Semana 20 in Iquitos (May 26th, 2014)

Hello my family!

Well this week flew by in the blink of an eye. I felt like I was just writing you all yesterday. 

Hermana Centeno and I are living the dream here in our area Las Colinas and working so hard. This week for sure had it's ups and downs but we are learning so much.  We're also going to be moving this week because Sister Gomez doesn't like our house all that much and wants us to move into an apartment owned by a family of members, it's for sure safer and the road in front of the house is cement (HALLELUJAH).  Its gonna be really tough though because our current house is basically inaccessible by motokar and I don't know how we're gonna load all of our stuff onto a motokar, but hopefully the members will help us out with that one!

We've been finding lots of new investigators and some awesome families that we're teaching.  One of of them is a super cute little 20 year old mom who has two little twin baby boys. Her name is Chana and we've been teaching here a week or two now.  Her husband is a member of the church but hasn't been active since he was a kid, but she is super interested and has come to church and wants to get baptized. So we've been teaching her normal, but this week we went and taught her with a member named Janina. Janina is awesome, she's always helping us out, giving us people to teach and usually tries to teach the whole lesson haha. This time when we got to the house, Chana's husband Jose, would not come and went and hid on the back porch. With Janina leading the way we marched around to the back of the house and brought the lesson to him. I literally sat on a log and we started teaching. We started getting to know Jose better and he said that he doesn't really have goals for his family and that his kids can do whatever they want. And with that Janina was off, she started with a social analysis of why Jose was that way, and then started burning him REALLY hard and started saying things like 'I know you have problems in your relationshiop and your family, and your babies are sick! Look at them! I can tell that they have diarhea! And your wife is suffering and lonely!" at this point my companion and I were slightly horrified and tried to cut her off before the damage got any worse. And right as I was getting ready to change the subject Chana, with a baby on each knee, started crying really hard. A cry of desperation, and of someone who really is suffering. Janina went over and started hugging and comforting her, and she too started crying and telling her to be strong and that we love here. And right then one of the babies started crying and had an accident of diarrhea. At this point I was kind of freaked out I had no idea how this sister was able to discern all of these challenges that this young women and her family were facing, when normally we would teach her and she would be there with a smiling face. That night, Janina went back to the house of Chana and gave her some money to take her babies to the clinic. I learned a lot from Hermana Janina and her example to me. At first I was like 'oh my gosh this woman is a wizard' but then I realized that when we are in tune with the spirit, we truly can discern the needs of these people. Because it's true, so many of these people are suffering in ways I can't even imagine, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer. It's what truly brings families together and can heal all these problems.  I completely sure that Chana felt the love of Hermana Janina and this week came to church.  I was moved by this experience and pray for the spirit of discernment to help me open my heart and truly help my brothers and sisters here in Iquitos.

This week Segundo got baptized! He is so awesome and has lots of goals for his family. But sadly on sunday he didn't come to his confirmation.  It doesn't sound that bad, but for me and Hermana Centeno it was a pretty hard blow as missionaries and really sad. We went and talked to him to find out what happened and there were some issues that happened and he feels pretty bad about it, and I'm 100%  sure that he will be there next sunday for his confirmation.

So that was probably the low point of the week, but there are things that happen that are out of our control, what is important is that we are constantly learning. 

One of the members asked me how it feels when I see the families that we have found, taught, married and baptized in their dresses and white shirts and ties faithfully walking to their sunday meetings as families and reading their scriptures and Liahona's--I literally can't describe it. It's AWESOME. Missionary life rules. 

Love,

Hermana Benyo

Photos:

1. Us and Segundo before his baptism, along with his now father-in-law/our convert Maykeel

2. Amazon river dolphin!!! awwww

3. Our neighbors selling their freshly caught piranhas 

4. The peruvian hairless dogs here are super cute!

5. Hairless puppies

6. The street in front of our house after it rains (ie every day)

Semana 19 in Iquitos (May 19th, 2014)

Wow do I have a lot to update you on this week! Hermana Centeno and I are pleased to announce that two of our families that we taught got married on saturday, Guido and Betsy, and Meredith and Segundo!! Woohoo! and after the ceremony, Betsy, their daughter Emily, and our other investigator Sofia got baptized!! And Segundo will be getting baptized this Saturday.  This week was a little crazy, filled with trips downtown to do marriage papers, we had a bar-b-que activity with the ward to help raise money for the matrimonies, decorating the chapel, and a little bit of stress on the side! Like I said the other week now that we're doing all the marriage papers it's a little more work and matrimonies and baptisms always stress me out a little bit but they also are so awesome I cannot describe to you how great it feels to see these families come together, be married, and enter into the covenant of baptism. Each on of them bore their testimonies after being baptized and hearing them firmly state their faith in Jesus Christ brings so much joy and warmth to my soul, Its not something I can even describe. After being baptized, Sofia pulled me aside and thanked us for everything and said that she feels like she really has started a new life, now that she has come to this great step of baptism.  It was an awesome day, the Elders also had a couple that got married so we had a joint ceremonies and they all got baptized afterwards. It was such a beautiful day and for real I'm still on cloud 9. I love being a missionary.

Oh yeah, I went to Ecuador this week. Hehe. So on Tuesday the zone leaders told me I would be flying to Lima the next day (Iquitos is surrounded by rivers on all sides and there's no roads connecting Iquitos to the rest of the world so leaving always means flying), but this news was normal because I still have to do some visa stuff. This is a really exciting thing for people serving here in Iquitos because Lima means McDonald's, and Papa John's and all kinds of other delicious American things that sadly don't exist in island cities in the middle of the jungle. So We flew in Wednesday night and they took us to a super ritzy beautiful hotel (WITH HOT WATERRRRRRRR). Yeah you bet I showered for a good 30 minutes. So yeah Lima was nice I legitimately thought it was about 38 degrees there it felt so cold to me, but when I saw the temperature it was actually 68...hahah, I'm so weak. So the next morning they piled us in a van and took us back to the airport....which confused me a little because I was expecting to go to immigrations. So when we got to the airport they were like 'Great, so you guys need to leave the country, so you're going to Ecuador?. hahaha what. So we hopped on a flight to a place I've never heard of called Tumbes and when we got there it was SUPER hot again and they piled us in a van and drove us to Ecuador lol. So that was an adventure, it's a lovely country with diverse people, but sadly I was only in Ecuador for about 2 hours. We had to leave the country and re-enter. But the good news is I have the Ecuador stamp on my passport so it COUNTS. Then they dropped us off in Tumbes in some plaza and we ate dinner and acted like tourists for a while, took pictures by the river. We ran into some missionaries that are serving in Tumbes too and they gave us some tips on where to eat and whatnot. So then we flew back to Lima, stayed the night in the Hotel, and flew back into Iquitos in the morning. haha so yeah that happened.

But for real this week was so great, different but I loved it. My testimony and desire to serve the people of Iquitos gets stronger and stronger every day. I love you all and hope you all know that I am working my heart out here and loving every minute of it!

Love,

Hermana Benyo

Semana 17 in Iquitos (May 5th, 2014)

Hello family and friends!

Hope you are all doing well, I miss all your pretty little faces!  Everything is great here in Iquitos and I hope that spring has finally sprung up there.  Honestly I don’t know what season is because you can ask whatever person what season it is and get a different answer every time. But it’s safe to say that seasons aren’t really a thing here.  We just finished our sixth week here in Iquitos and I can’t believe we’re already at changes again, the time flies so fast. But I won’t be going anywhere for a while which I’m totally fine with because I really like my area and my companion, Hermana Centeno.  This month of May we’re teaching some really awesome people, and it looks like we will be marrying and baptizing one or two families (one for sure). The other news is that our Zone Leaders just informed us that from now on, we will be taking care of the marriage process for all of our families. Before, they did all the papers for everyone in the zone, but it’s gotten to be a huge burden so now we get to do it! Which is fun but also a bit stressful because the process can get kind of complicated depending on the situation.  This Saturday, Sofia is getting baptized! She is beautiful inside and out and learning and living what she’s learning. I love seeing the fire of her developing testimony, it always inspires me and brings us so much joy, everytime we meet with her. She is going to be great. The other family is the famiy of Hermano Guido and his wife Betsi. We have been praying and fasting for them so much and doing service for them to help them with some struggles and we know that our prayers have been answered. Guido has made a 180 turn and is ready to come back to church, get married and help his wife and daughter prepare to be baptized. It really is a miracle his change of disposition and we owe it all to the lord. Yesterday they all came to church and it was the best. I love having families that we’re teaching in the chapel with us together.  This week I’ve been feeling a little insufficient and like I’m not completely living up to my potential. And more that the spirit is not always with me. Our leaders gave us a really awesome talk that talked about one missionary who had a similar experience, and asked a well known leader in the church what he should do.  The leader told him that what he lacked was the accompaniment of the spirit, and this is because the spirit only dwells in holy tabernacles. If we are doing things that drive away the spirit, of course we won’t be at our full potential.  What we have to do is purify ourselves. So he told the young man to go home, start fasting and praying for one day and make a list of all the things and all the thoughts that drive away the spirit. Whether it’s thinking too much about your life at home, speaking sarcastically to your companion, or sleeping in a few minutes longer than you should, put them all on the list and present it to the Lord. With this list of things he challenged him to do a 40 day fast. For forty days, completely abstain from each of these things on the list, and he promised that he would see miracles. They did this and it completely transformed their attitudes and not only that, it affected the people they taught. They taught with more power and authority with this companionship of the spirit. After reading this, I was totally inspired and ready to go because it was exactly what I needed. There are so many things that I do that prevent me from living up to my potential and having the spirit with me at all times. So my companion and I made our list and this beginning of the new 6 week change starts our 40 day fast from all of our little vices. Even the little things, the distracting thoughts, the negative words, all of it. This is a process of purification and we know that we will see miracles. It won’t be easy and we can’t do it on our own by any means. But every morning we will look at this list and pray for strength to withstand temptation. And every night we will report back to the Lord how we did, where we messed up and commit to be better the next day. I know that this is a Gospel of change and that if we don’t actually change and repent, this life and this time of probation with be worthless. I'm so grateful for the grace of Jesus Christ which allows us to be better, to be transformed into the best version of ourselves, and to be purified. Habits and behavior don’t change overnight and we gotta keep going, every day is a fight and that is one thing that I just love about this life. I wish you all the best and hope that you too can be inspired to purify yourselves and live up to the potential that our father in Heaven has in mind for you all. I love you sweet people. Peace out till next week!

Ps can’t wait to see those guapo faces this Sunday on skype!

Love,

Hermana Benyo

Semana 16 in Iquitos (April 28th, 2014)

Hello my dear family!

Hope you are all doing fine, still can't believe you guys got another dog, but hey I'm pretty happy about that haha. Hermana Centeno and I had a fabulous week here in Iquitos, but what else is new I really feel like I'm living the dream here. We have a lot of new people who are preparing for baptism this month and several families who potentially may get married and baptized this month. Our area here in Las Colinas has some serious potential and we are working on turbo right now.  

We have a new investigator named Sofia who lives with a member, she is 19 years old and the definition of golden investigator. She's been attending church the last month and loves it. Our first lesson she expressed her desires to follow the Savior's example, start a new life and be baptized.  The second lesson in her prayer she asked Heavenly Father to help her to follow our example so that she can also serve a mission. We were smiling so big after that prayer. She has a such as sweet spirit, she literally glows. She is preparing for baptism on the 10th.

We are continuing to teach the soon to be son in law of the Torres Amias Family. His name is Segundo and he's really great as well. He's been praying to know if the Book of Mormon and the Church are true and he's said that he feels that it is. It's looking like we will be planning the wedding for them on the 17th.

It's pretty crazy because there's like three other families too that we could potentially be marrying and baptizing this month which could be a little stressful but we're way excited! May is gonna be a good one!

I've been thinking a whole lot lately about how great it is to be here. I'm exactly where the Lord wants me to be and there's literally no other place I would rather be. I love being a missionary and I love serving the Lord and his children.  I'm learning and stretching and growing in so many ways, dilligence, hard work, service, love and charity, humility, selflessness, focus....It's such a time of growing I wouldn't change it for the world. So thank you for supporting me out here. Thank you for the prayers, all of it. We never get discouraged here, because we're already on the winning side!

An update on Iquitos is that I realized recently that I literally don't even feel the heat anymore. It's completely normal and it's so sad to me that living this long in tropical heat and humidity with no air conditioning that I will shiver in anything less that 80 degrees. Yeah it's safe to say I'm officially not the Wisconsin girl I once was.  Update on the bats in our house, we haven't heard from them recently and the cucarachas have been keepin pretty quiet. Also the Elders in our ward have a huge monkey with a scary face living in the rafters of their house, so I mean yeah, I really can't complain.  Excited to call home in a couple weeks. All is well in Iquitos! Love you all, stay sweet, choose the right, and write me! 

Love, Hermana Benyo

Semana 15 in Iquitos (April 21, 2014)

Hellooooooo my family!!!

I hope you all had the best Easter! I had a pretty good one!

This week we had interviews with President and Hermana Gomez. They are seriously the best I cannot express enough how much I love them. I feel so much love from them and for real, mom and dad, they are literally the Mexican versions of you guys, so it's like I have my parents away from my real parents.  President Gomez is always happy, loving, and encouraging and Hermana Gomez is like the super smart mom nurse lady who loves her kids, it's so funny they remind me so much of you guys.  So yeah it's always great getting to see them. (Also, my zone leader is LITERALLY a Guatemalan version of Nick).

This week the Torres Amias family got married and baptized! Wooohoo!!!!!!! It was both mine and Hermana Centeno's first family/matrimony in our mission so it was a little stressful figuring out the paperwork, fundraising, clothes, decorations, food and all that jazz. But the Elders and the ward helped out a TON, and we are so grateul for their help and support. But It was a great day and we were so happy and proud to see them get married, baptized, and confirmed as a family. I know I've said it a bajillion times but I really can't express how much we love this family.

This saturday a little boy we're teaching named Angel is also getting baptized and he's pretty excited about it. Other than that, Hermana Centeno and I are trucking along, finding new families to teach and trying to help bring back the less actives to church. That is a big obstacle here in Iquitos, there are tonnnns of less active members. Pretty much every block in our area has one or more families of less active members, and many times all we need to do is visit them and show them that they are missed.

Hey fun news, we have bats in our house! We finally got rid of the nasty gigantic cockroaches only to discover bat droppings in our house. So my mosquito net has now been converted from my cucarachaprotection-net to my murcielagoprotection-net. We haven't seen them yet because they only come out in the night but they leave presents for us every morning. The elders advised us that we just have to sleep with a slingshot and we'll be ok, so we're thinking about trying that one out. hehe.

But other than that, all is well in good old Iquitos and I wish you all well!

Love,

Hermana Benyo

Semana 14 in Iquitos (April 14th, 2014)

This week in Iquitos.....

ADVERNTURES WERE HAD THIS WEEK!!! 

I'm really happy and excited right now and I don't really know why but everything is great, is all I can say!. Not going to lie this week was a big ball of stress at times and at other times was so fun and so spiritual I can't even explain it.  Our area is seriously the best I could serve the rest of my mission here and be completly content.

Hermana Centeno and I are continuing finding new investigators and families to teach left and right, working till we drop and I'm honestly so content that way.  We are proud to announce that our family, The Torres Amias family is getting married and all five of them, plus their granddaughter and getting baptized later that day! They are the best and I love their testimonies and obedience. They also have the cutest kids, my companion and I love em so much! 

We found a new family this week that was a street contact! They live in a part of Iquitos super close to where I am called the Belén district.  There all the houses are wooden and built on stilts or on floating platforms on the banks of the river so that every 'winter' when the Amazon water level gets really high, everything floods up. The houses on platforms float up and the houses on stilts are usually ok. It's the area of our district leader and his whole area is pretty buch wooden platform bridgey things built over the water and right now the water is super high so a lot of the houses are inaccessible without a boat.  So we ran into this family walking down the street exactly as they were looking at a house to rent in our area because their house got flooded over and turned into a pool. When we contacted them, the husband, Guido said that he was a member of the church many years back when he lived in another part of Peru but had gone through some tough times and left it all behind.  He and his wife Betsi were super friendly and we went to visit them last night after they had just moved in. They are such great parents and it is so easy to see that they just want the best for their family. We testified of the atonement and how we can become cleansed and start anew. We invited him to come back to church here in Iquitos, to forget the past, and we invited Betsi to be baptized and she accepted. We have a really good feeling about this family and excited to see how they progress.

Also, Viviana who came to conference last week accepted a date to be baptized on the 26th and she has been praying and gaining a strong testimony. This week she wasn't able to come to church because her sons who live with her uncle in a nearby pueblo were sick. But we have faith in her and she is just a really genuinely good person and daughter of God.

That is one thing I love so much about the people of Peru. Everyone here has so much faith. They all know who they are, that they are sons and daughters of God, they may not have the fulness of the Gospel but they have such a great sense of divine identity and more or less their purpose in life, something that is so special to me about this part of the world.

Also getting baptized on the 26th is an 8 year old named Angel. He is the sweetest, and his parents are not members but they literally come to church every sunday. It maked me sad because his mom, Luz, wants to get baptized so badly, but she has had some complications that prevent her from marrying with the father of Angel. But they are an awesome family with GREAT testimonies.

So honestly our area is great, it has so much potential and Hermana Centeno and I are truly starting to see miracles here. We also had some way fun times this week. So when it rains here, it rains HARDDD. Harder rain than I've ever seen in my life. So we were out visiting people with a member when it started raining so hard that with the tin roofs we literally couldnt hear anything and had to stop the lesson there. We then walked home in the rain and we only had one umbrella so  I gave it to Hermana Centeno and the member and braved the rain. I got completely drenched but it was actually so fun. Then after it rains, our area is almost completely mud. Mud mud mud, up to our knees. My boots get quite the use. And on sunday, we were  picking up an investigator family to church when we came to a little stream. There was a little 6 year old girl that I was helping cross the stream when boom i slipped and stepped in the mud and literally my foot went in knee deep and my shoe completely disappeared. I had to dig in up to my elbow to get it and I was completely filthy but a nice neighbor brought me a bucket of water, and we were late to church but hey, it was funny.

Also this week there was a gian power outage which was an adventure in itself. It was like that one power outage in Appleton for three day except in Perú. So that was fun.

I love Hermana Centeno, we are always laughing and smiling and working, couldn't ask for much more. I've learned so much to have faith, work hard, and be happy. Because literally stressing does not help AT ALL. IT DOES NOTHING. And I feel like I'm finally learning that, because when I let go of all the negative 'What if's' and 'how are we gonna's and just be happy and work with trust in the Lord, that's when the amazing and great things come our way.

This week We went to this place called Quistacocha where the missionaries go all the time. It's basically like a zoo with all the Amazon animals and then in the middle of it is a lake with beach surrounded by jungle. It was pretty fun and I got to hold a snake. And I'm pleased to announce that I ate my first SURI! And I'm not referring to Tom Cruise's daughter, but a gigantic larvae that lives in rotten Aguaje trees in the jungle. It's delicacy here in Iquitos, and want to know the best part, they are eaten LIVE. It's basically like Pumba in the Lion King.  It's so terrible though you have to first eat it while it's squirming all around, bite its head off to kill it in your mouth, then chew the body and then the head. I wouldn't recommend it. It has the flavor of radishes but the terrible part is that it is such a mouthful, the body exteriour is so rough with gooey guts in the middle and then you throw in the head to top it off and it's crunchy like popcorn. Bon Apetite! No it's awful and I can't believe I ate it, my gag reflexes went nuts, but I did it and now I'm an official Iquiteño. I have a video but I can't figure out how to email it. So that was a little bit of my adventures for this week, hope you all have a great week until next time!!

Love,

Hermana Benyo

Semana 13 in Iquitos (April 7th, 2014)

This week in Iquitos was awesome!

So my companion and I are working like crazy to find new families to teach and we've been straight contacting references and teaching every waking moment it seems and honestly----I love it. I feel like I'm working so much harder because there is so much more to do. This week alone we founf 24 new investigators with 7 families. We are also working way hard with less actives. I love my area it is a missionary's dream come true, and we are going HARD.

So Hermana Centeno and I are teaching the family Torres Amias (as pictured in the photo). We LOVE this family. They are so special to us and we are always laughing and having fun with them.They have such great desires to be disciples of Christ and we are helping five of them, the two parents and three of the children to be baptized on the 19th.  They are learning and progressing so well and we are so excited for them. We are preparing that matrimony for the parents, Maykeel and Lucina, and will be holding a ward fundraiser to help with the matrimony. We are excited and praying for them.

We are working way hard with all of our other investigators and we see a lot of potential in these sweet people. We have an investigator named Viviana who we contacted in the street. She is a single mom and was very kind and willing to receive us and actually came to General Conference this week! We were so happy, she is always so kind and smiling.I was watching conference in another room in English but my companion said that she was very attentive the whole time. I didn't get to talk to her after but we talked to one of our other investigators who is her nighbor, and Viviana told her that her heart was touched by the conference.  She told her that she has been to a lot of churches but never has felt the spirit the way she felt it in conference. Our other investigator told all of this last night and I was smiling so hard and so happy. That is the power of prophets and apostles, people. This conference was so amazing to me, I felt so spiritually fed and I have a testimony stronger than ever that they are truly servants, prophets and apostles of God, who speak to us and have the authority to guide us. I am sure of that, and so grateful for that knowledge. The whole time in conference I was feeling the spirit so strong and praying that our investigators in the chapel were feeling the same thing. And my prayers were answered, my companion and I felt true joy in knowing that these people had felt the spirit testify of the truth of the restored gospel.

I know this church is the same church that Jesus Christ established while here on the Earth, and that we have prophets and apostles who lead us and guide us back to his presence.

My FAVORITE talk from conference was that of Elder Bednar that spoke of the atonement and that we can use the atonement of Jesus Christ to bear our burdens. Not just to be cleansed from sin, but to be transformed into the kind of person we want to be, that God wants us to be. My desire is to use the atonement and repentence to become a little better every day.To love more, worry less, think about others needs before mine. It is a constant quest and I am so grateful to be here as a missionary. I am learning and growing in ways I never thought possible, in ways I could never have grown at home, and because of that (and many other reasons as well) the sacrifice is totally completely 170% worth it. I love you all and I'm praying for each and every one of you.

 Love,

Hermana Benyo