Happy Super Nova Eclipse!

This happened at church today when I was playing the piano. He is only 2 and hopped up and wanted to play with me! His name is Rhys pronounced Reese 

FOOD DRIVE

Typical selfie. We found some other missionaries in our area so we covered their car in pass along cards. We are hoping they are the French or ASL so they aren't poaching. 

Dear family!

That is so very awesome hearing about the Super Nova Eclipse! I would say we would try to go out and see if we could see it in the sky, but the air is so polluted here and it would be past our curfew for going outside. But the weather here has been so amazing! It has been cloudy and in the 70's most of the week! This next week it says it will rain most of the week and will drop down to 60. The General  Conference here is so very great. We get to watch the sessions either at a members house, a chapel or from our iPads at the church. They have streamings of the Spanish translation in the Chapel which is awesome because we can basically invite everyone to come now. We are going to members houses on Saturday, their names are the Yarns and they are a solid family. 

This week has been a harder week because all of our appointments on Wednesday cancelled on us or just weren't there. 4 appointments in a row dodged us which was hard, but we just went back out and started to visit more less-active members. The members here are really great at feeding us, this last week we hardly ate with members though. There is this great member named James, he is single and we are 100% positive he is one of the three nephites. He sold his tv and everything and we just joke with him about how he is always out teaching the gospel. He took Elder Archibald and I to Outback Steak house. Bless him because he payed for us both and he is just so great!

This last p-day we went to the Atlantic Ocean part of the mission and spent some of the day down there which was lots of fun. 

There is this great investigator that we have his name is Ian. He is a Bass player and plays for people that need someone to play for them. He is really hard to get an appointment with because his schedule changes every week depending on the gig he is playing that week. But he is very interactive with us, he asks questions, reads, and let's us come back to teach him more. Every time he sends us a text telling us about his schedule he always addresses it to me, which is funny because it's our companionships phone. I've just been to every lesson that we have had with him.

Sunday night we also met this great guy named Joseph. His family is really strong in their religion but he had a lot of questions on where we go after this life. The way he talks it makes it seem like he has a past he wants to repent and be forgiven for. We gave him basically everything that we possibility could with our number and he said to give him some time to read and to ponder. He said he was very inspired just by our devotion to the gospel that he knows it will be something to check out. 

On Saturday we had a food drive that the entire mission did where we each went to different stores and collected food from people going in and out of the stores to donate to the local food bank. At first when we started the service we felt like it was going to really drag along that day, but after an hour people just started giving us can after can of food so we filled up a box and a half of food. It was awesome because we got to interact with people and they didn't slam doors in our faces! They were all super kind and polite about it. We had a great time doing the service and we are looking ahead for more opportunities to do these food drives. We think it is an initiative that the mission is trying to roll out so we will see about it. It was also nice because we got to be in regular clothes and people wanted to talk with us! 

I hope everyone who reads this email will try to serve others more this next week. Have a great week and I cannot wait to hear from everyone!

Love Elder Bentley

Happy Falll!

This is down at the tip of Maryland down at the Ocean. It is across
the entire mission which was so much fun to drive down there and see
the sea and stuff!

Making trifle for Elder Archibald's birthday

A little boy that just moved into our ward. He loves to play with our name tags
 

Elder Archibald's birthday stuff

This is a map of our area. The blue lines are areas we have tracted.

Dear family!

This week has been such an amazing week! First to start off, they finally gave us our iPads. It has been nice because there is the area book app on it and it is so much more convenient to do the work. We also found out this week that the mission is going to start to try to initiate Facebook back into the mission. Elder Hill and Elder Archibald didn't seem to happy about this, I think most of the missionaries just waste lots of time scrolling on it. 

Friday morning we got a call from the Visitor Center sisters asking if I could play the piano for a duet at the night of inspiration. That is October 11th so everyday I am allowed to take some time and practice for that! That was really cool, but at the same time super weird because they said they would look at the roster for my email to send me PDFs of the music. I then was like "wait I didn't sign up on any roster" then Elder Archibald said that Sister Cooke signed me up because she knows I play piano. 

Another cool thing that happened this week was I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Hill my District leader. We had an appointment with an African named William, it was our second lesson with him and Elder Hill looked at me in the middle of the Lesson and said "Right now" so I invited him to be baptized and he was more than excited to say yes! Right now he has a date set for October 10th. He just has to come to church every Sunday between now and then, and he can be baptized! He lives with his Brother and his Sister-in-Law. His brother is in the military and is at a Training. So we thought that his sister in law was his wife because he calls her wife. I guess in their culture if your brother marries someone, everyone refers to her as wife. He has a wife and kids in Liberia, he is working here and sending money back to them. It was a great experience to invite him to be baptized!

Sunday night we had something called "Why I Believe" it is something the VC puts on here to invite others to come hear testimonies about some of the more famous members. The speakers last night were John Smith and his wife Hannah. He worked at the White House as the lead lawyer to President Bush for homeland security matters; at a major law firm in DC. He is also a direct descendant of George Albert Smith. Hannah served two clerk ships at the Supreme Court for Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A Alito Jr.  It was really cool because we have to invite less actives and investigators to it. Every missionary is supposed to invite somebody to it.

It was Elder Archibald's Birthday on Sunday also! We surprised him with balloons and presents. We then had Trifle, except for the fact that we did this all Saturday night because we had Why I Believe Sunday night. He said that it was one of his better birthdays which is really good!

When we got our iPads we had to go to a Specialized training where President Cooke and Sister Cooke have us talk with the APs about the struggles that some of them are having with their companions. Elder Paul and Elder Fisher were there and it was awesome being able to talk with them for a little before the meeting started. I am blessed that Elder Archibald and I get along well because some of the other trainees and their trainers are really struggling so that was a blessing.  I also saw Elder Fisher at the Why I Believe, he is such a great guy! The ZL Elder Parker told me that out of the Trainer pool that was set for the group of missionaries that came out was not the best, but that I got lucky with Elder Archibald. 

We do a lot of tracking. When we don't have anything to do we tract. We find a lot of people that way because they see the devotion. We have area book apps on our iPads, we also have gospel library where we have all the Mormon messages that we can share with the investigators. We also have the lds tools app. We are also allowed to email from our iPads as long as it is the P-day. Most missionaries like to just email Sunday night because they are out and about on Mondays and don't have wifi. The church has a lot of restrictions on the iPads, there is a chip in them where it restricts most of the apps. Basically just the things that are gospel friends are not restricted. 

I am glad to hear that everyone is doing great in Utah!

Love,
Elder Bentley

Sept 14, 2015

Love the pouring rain!

Dear Family,

Yes I have been able to find names to take to the temple, we still have another month before we are able to even go to the temple to do the baptisms. This area that we are in is a car area, but I do have my bike and it is all set up. We still ride our bikes though because we only have 850 miles a month to do the work that we need. And since we have to go to all these meetings around Maryland, we have to be careful with the miles that we do use. We also are saving miles so we can go down to the tip of Maryland to Look Out Point, so we have been saving alot of miles for that as well. 

This last week was supposed to start to cool down, most of the week was still pretty hot, it was high 80's and low 90's most of the week, but then on Saturday we just had a down pour of rain and it cooled down to the 70's. When it rains down here, it pours, we had planned to go out tracting and since it was raining we got to go out into the rain and tract for a little, the rain stopped pretty quickly and we realized we had already tracted those houses. We left that area and went to go check up on some of the potential investigators that we had. The lady Elsa is now an official Investigator and we have another appointment with her this week.

That same night we went and contacted a referral that we had received and he just wanted a bible. We ended up teaching him the restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon as well. He was searching for the truth and had been going to different churches trying to find the true one. He was more than willing to come to church the following day, but he ended up not coming. We have an appointment with him this Saturday so hopefully we can find out why he wasn't there.

I went on Exchanges with one of the zone leaders this week and we were out tracting an area where a bunch of Muslims lived. He was very great at starting little conversations with them and one of them invited us into his house. It ended up being that he was telling us about Islam and his religion, but his wife made us smoothies and we were more than willing to listen. Hopefully since we listened to him, he will want to listen to us. He said that he really respected Mormons and that he liked them as well. After about an hour in his house, he gave us both awkwardly long hugs and sent us on our way. 

We also contacted a less active member who we though was a member, but he ended up having a record because his mom was LDS and so when he was born he was given a record, but he never got baptized. He had so many questions when we met with him that we were able to answer. His dog had flees, and we were pretty sure that they had bed bugs so we had the whole bed bug experience stripping down after the lesson and had to take scalding hot showers. We talked with him for about an hour and it put us past our curfew, and Elder Archibald's blood sugar was getting super low so he was feeling dizzy and that made it so I had to drive. We are not supposed to drive until after 12 weeks in the mission, except for an emergency which this was.  

We had this thing called the Global Gala Saturday night. The ward threw this big dinner where they had dishes from all over the world and the gym was decorated with each continent's things. It was lots of fun because we got to mingle with the members and got to know some of them better. We also got a lot of food from it so that was always a bonus.

We get our iPads this week finally, it will be nice to have access to our own area book and to be able to use it as a teaching tool. We have to watch every Mormon Message and learn them so we can apply them into our teachings. Elder Archibald said that that was one of the hardest things to do just because there are so many of them that it is hard to remember which ones is what off the top of your head. 

This week overall has been a great one. We got fed most of the nights so that was nice to get to know the members really well. We ate Sunday dinner last night with the Atkinsons and that was a blast because they are a great couple just to sit down and talk with. We ended up being there for 2 hours last night and when we were done we did not have that much time to go out and proselyte so we did a call wall.

This last week I got a letter from Brian, Shanna, and the boys which was really great. Writing them was just so much fun and after I sent it the letter last night it reminded me how much fun hand writing letters was!

Love,

Elder Bentley

Happy Labor Day

Dear Family!

The Weather here in DC has been so very hot, we have been in the 90's most of last week, but the real excitement about that is Elder Archibald and I spent most of last week tracting. It has been a very sweaty week for me, those handkerchiefs really do help a lot with the brow sweat, but everyday this week at the end of our tracting period I have had sweat marks on the rear end of my pants, my clothes have just been drenched and we have had many people this week give us water, even though they didn't want to hear our message which was very kind of them to give us water. This humidity has just been the sweatiest thing ever.

We had a really cool experience this last Tuesday while we were out tracting. We knocked on this first door and there was a lady who said she would be willing to hear our message, but she was just starting to get her kids ready for bed because school started this last week down here. So we will go back this week and visit her, but the house right after that we knocked on and I asked the lady if she wanted to hear our message about Eternal Families. And she said Yes! I had no idea what to do because no one has said yes yet. Luckily Elder Archibald had my back and he jumped in and saved the day. We taught her the plan of salvation at the door and then got her number. Her name is Elsa, yes just like in frozen, she seems like she will really be able to progress so we will go out and teach her! She if African but spent twenty years in France. She is fluent in English so we get to teach her. 

On Thursday we had our typical meetings with the zone, district, and trainer meetings. We talked a lot about the Process of Purification. I will send you a link to the story when I get my iPad here in next few weeks. Everything happens through these iPads and it has been a real hindrance because there is only one to a companionship in the trainers companion ships. The trainees get ours on the 17th so we will be able to have the area book and links that we need to teach. Thursday night we had a lesson with one of the recent converts, Bob, he is such a solid member, 20 years ago some missionaries gave him a Holy Bible and he finally wanted to know more. He really loves this church and wants to spend time serving his new church. At the end of the lesson he offered the most sincere prayer I have heard on my mission. He blesses the children of the world and follows it with "Without you I would have nothing" knowing that Heavenly Father has given us everything. He also asked for opportunities to serve the church so we brought that up in ward council and hope that he gets a calling this next week.

After the lesson with Bob we were riding our bikes around the area and we had a feeling that we should go visit a former investigator named Paris. She is really struggling with her family life and finances. She was taking the lessons a few months ago and she did not want to meet with the missionaries anymore. When that happened she noticed her life took a big turn for the worse. She realized that she had been chastised and told us she wants to keep meeting with us. That was cool because she was really interested in the gospel.

We had a new investigator come to church yesterday with his wife, we jumped on that and made an appointment with him this week and we are spending most of our days now teaching people which I am really excited about! The members in this ward really love the missionaries! We got fed today by the Myers, bless their hearts! They invited 8 elders over to their house for breakfast on some of our Pdays! We are eating alot with the members, we have 7 food appointments with the members this week, two of them are today, and every other day is at night, except for thursday. Typically we have lasagna, spaghetti, chicken and rice, or just whatever they fix, I have been really good about eating it all though! 

Last night Elder Archi and I were going around visiting less-actives, typically none of them answered except for the last one. Her husband let us in and she is a member but he is not. She invited us back for dinner this next tuesday and we are really hoping that she wants to share the gospel with her husband and that is why she invited us back!

Last story, we went to go do family history on Friday because we get an hour of it every week, we have the chance to go do baptisms if we find family names that need to be done! But we were riding our bikes here and before we left Elder Williams told us hid did not know how to ride a bike! So we cancelled all of our tracting plans and spent the day teaching him how to ride a bike, It was a cool experience because we all felt like dads to him teaching him how to ride his bike! Patience is really a virtue.

Hopefully everything goes well at home this week!

Love Elder Bentley!