The direct descendent of Lehi

Dear family and friends,

This week has been the one of the most beautiful and stressfull and crazy but great weeks ever. Weeks like this make the mission worth it. We had this investigator named "Carly. " I cant remember what I called her last week when I told you about how we met her when we started jump roping with her kids. She is the one who went with us to a relief society broadcast in the same night that we met her. Her daughter wants to be baptized. Well, we had this really great lesson with her where she just flat out asked.. so what time is my baptism? We are so excited for her! Well, it so happens that they have to assist sacrament meeting 2 times before we can get any one of our investigators baptized, so getting them to church is just as important as their baptisimal date. The night before my companion and I started our fast. Yep, we fasted for our investigators of course. Well, we stopped by her house to pick up her up to go to church and she wasnt there. We could have just died. We ran to a payphone and called her. And called.. and called. Her kids at the house said that she had left but that she had her phone so we must have called her about 10 times. We decided to go back to the house again, and she still wasnt there. We walked dejectedly to the chapel. I tried to be positive. I thought about how just the night before she wanted to be baptized and was so excited that she just asked what time it would be. We missed the sacramet unfortunately and we just started thinking about how maybe we just didnt have enough faith. I started thinking that maybe we didnt really do everything we could. But we really did. We were fasting, praying, visiting her every day, helping her read the book of mormon, helping her feel and recognize the spirit, we got her friends at church. As we sat in the gospel doctrine class that day the door creaked open. IT WAS HER! I jumped up and gave her the biggest hug. My companion and I didnt know if she could still be baptized but we decided to have faith and talk to her about it later. Well, in relief society they announced her baptism before we could say anything, and all the sisters were congratulating her. AH! Anyway, that was awesome. We decided to call our district leader after church and ask permission for her to be baptized anyway. We had to know that night because we had another appointment at her house later that night. Well, our district leader didnt answer. We then called our zone leaders. They didnt answer. We then talked to the assistant to the President. He said that according to the handbook that would be a no. Classic of the AP just so you know. But thats a good thing. I told him I was going to call President. He said that was fine just as long as president knew he was following the handbook. Well we called president. We couldnt get ahold of him. He was doing a couple of meetings north de chico. I called back elder custer and asked when he thought we could get ahold of him. He said maybe at 9. Our appointment with carly was at 7! At 6:55 we call President again. HE ANSWERED THE PHONE! =D We explained about how great she was and how she came to church without help and how when she got in the door she was apologizing that she wasnt there when we stopped by and everything. President gave us permision as long as her daughter got baptized too. Im so excited for her!

Sorry that was long.. but that is just an example of one thing that happens in one day on the mission. So much stress, but sooooo worth it!

OkaY. Im going to write about "John".
This guy is incredible. Well.. when we first met him, he wasnt our most exciting of investigators. In fact we were kind of dreading going to his house again because his sister in law is a testigo de jehova. Shes not very nice either.
Anyway we were passing by on the street to get to another appointment when we saw him walking back to his house which is weird because we have never just seen him on the street before. We asked him if we could stop by if the other appointment that we had fell through. He said sure. Well, as luck would have it, or as God would have it, because there really are no coincidences, the appointment did fall through so we ended up walking over to his house.
But this is the thing. Neither of us knew what we were going to teach him.
We finally decided that we would just say a prayer before we got in because none of the lessons really felt right. Well, we get inside and his mom is there which is good and another miracle because we need a woman in the lessons when we teach a man, and his sister in law wasnt there. =)
Then, he had a bunch of questions about the Book of Mormon. We explained it a little bit more and then there just came this point in the lesson when both me and my companion stopped talking. We didnt know why. We just did and felt like we had to wait.
Well then he starts saying, "I had a dream. And in this dream there was this tree." We both kind of perked up our ears. He continued. "And then it was dark and there were two groups of people. It felt like the second coming. There were good people and there were bad people. And then there was this cable running from the tree to off in the distance and I couldnt see the end of it." At this point we both just JUMPED FORWARD and started explaining all about Lehis dream. "Do you know there is a prophet who had a dream that sounds exactly the same as the one you are telling us in the Book of Mormon?"
I mean we couldnt have been more excited. He couldnt have been more excited either. We had already been there about an hour and had to go so we were just going to let him read it for his homework and come back later and explain it some more, but then he just starts reading it in front of us. And when he got to the part that says that Lehi saw a man in white robes he stopped and looked up and said.. "That was in my dream too!" Okay, so to make a long story short, he has a baptisimal date and when we asked him if he knew the Book of Mormon was true he said, "Yeah, its the word of God!" Now we just have to explain a little bit about prophets again because he thinks he might be one. lol. =) The moral of the story.... listen to the Spirit, and never judge a contact by his or her appearance.

Love you all very much,

Thank you so much for your prayers. They are working miracles!

Love Always,
Hermana Bendixen

The Time is Now

Dear Family and Friends,
For those of you who watched General Conference, did any of you get chills when President Monson said the words: "The time is now." ?

I cant express how grateful I am that I get to be apart of the work of the Lord in these times. How exciting that the whole world is now working together!
The other week, our President told us that we were going to be the example for all of the world when it comes to retention. He told us it was a time to write in our journals. Presidente Uceda was speaking with the 12 apostles about who they could use to be an example for the rest of the missions. President Uceda who is the area authority for here in Peru said, "I know of a place." He is working with our President and this week we are all being trained anew.
Im also really excited because my companion and I are growing so much together. We started studying preach my gospel during our weekly planning and found out that there were about a million things we could change in how we plan and how to take care of our area book that no one had taught us. Im so excited because I can already see how inspired God is. Little miracles happen every day.
We were talking to this less active member the other day and he told us he didnt believe in miracles and that they didnt happen anymore.
It was funny because I couldnt remember much except that Moroni 7 talked about why people say miracles cease. We assigned it to him even though we were late for another appointment and even though when I read through it I wasnt sure if it was what he needed to hear and almost just left him with Eter 12. Well when I got home I reread Moroni 7 in English, and EVERY WORD dealt with his questions. I love that. I love that when we are really listening and trusting in God, miracles like that happen.
Conference was a miracle too. The talks as always specifically apply to one person that we know and to ourselves.
Other miracles, we had eight investgators come to church. Granted it was General Conference and so there were three other opportunities for them to attend, but it still was a miracle to me because many times we are happy if one make the sacrifice to come to church.
I see miracles in how God answers the questions of our heart with other people. Other missionaries talk to me and end up telling me just what I need to hear. And I know its from God.
There is the miracle of obedience, how when we are so dang tired when we try to get up in the morning but we do it anyway and we do our exercizes and when we really study and pray hard, we are not tired. We just arent. I have never slept better in my life.
We've seen miracles in how the members help us. When we had to be at four appointments in 2 hours we were able to find the ward members who could go on splits with us.
My companion and I ran into a very argumentative person from another religion one day. She had been seeing that street in which we found him in her mind for a while and knew that it was a prompiting to go contact on that street. It took a while to be able to talk but we smiled and bore our testimonies and eventually left, and though and we werent able to get any new appointments from that time my companion learned something. Her high school was practically all mormon and she had never had to deal with The next day when we were on splits, my companion had to bear her testimony in another appointment with a very special investigator when his sister in law showed up who is also from the same religion and also very argumentative. I am soo soo soo proud of her. She told me later how the experience went, how she was still able to teach the investigator the gospel in spite of the invitations to fight.
I know God was prepping her for that moment.
Then of course there is the beautiful miracle of seeing people really fainding faith in God. Here in Peru, practically everyone believes in God. One of our investigators didnt. Now we are seeing a complete change in him. He prays sincerely, he receives answers and he is reading the scriptures. He attends his meetings. He is a busy student but still sets aside time to learn.
Then there is a girl who showed up to church. I will call her Maria. Maria is 21. My age. She is renting a room where her and her sister live. Her sister is 15. She supports her. She is looking for a better job where she doesnt have to work 12 hour shifts every day of the week because she is also studying as a nursing student and she doesnt get any sleep. This sunday she showed up to church with her sister. Im so proud of her. When people act on the commandments and follow them, then we see faith.
Its so easy to look past these people.
When I first met all these people I didnt think much of them. I didnt think anything bad about them.. just that they were normal. But really thats what all of us are. Normal ordinary people who are children of God. All of us are on our own paths learning and growing. And so when someone is normal... a.k.a all of us... we need to share the gospel with them. Its beautiful how you can feel God´s love for a person when you get to know them.
Its a huge responsibility right now being a missionary and realizing the whole world is looking at you. Just knowing that I am in charge of the little area I have to see the work of the lord progress her is terrifying. But I remember that Christ is here for all of us.
He supports us in our trials. When we think we are alone and even our companion isnt there, God is. He literally does send seen and unseen angels to protect us and to move the work forward.
Really I know he lives and that miracles happen. I am determined to make the last 11 months of my mission better than the first 7.
I miss and love you all.
I hear about the scary things happening in the world right now. Im so glad to know that God has a plan for everything and that he is merciful. Its hard to know what is truth and what is a lie here.. but whatever happens I know God takes care of us and he can work miracles if we trust him and serve him.

Love Always,

Hermana Bendixen

Less than a year left in the mission.=0

Dear Family and Friends,

I felt like I have learned so much.  I relearned things that I had forgotten again.  Our mission president is drilling us on how to reteach lesson one. 

 Its great because now we get some training from the zone leaders which we didnt have before.  Usually only the elders got help from the zone leaders.

  Before I always cringed when we said we were going to teach about the restoration of the church.  But that is how we ended up teaching the lesson.  I feel ten times better now because when we teach lesson one, we are really teaching about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We testify more of the Savior and how we can follow his example. =)

We passed by a contact that we had this week.

 It´s funny because I didn´t think that much would happen, but it turns out that the husband of the woman we contacted was reading the BOM the night before we came to visit them.  He is somewhere in 2nd Nephi I think. We were so excited. 

Also, the spirit was really strong as I learned from the Hermana Solis how to teach lesson one in a way that applied to the investigators. 

 At first I thought we were missing out on things that we really had to say and then she told me something.  If it doesnt help them move towards repentance, you dont need to say it.  I thought that was awesome.  The spirit was so strong. And he said he will be baptized when he knows that the prophets really are called of God. I was pretty bummed because I didnt see our new investigator on sunday, but when we passed by his house later that day, he told us how he went to the stake center in Palmeras and how he will be seeing general conference next week. =)   I know his faith is being strengthened and I am so excited for him! 

Another crazy thing happened that I would love to share.

And really miracles happen ever day but I just recently started recording them in my journal.  I didnt realize how much doing that helps you be grateful.  No wonder the prophets have told us to keep one.

Anyway, this one day had been another day where appointment after appointment fell through and we weren´t sure why nobody we contacted didnt want to hear a little bit about Jesus Christ.  Well, we were walking down the street where there were these 3 kids playing with a jump rope. My companion is awesome and asked if we could jump in. It was pretty fun, Im not going to lie.  

We were just playing jump rope with the kids for a while when one of their moms came over and said hi and we introduced ourselves.  We asked if we could share a message about Jesus Christ with her. She said sure and was super friendly.  We found out later that her mom and sisters are mormon but that they live in a different city. She told us how different they were now.. how they dont drink, how they treat eachother differently, they have a relationship etc. 

 She flat out said she could feel a different Spirit of peace when we talked to her. We explained the Holy Spirit and how to pray and that in about twenty minutes we were going to go to a meeting for women all across the world where the prophet was going to speak.  We asked if she wanted to come and she asked if she could bring her kids.  We said sure! and we all hopped in a taxi to go to the stake center.  It was really cool to see how the prophets begain to testify of the same things we had just talked to her about.  About how through Christ we find peace, and how we need to pray sincerely. She had also told us about one of her rebelious sons who was 16 and doesnt live with her and it was awesome to see how in this conference for the Relief Society, they talked about how the best way to help their kids is with the gospel.  I was so grateful to God that we were able to teach someone and really help.  We´ve met her since then and she is praying and finding more peace in her life. She is also excited to read the words of the prophets from ancient america in the Book of Mormon. 

Another thing that happened yesterday is that there were these kids that looked like they were about 7 years old. 

 All of them were screaming and one of them was choking another one.  We ran over and I told them to listen to me.  They started accusing one another of how someone threw his shoe in a bush and bunch of other ridiculous stuff.  I told them the two boys that they both needed to say sorry.  I promised them that they would feel better if they just said sorry. 

 The little girls were so cute they just kept nodding their heads in agreement.  I asked if they could both just do that.  One of them said ya.. and the other after said.. ya. 

My companion pulled out stickers with happy faces. Then they got really excited and they both said sorry immediately.  It was so cute seeing the expressions in their faces change.  I dont know why but everyone here puts happy face stickers on their foreheads so we did that for all the kids and afterwards the two boys gave eachother a really big hug! It was so sweet. Especially when the littlest girl who looked actually like she was about 3 or 4 ran over and gave them both a hug too. 

 When we left they were all smiling and super happy. 

I hadnt thought that anyone saw, but later my companion told me there had been a man on the other side of the lawn who was watching all of it. He smiled and waved to her when we left and then when I looked back, he had a huge smile on his face too.

I have this little game I play with myself while we are walking on the street. We see how many people we can make smile as we smile at them and say Buenos Dias! o Buenas Tardes! etc. Its really fun and always rewarding to see someone else smile.

Love you all and I am so grateful for all of your letters!

Keep being strong. Christ lives and directs his church, and the restored gospel of Jesus Christ really is what brings lasting peace and happiness.

- Hermana Bendixen