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??
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