Hola!

So this week has been interesting.

Last Monday we hiked up to this place called la piedra de nuestros compadres. We went with my district and took a picnic. It was fun and there was an awesome view of the valley and mountains/vocanoes all around. Wednesday we had divisions. We went to Chiquimula for district planning and then Hermana Torres came back with me to Esquipulas and my comp stayed in Chiqui with Hermana Guerra. I was feeling sick that day, but also excited because of divisions because Hermana Torres is pretty much amazing. So it was one of the best days I have had out here. Even though I felt like I was going to collapse, throw up, or pass out for pretty much the whole day, I actually felt like a missionary and like I contributed and learned! She gave me really great feedback and did the training with me. We ended up with 5 new investigators at the end of the day and a baptism date!! So basically for the past few days I have been back and forth between laying in bed and going out to teach and then regretting going out haha. On Thursday I got in bed at 3 and was in and out of sleep until 10! it was insane. Everyone thinks It´s dengue because I have had a fever and it feels like someone beat me up.
Yesterday for pday though, we went to Ipala with my zone. We hiked up to a water volcano! It was awesome. It was an hou hike up so I was pretty beat when I got to the top. I layed in the grass basically the whole time and talked with some of the other nortes. I probably should have stayed home but if one companionship couldnt go, then nobody could go. It was really fun though. My zone is so fun. We have 13 nortes and 11 hispanos. It´s crazy!! Usually we have a lot mor hispanos than nortes. Anyways, that´s all I have for this week really. It hasn´t been too exciting as I have been laying in bed for a good part of it. We have another baptism date for this month though. The lady walks an hour and a half to get to church each week. Her ¨husband¨was coming with her but he just left her last week. He actually has another family somewhere so she thinks he went to them. She said that he was talking about his family after one of the sessions of general conference. So who knows, maybe he will make things right with his family and still find the church wherever he is out there.
Anyways, I love you all and thank you for your love and support and prayers!!!

Love,
Hermana Bender

Ipala:

Jungle Hikes

Hola all!!

Time is flying by, it is unreal!

This Saturday we had 5 baptisms between the Elders and Me and my Comp. Last Saturday we had 3. So the most recent Saturday was awesome because we had one of our new investigators come to the baptism! we planned it for 4pm so naturally here in central america, it started around 5:45 haha. During the waiting time our investigator, Jessica, came up to my companion and was like, hey, can I have a Book of Mormon? So we had a mini lesson and asked her to read about when Christ came to the Americas and pray to know if it is true. She said yes because last time she prayed to know if we were messengers of Christ and she had her answer in a dream. In the dream me and my companion were standing and holding a streamer I think between us and in the center was the heart of Christ. Kind of weird because she talks about the heart of Christ a lot but awesome because she was like I know that where you two are, there is Christ also! So cool.

So last Pday was so great. We planned to go to a waterfall with one of the recent converts in the branch, Freddy. So we left at 7am in case it was going to rain in the afternoon (which is usually does since it is the rainy season). So we hiked for about 2 1/2 hours in the most beautiful Jungle basically. Then some people told us that we were on the wrong path for the big waterfall. We didnt want to turn back so we kept going and made it to some small ones. It was really fun. We brought lunch and hung out and took pictures. Then Freddy ended up slipping on a rock and hurt his foot pretty badly. He could barely walk and we were out in the middle of nowhere so there wasnt any transportation until we got closer to town. so the 2 1/2 hour hike back was actually 3 1/2 which was actually really great because it as a lot of steep up hill and down hill so it was nice to walk slowly. Came back into town just as the rain came down so I was soaked, had some nice blisters, scrapes, and bug bites, and it was AWESOME!! Totally worth it.

On the way back we stopped and talked with this lady who works out there taking care of the coffee plants. She lives day to day and was crying because someone told her that the missionaries go out there sometimes and to look for them. (which is weird because the missionaries dont go out that far). I gave her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and we invited her to come to church on Sunday although we didnt think she would actually come because it is so far away. But. Sunday morning in she walks with her ¨"husband" (hardly anyone is married here). They want to come to conference this Sunday too, Yay! Just goes to show us that the Lord is hastening his work. Miracles happen every day here, and it is amazing to be a part of it.

Saturday we get to go out to Chiquimula for conference and stay overnight with some of the sisters for Sunday conference too. I cant wait! Im pretty sure we nortes get to watch it in English too so that is great!!

Invite your friends to conference everyone!!!

I love you all!

Hermana Bender

Two families baptisms:

Our hike through the jungle:

 My District:

A cool castle thing:

A family found out Hillary's first name and named their rabbit after her because it is white and has blue eyes:

 

Buenos Dias!

Hello everyone!!!

First of all, shout out to my baby sister LIDDIE JANE who is turning 10 today!!! Welome to the double digits sista!!! I love you!

Im sorry if any letters got lost because of the other address or because the MTC here loses lots of letters apparently.

Time for an update on the past two weeks! Still adjusting to the fact that I live in Guatemala. It is so beautiful here. Every day is a new experience, and they always remind me that I am definitely not in the United States any more haha. I have never had to wonder if I would have power in the morning or running water. It has definitely made me more grateful. I am actually super blessed to live out here in Esquipulas. Our apartment is pretty nice and has warm water in the shower. The other hermanas in my zone were like whhaaat?! you have warm water?! haha. One of the hermanas from my district in the MTC said that they were living in a house for a week and a half that only had cold water, no flushing toilet, and it was infested with geckos.

So last Fridady was a zone conference with the mission preident Watts and his sweet wife. They are the BEST!! The meeting was really great and inspiring and gave me a lot of encouragement and all of the other hermanas were just really uplifting. Afterwards, hermana Watts gave us all cinnamon rolls that she made!! A little taste of home : ). Sunday Pres and sis watts came out to Esquipulas for church at our branch. We had a family that we have been teaching FINALLY come to church with us that day and also less active members galore!! It was awesome!

Sunday night we went to stay in Chiquimula because we had zone pday the next day and we were going to the Castillo which is 3 and a half hours from there so we were leaving at 5 in the morning. It is about 40km from the coast! It was so beautiful there and sooooo humid! I loved it! There is a famous singer that made a music video in the castillo if you want to check out where i was on youtube. The singer is Ricardo Arjona and the song is called Fuiste tu. One of the pics i sent last week is from the castillo.

We now have 4 baptisms set for this saturday. they are all cousins and from inactive/reactivated families. The oldest one is an 18yr old boy named Bryan. He never sists in onthe lessons with us so we were super suprised when he asked us if he could be baptized. He wants to go on a mission too so that is exciting.

Thursday was my comps birthday. we went to our commedor for breakfast which we usually never do, and the cook, mama lili, made us pancakes! And hot chocolate!! I thought she was asking me if i wanted my hot chocolate with milk so i was like YES! but she was actually asking me if I wanted avena con leche which is oatmeal-like stuff but better. Anyways, I would have said no because i was already so full but out she came with the avena con leche and I was confused at first. I said to my comp, that is for you right? hahaha nope. so I was soooo stuffed. Then for lunch we went to a members house with the elders because the family wanted to make my come a honduranean meal. It was a bunch of fried stuff and some root that they love which i forgot what it is called. They love this root, like they put it in fried dough and with salsa and in tacos. It is no bueno. Elder Davalos bought 3 huge strings of fire crackers so we set those off, it was pretty fun. He is crazy. He knows a little bit of english and he learned funny words when he worked in the mission office so he calls me cankles, flowers, stinky, fool, and grumpy. It is so funny to hear with his accent and nobody else has any idea what he is saying. That night we got pizza and cake and the Elders smashed my comps face in it so that was fun! hahaha.

Anyways, that is my life these days. We are having a workshop on Friday for the leaders in the Branch because none of them want to help us with the work and we really need to be united as a branch if we want to see success.

I am trying to take note of the tender mercies of the Lord every day. It is amazing to see his hand in every aspect of my life. I love the people here. I can hardly wait for when I can actually express everything I want to say to them in Spanish. It has been hard for me to stay positive in that aspect so thank you to everyone for your love, support and prayers. I am so grateful to have so many people that love and care about me. You all are wonderful!! 

Hermana Bender

Hola to All!

I made it through my second week in the mission field!! haha nah, but really. Thank you for the support and love from every one of you. It has definitely been hard but I know that I am here for a reason and I have faith that the Lord with help me succeed in his work.
Last week we went to the cathedral I was talking about in my last email that has the black Jesus. It was weird because there were a lot of sculptures of Christ with blood all over him and stuff. I didnt like it at all. We has to walk out backwards too, what is that about? My comp tried to explain it to me but she just kept saying the same thing over and over. Hopefully you all got the pics I sent. I will try to send some more out next week but I dont know if I will have time today.
Thursday was a great day. We had divisions and I got to go out to Chiquimula with Hermana Guerra, who is probably the sweetest girl ever. She helped me so much and actually let me teach!! I felt like a real missionary for the first time. She is such a good example and exactly what I imagined a trainer as. It was awesome. We visited so many people and I have never sweated so much in my life!!! And chiquimula isnt even the hottest area! There is so much poverty there though and lots of people dont know how to read. They live with dirt floors, tin roofs and plastic bag material for walls. It was very humbling.
Saturday it rained sooo hard! It has been raining a lot lately but so much that day. We were teaching in a house with a tin roof so we had to yell while reading the Book of Mormon. It was awesome. When we went outside the street was like a river and all of the kids were out splashing and dancing. It was super cool.
On Sunday we traveled to the Capitol to do visa stuff yesterday. We didnt know that we were going to leave sunday so I was so excited. I loveeee the Capitol because I just love city life and being around lots of people. Anyways, I was hoping to stay with Hermana Fitzgerald (my old comp) in the old nurses house that we had stayed at before because the district leader said we would be staying in the nurses house so i was so excited but then he said we would be staying with the nurse who is hermana whittaker. Anyways the bus ride was 6 hours long because there was a car accident. The AC on the bus was broken too so that was pretty funny, and quite sweaty haha. Its always fun being with the elders though because they help me with the language and are super funny. They lift my spirits a lot. So when we showed up to the house we were going to stay at it was Fitzgeralds!!! It was so great to see her. Then the next morning Hermana Hutchins showed up from all the way out in porte barrios!! We went to the mission office and guess who was there...Hermana Medina! Then a while later the last girl from my district and ALL of the Elders from my district showed up. I was awesome because we didnt think we would see them again since they are in a different mission than us 4 (Fitz, Hutchins, Medina and Me). It was a major blessing because we all needed support and encouragement from eachother. It just goes to show that Heavenly Father knows us and knows our needs. Im back in Esquipulas now and ready to start working hard. There is definitely a lot of work to be done here!! Wish me luck. I hope you all have a great start of school!

Love you all,


Hermana Bender

This is the church with the Black Christ

 

At the catillo yesterday

Entonces!

It seems like it has been an eternity since i have been able to write! I'm out in my new area Equipulas. It is 5-6 hours outside of the capitol, practically by Honduras. Actually, my trainer said that it use to be part of Honduras. There is a famous cathedral here that has the carving of Jesus that turned black. So lots of Catholics here believe that God is black. Very funny.
I still only get an hour to write so hopefully i will have time to write everything. I also left my notebook at the apartment so i cant remember everything I wanted to write about. Anyways, the area here is good. Its pretty hot but not like Zacapa or Porte Barrios. There is only a branch here. Yesterday was my first day at church. The Branch President is hilarious, i love him. There are a lot of good people here that want to help us and some that don't but we are going to fix that. On Friday i think, we finally did some contacting in the street and I saw some little girls in front of their door, so I said hello and my comp asked if their mom was home. They invited us in and we talked with the grandma that was there. My companera asked her if she knew who we were and she said yes I know her...me. It was strange, I don't really know all of what she said but my comp said that she recognized me. After the lesson my comp asked her if she would pray to know that we are messengers of Jesus Christ and she said Hermana I don't need to, I have no doubts that you are his messengers. My comp said that a lot of people here say that they have had dreams or visions and so lots of missionaries think that they are crazy but the president said that because they are descendants of Lehi, they have that gift and to never dismiss what they say about them.
I'm going to send out some pictures finally so hopefully they all come through.
Spanish is really hard right now. Everyone here speaks differently and not everyone pronounces their words correctly so half the time I don't really know what the person is talking about. I don't really get to teach anything, I just go around with my comp right now and listen and then either pray or bear my testimony. Its really hard out here, and every day I want to go home. I have to remind myself every day why I'm out here, because I know it will get better. I miss you all so much and love you.

Hermana Bender

 

my trainer, Hermana Redondo

my hermanas de mi distrito Fitzgerald, medina, hutchins

Hola hola!

Great news everyone!!! We got to go to walmart on Tuesday! What a glorious day that was. We started the day off right with a nice americanish breakfast of pancakes!!! The viejos left that morning so there were only about 40 missionaries here. That night was pretty much the worst night of sleep I have ever experienced because the girls in our room had to leave for their missions at 3 in the morning. So basically they just stayed up all night and then around 2am Hermano debon started yelling luggage! luggage! luggage! in Spanish so that was awesome. The world was set right though when we got to breakfast and had pancakes. I dont know why but we seriously have some sort of egg concoction for breakfast almost every day. No me gusta. Anyways, before Walmart we went to the stake center and played an awesome game of kickball. I was a captain and basically picked an allstar team because we dominated. Not that we kept score...but we dominated haha. That was really fun. Then we got to go to walmart and everyone stocked up on their favorite candy and snacks to last us the last two weeks. Im Pretty sure the elders filled an entire cart. one elder spent over 700 quetzals. Insane. Hermana Fitzgerald and I got a nice stash of chocolate and nutella haha tpical. After wallyworld we went to the mall and ate in the food court. The taco bell here is legit everyone.
When we came back from our adventure "a fuera" we got to go to the temple, which is always the best. I am going to miss it! We might get to go once or twice in our mission though since part of the east mission includes the city.

On Wednesday morning we got a BIG new group of Norte Missionaries. We now have more nortes here than hispanos. Its crazy and awesome. There has been a lot of construction going on here so every day they turn the water off randomly and we have no water in the bathrooms. The only bathrooms we can use are out at the gym so there ends up being a long line haha. It has been a fun adventure. That night though some of the workers were working on the bathroom...we had a great suprise. We got into bed late because the hermanas were all just getting back from meetings and they still needed to unpack some things and so around 10;45 the 4 latina hermanas were kneeling by the door praying together in a circle. Us nortes were all just laying in bed when we heard a really loud rushing sound like the fire hydrant was on outside or something. I looked over the side of my bed to say something to my companion when the hermanas started screaming. Water started rushing in our room under the door!! I jumped down from my bed and went to grab bags and things that were on the floor and its a good thing too because we ended up with an inch of water in our room all the way back to the window. And our room is pretty big. Our room is right by the bathroom so we got the most water. It went almost all the way down the hall on our floor though and out the side door down the stairs. It was crazy. We all got brooms and mops and dust pans and swept all the water into the bathrooms in like 20 minutes. It was crazy and really funny. One of the hermanas in my district was super smart and when she saw the water coming she put a blanket down in front of the crack in her door so they didnt get any water in their room. Friday morning I woke up and grabbed my towel to go take a shower and had a nice suprise when i slipped in a new lake of water in our room haha. Luckily I caught my balance before i ended up sopping wet. We still have no Idea what happened with that one because our room was the only one with water in it.

In the new picture you can see two of the girls from my district. They girl in the bright red dress next to me is hermana hutchins and above us is a girl with red hair that is medina. Then down my row in the middle is hermana fitzgerald. She should be right in the middle, not the hispana one haha.

Last week we were talking about family and my teacher told us that her brothers names are josé, jóse, and josue...hahaha we all have a good laugh about it now and then and whenever we ask hispanas what their siblings names are or some of the teachers what their names are we always guess those names and then Melgar is like hey! Are joo making fun of mi family? it is the greatest.

Sundays Mondays and Tuesdays are our favorite days because Sundays are just filled with great devotionals and talks and meetings (besides the hunger games in sacrament meeting and district class). Then mondays we get a new shipment of ice cream (sad how our excitment centers around food these days). then Tuesdays are pdays and we get to email. Anyways I hope everyone is doing great and soaking up the summer sun! This might be the last email for two weeks since we are heading out to the mission field next Tuesday! Its crazy! I feel like I have been here forever but that I just got here at the same time!

I love you all!

Hermana Bender

foto grupo 24 julio CCM Guatemala:

Weekly

DEAR ALL!

Les mando la foto con Alejandra, espero que la reciban.

los veo pronto!

recuerden... SOLO ESPAÑOL =)

hola!!

Another great week at the CCM! Tuesday was a nice relaxing Pday. Me and my companion got a little confused with the time to go to the temple so everyone ended up leaving without us. It turned out great though because our teacher Hermana Melgar came to go to the next session and she forgot her shoes. All she had was flipflops so she borrowed some of mine and we got to go to the next session with her and it was just us three and then two elders and a temple worker. It was great. One of the ladies working in the temple asked me how her english was and I said oh it is perfect! She started laughing and said ahh thank you bella and kissed me on the cheek haha, It was cute. We also got to meet our mission president since we were late. We saw him out in the parkinglot and Fitzgerald was say hey that looks like our mission president. So i went up to him and it was! He is so nice and he went to hug us at first when I told him he was our mission president haha then he was like ooh wait and stuck out his hand.
I have joined the bug bite club! I have like 7 mosquito bites on one leg and 3 on the other. The ledum helps but it wears off fast so I have already used one bottle and a little of the other. I may need some more of that. The other night we were at deportes (sports) and one of the hermanos challenged us to do a 3 minute plank. We were just sitting on mats talking because the balls always get hit over the fence so we only have a baskeball and the elders use it. Sooo i think he just wanted us to do something. Anyways he said if we could do it he would give us this giant hershey bar he had in his car. So of course we did it haha. And 4 out of 6 of us hermanas made it to three minutes. It was a joyous night and day after eating on that chocolate bar haha.
The next night one of our hermanas twisted her ankle and it is not looking so good. She has to stay on crutches for at least 4 days but it seems to be getting worse. It was cool though because right after it happened she was being carried upstairs but some elders stopped her and she was able to have a blessing pretty much immediately. I love that.
It has pretty much been same ol same ol with the schedule. We practice teaching with our teacher investigators every day. This week we are creating profiles for ourselves based off of nonmember family or friends and teaching one on one with our district. should be interesting. We also got to do contacting with hermano cano who teaches us on saturday. He is really helpful and always has ways for us to improve and be better missionaries.
The other day Hermana melgar promised Hermana medina and Hamblin that if they got the district to speak solo espanol for the day then she would bring them diet coke haha. So they got diet coke. They were in heaven. Yesterday was Hermana Hutchins birthday so hermana melgar brought us a card and two cupcakes with a candle saturday night to surprise her. Basically hermana melgar is the best. We have so much fun with her and she teaches us sooo much! She showed us a devotional by Elder holland on the Book of Mormon that was amazing as usual. Then after planning I got her to play the motab circle of life song. It really does sound like they are saying pink pajamas, penguins on the bottom Spencer!! haha everyone was cracking up.
We got to watch another dovotional by Elder Holland yesterday morning. It was Incredible. I highly reccommend that you guys watch it. It is an MTC devotional from 2011 i think and it is about what missionaries need to do better. I think you would really like it though Dad. It gave me a lot of motivation. Afterwards we had an hour of personal study, and it was the best personal study I have had yet!
tomorrow we get to go out again for pday. We get to go to walmart haha. I never would have thought that I would ever be so excited to go to walmart but it has happened. We get to go outside of our mtc bubble haha. All of the elders have been talking about how much food they are going to buy. They complain so much about how the food is always cold and gross and how the MTC is like a prison. It will be cool to see how much they change by the end of their mission haha.
It has been cold here the past couple days, its strange. The other day it started raining and we could see the wall of rain coming towards us it was awesome.

Well I love you all and hope you are all having a lovely summer!

love,
Hermana Bender
 

Letter to all

so this past week has been pretty great! After emailing last week we got to go to the temple here, which was sooo amazing! The rest of the day was pretty much doing laundry and cleaning because the dryers take foreverrrr to dry. but I cant complain because at least we have a dryer right? haha. anyways, then we had a devotional by Elder Amado in the lovely espanol. He is a really powerful speaker and I loved a quote he said "suffer with patience and I will give you success". I could really apply it this week because not being able to speak the language is really frustrating. This week we did some practice teaching and part of it was going to a house the church owns, which is where I am right now because that is where they keep all of the computers. They have like 6 rooms though so they get members or other missionaries to act as investigators and we practice door approaches or just visits and such. So they didnt tell us that we would be visiting an "inactive family" so we just prepared a lesson on God is our loving heavenly father. so when we sat down we asked some questions and they said oh ya we are members but I work on sunday and I dont go because nobody says hi to me. Anyways we were both thinking like oh okay this lesson could work then. so my companion started to talk about the lesson and the lady stops her and was like, you guys only care about teaching the lesson? She was just acting, but we both didnt know what to do and we didnt have any idea of what to say in spanish. It was really hard and my companion started to cry a little bit so I think the lady felt bad and she and her husband stopped and gave us advice on speaking the language and how they both served missions. then the lady told us that she could understand us because she could feel our loving spirits and then went on to tell us how much god loves us and then I was crying too hahaha, it was a great experience. Really hard, but definitely needed. It made me think about that quote from earlier. The end of this day was pretty good though because we taught Alejandra a lesson on prophets and we spoke almost 100 percent in spanish minus 3 or 4 words. It was awesome. Also she said she would read the article from president monson we gave her so thats great. We practice teaching with the hispanos here so that we are forced to only speak in spanish ha, it is hard but we are getting better and better. It is crazy to me how much we have learned in only two weeks. Some days we have "solo espanol days", which basically means we all talk A LOT less haha, but it forces us to speak in spanish more which helps a lot.
In the mornings when i get to the showers, if nobody else in taking a shower, the water is freeeeezing! So I have had a couple of cold showers haha, but on the bright side, it wakes me up pretty fast! Tomorrow all of the missionaries that have been here for about 2 weeks for the hispanos and 6 weeks for the nortes. We call them viejos. The are all leaving in the morning for their missions so tonight is their "last supper" and we get a chocolate fountain!!! Basically the best night ever because there is apparently some kind of chocolate famine in the CCM. I need my chocolate. The news of the chocolate fountain brought tears to my eyes. hahaha not really, but it is a big deal. We are losing 33 norte missionaries tomorrow and gaining 35 new ones on Wednesday. plus new hispano missionaries. It is going to be really empty here tomorrow night!
Yesterday we taught a lesson in our district class on answering objections or concerns about the church like prophets or the word of wisdom for example. It basically came down to how we need to testify of the book of mormon and tell our investigators to read it and pray about it because if it is true then Jesus is the Christ, Joseph Smith was a prophet, he translated the book of mormon and restored the gospel to the earth, and the prophet today is led by God. Pretty good lesson.
Tomorrow in the day we get to go to the mercado! we have been looking forward to it since the day we got here! we also get to go to la mapa, which is this big 3D map of guatemala so that will be cool and we will get to look at where we will be going. Then for lunch we get to go to...Phoebe....WENDYS!!! haha finally some legit American food! not that the food here is bad, its actually really good, just different. Like sanwhiches, or beans and chips for breakfast. Definitely different. Anyways, when we get back from our excursion we get to go to the temple again, Im really looking forward to it.
Lots of great learning and experiences, it is hard to remember what happens each day. All of the days blend together and it seems like I have been here for a long time but it has only been two weeks. Im learning so much every day and I am so excited to get out into the field but I have a lot more to learn!! I hope you are all doing marveillosa!!!

I love and miss you all!!

Hermana Bender


Her are some pictures of the missionaries at the MTC with Hillary. Can you find her??

Day 1

So, Hermana Bender left yesterday and arrived in the Guatemala MTC today!
Here are some touching goodbye pictures:

She got some extra time to write today because they ended their class early, so here is her first letter:

Hola,

Just wanted to let you know that I made it safe and sound...and with all of my luggage! One of the girls had a big suitcase lost, so that stinks. Hannah and Olivia came to the LAX airport to visit me for a bit during my layover. It was so great, and Olivia is getting so big! She is adorable! So somehow I got a business class seat on both of my flights while the rest of the Elders and Sisters had economy seats, muahaha, it was the best! They were like so how was the royal treatment sister? haha. I still didnt get much sleep though. We went through a crazy storm and everyone was freaking out, and the flight attendants were trying to make it back to their seats. We got here at 6am and after going through customs and everything, took a school bus to the CCM (MTC) and met all of the other sisters. They are all so nice and helpful, it is great! They speak in Spanish pretty much the whole time so the added tiredness doesnt help me with understanding, but it is already coming back to me and they are all really patient and explain everything when we give them blank stares. I keep getting French and Spanish mixed up though. We had some breakfast and then had two hours to take a nap, which was much needed. Then we met the CCM president and wife and we are told that we are not allowed to drink the water from the tap AT ALL over the whole mission. We cant brush our teeth with it either. Anyways, President Cole told me that before I would get here its like im running on a treadmill on a 4, and then when I get here I would be running on a 7 trying to get my feet back under me. I think i will be able to get my feet back under me after a full 8 hours of sleep haha. Just kidding, I feel like I have already been here for a couple days though, and it hasnt even been 12 hours! My companion is Hermana Fitzgerald and its crazy because she was in my Pdbio class at BYU and she got her call in February and told our group where she was going, but I totally forgot that she was called to Guatemala too! She is the best, and we are really working to learn Spanish. We arent allowed to take pictures until our Pdays because there are problems with theft here and they also dont want us to be distracted. My pday next week will be Tuesday but it changes each week I think because of the new missionaries coming each week, so I will have to tell you again next week if it has changed.

I will have more time to write next week! Adios until then!

Love,

Hermana Bender

p.s. I cant figure out the apostrophe on this keyboard sooo please
excuse my horrible punctuation!