero appetite. I'm pretty sure I've lost about 15 pounds from not eating anything. Everyone kept trying to get me to eat but even the thought of food made me nauseas! They brought me pizza, chocolate, ice cream (flavored rum and raisins?? no thanks....), grapes, jello, the works but nada. The kitchen lady kept getting so mad at me for not eating so hermana S started flushing things down the toilet for me so she wouldn't ask.... (she's such a loyal companion....haha) I eventually started to be able to eat soups and now i`m back to feeling normal about food. When we got home from the hospital it turns out that the other sisters in our area washed our clothes and cleaned our entire apartment! I almost cried! I just remember laying in the hospital bed thinking about all the clothes I had to wash (and remember.... we wash everything by HAND. One load of laundry takes 2-3 hours to wash). They are ANGELS. I had to stay home a few more days after getting out,and I can't remember the last time I slept so much. I was whipped exhausted! I still get a little tired walking up stairs and stuff but I'm pretty much back to normal :) It was definitely an unforgettable experience and I bathe in bugspray now to avoid a repeat of that!

We weren`t able to work as much but we still had some good experiences. We have an investigator who is sooo great! She eats up everything that we say and gets so excited when we come. She recently changed her life around and has been going to a church, but she said that for some reason she's been afraid to get baptized or pass up front to "accept" Christ. We know that it's because God has something even greater prepared for her :) We also found a man that is a seventh day adventist who is super great. We were talking with him and he told us that he feels like there has got to be only one true church on the earth because God can't have 2 different doctrines that are both true. He said that he's always been worried that he isn't in the right one, and that he wants to be sure which church is true. We taught him lesson 1 and he was super interested and receptive. He was impressed with our church organization but couldn't get pass that we don't worship the Sabbath day on saturday. But.... that's something that the Spirit can help him to understand if he can open up his heart and pray about it!

Taking a week off as a missionary is actually really rough. I feel like right now I am starting all over again and I have to re-learn how to be a missionary. But I've been studying a lot in preach my góspel and a talk called "becoming a consecrated missionary" and have been learning a lot. Maybe this will be good for me to get back to the basics of missionary work and really let the Spirit do the teaching. I was reading in 1 corinthians 2:9-14 and it talks about just how important it is to have the Spirit. It says that spiritual things must be learned through the Spirit, and that it is imposible to learn spiritual things without it. It talked about how the natural man doesn't understand spiritual things and may even disregard it as nothing. That just goes to show how important it is to be "born again" spiritually through baptism, let the natural man die, and to be able to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. It's the only way to learn and progress!! So when it all comes down to it, we just need to teach the basics to invite the Spirit, and then the Spirit teaches them what they need to learn. How many times have we learned something completely different from what we read or what we heard in a talk? That's the beautiful thing about the Spirit :)

I hope that you all have a great week. 

Until Next Week,

Hermana Bennett

The Dreaded Dengue

Monday Sept 1, 2014

Well. .. this email is a going to be short because there isn't much to say. I didn't really feel like a missionary this week because i was cooped up in my little apartment for four days straight.  Missionaries aren't meant to be cooped up like that. 

It seems like when things are going great and life gets comfortable it's time for a curve-ball to keep things interesting and to keep us progressing. Thursday i came down with a fever of 102.2. With acetaminophen it would go up and down but never fell below 99. Each day i felt worse and worse until finally i went to the emergency room and they checked my blood.  Didn't say much and then just sent me home and told me to come back a few days later. My platelets were at 146. My wise mission president told us to go back today instead of wait and my platelets had fallen all the way to 94! Which meant being checked in to an overnight stay once again in a catrachan hospital. But it is great here. The staff is absolutely accommodating and friendly and informative.  They are taking good care of me. It's even called hospital la fe (faith). I remember one night i was feeling so sick and my fever was so high and my head was pounding and i felt like i just couldn't do it anymore.  I remember praying to God and begging him to "rebuke" my fever... haha buuuuuut i guess it doesn't always work that way.  But i had just watched the Joseph Smith movie in bed that day and the part when they were in liberty jail kept running through my head. "Hija mia, Paz a tu alma... peace be unto thy soul.  Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be bit a small moment." And it's true. 

This is hard, but it will pass.  At least now I'll be much more careful about putting on bugspray! Just because I'm the nurse, doesn't make me immune to my own guidelines... :) whoops... sure love you all.  Please pray for me.  Hope you are enjoying your holiday weekend and the beginning of the school year! The church is true!

Until Next Week,
Hermana Bennett

Update from Hermana Klein:
Wed Sept 3, 2014

She has been pretty sick this week with a fever, headaches and some nausea. We thought it might be Dengue and had her platelets checked, which really is the only way to tell Dengue from a flu bug . . . and they did drop down below 100, which is the point we choose to have them observed in the hospital because there is the potential that it can turn into hemorrhagic fever. Fortunately for us, none of our missionaries have ever had Dengue result in hemorrhagic fever. (knock on wood!!!!) We feel really blessed in that. In the hospital, really they just do some hydration with an IV, and there isn't much else they can do, it's viral and doesn't respond to any medications. Fortunately, after one day her platelets started going back up again. The doctors recommended she be watched one more night (last night) and I'm quite certain she will actually be going back to her home today. Probably for about 2-3 days more of rest (which she is getting really tired of!) - before she starts doing missionary work again with her companion, Hna. S. She has been wonderful and is taking such great care of her. We are keeping a close eye on her. She is amazing and we are astounded weekly at the work she continues to do as a missionary as well as provide much assistance to all the missionaries with their health needs. We love her tons! We'll keep a very close eye on her, and if anything changes I'll let you know. 

Sending love from Honduras - Hna.Klein