Eleventh Month!

Seneca Zone Mission Tour with President Johnson

Us WIth the Chaneys

Dear Family!

This week has been super week because we had the opportunity to have a little mission tour where everyone got to meet President Johnson. He and his wife came with the assistants and introduced themselves to us. They had their kids put together a little video where they talked about their feelings of the Johnsons coming on a mission. We got a little moment with both Sister and President Johnson where they asked where we were from and about our family. They are going to rock in this mission and we are super excited because President Johnson is a funny guy.

The whole weeks scheduling has been very messed up because we planned for it last week and found out the night before that the mission tour and interviews where changing days so we had to juggle our days a bit. The plus side to that was we got to go to an all day farm shift. We got to the farm, sun screened up and started to fill ditches with old moldy hay. That took about four hours to complete, it was great because Maryland has different bugs than Utah so we say a ton of them in the moldy hay. We then trimmed trees and had a jolly old time.

The night of July 4th we got to go with the Bearman family to the National Cathedral in DC. We were allowed to stay out longer since it was the 4th, we tried to watch the DC fireworks but the could a were blocking it so we walked around the cathedral at night and it was pretty cool.

We got dropped by two of our investigators this week. Anna told us that she wasn't really interested in being a Mormon and that she was fine being a non-denominational Christian.  We also got a new investigator from the sisters who was on date and was excited to meet with us. Then the day before our appointment with her she called and told us off practically. It was sad because our investigator pool was just picking up, then halfway through the week it dropped again. We will start working on building that again. 

We got to go visit some of the less actives of the ward. We went and visited Brother Comeford, he has a mental illness but he is a very smart guy. We sat there silently on his chairs while he did some things, it was very cool because we saw him call himself to repentance so it was awesome to see that. He has been returning to church and is doing great! We saw Brother Coberly who is a crazy cat guy. His home is stuffy with the smell of cat urine and all that cat hair so our visits are pretty short. He came to church this week though so that was awesome! 

We were able to teach a Muslim man who we tracted into more about our religion. He was pretty closed off towards Christians until our conversation so that was good. He asked tons of great questions that were showing his desire to learn and to find out the truth. We probably won't be visiting him at all or anything but it was a great run into that we had with him.

Love,

Happy Independence Day!

Playing Football at the National Mall

Playing basketball with a member and some friends

Happy Fourth of July!

Well this has been quite the exciting week for Elder Bailey and I. The week started off pretty great. Monday morning some of us missionaries met at the National mall to play football. It was pretty exciting, except for the fact that it was pretty hot outside.  We had a great time playing so it was worth it. We walked up to the Good Stuff a Eatery afterwards and got some killer burgers. That was the part I was super excited for. They have these fries that they put herbs on and they are surprisingly super good!

Monday night we had a lesson with Shaka. Jacob came on exchanges with us. He is in the priest quorum and his dad really wants him to hang around good influences that'll make him want to serve a mission. Anyway, we had a great lesson with Shaka. The real miracle was at the beginning of the lesson a referral that we received from the Baltimore mission walked into the lesson. We didn't have an address for her so it was a huge miracle! The spirit was in the lesson and you could definitely tell that both of their hearts were softened. 

Tuesday at the farm we didn't have any riders show up so we got to spend the day herding horses into different pastures to eat. That was great because we got to chase after horses trying to catch them it was a lot easier to catch them after we had some caught before hand. We could walk up with the horse and it was as if they couldn't see us which was super strange. 

Our investigator Jacklyn we were able to visit twice this week. The first visit was to see when we could visit her again within the week. We taught her quickly a little review lesson on the Plan of Salvation because it was apparent that she had forgotten the little bit that we had taught her. Our actual appointment with her we talked about prayer and the importance of finding for our selves the truthfulness of our message. She is a bit sarcastic so it's really tons of fun to teach her.

Thursday morning we had the privilege to go and help President and Sister Cooke finish moving things around the mission home for the new Mission President. It was a simple little thing that we got to go do but it was treasured because we were the last ordinary missionaries in person to say goodbye to them. President Cooke out his arm around me and said goodbye which was really sad. He has been a great leader for this mission. We will miss him tons.

Saturday we got to spend time playing basketball with members and their friends. They had a tournament for the whole thing and Bailey and I won the whole tournament. The member thought we were joking when we said we would win. We found out that the new mission President President Johnson wanted to come out on exchanges with us. It was his second day and he was already coming out us. We were the first missionaries that he went on an exchange with so that was awesome. He is still a little washy on the rules, but he was asking questions and I was helping him answer the questions about rules he had.

This mission even though we have had a change of leadership is still directed by the Lord. I know that President Johnson has been called by God to serve and direct the missionaries in this area at this time. He is everything that this mission needs, funny, hard working, and most importantly very spiritual. We will miss President Cooke, but President Johnson will take this mission further than we think we can go. He will push our limits, help us become better disciples of Christ, and better men and women for this rising generation.

Love,

Elder Bentley 

Last week of June

Us at Lulu's

The Sock Game

Dear Family!

Well this week has been quite the different week for Elder Bailey and I, the week flew by time wise, but we weren't able to really have too many lessons so the days felt like they were dragging on. 

Tuesday was a pretty interesting day. We had our typical district meetings, but I got another district that sat in because their DL was at a training meeting. There were like 7 companionships in the meeting so that was pretty enjoyable because we had participation from tons of people. It started to pour down water through out the meeting but farm was still on. As we were at the farm we were weeding between rain storms and helping with the Riding. Cool thing that happened, McKenna Erasmus is in this mission. She used to live in our ward like 10 years ago.

Wednesday we got to go help a member mow her lawn. She is getting old so she had a riding lawn mower. Of course I offered to use that because it was just an enjoyable two hours of service. She is the member that orders us pizza every other Saturday. We got to go visit Harold today, hurrah.... He got mad at us last week and we had no idea why. But we called him to see if we could visit this week and he got mad at me for making eye contact with him and looking away last week or something. Just causing contention and what not. We got to go visit the Cabanban family that night and set up an appointment to go play basketball with Brother Cabanban and some of his friends, but that fell through. 

Thursday was my birthday! We had our last interview with President and Sister Cooke. They made everyone sing to me so that was exciting. He forgot until we were about to leave and I thought it would have been funny if we had left because he was running through the church looking for me. We went to Betsy's afterwards and they fed us lunch and her kids were excited because we were having our birthdays. Other than that not much happened. We did a lot of contacting and planning for the rest of the day.

Saturday we spent the entire day doing service. We helped out Lulu mow her lawn and take care of the sticks and branches in her yard. We put all the wood in a pile and she gave us this sweet saw to cut the branches into small pieces and so we had a great time with that. While Bailey mowed, I power washed the deck and the Patio for her. We took care of the Matsen's chicken because they were both out town for the weekend. That was quite enjoyable. To finish the night we helped a new family move into the ward. They have a few kids so that meant tons of stuff to move. Luckily tons of helped showed up so we got it done surprisingly very quick.

Sunday we had our first and only appointment with any investigator for the week. Jacklyn was a referral from the sisters who was interested in the church and the joy our message brings. Our visit was short but sweet and to the point. 

Spiritual thought, when we take the sacrament we are taking the name of Christ upon ourselves. Think about having a little Christ statue pinned to our shirts, would we act the same way we would without it? Would we treat others differently? When we take the sacrament we take his name upon us. We are all representatives of him, we need to live his example.

Love,