Happy Independence Day

Saying bye to Elder Rowley

Dear Family,

We had to say goodbye to Elder Rowley, and frankly that was pretty sad. He was the missionary that I've spent the most time with that was never my companion. But that was about the only sad thing that happened this week. 

Monday evening we were able to go and visit with the Agwus. We are teaching their kids, and they are set for baptism this week, but we took time to visit with the Parents. Sister Agwu cooked us a nice Nigerian meal and it was, to say the least, pretty good. It's been a while since they stopped going to church, but Brother Agwu has been coming pretty regularly. It was nice to spend some time visiting with them. We got the call there that we both would be staying. President also asked Elder Chamberlain to be District leader, and told me to guide him on this course. It will be a phenomenal transfer.

Tuesday we got to go and visit with Gerelle. They just had their baby so that was pretty exciting. We were grateful they let us into their home to visit with him and to help him move along the path. We talked about getting to the temple to do baptisms for the dead and family history work. It was great to see this light turn on where he is feeling the joy and excitement of doing family history work. We will hopefully get him to go do baptisms this coming Saturday. At church he was ordained to the office of a priest and given the Aaronic Priesthood, so we are excited for him. 

Wednesday was transfers, but as said above, we both stayed. It was quite the great way to start off. Sister Lee, a Filipino member, has these two others living with her. She is really great about sharing the gospel and felt prompted to sit down with them and to talk about the gospel. We were there last week and that led to us visiting with them this week. We taught the restoration and they both loved it. We extended a baptismal invitation and they accepted, but we need to find a date where they will be available for it. And there are some bumps on the log to smooth out. But we had a powerful lesson with Dolly and Roger.

Following that we got to go teach Keysa. She is coming along very well! We talked with her about the Plan of Salvation and she thought it was great. Didn't have any problems with it and is more than ready to accept it as the plan for her. We will be going over Tuesday to do some service for her so we pray we can talk with her two oldest boys as we do it. The night ended with us visiting the Harris family. It was a good chance to talk about missionary work and they things they can do to help us out. They are that family who are completely geared in the gospel and missionary work. They have had every member in their home for dinner at least once. They are on top of things.

Friday morning we got to go visit with Anik. He is a recently returning member who was baptized a few years ago. He got scheduled to work on Sundays so it has been hard for him to get to church. His boss is letting him have time to go, to church and everything. We talked with him about Family history and temple work. He has a name to take to the Temple and we are working with him to get him there. He had his Aaronic Priesthood interview on Sunday so that was fantastic. He will get there! That evening we got to the Agwu's home again so they could have their baptism interviews. The Zone leaders met us there so we could have them. We got there and Brother Agwu was gone, but thankfully he was only 20 Minutes away. They both passed and we are good for the baptism!

Saturday was an interesting day. We met with Eryn, a girl we tracted into last week. We talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon and the priesthood with her. We read in 2 Nephi 31 and helped her see the importance of it all. It was a good lesson, struck up lots of conversation between ourselves about teaching throughout my mission. Later that afternoon these huge thunder clouds rolled in out of nowhere. Next thing we know, the rain was pouring down on us!! We were completely soaked, so we just kept going on knocking doors. We eventually dried off and during dinner got to change into warm dry clothes. That was quite the experience.

Sunday was a great end to the week. We say Keysa at church with her kids which brings joy to us! After church we met with a new lady Ashley, for the first time. She loves the Book of Mormon and was just intently listening to everything st we had to say. It was a great lesson with her. We invited her to be baptized on August 5th so we pray that can go through. That night we went to teach Melissa one of her new member lessons. We got to visit with Brother Smith and Sister Smith. They have been busy with military related things so it was nice to sit down with them and talk about how things have gone. 

It has been a fantastic week. How blessed I am to be part of this work and to see everything move forward in it! 

Love,

Elder Bentley