February 27th

Photos from the National Harbor - Pepper Palace 

Dear Family!

To be honest this week has been a pretty slow week for us. With transfers, cancelled appointments and strange weather it's been a slow week. However the weeks fly by and it's almost the end of February! Also weird thought, the weather here has been in the 70's most of the week, it's been a very mild winter in Maryland. 

Few Highlights of the week though:

Thursday went by pretty quick. We had service with the Bodmers, weekly planning and a few appointments. However the highlight comes in from that night. We were pretty bummed because the people we planned to go visit cancelled, but we went into the "proper" upper Marlboro area. There we knocked onto a door that had a Ukrainien family and an African American husband. At first they were pretty standoffish at the door. Well the Ukrainian lady was direct and to the point, but we snuck the message in through family history and talking about what we do anyway. If they are willing to listen, we will try every avenue we can think of to invite the spirit into their lives. We had a duo teaching, Elder Mullen taught the husband and I taught the Wife all at the doorstep. Then they sent us off with water, apples, and granola bars.

Friday night we found ourselves knocking doors again. Wahoo! We were in the area of a bible referral that we planned on visiting. We walked up to this door and knocked it, casually like every other door. Then we noticed the posted no soliciting sign. Side note, sometimes we knock those doors sometimes we don't depending how the spirit feels at the moment. Anyway, here we are knocking this door. This nice lake Ms. White answers the door. We asked her if she knew Larry (the guy we were looking for) and then talked about the gospel. It was a pretty great contact with her. She was open to visiting and to talking about God.

Saturday we went to this old run down apartment building just off Naylor Road, but the metro stop. I guess there was a huge crisis that happened at this building a few years back but we had an appointment there with a guy named Curtis. He called headquarters asking for a free finding faith in Christ DVD so we gave it to him! Ends up he is this pretty solid guy who is down to listen to our message and to meet often to keep the spirit in his life. As we left the building it was an eerie feeling building so we exited pretty quickly. Not like an unsafe feeling, just like an apocalyptic feeling because it was worn down pretty bad.

Sunday we had some pretty great meetings. It was nice to see the Smith family come and to see Michael there as well. The day went by quickly and we ended at a member's home. He is just visiting the ward for a short time but Bishop Hoyle asked us to visit him. He is here because of a recent divorce to his wife that was also recently married to. He opened up and we had a great discussion with him. There it's where i came to a conclusion about life.

Life Lesson Learned this Week:

Practice makes perfect (or perfect practice makes perfect) however you want to say it. Through out my mission I've been pretty resentful about doing role plays and practice teaching with members. Even before I came out on my mission I always dread practicing. I wasn't always good at it and missed out on some great blessings. But these last 6 weeks we have been sitting down with members teaching them discussions from the pamphlets. My confidence in teaching that lesson has grown immensely and we've noticed drastic changes in our teaching abilities. We can better adjust the situation to the lesson and can shape it to the person we are teaching. I know it's directly related back to the practice that we have been putting into the lessons. 

Hope you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder Bentley