Baptism- Doesnt' Get Better Than This!

April 25, 2013

OK, so before I forget! I wanted to thank everyone so much for the birthday cards! I walked down stairs one morning and I saw the post lady and she was like “Do you know who this is?” I said, “Well it’s me”... she’s like, “Well here you go.” and I got a stack of about 15 birthday cards hahaha All At Once.!!!No joke there were so many!!!!!!!!!!!!! More mail than I’ve had my whole mission!!! Ok probably not but it seemed like it. And yes Anziano Smiths mom sent me one too. What a great family! She even sent me some pics of my first day in Italy with Anziano Smith and others and said we have to do a picture after we get back haha. Thank You Everyone!!! It meant so much to me!

Yeah the turning 20 thing is a little weird, but I just will get used to it. There is still a lot to learn that’s for sure, and I don’t think I will run out of stuff in the Bible to study.  There is some pretty interesting stuff in there. I’ve already read the Book of Mormon 3 times on my mission and so I decided to do some New Testament and I learned a lot.

Our Beautiful Peruvian Family

Well we did have a baptism and it was Sweet Sweet victory. ! E________ is her name and they are from Peru. Super nice family and we reactivated the dad in the process. Great story for sure. It doesn’t get better than that.  Everything went great and there were a lot of people there. Not only that but we are now teaching the sister! She is super elect as well and will be getting baptized without a doubt, after I leave of course. Well there is the possibility that I stay as well, not sure though since I’ve been here since October. But next email you will all know where I’m going.

Well I’m doing my best, I don’t have a lot of time left in Italy and well I’ve been a little lazy lately. Not because I want to be lazy but because it’s really really hard to beat the natural man when you are as tired as we are. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life! And well there is no time to sleep in. It never goes away, just gets worse and I’ve just gotten comfortable where I was at and then I slapped the natural man and so now Anziano Heaton and I are raising our personal standards to get it done here in Busto and leave it on a good note if I happen to leave. Busto is going good and I’m working my hardest to leave Busto with work to do since we seem to have exhausted all our people to teach and dropped a few, lost a few, and some more got busy, so we now have nothing to do and we have ruled knocking doors as ineffective to finding anyone, but it’s a really fast way you get the cops called on you and get every grandma in Busto mad at you. So we will try member referrals. See how it goes. Not only that but I’m pretty close to year mark and I need to step it up a bit.

Doesn't Get Better Than This

Well anyways have a good week, and yes we did have a conference yesterday so that’s why no email yesterday. Dot get too mad Mom. If you want, I can call Ted. R. Callister of the Presidency of the 70 and tell him not to come visit our mission again so my Mom doesn’t miss an email from me. haha Just kidding, I know you just are anxious to hear from me. But look only 1 year more that’s nothing really. It’s gone by really fast.

Well Love you as well sisters!
Anziano Benson


Celebrating with the Ward Mission Leader



Our District Milano 3

One Continual Strand

April 17, 2013

I do have to say that I don’t miss the Idaho spring weather for anything haha. It’s been so nice here and we have managed to keep it. I’m actually too hot right now. It’s about 74 degrees today and we are enjoying the sun in short sleeve shirts. We will go kick the ball around this afternoon after we get a pizza again haha. I finally got my hair to grow a little and now it’s finally good I think.

It seems like I learn so much every week. This week we had an appointment to see someone and I’d prefer not to go into what happened haha but I will say that I learned an important lesson on standing up for what is right and true and what we should do. The Lord’s way is never the easy way. In fact I can’t think of anything that he has asked us to do that was ever easy. If you are presented with a choice don’t do it the easy way, do it the hard way and you will be glad long down the road.

Thanks Mom for the short story and old picture of us at BYU. The sad thing is that I look like my Dad! Look at how young he was!! Ahh It’s so frightening! I’m only 5 years from that! That’s not coool! Would someone just please put a pause on the stop watch of my life so I can take a second and think before it’s gone. I will come back and all my sisters will have grown up; especially Ellis. She’s done with school, and well I missed 2 years of that. Well what do you do? Man I’m so glad that we will all just chill in the celestial kingdom together so we just make up for all the moments we missed with the family; where time has no beginning or end. The longer I’m here the more I understand the deep truths about God and his nature and his position in time and space. There is not end to beauty, to his creations and time is not relevant to him. There was never a beginning, nor will there be an end. It is one continual strand. I invite you Mom and Dad to stick your head in the Bible Dictionary for 5 min and see what you will learn about our existence. It’s deeper than you think.

Well Baptism!!!!!!!!!! April 20. We are stoked! Well I love you so much and take care!

Anizano Benson

Use Your Testimonies

April 10, 2013

We had a good week and we will be having a baptism the 20th of April! All we have left is the interview to do, so if she passes it’s smooth sailing until the 20th. They really are a great family, and  have a kid who is 10, but we will have to teach him after he comes to church a little more and gets integrated with the kids more. We will also have to teach him the lessons. The family is a part member family and husband is a priesthood holder already so we are really excited. They are just a beautiful Peruvian family and are great to be around. It’s finally good to get a baptism, but it’s been hard in all other parts of the work; especially finding new investigators. No one wants to listen to us so we have resorted to seeing only member instead of ringing doors and doing street contacting. They just don’t work and no one will listen. So we hope this new idea will get us some elect people. Conference was good, but we didn’t hear Sunday afternoon session. They talked a lot about missionary work, especially President Monson. He talked about what we need to do as missionaries. Use your testimonies!

 I hope all the sisters are doing well and getting ready for summer. Hope Ellis has a job lined up because college $$? I’m sure dads already said enough about it, but I’m starting to sound more and more like him every day of my life haha. I’m getting after myself in my head about our messy apartment. haha.

Well have a good week! All is well here

Elder B

Kicking Into High Gear

April 3, 2013
Well after kind of a slouchy week here in Busto we kicked it into high gear to get some things moving. We had only 3 lessons last week and this week we are on track to do 15. We hope. But the weather here was pretty terrible. It just rains, and rains, and rains and does not stop. Finally after a week of rain the sun came out and its about 70 degrees today. Feels so good. Next week suit coats off so hopefully the weather warms up so I can hatch the shell into short sleeves. Easter was good, and everyone was on vacation, except us haha. And we had the day light savings change here and now I am really really tired. I was doing great until we messed up the sleeping schedule! Oh well Ill adjust.
I Hit the big 20 this month and its starting to freak me out a bit that I’ve been alive for 2 decades. Seems like yesterday it was still like 2006 or something but now it’s 2013 and it’s just going by really fast. I’m picking up on some good cooking so I’m pretty content with that. I’ve been taking tips and hints from all the Italian chef masters here in the ward haha. They have been training me well and I like cooking now. I’ve got about 5 different sauces to try so far and then some different recipes with meat as well. Every meal appointment we have I try to get the recipe from them and learn how to do it. So far it’s worked really well. I’ve discovered the Italian way is simpleness and cheese. The better the taste of the cheese the better the pasta, lasagna, ect. You have to buy the $11 a pound cheese if you want good Italian food. The cheese at home is an embarrassment, and an outright offence to any European; that anyone would produce such a thing and then ask people to buy such a failure. That’s called American cheese.
 Well anyway things are going good and we are working on a bap date. We go on Friday to set one and we are praying that she will accept it. Not to mention my time here is probably drawing to a close and I really want to be here for the Baptism, especially since I’ve been teaching this family since January and they have been coming to church and everything it would be a shame to not be here for it! I might use that as leverage for getting her in the water haha.
The whole time Anziano Heaton and I have been searching for Busto jerseys and we finally found some! So we will have to go check them out. It’s hard to find jerseys for the Seri b teams here because they are a lot smaller and usually only sell them at the games, which we cannot go to. So it’s like next to impossible to find them. Sounds like a great Birthday gift. Hint hint.
Well everyone take care.  Love you!
Anziano Benson