Buenos Tardes! Holllllla everyone! How are all of you doing? I hope you each had a great week and I really enjoyed reading your emails! It sounds like everyone is doing pretty good. And it sounds hot in the SLC! Bilbao is beautiful right now. We have finally had some sun and it is just wonderful. It is probably like 70 degrees. Perfect. Today I´m in Barcelona picking up my residency card and it is pretty warm here! Barcelona is such a cool city! I would love to serve sometime during my mission. And today I got to see La Sagrada familia, which is a famous cathedral here. I will attach some pictures. This cathedral has been under contruction for over 100 years and is still not finished. But let me tell you... It is stunning. 

But the best part of my week was Mildret´s baptism!!!!! YAYYY. It was a great day and everything went smoothly. Mildret and her Dad looked so good in their white clothing. I will attach some pictures of them too! Mildret was so prepared and I am so happy and excited for her. Luckily this time I did not have to give a talk haha but I did participate in the musical number. We sang "We I am baptized (Cuando me bautice)" ... I love this song. She is truly a special girl that will be really hard for me to say goodbye too. She is always so happy and has a huge smile of her face. I just love her! And the best part is that her family is preparing to go to the temple!! I couldn´t be more excited about this. 

I wrote you a letter earlier today haha that you won´t get for another week so I´m trying not to repeat things! But anyways the work is going good and I´m good too. I miss all of you but I am loving my mission more and more as I go. I´m really excited for all the new sisters that are coming in. The new hermanas we have a really great and it has been fun to get to know them. I´m not sure what will happen this next transfer in a few weeks. I really hope I stay in Bilbao because I love the people here and it´s beautiful. I would really like to get a spanish speaking companion so that I can get really good at spanish. My companion speaks spanish well but doesn´t like speaking with me. So it would be really good to be just forced into speaking spanish all the time. I feel like I need to get realy good at spanish so that I can be the kind of missionary I want to be and the Lord wants me to be. And I will need to be good when we get 20 new hermanas in September because there is a 90% chance that most us everyone (including me) will be training! 

Hmmm I´m trying to think of what else to tell you... Oh did you watch the missionary broadcast or hear about it? I haven´t been able to watch it yet but hopefull sometime this week! I´ve heard that they may start implementing facebook and ipads for missionaries. Pretty cool. I don´t know when we would find time to use that haha but I´m sure they have a plan. This is an exciting time to be a missionary and I feel blessed to be here in the Spain, Barcelona mission (the best mission around)! I wouldn´t change a thing! I miss you all but I am happy to be here! 

I love you all mucho! Y espero escuchar de ustedes pronto! Aguurrr! Besos y abrazos!

Con amor,

Hermana Brooke Benson 

Stuck in an elevator.

Dearest family,

Hola buenas dias todos! ¿Como estan? How are all of you? It sounds like you are all having a pretty good summer! Thanks for your all of your love and support. I have the best, most good looking family around. I missed you this fourth of July!! It sounds like you had a good time! It was weird to be somewhere where the fourth is not celebrated. So in order to do some celebrating we sang the national anthem a few times throughout the morning, dressed up in all the red, white, and blue we had, and we even made an "American" lunch. For lunch we ate hot dogs, chips, watermelon, and lemonade. It was a great time. I love it here but sometimes I miss America haha. 

This week Ali (our investigator from Pakistan) had us over for medio dia and he made us a traditional Pakistani meal. It was a little nervous but it was actually really good. He made this chicken with all these different spices, and I think there was some curry in there too, with rice. Super good! Haha and then we brought brownies for dessert. It was really nice of him to have us over. He is really great and would make a great member of the church. He is still waiting to recieve an answer from God about baptism.... But it seems to me that he has already recieved many answers. So we are working on trying to help him recognize answers from the Holy Ghost. It´s really interesting because he has told us that he wants to be baptized like Christ was and he wants to feel clean from sins... But he needs an answer. I hope he recognizes these answers soon! I have faith that someday soon Ali will be baptized! 

So yesterday was fast Sunday and a really cute member named Paola invited us over to eat after church. We got to her building and all got in the elevator (note... the elevators are tiny here) and it got stuck!! All six of us were stuck in the elevator for about an hour. It was a little stressful to say the least haha but it was so cramped with all of us in there and yesterday was a pretty warm day. Haha I tried to keep people calm... including myself haha. We were all a little on edge because of the hunger levels, heat, and cramped space. And then we said a prayer... and then we called the 911 number here hahaha. It was semi embarrasing that we had to call the emergency number because we were stuck in this elevator. While we were waiting for someone to rescue us we sang a few songs haha and shared a spiritual thought with the member. Good missionary times. Then some guy finally came and opened the door for us and all was well! And then we went and ate a really yummy meal with Paola!

Hmm I´m trying to think what else. Oh okay so the other day I was on a split with one of the Hermanas from Pamplona. And guess what, she is even newer than me! Weird, I still feel like I just got here. But anyways when we were together we saw so many miracles. So many people were just put right in our path. First we went to visit a less active and it turns out we went to the wrong appartment but these two women let us in so we talked for a little bit and prayed with them. They are potential new investigators. Then we ran into this cute family from the Congo who we talked with, gave a Book of Mormon too, and prayed with. They are really cute and I´m excited to meet with them again. Then we ran into two American girls, which never happens! They were really nice and we ended up giving them a card and inviting them to churhc. And then we went and met this reference from the Elders. And it turned out that he and his friend just wanted to Bible bash... Haha in Spanish. But the miracle to this incident was that I understood what they were saying and we were able, in a christ like way, have a conversation and leave them our testimonies and The Book of Mormon. 

Missions are great and I´m grateful to be here in Spain. I learn so much everyday and my testimony is strengthened everyday. I know this gospel is true. I know that as we obey God´s commandments we are blessed in many ways.  Yo se que Jesucristo es nuestro Salvador y mediante El podemos recibir perdon y mas paz y consuelo en nuestras vidas. Se que Dios nos ama much. Somos hijos de Dios. Digo esos cosas en El Nombre de Jesucristo. Amen. 

I love you all and I hope you have a great week! I hope to here from you soon! Un besaso! 

Con amor,

Hermana Benson 

Hola everyone!! I hope you have all had a fantastic week. The work here in Bilbao is going so great. I am happy to be here and I love my mission more and more everyday. This last week was sooo great. Guess what?! Fredy from Argentina was baptized!! Ah it was such a special day and I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to be a small part of it. The best part of the baptism for me was when Fredy shared his testimony. Wow is all I can say. I feel like my companion and I hardly did anything because he is so so prepared by the Lord. But the worst part of the baptism haha just kidding not really was when Fredy decided he wanted me to give a talk haha. Oh man a talk all in spanish. Wheeew I´m glad it´s over! I was pretty nervous but I think it went okay! Back to his testimony... He talked about before he was without belief and how this has changed his life and that baptism was the best decision he has ever made. The spirit was so strong and I know that Fredy and his cute family have so many blessings in store. Haha and when he was closing he was trying to remember en el nombre de Jesucristo, amen but it didn´t come to him, haha so he just said por Jesucristo (for Jesus Christ). Ah it was the BEST. Oh and President and Hermana Pace came to the baptism and it was so cool to have them there! They are wonderful! I´m grateful the baptism went smoothly because we had a few "technical" difficulties before hand... A few hours before the baptism Hermana Goodman and I were at a relief society activity and right before we were going to leave we decided to check out the font to make sure everything was good. And we walked past the bathrooms towards the font and we just started smelling something awful. And we opened the door to the font and the smell just continued to get worse. Like so bad I was semi gagging haha. So we look into the font and there is straight up pooooop in the font! Sewage had come up and out of the drain at the bottom of the font! We quickly found Elder Herrero (husband of the senor couple who we serve with) and just told him that something was wrong with the font and that he NEEDED to go look. Haha so him and Hermano José (ym president), who is eating a dessert, go up and to look... Haha we stayed back because honestly I couldn´t hand the smell. They come back out and Hermano José just quietly throws away his dessert haha and Elder Herrero comes out with a disgusted look on his face and leans over to us and says (in his awesome spanish accent), "Hermanas... That is big fat crap (he may have used a different word)!" Haha I was in such shock and aw at whole situation that I just could not stop laughing. Like seriously of all things like could happen before a baptism... Poop in the font?! But it all turned out to be okay. Hermano José so kindly cleaned out the font while Elder Herrero sent us to the store to go by febreeze to spray all of the whole church. And the best part about the whole thing is that Fredy had and still has no idea of the events that transpired before hand! It really did turn out to be such a great night and I am so happy and excited for Fredy! He recieved The Holy Ghost and the priesthood on Sunday. And today we are going to teach him about temples and eternal marriage/families! His wife and kids get back from Myorca in a couple weeks! :) 
Well I hope you got a good laugh out of the story like I did!  I love you all and I hope everything is going well! Thank you for your love and support! Hope to hear from you soon! :) 

xoxo,


Hermana Benson

P.S. Attached are some pictures from Fredy´s baptism. 

HOLA everyone,

How is everyone doing?! Thank you for your sweet emails. Everything is going good here in Spain. Today I am up in San Sebastion because my companion had to go to Barcelona so I am up here staying with the sister here. It´s about 90 minutes away from Bilboa. And it is so so so beautiful here. It´s right on the coast below France. This morning we went on a run on the boardwalk! Mom you would have loved it! I wish you were all here with me. I head back to Bilbao tonight. The work is going well! And guess what?! We have a baptism this Saturday for Freddy. He is the dad from the family from Argentina. He is so great and prepared. His wife moved to Mynorca for a month to work so maybe he will baptize her when she gets back! The missionaries are going to keep teaching her there. It is so exciting to see some of the fruits of our labors! We are also still teaching Ali. He is doing well we just need him to start coming to church! We are still teaching  Mildret as well. Her and her parents are still deciding on a baptismal date for her. Sorry this is so short I have to run! But I love you so much! xoxo

Hermana Benson 

Some pics of Brooke's apartment and city.