july 30, 2012

1. Is there a church or a place to meet on Sunday?

2. Is there a branch?

3. Are there any members to help support you and Elder Welling?

4. How are you meeting new people?

5. Buenaventura: Is it located along the coast?

6. How long has it been since missionaries have been in the area?

7. Why are two gringos together? (you and Elder Welling)

Hola,

I feel excited to write today haha. We meet here in a memebers house. We are trying to find a house or maybe like a elementary school to hold our meetings. (I blessed the sacrament, Gave a talk, Sang a musical number, Taught preisthood and sunday school... We feel like real missionaries.) It isn`t a branch yet. It is a group. Our job is to make it a branch. There are a few members and they are bomb. They are happy to have missionaries. Now there are 4 of us in the city and it is a blessing to them and to us. There are not very many soldiers but they are all marines. (Some literally marines :) )Buenaventura is a big port city. I am right on the ocean. I touched the ocean the other day. Some people build there houses in the ocean. It freaked me out a little bit but it`s all good. There has never been missionaries here. The majority of the people have never seen or heard of anything that we teach. They`ve never seen missionaries. Well the president put us two gringos together. Not sure why i just know that i am loving it. He is way sweet. I picked him up from the airport when i was in the office and now he`s my senior companion and my district leader. :) We work hard, well hard can`t really describe it. We laugh a ton and we look and teach like crazy.

To tell you a little bit about what we are doing. We have to "Strengthen the stakes" and "Extend our fronteras" Moroni 10. We are trying to make sure that the members learn how to be members. We are also here to preach the restored gospel and baptize. We haven`t taught normal lessons or looked in normal ways. We have thought bigger. We have gone old school a little bit. We have organized meetings with groups of people to be able to teach more people at once. We put ourselves in touch with the government to have access to all the leaders here in the city and we are meeting with them to organize big groups of people. We don`t have time to teach people that don`t progress really. We focus on the ones that are most prepared. We put baptism dates in the first lesson and see hwo they accept it. I love the people. They are 70% african Colombian. Very beautiful dark skin. They come up to us wherever we walk. We have been able to put about 15 baptism dates in these last 4 days. We feel happy and blessed to be able to serve the lord here. He is doing his work and we are trying to keep up.

I love you all so much.

Benny

It rains so much here mom. I have eaten more fish and shrimp then you can believe. THIS IS PARADISE.