Elder Fisher and Elder Bentley

Dear Family,

This week has been a pretty good week! Elder Archibald and I did a lot
of finding. We found a couple of people, but all of our appointments
feel through this week with investigators. We are hoping that this
week our appointments will be more solid so that we can start
getting some solid investigators.

On Tuesday we had Elder Perkins come and talk to us for our zone
conference. As he talked about Preach my Gospel, the spirit really
 chastised everyone into focusing their studies on PMG. Along with
this he emphasized the importance of being Strictly obedient. As we
are obedient we will be blessed more, wether it be with more knowledge
and remembrance in our studies or with more opportunities to find
investigators. It was also a nice tour because we were supposed to all
be there by 8, but we showed up earlier and I was able to just play
prelude piano hymns. Playing the piano is a real big stress reliever
on my mission. Not that I'm super stressed, it is just nice to sit
down and play hymns for a couple of hours. Elder Perkins interviewed
some of the missionaries and it took longer than they expected. And
that is when I was able to play piano.

Then on Wednesday we has a specialized training for all of the new
missionaries, mostly the meeting was going around from station to
station learning how to get refunded for metro, cleaning the
apartments, driving basics in the mission, and how to work with
referrals. There was an emphasis on companion unity in this meeting as
well, Elder Archibald and I are pretty unified though so we didn't
really have to worry much about that. The older elders in our
apartment are having a hard time because they are training and the
trainee isn't really a social person, and so its hard on Elder Hill,
but at night time he winds down pretty well with Elder Archibald and
me.

We have had a lot of time this week to go tracting, we usually do a
Liahona where we pray that we will be guided as a companionship to
know which street to go to. We then each pick 3 streets on our
tracting map, and almost always we pick streets that are the same or
super close to each other. Wednesday night we went tracting and found
this old Asian guy named Mandy, he said he was really busy and to call
ahead and set an appointment with him this week so we will do that.
Just a few houses up we found this lady sitting on a bench and she was
having a hard day. We gave her a card and tried to talk with her and
comfort her, she didn't want to really talk so we went on, but we felt
like we needed to go back and chat with her, we ended up talking about
The Plan of Salvation, and she told us to come later and so we are
going to go check up on her this week.

Elder Hill is a great guy, we usually get home before them at night
time so we really like to prank them, Thursday we strung up their room
with a bunch of strings, and tied his animals up to the ceiling. He
thinks it's hilarious and so he tries to get us back by covering our
beds in pamphlets and cups, but he will get us back eventually.

President Cooke is a great guy. He told us that we can pick what music
we want to listen to. He also lets missionaries leave their apartments
early to go to the gym, we think that Sister Cooke had a big influence
on both of those. We are really good however in our apartment
listening to spirit inviting music thorough the week and Sunday, and
on our pday we listen to piano guys, John Schmidt, Jack Johnson, and
just the relaxing music of Disney soundtracks and other soundtracks.
They don't really have a lot of musical music though, but I'll get
them to listen to it. He also encourages us to go into DC on our
pdays, so we don't have to stay in our areas on pday, we just have to
be home by 6. Today we are going to thrift stores and tie shopping.

I hope all is going well at the Bentley residence, and I hope that you
all have a great coming week!

Love Elder Bentley