Ben's Last Report

Family,

Well, to be honest I don't even really know what to say.  As you all know...or forgot and are now reminded...this is my last week as a missionary.  It is a feeling that I don't even think I could put down into words.  Knowing that I will be leaving this area and this mission and the people that I have come to love is a very hard thing to handle.  Luckily, it has been all work and nothing else this past week and I have absolutely loved it!  Many missionaries and members are asking if I am getting trunky, but weirdly enough, it has seemed to have the opposite effect on me.  I feel like I need to work harder and do more.

This past week was just a blur of activity.  I had a leadership training meeting on Tuesday where two men from the mission department came and talked to us.  A very spiritual meeting and we are left with training that will greatly affect the mission.  I also had two exchanges with other Spanish missionaries and a baptismal interview, and on Saturday we helped out with a city service project of planting 1500 trees and other plants in a new park.  In all the craziness we managed to find and teach more then almost any other week!  We found a couple of families that we started to teach. One has been through Utah and saw, walked around, and took pictures by the "big church" (temple) in Salt Lake City. It was a great opportunity to teach about families and why we have the temples. They seem to be genuinely interested to learn.

We are looking forward to another good week with zone meeting, another exchange, and Elder Aidukaitis of the 70 coming this week.

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Ben

 

Almost Done in Seattle

Family,

Another wet week has flown by.  Luckily, the sun is shining today.  I hope Utah is as green as Washington when I see it. This week we have seen some success taking out several members with us.  We have had a hard time with that in the past because we can never find anyone not working when we need them to go to a lesson.  The branch president's son has said that he would help us any day. He served a mission in Chile and returned about 4 years ago and wants to help out.  Also, the recently returned missionary to our branch has wanted to come out.  We had both of them come our with us this past week.  It should help the work out a bunch to have members ready and willing to come to lessons.

Sad story of the week is when I kicked a soccer ball into the face of a recent convert (she is 10 years old). :(    The best way to get Spanish people together and have a branch bonding time is to play soccer. Playing sports literally is a good missionary tool...until you hurt someone.  We decided to join in and, of course, we weren't playing as hard as the other people.  My companion played as goalie, and I just tried to get rid of the ball if it ever came my direction.  I saw the recent convert several times and said sorry, but we also got some candy and were I was able to apologize more officially.  Good thing we have a good relationship with the person I pegged in the face...I don't know how an investigator or someone else would have taken it.

We found a new family that we have a lesson set up with tonight.  We have, on separate occasions, met both of the parents and they seem really awesome. Hopefully all goes good in this lesson tonight and we can help them progress. We also meet another lady this week that we had a lesson with and seemed pretty solid until we showed her the Book of Mormon.  I guess it is a little scary to people at first.  She did tell us though that she would read a chapter of it and see how she liked it.  With the power of The Book of Mormon, we are thinking her heart will be softened.

The mission is pretty excited for this next weekend when Elder Aidukaitis of the 70 will be visiting our mission. He is the assistant executive of missionary work. They announced that he would be coming this past week while we were at zone conference, and they usually announce such things months in advance, so I was quite surprised when I heard I would get to hear him. The Lord is hastening his work!

Love you all,

Elder Seattle

Three Weeks Left for Ben

First off congratulations to Amber on her new baby!!!

This week went pretty well.  Nothing crazy happened, but we continue to feel happy in the Lord's work.  I am so happy I received my new rain coat recently because with the exception of a few short lived hours Sunday afternoon, it has been pretty much a downpour of water everyday.  Now all I need is a waterproof backpack.  People are really funny when you knock on their doors and they say "we are not interested in your message but I hope you have a nice day and stay dry."  Haha, I wouldn't have it any other way though.  I have become accustomed to the rain and can't even imagine what a dry day is like.

This past week we did find a really prepared lady who is like golden....but she is a single mom so we passed her off to the sisters. They pretty much told us that she is amazing and SO prepared to receive the gospel.  Now we just need to find a man like that. The Hermanas also tracted into Jesus (our investigator) and had a lesson with him. They were thinking that it was a little bit interesting how he already had a Book of Mormon, knew so much about the church, and looked a little familiar.  They just laughed when we told them at correlation meeting that they had just taught and set up a return appointment with our investigator.  They asked Jesus' girlfriend when they were there is she wanted to learn and she said "no."  We are still working on it, but looks like it could be awhile more before her heart is softened to us.

One of the counselors in the former stake presidency (it was just rearranged 4 months ago) came and did a Book of Mormon presentation for the branch this past Friday. He served his mission in Peru and while there learned from the tribal leaders about their history.  All of their history was memorized and passed down from generation to generation.  Many of their stories match up with the Book of Mormon. The way the missionaries had success and permission to teach the people was to talk with this tribal leader about the Book of Mormon. He would see that what they taught was the same in the Book of Mormon and give the missionaries permission to preach to his people.  It was super interesting and I wish we were able to stay for the whole presentation (we had to be home). The cool thing is is that the words "Nefita" and "Lamanita" (Nephite and Lamanite) are in their language.  Over the years their meanings have been changed a little and "Nefita" means destruction or destroyed and "Lamanita" means fruitful or prosperous.

Love you all,

Elder B.

Update From Seattle

Family,

This past weekend was amazing!  We were able to watch all of the sessions of general conference (minus an hour of the Saturday afternoon session because I had to drive to Seattle for a baptismal interview).  It is always such a spiritual boost.  I loved it!  There were also a lot of talks directed towards missionary work.  Can you imagine in a couple of months there will be 90,000 missionaries? It is crazy!  One of the 58 new missions happens to be from splitting our mission in half at the start of July.  The Washington Seattle mission is already one of the smallest in the world, but will only be getting smaller.  The only investigator that we had come to general conference was Jesus.  He came to the priesthood session because it was the only one that he could make it to.  He really enjoyed it, and hopefully that will help him in his plans for marriage and baptism.  We set up multiple lessons with him this week, but they all fell through because of his work.

We met two other men just yesterday and were able to teach them.  We were actually meaning to get ahold of one of their roommates, but he had left right before we got there, and they were just showing up as we knocked on the door.  They, like most Spanish men, are super busy working and said they would only be in the house if it was raining so hard that they couldn't work. They seemed interested in learning, and one actually met the missionaries in Mexico years ago, but had not a set return appointment at all.

Our teaching pool really hasn't increased at all.  We are brainstorming of ways that we can find people to teach.  Nothing that we have used in the past has been crazy successful.  We even tried contacting in Goodwill this past week.  For me personally, I would much rather knock on someone's door or talk with them in the street as a way to contact them than contact in a store.   did talk with a man who invited us to come by his apartment later in the week. The only problem is that he didn't remember what number his apartment was in a complex.  He gave us a general idea of where, and then later in the week we tracted everything around it until we found him.  We were able to share briefly about The Book of Mormon.  It was interesting because he already had a Book of Mormon in his house but had never read it.  We committed him to read the introduction and still need to follow up on that.  This is an awesome branch though, and I am super excited to continue to serve here.  I look forward to working even harder for this last month.

Love from the Emerald City,

Elder B.

Work Continues in WA

Family,

Well, this week has flown by, and I really don't even know what to write about it. We are still in the process of training the new branch mission leader on what his calling exactly is.  He loves the work but doesn't really know too much about what we do on a day to day basis.  I think he just thinks we knock doors all day:)  The Hermanas are in Renton, and we passed off a bunch of people for them to teach.  I honestly think our area book was cut in half.  We are looking for some people that want to learn so we can grow our teaching pool.  We found several and one family seems to have potential.  The mother was excited to hear that the church offered classes for her daughters (around 5 years old).  I guess the church she was attending in the past didn't.  She said they would start reading The Book of Mormon and that we could come by tomorrow.
 

This week we had our investigator (Jesus, the man from Puerto Rico) ask us if we had a date he could be baptized!  I told him any day after he was married. He then said "that would take a miracle" because his girlfriend has no desires to be married....we are now praying for a miracle! :)  He hasn't been to church for the last little while because he starts working at McDonalds at 4 in the morning on Sunday and doesn't get out until after church ends.  Just yesterday though, he slipped in a little late to sacrament!  He said he got off work a little early so he could come.  We didn't see him much though because right after he has to go to a second job.  We also started to teach his 17 year old son that just arrived this past week from Puerto Rico.

 

Well, that about wraps up the week.

Love you all,

Elder B.

 

 

Ben Stays in Renton

Familia,

First off a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Grandma Judy!!!  I hope you have a wonderful day!

Well, transfer calls are in and......I am still in Renton with Elder Carpenter!!!  It was a huge amount of waiting to see if we were going to stay.  President Larkin didn't get transfers done until last night (Monday), which is the latest I have ever seen it done, and so nobody knew if they were leaving.  I thought for sure I was leaving, or at least Elder Carpenter would leave, but it didn't turn out that way. This will now set a record for me for the longest time serving with a companion without any kind or break (Elder Wilkins will still have the most transfers with me just at different times).  We are pretty excited to continue serving around each other.  It is really unusual for a trainer to be with the trainee for 4 transfers. Maybe the Lord knows I need to have twice as long to teach my companion as other missionaries need. :)   Hahah, over the last few days I have pretty much said goodbye to the members here, so they will be super surprised when I show up to church again. 

Yes, we should be getting the Hermanas back here in Renton today.  One will be straight from the MTC.  We also have a new branch mission leader that was sustained last Sunday, so the missionary work here should really change. The new mission leader is a convert of about 2 years and loves missionary work!!! Hopefully we can get him oriented on Preach My Gospel and area books really soon.

Right now we have been trying to teach a lot of women in this area.  It makes it a little difficult at times to always find a member to go with us to the lesson, so I guess the Hermanas will automatically have some work when they get here.
The branch is pretty excited because the first missionary EVER to serve from this branch is coming back today!  Of course I never knew him, but he may be a huge asset for us if he really wants to continue doing missionary work.

Not too much to report.  I love the members here, my companion, the work, and even the rain...yup life is swell!

With much love,

Elder Seattle

Temple Trip in WA

Family,

Well, today has been wonderful but we are in a bit of a rush.  We just got back from a temple trip in Bellevue.  As always, the temple was wonderful.  Of course, the district I am in realized it was my last temple trip (as a missionary) and were (jokingly) saying that the next time I go through the temple would be to get married... I managed to not think about that. :)  The only problem is that the temple trip really cuts into pday so we are running around like mad the rest of the day.  Also to make pday even shorter, I am traveling back up to Bellevue for a baptismal interview at 4pm and then we have an emergency district meeting thing at 5:30pm.

I have no idea what to say about you not hearing from the mission, Mom. They called me about a month ago because they were trying to get a hold of you but didn't have the right address or phone number.  I have now given them the correct information 3 times, but maybe they have lost it again.  Or maybe they forgot I was leaving!!!  At any rate, I know when I am scheduled to leave (May 6th).  Due to a change up in the length of time missionaries stay in the MTC, our transfer this transfer was cut to 5 weeks, thus robbing me of a precious week in the mission.

This week was really good.  It seemed like we weren't really reaching anyone, but then we had a couple investigators, part member families, and less active families we have been visiting show up to church at the end of the week. This past week was one of the biggest groups I have seen in the gospel principles class at church!  We also had interviews with President Larkin this week, and he told me he would be putting Hermanas back in Renton next week. One will be straight from the MTC and the other will have never served in Renton.  We will most likely be passing off multiple people that we have been teaching to them, and so our teaching pool will be cut in half.

Not too much new to report. Transfers are this weekend and Elder Carpenter is hoping that we stay together so he can "kill me off."  I don't think that it will happen (I have never been with a companion for 4 straight transfers), but we can hope for the best.

 

Love you all,

Elder Ben