WEEK 56 HOW GREAT IS THIS CALLING!

I truly love being a missionary and the opportunity I have to testify of Jesus Christ everyday! That family we were helping move, one day the mom’s friend and friends sister were over, we were able to schedule an appointment with them. We went and taught them this last week and they understood everything so well! They had great questions! We were able to invite them to be baptized in October and they said yes! Their names are Terri & Lindsay, both sisters w/ 1 child each who live together. After the invitation Lindsay asked if we baptized infants in our church. (she has a 4 month old daughter) We we’re able to use the Book of Mormon to answer her question that we do not baptize infants in Jesus Christ’s church and the reason for it. I love the Book of Mormon so much! I know it has the power to change lives and comfort us.

So remember how I said I fasted for 2 things w/ Rebecca a while ago & then her boyfriend left her. Well, we met w/ Rebecca yesterday and she said she wants to move her baptismal date forward to October! The Lord hears our prays & the power of fast is real! So we have her baptism scheduled for Oct. 13th at the moment! #theLordprovides

We’ve been doing a lot of finding this week, mostly through campus contacting which is a ton of fun! We’re focusing a lot on personally getting to know people and the miracles from it are real. Usually we talk w/ people and then they’re the ones who actually start asking about us and what we’re doing. Great quote that goes along with this “People don’t care what you have to say, until they know how much you care.” Genuinely taking interest in people & their lives is a Major Key!

Couple cool stories, we were leaving a members apartment and there was a guy about to go into the one next to them, we were pretty far away and it was dark, so I hollered at him and we started talking. He said he was Christian and I was like “Great us too!” And started walking over to him and after I said that he goes, “Oh cool, I thought you were those Mormon guys.” Hahahaha! So I went in to tell him how we’re The Church of Jesus Christ and we believe in Christ. We continued talking and are meeting with him tomorrow and he’s really interested! His name is Coi Bennett and his cousin is gonna sit in with us as well.

The other is that we taught a Member last week and invited them to pray for a missionary opportunity that week, act upon it, then invite that person to come closer to Christ. We got a text from that member later in the week telling us he was able to teach the Restoration of the gospel to his coworker and invited him to meet with us and he said yes and was really excited & now we’re meeting with him tonight!! I love working w/ members it’s so great and miracles come from it!

I love my calling and am so grateful for this opportunity I have to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Much Love y’all! 🤟

Elder Bennett aka yoboigator 

Wyoming Sunsets

Yo Boyz Puttin In Work

WEEK 54 WE TAKING OVER

We’re covering the YSA ward now!! It’s extremely small tho, especially for being a college town. So there’s 3 YSA’s and we’re covering 1 of them and there’s about 30 active. We fittin to change that up real quick! So best believe you’ll be catchin yo boi out there on UW campus sharing the gospel! We hyped bout it!

This week we spent a lot of time helping a family move that was being evicted. The Mom is a returning member and her kids are Byron and Robbie, the ones who came to church last week. So we spent a lot of time helping them out and got them all moved so it’s pretty relieving that that’s all done now! We’re starting to teach her kids and also one of her friends named Terri who seems really interested and promising!

We had MLC on Friday and that was a lot of fun! Got to see all the homies and even stopped by and saw the GOAT Gene Cross!! He moved into a new apartment and gave Elder Shellman and I the royal tour, love that man!

We met with a man named Don Soltman who has been an active member for about 15 years but just never baptized. We met with him at a members home who he’s close with. The member basically talked the whole time but I think we’re making small steps of progress with him which is good! The member told us on Sunday that Don poured a glass of liquor Friday night, looked at it, and didn’t have a desire to drink and poured it down the drain. So, we’re seeing small steps, but it’s exciting to see!

Not too much to report, Rebecca came to church with us this week and has been progressing pretty well. There’s another man named John Bliss who we’ve been working with who’s come to church the past 2 weeks and a member in our ward just hooked him up with a job!

Much Love y’all 🤟

Elder Bennett aka yoboigator 

MLC

Bowling for the boyz back home

Gene Cross

GOAT

WEEK 54 DREAM TEAM

Shaq & Kobe, Jordan & Pippen, Serena & Venus. What do all these people have in common? They can’t compete with Beecher & Bennett. It’s been a long year comin but the dream team was finally assembled of Elder Bennett & Elder Beecher Halladay! We got to go on exchanges together yesterday and it was such a blast! We taught a couple with a young family in the morning & our mission President came along and it was so incredible! We taught the Plan of Salvation and they were like sponges soaking it up. Justin, the husband isn’t able to be baptized at the moment for legal reasons but we were able to put his wife on Date for baptism September 15th! Dream Team.

This week was such an incredible week of being a missionary! My heart is so full & I have so much love for the people of Laramie. The work is going amazing, we’re seeing so many miracles, and I’m excited & enthusiastic about this incredible work!

We had a man who just showed up at church last week named Danny. Him & his wife were on their way to Oregon & broke down in Laramie. Danny was at one point while living in Missouri on Date for baptism but he missed his date. He has an incredible amount of love and respect for The Church of Jesus Christ, and the missionaries. We went & taught him & his wife Wednesday and asked him to kneel down and pray about the Book of Mormon & Joseph Smith & he was like okay let’s do it now. So we all knelt down and prayed, before he prayed he said, God’s gonna laugh at me for asking cause I already know the answer & that’s that it’s true! He said a sincere humble prayer and we were able to set a baptismal date with him. He came to church this week, now we’re just working on helping him quit smoking.

We had Zone Conference Thursday & I got Elder Shellman back so we back together again!

Our Bishop called us up Friday morning and told us we needed to help with an emergency move. We went over and it was a less active woman who needed to be out by the end of the month. While moving and talking we learned that she had 2 boys, 9 & 11, and a daughter 16, who none were baptized. They hadn’t been active cause her husband who she’s in the process of divorcing from basically said it’s me or the church & she chose him. Fast forward to Sunday, her and the 2 boys came, I sat with the 9 year old who has mild autism, his name is Byron & I love this boy so much, he’s hilarious! After sacrament meeting his mom said Byron the missionaries can teach you and you can get baptized, do you want to get baptized? And he looked at me and said “Yes & I want you to baptize me!” It was so heartwarming and such a miracle! So we’re going to teach the 2 boys tomorrow and we’re so excited!

There’s so many miracles from this week but this would turn into a 5 page essay if I listed them all haha. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and am grateful to be a tool in his hands in this marvelous work! Love y’all!

Elder Bennett aka yoboigator 

Elder Strebel & I

Homies from Zone Conference

Zone Conference 

Huge bull elk rack in a members home

Dream Team X2

Week 53 How Many Missionaries Can Say They Got Stabbed On Their Mission?

This one can! ️Yo boi got stabbed...it was on accident, well I’m pretty confident it was at least haha. It was just a tiny cut so we just super glued it back together cause you know we Missionaries ballin on a budget out here. But anyways yeah they always say pics or it didn’t happen so I got pics to prove it.

This week has been one of the most eventful ones of my mission yet! I got a new companion temporarily. On Tuesday an Elder in Rawlins, small town like 90 miles away, was driving down to Laramie and hit 90mph while driving & so he lost driving privileges. His companion doesn’t have driving privileges either. So, on Wednesday we were on exchanges with them & neither of them could drive. Well you can’t have someone who can’t drive in Rawlins cause it’s a super spread out town, so my comp Elder Shellman, switched with one of the missionaries out there, Elder Monaghan, so I’ve been comps with Elder Monaghan for the past week haha. It’s been fun, he’s a really funny Elder and I’ve loved being comps with him. Elder Shellman & I will be back together on Thursday tho so it’s all good.

So funny story. Last week I fasted for Rebecca and prayed specifically that her & her boyfriend she’s living with would have a desire to get married & she’d want to move her baptismal date to a closer date. Well this week she texted us and told us that her boyfriend left her. So I guess you can say God definitely answered my prayer, just not in a way I saw coming haha. Anyways she’s be doing really well with the break up & is still progressing great! We taught her yesterday and she said she’s done smoking, coffee, everything. And she gave us her Vape pen and was like I’m done! That was so awesome! I think this week we’re going to talk with her about moving her date up to be baptized sooner. 

I hit my one year & that was a lot of fun, me and Elder Butterfield, another elder I came out with went out and burnt our shirts. Shout out to all the fam for the packages, I love you all so much! 🤟

Elder Bennett aka yoboigator 

Elder Butterfield & I Burning Our Shirts 

Elder Monaghan & I w/ Rebecca’s Vape #vapenation

Fam out here gettin me fat

Mr. Peanut

Enjoy my hairy leg 

WEEK 52 1 YEAR STEADY HUSTLIN

Hittin my 1 year mark on Thursday Lesssss Goooooo!!! 

I had an amazing week! We had transfers on Wednesday and we’ve been non stop going since! Lots of meetings, ministering to other missionaries, and teaching! So it’s been an incredible week! I love my new companion! He’s from Oregon and is a really diligent missionary so I’m very grateful for him. I also got to see Elder Strebel aka T Strebs on transfer day!! That was really cool cause it was my first time seeing him in a year of being out and he’s on his last transfer.

Rebecca is doing great! We taught her on Thursday & read the 1 Nephi 8 The Tree of Life with her, then she came to a dinner with us at a members house on Friday, then Saturday we did a Chapel Tour to make her more comfortable about church, and Sunday even though she was sick, she still came to church!! It was so awesome! Okay but so get this, sacrament meeting was just a train wreck no lie haha. The speakers was an older couple and the wife was just kinda boring and went long, then the husband was like a firecracker talking about abortion and how he’s so grateful that he’s been blessed to be sealed to 2 women(Previous wife passed away)!!! My comp and I were just like oh gosh Rebecca is never coming back. I was praying the whole meeting just like please please please let her feel the Spirit haha. So after church I texted her about it and she said she absolutely loved it!  She said she’s a sucker for old people & agreed 100% with what the Brother had to say. How awesome is that!! Such a miracle haha. We just gotta trust in the Lord and understand he knows what he’s doing. Another miracle with her is she has a friend she’s had for 20 years and never knew that she was a Mormon. And so that made her even more excited to find out about her friend who’s a member and the friend is being awesome with helping out, she made Rebecca promise she didn’t make a final decision until she at least came to church 3 times.

We helped the Unger family move and said goodbye to them. Their the ones that came to church last week

Something we’re really focusing on this transfer is working with the members and it’s such a blessing. We have incredible families to work with! One family posted about us on Facebook and another took us out for ice cream last night, it’s so nice to feel the love from the ward and see that we have good relationships with them cause that’s so valuable! We’ve been doing a lot of Service this last week too. We’ve been helping some members build their house, it’s been a lot of fun. I can feel the trust between us with the ward growing a late, very grateful for that.

I’m loving Laramie and the people here. Things are going amazing and I feel so blessed! Love y’all! 🤟

Elder Bennett aka yoboigator 

Elder Cerezo, Elder Hamelin, & I last week before transfers

T Strebssss

Sunset

The Livingston Family, love them so much! (That’s my new comp Elder Shellman next to me)

WEEK 51: KISSES TO PREZ

Missionaries went home on Saturday so since Friday we’ve been in a tri-pan w/ our boi Elder Hamblin aka Hambo Slice! He’s such a goob but love the guy so much!

I’m staying in Laramie another transfer and am gonna be training a new ZL Elder Shellman! I don’t know him but I’m excited! The member missionary work is starting to pick up here so I’m hype bout that! This transfer gonna be so dope!

We taught Rebecca this week & read the Tree of Life with her & it was awesome! She was relating a lot of things from the Book of Mormon to her personal life. It’s so funny, she talks like she’s already Mormon, like she’s already been telling people she’s converting to being Mormon haha it’s great! 

Huge miracle!! There’s this part member family that we teach every Friday, this is the one I played in basketball & beat but he didn’t come to church. Anyway, we teach them every Friday, commit them to come to church, stop by Sunday morning, and they tell us they aren’t gonna make it. This has been happing since Elder Cerezo came to Laramie which was about 5 months ago. Well Sunday morning we got a text & they said they were getting ready & they came to church! Such a sweet miracle had me hype!

There’s a man named Don Soltman who’s been coming to church actively with his family for the past 15 years but isn’t baptized & he told us we could teach him w/ one of his good friends who’s a member, we’re hoping this fellowshipper will be a big change & help for him!

Yo boi out here taking aspiring to a whole new level. We had MLC Thursday & I kissed President McMurray on the cheek. Have pics as proof haha. It was accidental but super funny. Elder Halladay & I we’re gonna act like we were giving him kisses in the picture but President ended up actually turning into mine and he turned real quickly the other way into Elder Halladay’s haha. Shout out to the homie Elder Halladay who got called to be AP last week, fittin to do big things in the mission!

Right quick, WE ALL SIN. But we don’t have to carry around feelings of grief, regret, pain, sadness, guilt, etc.

“Behold, he sendeth an invitation unto all men, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them, and he saith: Repent, and I will receive you.” -Alma 5:33

Christ arms of mercy are eternally reached out to embrace us! We gon mess up, but don’t let that get you down, don’t give up, repent and continue to come unto Christ. 

Much love 🤟️

Elder Bennett aka yoboigator 

Peep the Progression 

Shoutout to Elder Miceli ZL3 swoopin on the pic

Squaaaad

The homie Elder Judd went home

Got to see the Bertagnole Family except for Adam

The Ungers at Church