Hey everyone! How are you all doing? I love hearing from you every week. Thank you for your love and support! 

This has been an amazing week for Hermana Hair and I! I feel so so so blessed. I love my life. I love my mission. I don´t even know where to begin. Okay so the other day we were on the metro headed to the church and I noticed this dad and his cute little girl. And I just looked at my companion and we were both like ahhh lets contact him. So I walk over and start talking with him in spanish and he just goes in english, "Yes the church of jesus christ of latter day saints... I was a member." We were so surprised! He told us that back in his country (Nigeria) he was a member and even recieved a mission call. But since coming here to Spain he has been inactive. Also his name is Loveday, so that just makes everything so much better! So we were able to take his name and address and later that day we went and took him a Book of Mormon. You can tell that he still has a strong testimony and desires to come back. So we are excited to help him! The only problem is, is that he works on Sundays but we are all praying that he will be able to find a way to come. 

Next miracle. We were again on the metro. A woman came up and asked us if we speak spanish because I guess we were speaking in english haha. And of course we answered yes we do! Haha and then we just started talking and she started asking us all the questions and then telling us about her life. Her name is Madelayn and she is from Venezuela And it turns out that she has only been here in Spain for 3 months and has had a really hard time. And she is searching to find purpose in her life and to be spiritually strengthened. So we ended up going to a park and talking with her more and sharing a few scriptures with her. She is such a prepared person and we can´t wait to help her! 

The gospel is true and miracles exist. God loves us. And I love you too! I hope you all have a wonderful week! 

xoxo,

Hermana Benson 

P.S. Today for preparation day we are going through the Sagrada Familia and I am so excited! I will send lots of pictures. And Hermana Hair says hi!

Picture number one is Hermana Hair and I eating food from Ecuador and wearing hats from Columbia (where hermana hair was born). Picture number two- cats. 

Hola! Como están? I hope everyone is doing great! This has been a crazy but wonderful week. On Saturday our investigator Hever got baptized. He was so prepared and it was a beautiful day! I am so excited for him to progress in the gospel. My favorite part of the baptism was when we shared his testimony. And he has a great to desire to share the gospel with his family in Peru. So we are trying to help him send missionaries to his house there. Attached is a photo from the baptism. We were truly blessed with so many miracles this last transfer. 

Also I got transfered! That is why I wasn´t able to email you yesterday... But now I am serving in the actual city of Barcelona! It is pretty close to my last area but it´s a different zone and chapel and everything. But I am so happy and excited to be here. It was really hard to say goodbye to all the people I love so much in Hospitalet. I hope to see them again one day. And now I am companions with Hermana Hair. She is sooo great. She was born in Columbia but raised in Utah. So she speaks english and spanish perfectly. And she is the sweetest girl ever. I am so excited to be with her! Also the area and apartment are beautiful. You can see the Sagrada familia from our window! It´s so cool! And I hear the ward and area are great. 

Hmmm what else... Things are going good on the mission. I love it so much! Time is flying by so that really scares me. So I am trying to take advantage of every minute. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to be on the mission it has taught me so much and it has changed me for the better! Thank you for all your love and support! I love you all so much! Have a great week! 

xoxo,

Hermana Benson

First picture is from the baptism.

Next picture is a from the english class that I was teaching every Saturday.

Hola a todos! Como estaís? I can´t believe we are already in summer. It came so quickly! It has been quite warm here lately and I am starting to get a nice farmer´s tan. And my companion is really burnt. I am happy to hear that everyone had a great week! We had a really good week here too. We have be so so blessed. Miracles everyday! 

So we are super excited because we have a baptism this saturday for our friend named Hever. He is about 48 and from Peru. He looked up the church online and showed up to church a few Sundays ago. He is honestly one of the most prepared people I have seen on my mission. He has already read the gospel principles book, is reading the Book of Mormon and he is working on watching all of the general conference sessions. And just yesterday he decided that he wanted to be baptized this Saturday! We were so excited! And he is here alone working in Spain but he has his wife and three kids in Peru and we are working on sending the missionaries to his family too. And we are also working with Jessica and Joshua, who are from Nigeria. They are the best. They too showed up to church a couple weeks ago. They will be baptized the 28th of this month! They love the church so much and it makes me happy! 

Today for preparation day we went and played football as a zone on this field near the olympic stadium it was really fun! It was good to play some real football. But the natives had no idea how to play haha it was funny. There were these other young people from Montreal watching and they came and joined us. But before that when we were waiting for the other missionaries to arrive we ran into Elder Mazzagardi who is in the 70 and his cute wife. They are here on vacation from Brasil trying to avoid all the craziness from the world cup happening there. I will attach a picture! 

Well that is really all for now! I am glad everyone is healthy and happy! I love you all and I hope you have a great week! I look forward to hearing from you again! 

Besos,

Hermana Benson 

Hey everyone! How are you doing? It is always so good to hear from each of you. It makes me happy to know that you are all doing well. I just love you so much! 

This week was a really good week. We saw so many miracles here in our area. We have been blessed with some new investigators that I am really excited about. The first ones are Luis (17) and Mirian (15). They are children of Catalina who is a less active woman. They recently arrived here in Spain from Bolivia. They came so they could be with their mom. And she is so excited and anxious for them to learn about the gospel. They are so so cute! They came with us to play volleyball this saturday morning with all the other young people. We had a good time and we are excited to keep teaching them. We are also going to start teaching Jessica and Joshua from Nigeria. They just walked into church last week with their bibles and all. They are really nice and they like the church a lot. So those are some of the miracle news that we were blessed with this week! 

This month in Spain is the month of invitation... Maybe it´s a world wide thing haha I´m not sure. But it means that this month as a ward we are really focusing on having more people in church every week. So each night at 10:00 we are praying with all the members that they might be blessed with opportunities to share the gospel. It is really great because I feel like it is really united the ward and making them more excited to do missionary work. Go members. They are number one. We met with one member last week named Anna Maria. And she started to tell us about all the things she is doing to share the gospel. When she goes into like phone stores or the apple stores she makes sure to leave the church website on the screen. Haha such a great idea! And she is also taking with her friends at work about the church. And she asked for cards, folletos, and a book of mormom that she could give away! She has caught the missionary fire! Wow we were so impressed and we can´t wait to keep working with her. Members are so important in this work. As missionaries we need them if we want the work to keep moving forward in the Lord´s way. 

Thank you for all your love and support! I hope you have a great week and that you have to opportunity to share the gospel with someone! Les quiero mucho! 

xoxo,

Hermana Benson

P.S. Ahhh also I almost forgot. This week we got a surprise call from Mark Scott (our recent convert) saying that he had made it safely back to Nigeria and that some one that lives in his house is a member and that they are planning on going to church together! Ah I was so relieved and happy to hear that.  

This is my dearest companion Hermana Reid and I at concilio last week! I trained her in San Sebastian last summer... Love her so much! 

Hiii everyone! How are you doing? This week was a great week because Mark Scott got baptized! We have been working really hard with him for the last 3 months and his baptismal dates kept falling through. And so I was praying so so hard that we could have a baptism in our area. I know that God hears and answers our prayers and blesses us when we do our best. All last week we had been trying to meet with Mark Scott but he kept canceling on us. And I was so so sad because I didn´t know if he would be getting baptized. And then finaly on Friday evening we were able to meet with him and he told us that he wanted to be baptized before he goes back to Nigeria.  And I was hesitant because he had been firing on us and I didn´t know how I felt about baptizing him and then having him leave the country. So we met up with him and went to a localtorio to go find the church that was close to where he will be living in Nigeria. And we were just planning on sending his information as a reference. But he kept asking us if it would be possible if he could be baptized on Saturday. So we went over the interview questions with him and it went well so then we decided to call Elder Garcia (Our district leader) to see if it would be possible to have an interview that same night. And miraculously they had time! So there you have it. We planned the baptism in one night and the baptism went so smoothly the next day. It was really one of the most spiritual baptisms I have been too. There were not many people there but it was very quiet and the spirit was felt strongly. And he was so happy. It was so amazing to see his progress from the night that we contacted him to the day he was baptized. The gospel is true. And it changes people´s lives. 

I love you all and I hope and pray you are happy and healthy! Thanks for your love and support! I hope you have a wonderful week! 

Here are some pictures from the baptism! 

Hey everyone! How are you? Sorry I have zero time to write today because we had our leadership meeting all day today. But I will have a little more time tommorrow. I just wanted to let you know that things are going well here and we were blessed with a baptism on Saturday! Mark Scott finally got baptized and it was a wonderful day! I love you all and thank you for your emails, love and support! 

xoxo,

Hermana Benson