OCTOBER 16TH

Me and Elder King

Dear Family!

Well this week was a pretty great one. There were only a couple of things that really happened this week work mentioning. 

We had the opportunity to go over to President Wolfe's home to help them paint the main floor of their town home. It's really the first interaction they have sent our way that's happened while I've been here. It seems like they are slowly starting to warm up to us. We painted their main floor a lighter tan color with the Behr paint that's only supposed to be one layer. I had the job of using the paint brush to get the cracks and crevices touching up what was missed. Overall it went well and they seemed to finish the second touchup layer later that day.

Thursday we went down to the Annapolis building for interviews with President Johnson. They were much needed for the Zone you could tell. It was also very nice to get everything I was wanting to talk about with him in and to council about the area. They are planned for 10 minutes, but they always are longer than planned because he wants to get to know us more and to make sure we are doing alright. That went over into the night and I traded a tie with Elder King.

Friday we had some service helping some guys from a Methodist church load up a trailer with food. We met them at the Maryland food bank in our area. We got there not realizing it was a little thing in the back and not a big event inside. But we are definitely going to be going down there to offer our service more often now we know it's there. Other than that this week it's been full of finding and talking to people.

Saturday was Baltimore's "Fleet Week," they had the U.S. Navy Blue Angels come and perform. It was out of the mission, but there's a spot at the top of our area at the hospital where hundreds of people gather to watch the planes fly over and around. We used that to talk to people about the gospel and to also watch some jets fly. 

That night we were out checking on some Referrals that we have. We received a new one where he was wanting a bible. His name was Ronald. When we stopped by he was gracious for his free bible and we asked if we could share some verses out of it. He invited us in not knowing we had an entire lesson to teach him! The spirit was strong and that was the miracle of our week! 

This week I learned more about charity. We had a lesson in Priesthood about it.  I took time to read the lesson this last week. I love the stories that it shares about loving our enemies. One of the examples that comes to mind however is in the musical Les Misérable. When Jean Val Jean tried to take the silver and get caught by the guards and taken back to the priest. He forgives him instantly and helps him realize there are bigger things in life. This one simple charitable act by the priest changed his entire life. How are our actions reflecting onto others? Are we being charitable? Do we love those who hate us? It's my testimony that as we develop charity, the lord will bless us with increased love towards others.

Love,

Elder Bentley

October 10th

This is us with Sister Missouri. She got us ravens and oriole's ties because she likes us. She told us we needed to wear them.

Me and Elder Mellen

Dear Family! 

Well this week has been a really great week! We had some great experiences that will be cherished for a very long time!

Last P-day we were tired of sitting around the apartment so we went bowling. It was a pretty great activity for our Preparation day. When we got there the lady said we could bowl for a discounted price, we had planned on 2 games. We had a little competition as we bowled also which made it enjoyable. As we went to pay to leave the lady told us that it was on the house! Blessings of bowling!

Elder Mellen and I went out finding Tuesday after lunch. As we were walking down a street his knife fell out of his pocket into the drain. I told him I could get it out, so after fastening a magnet to some string I fished it out. Tuesday night we had to give our car to the other elders so they could go to a training meeting. We were left with our bikes to ride home. As we rode home a guy got mad at us for riding our bikes, but there wasn't anything either of us could do.

Wednesday we got to spend doing an errand for the mission office. We spent that morning weekly planning before Brother Klecz came and picked us up. There was a new couple moving in for some archive work and they needed a bed. We had a queen at our apartment and was asked by the office to get it down to the apartment. It was a highlight because everything Brother Klecz says just makes you laugh. We got everything finished and had dinner with the Harmon family.

Thursday Elder Randall K. Bennett from the seventy came and visited our mission. It was really an amazing experience. He stood in front of us talking about what and how we could be better missionaries. His whole talk rekindled and relight the fire of missionary work in my soul! After seeing the spirit work throughout the meeting, we got out and did some work. We met with our investigator Elizabeth afterwards and talked to her about the importance of the Book of Mormon. We read some of Alma's words to his son Coriantum to help her see the importance. That night she sent us a picture of her daughter bringing up the Book of Mormon to have her read it! Miracles do occur!

Saturday we were out and picked up our newest investigator Jeremy. He's the first new investigator that we have been able to pick up for a while. We were checking on a row of homes to do some finding, his was the last home on the street and he invited us in. We had a nice quick lesson with him because his father was wanting him to help out his mom. We finished up and set a return appointment for this Monday!

Also as we were out on Saturday we stopped at a rehab center to check on a lady from a ward up north. She had surgery and is inactive but wanted a blessing. It was strange because as we got there and were wheeling her to her room for the blessing, a crazy lady thought we were taking her. She fell into tears pleading with us to not take her. Then on our way out was trying to "pick us up" she was talking to a group of older ladies and said to them "shhh! I'm going to go pick up some young guys" ( we walk past) "oh young guys!" It was a very crazy trio to say the least. We left her with a prayer and got on our way.

I was reading in Mosiah 20 this last week. It talks about the tower and how Limhi and his people were protected because they could see the dangers lurking outside. That's much like our prophet. We had this amazing opportunity to hear from the head of our church and it's up to us to apply their talks everyday!  I know it's from our Heavenly Father and it's what we need to hear!

Love,

Elder Bentley

Happy October

Elder Davidson and me waiting for conference to start.

Dear Family!

Well this week was a bit slower than I would have liked it, but we got to watch conference at the end of it so I'm not complaining!

Tuesday I went on exchange with Elder Haggard. There are lots of missionaries that don't really like him or get along with him. But as we went on our exchange with each other I got to see how loving he really is towards others. He has a very focused mind and heart so he's constantly going and going. We were driving down a pretty busy road as he pulls across trafic to talk to a guy who was on his bike. It was kind of scary, but the talking with the guy was worthy it.

Thursday Evening we got to go visit our investigator Elizabeth. At our last visit, we had invited her to pray daily. When we went into this visit with her we had the goal of inviting her to read the Book of Mormon. She has a 3 year old named Gwen, who is constantly running around wanting to play. Elder Mellen occupied her so I could teach Elizabeth with no distractions. We talked about the Book of Mormon, the stories that are in there, and the things we need to do to gain a testimony of it. She seemed pretty content with the invitation to read and pray so we hope she will do so!

Friday was a slow day, our car needed an oil change. Every time we got into it it would beep at us for a while. We called the vehicle coordinator who told us to take it into a firestone. We hated to have to take it in, but now it's fully functional and gets us where we need to go. We had a bible referral to stop by. It was this older Asian man named Kaw. I guess he is a reverend in his church so we also gave him a Book of Mormon. We were trying to ask him questions about himself and if he wanted to learn more, bit there was definitely a language barrier there. We will go back and see if we can teach his children though.

Saturday morning we got up and helped Elizabeth move some things out of her storage. The catch was when we were finished we would all go down and watch General Conference. It was definitely worth it to get her there. She seemed to enjoy the session. We decided that we wanted to watch the Second Session at home so that's what we did. The Branch had a Priesthood Pizza social before the priesthood Session. It made me miss going out to dinner afterwards with dad and the brothers.

Something from Conference, in Kazuhiko Yamashita's address he talked about being ambitious for Christ! Within his address he said, "Serving Jesus really is the best thing ever." Well I'm here to tell you how true that really is! Every day we get to wake up and represent two people. The first is my family. Being able to do this has not only brought joy, but love and respect as well. I'm not representing Bridger, but the wholeBentley name. Second is our Savior Jesus Christ. Through him everything is made possible, as we have faith, remember, serve and believe we are able to overcome,e anything and everything having joy.

Love,

Elder Bentley

Coookie Thief

Elder Rowley and I after our exchange

Dear Family!

Well this week was full of all sorts and kinds of exchanges. On a total, I went on 3 exchanges to see how the district has been doing. There was quite he turn of events that followed during so I will explain.

Tuesday was my exchange with Elder Chugg. When we got back to the apartment after district meeting, we started to bake cookies. There really hasn't been too much connection or trust built between the missionaries and the ward leadership. To counter that and to try to build relationships, I thought we would make cookies for the families and drop them by to share a message and whatnot. We made a good 160ish pumpkin chocolate cookies for this purpose.

That night we had a great appointment with our new investigator Elizabeth, it was a little longer of an appointment, but that was good as we talked about God. She has been looking for a church and her daughter got her to go to the temple visitor center. As we visited, we thought it would be best to talk about prayer and to invite her to pray.

We didn't get the chance to deliver the cookies because the exchanges and appointments made it so we wouldn't be able to until Sunday. We went on my next exchange with Elder Criddle who is training in my district. They cover the other half of the ward and we got to go work in it. We had a pretty good time you could say as we just went around and contacted people for most of the day. There really wasn't too much other than that that happened on that exchange. I exchanged with the Zone leaders that night at volleyball.

Elder Rowley and I went down to Annapolis for that exchange. The morning was service, cleaning out ditches. Something here that everyone does is bag all their yard waste. Let me tell you how much more proficient it is to throw it into a trailer and take it to the dump. We helped this lady they tracted into with her yard work. After that we got to go and check on a less active who was making up excuses at the door. But dinner that night was great! We went to the Tolman's for our dinner, brother Tolman is Dutch and loves to make Indonesian food. We had some kind of fried rice and had a great conversation with him.

When we went back up to Brooklyn Park that night is when I got really frustrated. So we made all these cookies to take to members and I told Elder Mellen to not let anyone eat them because they were for the members. When we got back, there were only about 40 cookies left. I guess while I was gone they thought it would be okay to have 8 Elders over to the apartment to hang around on a Saturday. It was super disappointed with the other Zone Leader and Mellen for letting that happen. In that process they ate tons of the cookies, and made a mess of the kitchen and such. 

Sunday during most of the day I was still super disappointed and Frustrated. Hopefully here soon I will be able to just come to terms with it and move on. 

Meanwhile during those last few days I found out that two of our most solid Investigstors were practically dropping us. One said they were going to Hawaii for a month and the other is up in Baltimore visiting his mom. I think Andrew after his visit will come to terms with the tattoos and want to get baptized. The branch already has a predetermined calling for him, ward Organist.

Hope everything goes well this coming week!

Love,

Elder Bentley

Happy Fall!

Selfie at the outdoor band we found

Dear Family!

Well this week we've had a few exciting things happen. 

Starting after our P-day last week, we went to go visit a new investigator we received. When we went to go visit Nichole she told us she wasn't interested in our message or anything. We were super bummed when she told us that, but after some talk with her grandma, we cleared up some confusion that had arisen. They thought we were still practicing polygamy. But after it had been cleared, we had a pretty awesome lesson with her and her grandma. It was a great first lesson and we're going to try and put her on date for our next appointment. 

We have our investigators Andrew, the one who is not the atheist. We had been trying to schedule an appointment with him through the week, and finally halfway through the week we got in to see him. He wants to keep getting tattoos and that's holding him back. We thought he was in his late 20's just to find out halfway through the lesson he was 18. Our total mentality on how we were to teach him changed at that point. We will be gearing everything towards a mission hoping he will be able to and want to serve one. If he goes through on the tattoo he wants to get, he defiantly wouldn't be able to serve. We will hopefully talk him out of it and into a mission!

We got a cut back on our miles for this month. We thought we would be getting a couple hundred more miles than what we actually got. When we got the number, we calculated the number of miles we would be using and were still a couple over, but it's for the things we have to get to, church, meetings, etc. We will be using the buses and maybe our bikes depending on the area and time of day we are there. It takes a while,to get anywhere on the buses so we have to plan it out. Then the buses just never show up sometimes, it's great. 

We had some service Saturday morning with the whole day to serve. The Annapolis zone got together with an interfaith group that went to a cemetery to clean and find graves. We had tools and worked together with "Apostle Thomas" and his congregation to clean, dig up, and rebury some of the stones. It was a huge group service activity and was great because that's something we wouldn't get to normally do. Half of the turn out were missionaries, but it was great because we got to work and talk with those who were on the stones around us.

Saturday night as we left our last appointment in the projects, the police asked if we were okay. The other Elders asked for a ride home and got in the police car. Then the other police officer asked if we would like a lift to the church so we could grab our car. We got to ride in a police car!!!! When we got back to our car and on our way, we stopped to fill up with gas and heard some live music coming from across the street. We walked over to it and they had a little band outside a crab shop playing oldies music. We talked to a few people and got on our way home to finish the night.

Other than that not much else happened, but it was a good week!

Love,

Elder Bentley

September 12

This is us at a BBQ last P-Day with the Harmon group

 

Dear Family!

Wow well this week has been full of many ups and many downs. The good news however is that we did have transfers so I'll be staying here in Brooklyn Park for another with Elder Mellen.

Tuesday was full of goodbyes, we had the opportunity to spend a little extra time with Elder Brown and Tausaga before they left on Wednesday. It's not that we were slacking on the work to do it, but it was the fact that our car had a bad battery so we dropped it off at the pep boys to have it looked at. We were within walking distance of their apartment, but far out of are area. We talked with them as they packed and Brother Cruz took us to get Sundaes at Costco. He dropped us off at the car shop and we got our car back and we got back to work.

Wednesday we had transfers and got two new Elders in the Branch. Elder Davidson and Elder Criddle. It's really cool,because Elder Davidson was trained by Elder Mellen and elder Davidson is training right now! We had an appointment fall through and as we went to get back into our car, it was dead once again. After placing a few calls we had it into the shop and got Elder Davidson and Elder Criddle to shopping after we got it back. 

Thursday was a frustrating day. The assistants I guess switched up our area boundaries and gave some of our area to the other elders and some of theirs to us. But we were not informed at all about anything and found it all out through elder Davidson. We also found out with the area change we would be giving up 7 of our investigators that we had been working with for the last 6 weeks. It really hit me hard because it started to feel like the work we had been doing with them was all a waste because we wouldn't ever be teaching them. It took some time for me to get through that, but by Friday night I was pretty settled with it.

On the Up side however, we had a great visit with Andrew the Atheist Friday morning. He invited us in and asked what we had prepared to talk with him about. I went over the Candle of the Lord talk with him by President Packer it went pretty good and he committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. 

Saturday was a great recovery day for us. We had contacted a bible referral that had come in Thursday. Her name was Nichelle. We called and asked when we could drop it off and she said Saturday at noon. When we got to her home, there she was sitting on her porch waiting for her free bible. After talking with her for a few minutes we introduced the Book of Mormon and she wanted to learn about it. We had a great first discussion there on her porch with her. A random lady walked up during it and listened to half of it and asked for our contact info to learn more as well. We found out she wanted to be baptized so we will work with that.

That night we had a pass off lesson with Cornbread (Sean) at the Harmon home. We talked about the last half of the Plan of Salvation and visited with them about smoking. Elder Davidson had a plan to commit them to stop smoking by having them promise a picture of Christ. It was awesome because they even said "Well that's unfair, I can't lie to Jesus." After much talking, testimony bearing, and Alma 34 33-40 reading, we had Sister Harmon on tears, Cornbread said he'd stop smoking by the 25th of September and accepted a baptismal date of October 30th. It was a great lesson and had us all pumped for the transfer.

Faith really does help us pay off. We learned in Stake conference this last week that we need to " learn by faith." If you want to learn how to swim, you get into the pool, if you want to grow your faith, you act on the promptings of the Holy Ghost. Faith really is a muscle, if we aren't using it, it is deteriorating. Why would we let such a precious thing fall out of our hands because of our laziness? The more we act on our faith, the more it grows. If we want to learn about faith, you learn by exercising your faith.  

Love,

Elder Bentley