Hello! How are all of you doing? I hope you had a wonderful conference weekend! I was so blessed to be able to watch most of the sessions. And we even watched them in enlish, which is a big bonus because it´s just not the same when the talks are done over in spanish haha. I loved how much the atonement was talked about. I think that one of my favorite scriptures was quoted a few times... Matthew 11: 28-30. I love my Savior and all the peace that we can find through him. I am so grateful that we have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives. How blessed we are! 

So there were a few highlights of the week that I want to briefly mention: 

1. Cristina prayed! A real prayer. Out loud, in front of us. Wow this was such a big step for her. She is really shy and was so so nervous to pray. Praying seems really natural for us but for someone like Cristina who has only ever recited catholic prayers it can be a little hard. With lots of encouragement and a little help she said a beautiful prayer. I am still so happy about it. Go prayers! 

2. Claudia (a less active) and Arturo (investigator) had their baby and they are so so happy! And we got to go see him! Unai is his name. It is a name in euskera that means good shepard. So great! I love babies so this was basically one of the best things ever. It was hard to not be able to hold him as missionaries and they were way confused as to why we couldn´t hold him haha. 

3. We found a less active member named Soledad who wants to come back to church but is scared to come back after a bad divorce. We just happened to come across her name in our phone and we decided to call her. I am so grateful we found her and that we are here to help her! 

4. Late thursday night I woke up real sick. Probably threw up a good amount of times. Mom I really missed ya.  I don´t know what happened but I think I ate something bad. Yuck. I never want to eat with people again haha. Luckily it only took me out for a day and I am feeling much better!

5. We went to Angelica´s (investigator) birthday party! It was a great time and so cute of her to invite her two, very tall, blonde, missionary friends haha. It was one of those awkward social settings but it gets even more weird when spanish isn´t your first langauge haha. And we even brought some brownies haha. People love brownies here. Mom could you send me one of your recipes? 

Well that´s pretty much my week! Haha. I am doing good and I am grateful to be here. Thank you for all your love and support! I love you and miss you lots! And I hope to hear from you again soon!

xoxo,

Hermana Benson 

Attached are photos from last dia de preparacion y de el cumpleaños de Angelica.

Hola everyone! These are some pictures of the beautiful San Sebastian today. Everything is going well here! I love this work and I am so grateful to be here. Have a wonderful day! I love you all! 

Besossss y abrazosss! 

Hola! Como estan? Espero que todo esta bien con ustedes. Les hecho de menos! La obro aqui en San Sebastian es genial. Me encanta la mision muchisimo. 

Everyone! How are you doing? I hope that everything is going good. I miss you all! The work here in San Sebastian is great. I love the mission so much. 

This last week was a crazy but great week. Haha my companion is awesome and is hanging in there so well. The first few weeks of the mission can be rough because you are thrown into so many new things. She really is a champ. She has such a strong desire to work hard and be obedient and I love her! And she speaks so well for a new missionary even though she doesn´t think she does. I am blessed to have her with me! 

So anyways back to the week, we were so busy but busy weeks are the best! It was also a crazy week where lots of interesting but funny things happened. But what do you expect when two, tall white, blonde, missionaries are walking around spain? I think we got quacked at and meowed at the other day... Haha. And one of our investigators gave us some fake (no alcoholic) beer. Oh and we might have locked our keys in the apartment. And we went to Bilbao for stake conference and zone conference! Ah and we played basketball with some investigators and members who had never played in there lives. It was awesome. 

Besides all those crazy things we have been working hard to prepare Onome for her baptism this Saturday! Yay :) She has been so prepared by the Lord and it has been such a pleasure to see her progress in the gospel. I can´t remember if I have told you a little bit about her story so I´m going to tell you right now! She is about 35 yrs old and from Nigeria. Side note, I love the africans here! They are the nicest most believing people. Anyways a couple months ago we started working with this less active man, Solomon, who now comes every week! And about a month ago he brought Onome and her little girl with him to church! It was such a miracle. A lot of the miracles we see happen through the members. And we have been teaching her for about 3 weeks now and she will be baptized this Saturday! She has been incredible to teach because she already has so much faith in Jesus Christ. And I am so excited for her to take this step of baptism because then the atonement can become real in her life. Whenever we talk about Christ with her the spirit is so strong and I can feel how much the Savior loves her and everyone. I love being a missionary and I love sharing this message of Jesus Christ with people!

So I mentioned a little earlier about how we were able to go down to Bilbao for a stake conference which was so amazing. The talks were super good but my favorite part was I was able to see some of the members who I love so much from Bilbao! It was the best day ever. I can´t even explain to you how much I love these people. And then later that night I went with my cute companion to visit a few of them. We got to go see my convert Mildret and her family who were recently sealed in the temple! They are doing so so well. I am so happy for them. We also got to see Gilda, Fatima, and Patricia. They are three cute women from Paraguay who I became really close with while I was serving in Bilbao. I hope and pray that I will be able to go back and see them all again before the end of my mission! Mom if you come pick me up we are going to visit these people. You will love them. 

Oh and also we had a zone conference yesterday and so that´s why I am writting to you today! But it was so great. I always love meeting with big groups of missonaries because the spirit is super strong. And I love recieving counsel from President and Hermana Pace. They are just the best! 

Woah sorry that turned into a really long email. But I just want you all to know that I love you and our Heavenly Father loves you! The gospel it true. If we follow Jesus Christ and we are faithful until the end we will have eternal life as families! I hope you have a wonderful week and I hope to hear from you again soon! 

xoxo,

Hermana Brooke Benson 

P.S. My fellow Utah fan President Pace told me about the win. GO UTES!!! 

Hola mi familia! How are all of you doing? It is always so good to hear from you every week! It is so good to be back here in San Sebastian with my new companion Hermana Reid. She is from Conneticut, 20 yrs old, BYU fan, haha and tall and blonde like me! Yay! ... Minos the byu part haha just kidding. But really I am so blessed and excited to have her as a companion. She is so ready and willing to work super hard with me! She is also likes to study a lot haha like Michael... So that´s a great example for me. And her spanish is way better than mine when I started. And actually yesterday she invited someone to be baptized for the first time and it was awesome! Haha it is always so scary that first time but she did well and he said yes! Training a brand new missionary is a lot of pressure but it is such a good opportunity for me to learn and grow and become a better missionary. 

The work is going so well here in the beautiful San Se. We have had our days packed with people to teach. The Lord is truly blessing us! And I think we will be seeing a few baptisms this month... Angelica, Cristina, Jenny, and Samuel! My goodness I just love all the people here so much, the members and the people we teach! We just got a new mission leader in the ward here. He is an 18 year old boy from Chile who is preparing for a mission. He is so excited to work with us and has already been helping us out a lot. The ward here is great. Our chapel is so small here though. It is so small that every week they broadcast sacrament meeting into one of the class rooms haha. I sometimes worry that we won´t have seats for our investigators but some how it all works out good. They are looking for a place to build a new church but it could take a few years. 

I am so grateful to be a missionary in the Spain Barcelona mission. It was so good to go down to Barcelona and pick up my companion. We had a big meeting with President and Hermana Pace (they are the best), the trainers (can´t believe I´m not new anymore), and all the new missonaries. I also ran into Corbin there too! Haha so great, I haven´t seen him for like 4 1/2 months. There we so many missonaries there! I love meeting with so many of us because the spirit is always so strong. 

Keep me updated on your lives! It sounds like you are all doing really well :) Keep on keepin on! Love you all so much!! 

XOXO

Hola mi querida familia,

How is everyone doing? I can´t believe that summer has come to an end and you are back in school! Que loco! It was so good to hear from all of you this week. I always look forward to reading your emails. This week has been great for Hermana Tyler and I. We have seen so many miracles. I am so grateful to be serving and I wouldn´t change it for anything. The gospel is real. I know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and knows us. I love being able to share this message of hope and love with the people here! I love the people here so much. I can´t even describe it. 

Okay okay I really want to share with you the miracle of the week! So remember me telling you about the spanish woman we found at the bus stop? Okay so she came to church last sunday and it was wonderful! Before church we were able to give her a LDM and explain a little bit about it. And on Thursday we had our first real lesson with her. So we taught her about the restoration of the gospel! It went so well! Ahhh I am so grateful. The spirit was so strong and she was so receptive to everything we said and felt there. At the begining of the lesson haha Michael will know this but usually as part of that lesson we explain that this gospel blesses families. And as we were talking about this i felt like I should bear my testimony to her about eternal families "las familias pueden ser eternas", as I bore testimony of this her face just kind of lit up and she said me too, I believe in that too! Ahh so good. Then later the member who´s home we were having the lesson in bore her testimony about recieving an answer that LDM is verdadero and about how we feel the spirit. And Cristina just kept saying I really want to find out if it is true, I want to know that too. Wow. Okay she is the most prepared person ever. But it gets better. So towards the end of the lesson I asked her if she had had a chance to read in the book of mormon and she was like ya a little. And she opens it up and she had read 15 chapters!!! This never happens. I am so excited and happy for Cristina. I can´t wait to continue to see her progress in the gospel. I know that she will recieve an answer as she reads and prays! We are hoping that we can set a baptismal fecha with her this week :). 

This is the last week of the transfer! It has literally flown by and I knew it would because I am loving my companion and area so much. I think this is transfer 3 for me. And for the last week of the transfer President Pace sent us two mini missionaries to work with. They are two 16 year old young women from Barcelona. Hermana Aragote and Hermana Mizzini. They are so cute and excited to be here. I will send a picture next week. It is so fun to teach, contact, and knock doors with them! I really hope that they have a wonderful experience and that they will leave with a strong desire to serve a mission. I wonder if you can do mini missions in Utah? I wish I would have done that! Anyways back to transfers, they are this next wednesday the 3rd. And I will probably stay here and train! Yay :) I will not be able to email next Monday but later on in the week once I get back from Barcelona!

I am so thankful for all of you and I love you so very much! Thank you for all your love and support. I hope to hear from all of you again! Les quiero mucho!! Que tenga un buen dia! :) 

Xoxo,

Hermana Benson 

Hola familia,How are all of you doing? I miss all of you so much! :) Can you believe that beloved summer is coming to an end?! I can´t! Summer always flies by. Well it sounds like all of you are doing pretty well... Nothing too crazy haha. San Sebastián is just great! I am really starting to love it here. The mission just gets better and better. This week was a pretty good week. And we had such a wonderful miracle happen yesterday that I want to tell you about. So lately I´ve been thinking about how the actually people from Spain are really hard to contact in the street because they are just not very open. So usually when we contact them with a direct approach we get shut down just about every time haha. But the people who live here who are from South America and Africa are much easier to contact. But I have been thinking about how we can get more investigators who are from this country! Anyways back to the story... Yesterday my companion and I were sitting at the bus stop waiting and this spanish woman came and sat down and my cute companion just turned to her and started some small talk. And guess what? She was so nice and friendly and she was super curious as to why we were so far away from home sharing this message about Jesucriso. We continued to talk with her and ended up chatting with her the whole bus ride. By the end of the ride we got her number and she said that she would come to church! What?? This rarely happens with the Spaniards. Her name is Cristina and I am so excited for her. And as I was talking to her on the bus it just really seemed like she has been prepared to hear and accept the gospel. Sometimes I will just be talking with someone and it hits me like whoa I´m a missionary right now and I´m speaking spanish with someone haha. I am so grateful to be on a mission, it is an amazing experience!  This week in San Sebastián is a huge holiday called La Gran Semana. And there are so many people out and about! Every night at like 11:00 they have a bunch of fireworks and sadly that is past our curfew so we don´t get to watch them. Haha but it´s okay. They also have tons of concerts and fun things for the little kids to do.  But anyways I don´t have much time to write this week because the place we email is super busy! But I just want you to know that I love you and the gospel is true and it will and does bless our lives. Thanks for writting to me! I hope to hear from you all again soon! Keep me updated on your lives, okay? Oh and I am sending you a letter today with some fun pictures :) Love you,Hermana Benson