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!