August 26, 2013
For the blog:
Well this week has been pretty eventful! we got to go to the center of lima, which is not in our mission but we got permission. it's the place that comes up if you google lima peru ha. the buildings are awesome! i saw some guards with legitimate swords guarding the presidents house! we didn't really do much but look around, but i remember thinking, "wow, i am in PERU right now!"
we also got a visit from elder cook of the 12 apostles. he came and talked to the peru lima east and south missions. he's pretty cool! and he told us to remember how our mission calls are assigned to us by one of the apostles, and that every time they assign a call, they are strongly prompted to assign us to our specific missions. sometimes, it's because we need to teach a specific person in a very specific time and place because no one else can reach them like we can; sometimes, we are assigned somewhere to be led by a certain mission president, and sometimes we are assigned to a mission because we learn something in that mission specifically that will help us immensely sometime in our futures. For some reason, i have always felt (and felt it especially in that moment) that i am here for something in my future after the mission. of course, every experience here is all part of god's plan for me, but i really am interested to see what he has in store for me, and how my mission in lima, peru is going to help. pretty exciting stuff, huh??
I've also learned that being a missionary can be pretty miraculous. And how did i learn this, you might ask? well, it all happened in the bathroom...
this morning, i woke up to the sound of my companion saying, "hna bennett, i need your help!" i jumped out of bed, half asleep still, and she started talking about how she went down to use the bathroom and found the shower on full blast. i looked out at the patio (we have to go outside through a patio to use the bathroom) and saw about 2 inches of standing water EVERYWHERE. I then had a flashback to last night when i was getting ready for bed and started washing my face, only to have the water turn off right in the middle. Where i'm living, every night the water is shut off and then turned back on in the morning. in desperation, i tried turning on the shower to wash the soap off my face, but (duh) it was shut off too. i turned it back to the off position, but the knob on out shower is broken and feels like it's turned as much as it can but it's actually not turned off all the way, so obviously, i didn't turn it all the way off. and then it turned back on in the night and filled the whole bathroom and patio with water! ahhh. i also accidentally broke the toilet the other day... so i'm already on strike one with our landlady. anyways, we were freaking out trying to find a drain for the water, and we found one! only, the landlady had stuffed a chunk of wood in it to keep rats out ha. we started yanking on it and yanking on it, but it WOULD NOT budge. we didn't want to wake anyone up because we didn't want anyone to get mad at us, especially betty the landlady ha ha so we just kept yanking on that stupid piece of wood. It's funny talking about it now, but in the moment, we were like on the verge of tears ha ha ha. So in our despair, my companion says, "let's pray!" she said a quick prayer, asking to know what we should do. as soon as she finished, I reached down and prepared for the biggest powerfulest tug of my life, and literally just PICKED up the wood chunk ha ha HA! it just popped right out! i remember looking at it my hand, and then looking at my comp, and then we both just burst out laughing! ha ha ha. then we said a quick prayer of thanks, and grabbed some brooms and started pushing that darn water to the drain just as fast as we could. we got it all cleaned up, walked back into out room, and my alarm went off. the other sisters walked out just as we walked in, and we said "buenos dias" like nothing happened. The coolest part about all of this is that during my comp's prayer, i just completely knew that everything was going to be fine. i literally thought, "we're about to see something pretty cool happen." and then we did! prayer is really a powerful conversation with god. he understands our troubles, and even if they aren't really of eternal importance, he helps us out when we ask. also, he has a pretty funny sense of humor ha ha.
anyways, i hope that i've been able to illustrate this funny little story enough to do it justice. my brain is kinda halfway in spanish and half in english right now so, lo siento if this is not grammatically correct ha.
We have a couple baptisms coming up! one is for hermano jaime. he is literally GOLDEN. ok, not literally, but seriously, he's the easiest investigator any missionary has ever had. everything we teach him, he just says, yeah, i already have a testimony of that. he's ready to go. i can't wait to send you a picture of him in his jumpsuit!
well, let me know how home is going! i love you and miss you, all of you!
hna bennett
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well, i still don't have my visa. obviously i came with an experiment group,
where we only have tourist visas, and the church wants to see how long it
takes to get visas ha ha.
thanks for sending me the cs lewis quote [about God making us into a palace when we expected a cottage]! another one by him that i think
about often goes something like this: a lot of times, when annoying or bad
things happen in our lives, we think of them as interruptions of our 'real
lives.' but in reality, the bad parts are just as much a part of our real
lives as anything else. the bad parts are how we learn and grow. they are
essential to our existence here on the earth.
ok that was REALLY paraphrased. and i think i must have had the plan of
salvation lesson on my mind ha ha. also, d & c 3:3 kind of goes along with
this quote too.
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