Elder Benjamin Arnold

Ben's last mission email

2010-08-18T13:11:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

Zone Conference / Elder Ringwood

Our Zone Conference yesterday was amazing. I felt so uplifted and ready to go work afterward. Four of us that were leaving bore our testimonies at the beginning. I felt impressed to talk about my own conversion throughout my mission. It amazes me how the spirit speaks directly to our spirit what we should say in the very moment that we need it. Following that Sister Greer spoke to us and then President Greer. They are both great teachers. As they were speaking I had many thoughts come to my mind that I quickly recorded. It was more the spirit teaching me than them. Following their talks we heard from Elder Ringwood. It was cool to watch him follow spiritual impressions that came to him. You could see that he was teaching to our needs without knowing what they were except through the spirit. He spoke a lot about getting lost. Getting lost in the sense that we lose our lives as missionaries. That we give up all distractions and dedicate our lives to the work. It was kind of a continuation of President Greer's talk.

Eddy y Blanca

We continue to have spirit filled lessons with Eddy and Blanca. They both came to church this last Sunday. The coolest things about teaching them are the changes that are taking place in their lives and the added happiness they are finding. I love it. It's the best part about being a missionary.

Rigo

Yesterday all of our plans fell through. All of our backup plans fell through. We prayed. We tried hard to listen to the spirit and go where the Lord wanted us to. We ended up in an apartment complex off of St. John's visiting a few trybacks. Next door to the door we were knocking on there was a guy and woman that was a little older than him sitting outside talking. We walked up to them and introduced ourselves. His name was Rigo and Maria was his mom. We talked to them for about five minutes about different churches, the purpose of life, and why we obey commandments. Then Maria got up and left. She didn't seem very interested obviously. As soon as she left Rigo opened up. As he spoke to us and explained his life situation it felt like his spirit was crying for help. He wants to know how to find happiness in this life and he wants to know how to solicit God's help. Again the spirit guided us in what to say. He had never prayed before. We taught him how to pray and what prayer really is. He said he would pray every night and we're going to see him on Thursday.

Have a great week
And I'll see you all soon
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-08-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

August 11, 2010

Hola familia,

Temple

I had my exit interview with President Greer this morning. I think the purpose was for him to get a feel for what our plans are for after our mission. It's nice that he's so worried about what happens to us for the rest of our lives. I really do feel how much he loves us. Right after he interviewed three of us we went to the Portland temple. It was beautiful and a very sacred experience for me. I learned so many things by the spirit. I felt such a peace and didn't want to leave when the time came to. The temple is so symbolic and has much more meaning than it first appears.

Eddy and Blanca

Eddy and Blanca were found just as I left Vancouver a year ago. Eddy came to church a few times and then as happens with many investigators they dropped off and weren't being taught for some time. Well, recently they were found again and Elder Bair and I have begun teaching them. They are both such amazing people and really are ready to accept the gospel. In our last lesson Elder Bair started out by talking about the Book of Mormon. They realize the importance of it and committed to start reading and praying again. Another cool story: Eddy the morning that we had our last lesson completely quit drinking. He called up Blanca and told her to throw out the rest of the beer. She ran to the sink and dumped it all out. He is committed to live the gospel and is going to be very blessed.

Meeting in the Tri-cities

The meeting went well over the four days we were in the tri-cities. I got to go and work in Pasco during the evenings and had some amazing experiences. I forgot how much I missed Pasco and the people there. I don't have any more time so I'll tell you some other day about all the stuff that happened in those days.

Love you all and have a great week

Elder Ben Arnold

2010-08-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

August 2, 2010
Hola familia,

Tri-cities
This week, starting tomorrow, there is a meeting in Kennewick. It's going to be going until the 6th. We're going to be going over all the new PMG lessons. I'm pretty excited about that. There is a lot of stuff to learn. Hopefully I'll be able to hop into Pasco in the evenings and do some missionary work over there.

Eddy
The Zone Leaders found this guy tracting and taught him a lesson. He was apparently really cool and was very excited about coming to church. They talked to him about being baptized and he was excited about that so they set a date for him in August. They referred them to us because his wife only speaks spanish. We're still trying to get a hold of him.

Juan
Juan is a friend of Arturo, who is a member. Arturo invited him to come to church and he came dressed up in a suit. He really enjoyed church and we're scheduled to go teach him this week. Isn't it amazing how things just work out. The Lord's hand is in everything.

Jorge
We had a Family Home Evening with Jorge and two of his kids this last week. We watched a video at the church and played a little ball with them. They all really enjoyed it and built some good father son relationships. Then Jorge came to church yesterday. He's a really good guy and I'm glad that I've been able to know him.

Break the fast
The branch had a big dinner after church since it was fast sunday. It had actually been a while since we had had one. Whenever there is food involved extra people always seem to show up. Whatever gets them to church. It's fun to try all of the different kinds of food that the various people bring. There's always a big variety. Especially with all of these people from different countries.

Lumbermen
Elder Bair and I have become lumbermen. We've been helping Hno Woodland debark some huge logs at his house. After we get all of the bark off then we sand it with an electric sander and stain the logs. He's building an entry way over his driveway. It's a project that he's been wanting to do and now with our help he's getting it done. Along the way I'm learning how to work with wood. The other day I learned how to pour concrete. That was an experience.
Love you all. Have a great week
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-07-26T09:43:00.001-07:00

July 20, 2010
Hola familia,

Bowling
We went bowling today. The first game I scored only an 82. Kind of sad. But then I got 131 the next game! I tried hard to redeem myself.

Debra
We taught Debra four times this last week. She's opened up a lot to us and we're figuring out what all of her doubts are. She's really close to coming to church. We really need to start working with her husband more. She is such a good lady. She ironed all of my shirts and pants last week. She's taking good care of us.

Orson Pratt Arnold
He was a stake president up here in Washington and moved down to Orem when he left. President Alder wanted me to ask you mom and dad if you knew him or could do a little research to see if we're related.

The Atonement
This transfer we're focusing on studying the Atonement as a district. There is so much depth to understanding what all happened in the period of time between the garden of Gethsemane and His resurrection. I come to realize how important this work is as I increase my understanding of what our Savior did for us. Mom I have an assignment for you. I need you to order a book off of amazon. It is called "The First 2000 Years". It is written by Cleon Skousen. Let me know if you can find it.

Arroyo
Sister Arroyo is a convert to the church but her husband is not a member. I tried to teach them a year ago but didn't have much luck. He wasn't very interested. Since that time some things have happened in their lives and now we are teaching them both together. We had a lesson with them and President Alder just the other day. The lesson went great and we're looking to set a baptismal date with him by next Monday!

Ricardo
This is Ricardo from Columbia. I went on exchanges with him last night. The appointments that we went to were not there. We had a great conversation in the car though. He was interested in what I did for work before my mission. I pointed a couple of SmartSensors out to him and he thought that was really cool.

Painting
We painted a members shed this week with Elder Hortin and Elder Prawitt. I got pretty sunburned from it the first time we helped. It was actually quite a bit of fun and it helped them get done a lot faster. The best part about it was the conversation that we had between Elder Bair and I and the other two.

You'll have to fill in all the details in your mind. I'm having a hard time getting my brain to function correctly. It's having a hard time remembering all the things that happened this week.

Love you all,
Have a great week
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-07-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

This has been a great week. I feel very calm and excited to do the Lord's work.

Transfers
Just what I expected and was hoping for. I will be staying in Vancouver with Elder Bair this transfer. In fact our entire district is staying the same minus one change. Sister Kendell who has been with Sister Pleshek in the Spanish branch will be going over to Kennewick. Sister Pleshek will be training a new missionary. Elder Hortin is staying here and getting a new companion. Elder Becerra got called to be a Zone Leader and will be going to Pasco with Elder Montoya.

Chiropractor
Elder Bair and I went to the Chiropractor this morning with Elder Tolman. There is a member in his ward that will do it for free for missionaries. So I got my back all tuned up. Apparently he's going to be able to help me with the bad circulation and occasional numbness that I get in my arms and hands. It was kind of fun getting all twisted and tweaked. He was able to help me get my back back in alignment due to my bad posture.

Monday
Yesterday was amazing. Everything just happened. Everyone was at our appointments. All of our lessons went well. The spirit was just really strong all day. Maybe it was because last week we worked hard on days when nothing was happening and it was really hot. So I'll tell a few of the cool things that happened during the day. We went with the Boyle's to dinner at a pizza place. While we were waiting for them to show up a guy named Tim came up to us and started to ask us some questions. It became apparent that he wasn't a member. He said he had always been interested in finding out more about the Mormon religion. Who better to ask than a couple of Mormon missionaries. He also came back to us a second time to get our phone number so he could ask us more questions.

Another experience that was amazing: We taught Debra and Alejandra. She asked us about blessings during the lesson. She wanted to receive one. We gave her one and afterward as we were talking to her about how she felt she described a feeling that she had which started in her feet and went all the way up to her head. She then began to cry and we sat there in the silence for a couple of minutes. After the blessing we watched a short video about when Christ came to the Americas and healed many people. I had never seen this video before my mission. In fact I hadn't seen it until just a few months ago. As we watched the love that Christ had for these people and how much they loved him a peace filled the room. There was no other place on earth that I would've preferred to be than there. I love the gospel.

Emilio
I taught Emilio while I was here a year ago. He even came to church one time. Well we found him again and we taught him last week. He then went to play soccer with the members of the branch. He made good friends with them all. And he came to church this last Sunday. We got his son, Emilio, who is three, to go to nursery. Members are awesome. They have so much capability and influence on helping people come to church.

Nihipali
We've been doing a lot of yard work for the Nihipali's. We've just about got the front yard all cleaned up. So we'll be moving to the backyard and the garden soon. Last Wednesday they took us to lunch at a Chinese buffet. The food was good and it was fun talking to them. They are very good people.

Edith and Marco
Edith is pregnant and is going to have her baby on Wednesday. We took Sister Reshke over to their home to meet them. They kicked it off really quick. Now Sister Reshke is going to be taking care of the kids while she is in the hospital. And she is going to arrange to get them dinners for the next couple of nights. We should hopefully be able to start getting them to come to church now. We're going to be having a lesson with them at 3:00 today so in just a few hours. I'll tell you how it all goes next week.

This is the Lord's work. I love being a missionary!
Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

Fishing

2010-07-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

2010-07-06T11:23:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

Pres Greer

So President and Sister Greer are pretty cool. I'll forward a picture that they took with the whole zone. They're both pretty funny and you can tell that they love all of the missionaries. I've only met him the one time. In the little meeting that we had they had each of us introduce ourselves. Sister Greer talked about their family a little bit. Then they told us about a whole bunch of changes that are going to be happening. New training that they got in the MTC. For example, our zone conferences and interview cycles will only be every other transfer now, every three months instead of a month and a half. They have a whole bunch of new PMG lessons and videos that the church just barely produced. The videos are footage of real missionaries doing real missionary work. It's hundreds of hours of camera men just following missionaries around. I'm excited about that. The Greer's seem to be really excited and ready to go to work.

Nihipali

We now live with the Nihipali family. They are from Hawaii. They are both very nice and the place we live is pretty good. It's a lot different from the Boyle's. We are living in more of a separate part of the house. So we don't see them quite as much. Elder Bair and I rearranged the furniture and stuff the way we like and we feel at home.

Birthday

My birthday was intense. President and Sister Greer and the AP's called me the morning of my birthday and sang to me over the phone. Then they sang to me again at the meeting when we met them. We ate lunch on my birthday with Sister Boyle and a few other missionaries including Elder Hortin. Then we ate dinner with the Church's and they threw a surprise birthday party. When we got there we thought it was going to be just us and then four missionaries popped out of the closet and the Boyle's showed up later. I forgot to mention that I ate strawberries pretty much all day long. Then at night we went to Sister Drown's house and had strawberry shortcake with Tillamook Oregon strawberry ice cream. Wow I got spoiled. I got your package grandma. My favorite part was the cookies. They're almost gone already.

4th of July

It was like a war-zone here. We had a hard time going to sleep on Saturday and Sunday. It literally sounded like bombs were going off every few seconds. The only time I watched any was while I was in the bathroom. I opened up the window and I saw big explosions in the sky slightly obscured by a large tree.

Have you ever driven on the wrong side of the road?

Listen up close this is a story you'll never forget. We went on exchanges last night with the first counselor of the Branch Presidency, Hermano Garcia. We were talking and having a good time as we were driving to our first appointment. Elder Bair and I were both giving him directions as he was driving us around in his little white honda. Well, we tell him to turn left at the next light and he does. Only he turns a little bit too early. I shout to him, "Not here Hermano, not here!" And all of a sudden we are on the wrong side of the median. We see a bunch of cars coming straight at us and another person on the other side of the median honking at us. Hermano Garcia eyes got as big as watermelons. He doesn't know what to do. Elder Bair tells him to keep driving until we got past the median. After about 200 feet we make it and are back on our side of the road. We all let out a sigh of relief and busted out laughing. I kind of sat there stunned. And said to myself, "Did that really just happen?" That's something you only see in movies. Then Hermano Garcia says, "Well we're okay." I couldn't stop laughing all night.

Just another week in the life of a missionary.

Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-06-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

Dance Festival
This was a huge event. This entire side of the mission, 80 missionaries, participated all day Friday and Saturday. 2500 youth from Longview, Vancouver, and the Dalles all were involved in this festival. This all took place in a really big football field amphitheater. They had three performances and a Youth Conference. There were a lot of nonmembers participating as well. The missionaries job was to usher all the people into their seats before the performances. Then we would watch part of the performance and at a certain time we would go back and get ready for our part. At the end of the very last dance every single kid comes out onto the field and when they get into a big group they started to sing How Firm a Foundation, that was the theme for the whole festival. Then all the missionaries in single file lines carrying white flags come marching out onto the field. It was intense.

I think my favorite part though was the youth conference. It started out like a skit with Helaman and Moroni. Then all of the stripling warriors come out, there were only about 40 or so. After they do their thing, which I never got to see, the missionaries come out onto the field behind them. As we came out we sang Called to Serve. Then there was some narration talking about the missionary life. Then we belted out the standard of truth. It was powerful. That was the strongest I've felt the spirit in a while. Then we started to sing We'll Bring the World His Truth and went and crawled up into the crowd. There were a lot of people crying after. It was such an amazing experience.

The Move
We moved out of the Boyle's home today. There were some changes in ward boundaries in the stake and they ended up redoing all of the missionary housing. Some missionaries even had to change the ward they were serving in. It's still two weeks until transfers.
This is the new address: 701 NE 108th St Vancouver WA 98685. I don't know much about the new family we're living with. We only just moved in this morning. I've been really sad about the whole move. The Boyle's didn't want us to leave either. Well, that's the life of a missionary.

Mission President
We now have a new mission president. President Belnap went home yesterday. Our new mission president is President Greer. I haven't met him yet. We'll see him for the first time on Friday. I've heard that he is a very happy person and that Sister Greer is even happier. I'll tell you more about them next week.

Young Women's class
This last Sunday we taught Sister Boyle's Young Women's class. It was a lot of fun. The topic was sharing the gospel. We talked a lot about the Dance Festival and how they could use that experience to share the gospel with those that came or even those that didn't.

Loose Chickens
After our district meeting yesterday the sisters went over to visit Sister Woodland. They weren't home but the sisters discovered that there was a dog in the chicken coop. They got the dog out and then called both us and Brother Woodland. Brother Woodland couldn't get back home but we ran right over. So I had some fun catching chickens and putting them back. There were only three that weren't accounted for and one that was eaten by the dog.

Missionaries out saving the souls of men and a few chickens on the way.

!Que tengan una semana maravillosapo!

Elder Ben Arnold

2010-06-22T15:21:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

Strawberries!!!
I think that I have eaten strawberries in my dessert for the past two weeks straight. Maybe except for one or two. All of the strawberries are coming on in the fields. They are so much better than the California strawberries that we've been eating. Just before coming to email we went with President Alder, our WML, and did some U-PICK strawberries. In other words pick your own strawberries for one dollar a pound. We got some huge bags of big ripe red strawberries. I'm so excited! I am a strawberry boy and I think everyone in the branch knows it.

Elder Hortin / Exchange
I got to go on an exchange with Elder Hortin. That was awesome being able to serve with him again. It's cool that he's my zone leader over here. We had a lot of cool experiences while we were together yesterday. We accidentally stayed up a little bit late just talking about everything that's happened. I did that with Elder Bair last night too. I'm just too talkative lately I guess.

Edith
Elder Hortin and I had made plans the previous night to go and talk to a family that we hadn't seen in a while. Well only the grandma was there and she was busy so we couldn't teach her. But the Lord had a reason for leading us there. As we were leaving the apartment complex we both saw this pregnant lady walking down the road and both felt impressed to go talk to her. It turns out her name was Edith and she had always seen missionaries going by and had always wanted to talk to them. She invited us to come over today at 6:00. I'm excited to go back and see what happens.

Smart Sensors
I've seen two brand new intersections with Smart sensors on each of the traffic light poles. They looked like SS205's. I don't know if they were just advance units or what. But it was cool to see that.

Father's day card / singing / tomato plant
I didn't wish you happy father's day last week dad. So Happy Father's Day! I hope you got my card by now. I promise I didn't forget I'm just late as usual. As part of our sacrament meeting we sang some father's day songs with the primary. That is, all four of us missionaries got up there in front with them. I've sung a lot more on my mission than I ever thought I would. And I actually really enjoy it. I even sometimes sing with my companion in the car or to begin companionship study. At the end of sacrament meeting they passed out cupcakes, cookies, and tomato plants to all of the fathers. They said that we're future fathers and gave us some as well. So Pancho our strawberry plant now has a friend. He doesn't have a name yet.

Temple
Today has been such a good day. We woke up at 5:15 this morning to go to the temple in Portland. We were supposed to make it to the 7:30 session but got there early and went through the 7:00 session. I learned so many new things this time. It was cool to see the differences again between the Columbia River temple and the Portland temple. I love being in the temple. It is such a sacred and holy place. Afterwards we went to the church bookstore which is right next to it. I got a couple of CDs of music. I can't remember the guys name very well but he's the guy that played Hyrum Smith on "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration". I also saw a CD by Daniel Beck. Hey, I know that guy. Tell Dan that I say hi dad. I was waiting by the door for everyone to finish checking out their purchases when I saw a hispanic guy sweeping up outside. I felt the spirit say, "go get him". So I ran out the door and introduced myself. He took off his glove and shook my hand. His name was Maricio. He thought my name was Leonardo at first. I started talking about the gospel and he shared with me a lot of his life story. He was involved in a lot of crazy stuff before but has been humbled and wants God in his life. At some point Elder Bair came out with me and we started teaching him together. I love teaching with Elder Bair. We listened, did a good job at asking questions, and taught him how the gospel could heal his life. We got his address and phone number and we're going to send it to the office for the missionaries in Portland to go and vist him.

A day in the life of a missionary. Saving the world one soul at a time.
Take care and have a great week.
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-06-15T22:52:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

Ofelia
We went on exchanges with Elder Hobbs and Elder Barter, two missionaries in our district. I went into their area doing English work and Elder Bair stayed in our area. This was an experience that happened to him. He had in his plans to go and contact a referral that we received from a set of English elders from when they went tracting. He had a very hard time finding it. In fact he turned around twice having given up. He was prompted by the spirit to find it. He gave me a call and asked me how to get through a certain part of our area. (side note, I am amazed at how fast he has learned the area, he's awesome). Long story made short he made it there. Ofelia immediately recognized them and invited him in. They taught an amazing first lesson. She had been looking for this for a long time. She is essentially all alone and needs to find God. I don't remember too much more from what Elder Bair told me. Well, just last night at 10:31 we got a phone call. I didn't recognize the number and tossed it over to Elder Bair and asked him if he did. He said, "It's Ofelia!" She sounded very excited as she talked to Elder Bair and wanted us to come over tomorrow (today, Tuesday). And her roommate/friend is going to be there as well. I'm super excited to meet her tonight. I forgot to mention she's 25 years old.

Walking in the rain / Woody
We were walking down highway 99 in the rain to go put some pass-along cards in a Mexican restaurant. A homeless man ran across the street with a piece of cardboard over his head. As he approached us he said, "My umbrella is better than yours. It can make me fly." He said it in a very sarcastic voice. It was pretty funny. We started talking and found out that his name is Woody. Well meanwhile the rain stopped. We talked all the way until we got to the restaurant. He told us about lots of things that had happened to him and how somebody had stolen his umbrella. Well, I had another umbrella back at home so I offered him mine as we parted ways. He was very grateful. Hopefully it made his day. On our way back to the car it started to rain. I got soaked. I couldn't help but laugh and smile the whole way there.

Andres y Isabel / Church
Andres, Isabel and their family are progressing so well. They came to church this last Sunday. They are working hard on getting prepared for their baptism. Hopefully we'll have more news next week. In an appointment we had with them and Dora not too long ago we were able to help them all recognize the spirit. We were all so happy and wouldn't have been in any other place in the world. Isabel even testified to Dora about the Book of Mormon and shared one of her favorite scriptures. That was the point in the lesson where the spirit was strongest.

Rearranged our room
This morning before coming to email Elder Bair and I completely changed the layout of our room. There is a lot more space now. It always feels good to change things up like that every once in a while.

Ricardo English
We've been meeting with Ricardo in the mornings and studying English and Spanish with him. He helps us with Spanish and we help him with English. I've been learning a lot already. He's originally from Columbia.

Study / Listen
I've recently been studying a lot about teaching skills from Preach My Gospel. I studied the section on listening in the most detail. As I've been putting the things I learned into practice I'm finding that our investigators and others that we teach just tell us what they need to hear. You have to pay close attention to pick out their doubts and concerns. I love teaching even more.

Pancho the strawberry
I planted a strawberry in a little pot and keep it on my desk. It's been growing very well. We take it outside when it's sunny. It's been fun to see it grow. We decided to name it Pancho.

Que tengan una buena semana
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-06-14T14:36:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

Ernesto

Elder Bair and I felt inspired to go tracting in the Maple Knoll apartments. As we were tracting we felt impressed to go to the other side way in the back corner and knock on four specific doors. On the way over to the doors we saw a man cleaning the inside of his van. We felt impressed to talk to him. After knocking on a few of the doors we went back to his van and began a conversation. We talked about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. We gave him a copy. We couldn't set up an appointment because he said he was always busy and that he might be going back to Mexico soon.

We went back the next day anyway. We found him there late in the evening and he was hesitant but with some persuasion he let us in. We talked about the blessing prophets were for the people in their day. We then talked a lot about the gospel and how it can unify the family. It later came up that his wife is not very interested in becoming very religious. He had a hard background and has received a testimony of Jesus Christ. We then shared the message of a prophet being called in our day to bless our families. He understood it. He wants that for his family. We committed him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. We'll see what happens when we get a hold of him again.

Isabel y Andres / Dora

We were just about to start a lesson with Andres and Isabel when there came a knock at the door. A lady who introduced herself as Dora sat down at the table with us. It was kind of like she knew what was going on. She seemed very content just to sit down and listen to us. She was very polite and intent as we talked. After sharing our lesson with Andres and Isabel when we began to ask her questions and shared a brief message about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. We left her a copy of the Book of Mormon and a pamphlet on the plan of salvation. At our next lesson with Andres and Isabel when we got there she was already there sitting down at the table waiting for us. She had read the first three pages of the pamphlet. During that lesson we talked about temples and how we need to prepare ourselves now to be able to partake of the blessings of the temple.

Running

Elder Bair and I have been getting up every morning and going running. We run for about 20 minutes which is just enough to really start sweating. It has given me more energy in the mornings.

Tennis

I'm going to play tennis today! I haven't played for a long time. And I've not played with anybody who really knows how to at all on my whole mission. Elder Hobbs got us hooked up to play with the high school tennis coach. Awesome.

Elder Bair

Elder Bair is from Glendale, Arizona. He has been out for almost 18 months. We are working really well together. Everything just seems to be clicking. We're following the spirit really well and have been teaching well together. There are four kids in his family and he is the youngest. Two boys and two girls. He is awesome.

Have a great week,
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-06-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

June 1, 2010
Hola familia,

Transfers

Transfer day is this upcoming Wednesday. I will be staying here in Vancouver but I will be getting a new companion. Elder Uribe is going to be serving in Kennewick. My new companion is Elder Bair, pronounced bear. I served around him in Pasco while I was with Elder Godinez. We always called him Elder Osito, which is the animal bear in Spanish.

Punchbowl falls hike

Our hike last week was amazing. We made it up as far as we wanted to. There were two upper falls that were about 6 miles from the parking lot. You could go back behind both of the falls. I got lots of pictures. Elder Montoya and I did a lot of running. We probably ran 4 to 5 out of the 12 miles that we hiked. It was a really good workout. It was really tiring especially with a backpack on full of food and water.

Digging trenches

We did some service for the Woodland family in the branch the other morning. We were digging a big trench around his garden to cut out tree roots. It was some good physical labor. There were some nasty roots that we pulled up. A few that were even made of metal. haha. Afterward we ate breakfast with them. We ate pancakes and Mexican scrambled eggs and bacon. It was delicious. Especially after working for a couple of hours digging a trench.

Dad, my hands are a lot more beat up and not so much like city boy hands. That's great, huh!

BBQ with the Boyle's / pressure washing

I've done a lot of yard work for the Boyle's and that's helped as well. One day I dug up a huge stump with a shovel and an axe. That was a lot of work. It was the stump of a cherry tree that Brother Boyle had cut down before I ever came to Vancouver the first time. The roots on that tree were almost bigger than the trunk itself.

The Boyle's take such good care of us. We didn't have a dinner the other day and they prepared a meal for us. We had, I don't know how to spell this, Shish-ka-bobs? And french bread buttered and cooked on his grill. I love the Boyle family so much.

This last week Ricardo, an investigator that I taught while I was here before, came out with us a couple of times. He did an awesome job of teaching and committing people. He even bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon and other things. He is a really awesome person.

Les quiero mucho. Sigan firmes en la fe.

Elder Ben Arnold

2010-05-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

We have transfers again. How did that happen? We find out this Saturday what is going to happen so I'll let you know next P-day.

Jorge and Claudia came to church this last week. They had come a lot before I came but hadn't been since I got here. We had a lesson with them last night. Brother and Sister Garcia came with us to the lesson. We watched The Testaments with them. We then talked about how that family was beginning to be torn apart by the world but through Christ they were united. Jorge and Claudia have had problems in their marriage like every other family. They felt the spirit as we watched the movie and then talked about it afterward. Claudia and Sister Garcia both started to cry a little at the end of the video. Sister Garcia shared her testimony how the gospel has blessed her family. She also shared her experience with her baptism and how clean and close she felt to her Savior afterward. I saw a light go on in Jorge and Claudia's eyes. They saw hope for their family. How important it is that members are involved with teaching people investigating the church.

Last P-day we went fishing in a members private pond and caught 8 rainbow trout. We cooked them this last Saturday for lunch. They were really good.

Today we're going on a hike. We're probably going to go back to punchbowl falls. We're going to be leaving in about a half an hour. We're going to try to make it farther up the trail this time. We only saw about half of the falls last time.

Elder Uribe has been sick a lot this last week. Poor guy. He's just about better now. It gave me some time to get our room and area book and journal all organized and up to date.

I love the Book of Mormon. I carry around a copy in English always. One of the kind that we give out to investigators for free. I always use it in my personal study in the morning as well. It hasn't failed me. Every time that I have a question or concern I've been able to find answers and guidance in that book. I know that it is true and that we've been blessed to have such a great tool. As I search my soul in its pages I find peace and hope. Through that book I have come to know my Savior.

I love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-05-13T10:29:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

It was a lot of fun talking to all of you. It's insane how fast that short time goes by. I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed Mother's Day, mom!

This morning we went on a hike up to the punchbowl falls. That's why I'm emailing so late today. We had a lot of fun. I got a little dirty and a little wet from the various falls along the trail. The best part was at the very end. There was a really high bridge that went over a really narrow and deep part of the river. There were two steep walls of rock on either side. It was so high that when I threw a rock down it made a really loud slapping sound. Almost like a gun but not quite that loud.

Elder Uribe and I have been riding bikes and walking all of this week. It's been good exercise. And we've been doing more finding during the day. The only thing is that it is hard to get to all of our appointments. The reason why we're not using our car is because it is at the dealership. A warning light came on saying there was something wrong with the airbag. It turns out that there is a serious problem in some of the electronic connections. The airbag could've gone off at anytime. It's weird because it is a 2010 model chevy malibu. It's okay that we don't have it though because the Lord has blessed us in many ways and has made up for not having that form of transportation.

One way that he's blessed us is by getting random rides from members. One day Elder Uribe and I were out eating dinner on the lawn of a school. We had a long walk ahead of us that we weren't looking forward to. Just at that moment a young man who just returned from his mission last summer pulled up and asked us if we needed anything. Perfect! Saved once again.

This morning we woke up early and went and taught seminary with Brother Boyle. I enjoyed that a lot. We covered Mormon 1-6 and focused on the principles of wickedness never was happiness and how we need to repent now and not procrastinate. There were about 8 kids in the class. That's the perfect size. I love teaching small class size groups.

We've been doing a lot of service for members lately. Cutting lawns and helping in gardens mostly. It's been great because we're building a lot of trust with the members. We also get to see them a lot more because we've been getting rides from many of them.

Due to the hike we're a little short on time.
Everybody have a great week
Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-05-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

Hola todos,
!Feliz dia de las madres!

This week we've been busy saving the world! We've been saving lives through teaching. Which reminds me, have you received the new Ensign which has the Conference Talks in it? I don't think we're going to get ours until next zone conference, next transfer. Maybe you could send me one before then (hint hint wink wink ;)

Our progressing investigator pool is kind of funny. They are all friends or related in some way and they all live in the same apartment complex. I'm pretty sure that is how each of them were found.

The list goes as such:
Andres and Isabel
Jorge and Claudia
Julio and Griselda
Mario and Viviana

Andres and Isabel are going to be baptized at the end of May. They are a really awesome family. We always have awesome lessons with them. Isabel reminds me of a bunch of friends back in Pasco. The only thing they are waiting for to be baptized is some final paperwork in their divorce so they can get married.

I met Jorge when I was here before but we never taught him or his wife. We had a lesson just the other day on the gospel of Jesus Christ and talked about baptism. It is amazing how the spirit guides both us and them during lessons. We are now helping them unite their family through the gospel. It is amazing how people can be healed spiritually and emotionally through the atonement of Christ.

We met Julio and Griselda when we were at a lesson with Jorge and Claudia. They asked us if we could teach them. We were excited about that. Especially since it is usually the other way around. We've taught them a couple of times now. They didn't see the difference between our religion and all the others after our first visit. They felt confused. We had only talked to them about the gospel and a little about the plan of salvation at this point. We were then able to teach simply about the ministry of Christ, apostasy, and the restoration. The spirit was very strong in that room. It was one of the stronger lessons I've had on my mission. Elder Uribe felt the same way. We had our Ward Mission Leader with us as well, President Alder. He was a mission president in Chile. He was also very impressed with the lesson and how we responded to their questions and doubts. It was just an awesome lesson.

We taught Mario and Viviana yesterday. We taught them about the plan of salvation and they ate it up. It was simple and powerful. We read a lot from the Book of Mormon. I love reading from the Book of Mormon with investigators. At the end we talked about baptism and discovered that they are willing but don't feel prepared. We asked questions and dug a little deeper and found that they have never prayed about the Book of Mormon or the things we taught. So they didn't have a testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith and of the restoration of the priesthood. We testified and committed them to pray about the Book of Mormon together.

It's been amazing to me how as we've committed people to be baptized all of their concerns and needs have come to the surface. We're then able to refocus and respond to their specific needs and help them make progress towards baptism and one day going to the temple.

This work and this church are true. I have been guided by the spirit many times to be able to help people overcome trials and questions that they have. I had an interesting thought that there is no way you could get 50,000 young men and women to go out and do what we do if it wasn't true. The gospel has changed my life and brought me more happiness than I can express.

Love,
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-04-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

It's been a crazy week. I am now in Vancouver. It's rained a lot since I've arrived. It reminds me a lot of Amy and how much she loves rain. It will probably start warming up soon. They had a warm week last week.

My new companion is Elder Uribe. I already knew him. We served in the branch in Pasco at the same time. He was in my old area while I was with Elder Godinez. His family currently lives in New Jersey but is originally from Chile. From Vina del mar area. It's not in Amy's mission.

Good news from Pasco! Arnulfo and the Flores family got baptized this last Sunday. I was really happy to hear that. Also Felix Santos who Elder Godinez and I taught and baptized just got back from Mexico and is in Pasco. I got that message today from him in an email. So I just missed him.

I have a story to tell you that hasn't completely unfolded yet. While I was in Vancouver the first time, we were teaching a family whose names are Ricardo, Daniel, and Sebastian. For some reason or other the missionaries stopped teaching them. I was talking to Brother Abdalah, a member in the branch, and he told me that Daniel was in the hospital. I still don't understand very well what for. He has a lot of swelling and pain in his abdominal and chest area.

Well, we went and visited them in the hospital. When we got to the hospital both Ricardo and Sebastian were there as well as the whole Abdalah family, which wasn't planned but still amazes me that it worked out that way. We talked to them for a little while about how Daniel was doing. He has lost a lot of weight. He's really skinny now.

Then we started to share some scriptures. It was interesting how the spirit guided the conversation. We shared scriptures like 3 Nephi 13:28-32 and Alma 7:11-12. We talked a lot about Christ and the atonement at first. Then we began to talk about the miracles that Christ performed and by what authority he performed them. We testified that that authority had been restored to the earth again through the prophet Joseph Smith. I then felt prompted to share some experiences I had with giving Priesthood blessings. One of which included a very young child being healed according to the faith of her mother. As I shared all of that I had tears in my eyes. Many experiences flooded back to my memory and I felt an overwhelming feeling of love from our Heavenly Father.

We then gave Daniel a blessing of health. He was eager to receive it. He was blessed to be healed according to the faith that he showed in reading the scriptures and praying while in the hospital. It was a very spiritual experience for each one of us in that room.

We're teaching a number of good families. One of which is on date to be baptized in the end of May. We've been working hard to find even more people to teach and little by little we're finding more. There are definitely a lot less people here than in Pasco. It makes for a good challenge.

I don't know if this would interest you. There was a branch activity on Friday night. They talked about emergency preparedness. They talked a lot about natural disasters and what we needed food wise and other things to be prepared. The family that has a baptismal date, Andres and Isabel, were both there.

I have a testimony of the importance of obedience to the small and simple commandments. For example, reading scriptures, praying, holding family home evening, paying tithing, and doing home teaching. I've had the opportunity to meet many different families and members of the church. You can see where each one is at in their level of understanding of the gospel and how strong their testimonies are of certain principles. There is a huge relationship between that and their diligence in doing the small and simple things. That relationship certainly exists in missionary work as well. The more closely I've followed the rules and commandments that we have, the more effective and happy I am as a missionary. One simple example is talking to everyone about the gospel. We're told to talk to everyone that we see and come across. Even since I've got to Vancouver I have improved in large measures with this. Recent days have felt much more productive and like I'm doing everything the Lord is asking of me as I've put forth extra effort to talk to everyone I come across.

This gospel is true and it means everything to me.

Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-04-21T11:24:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

So, transfers are tomorrow. I am leaving Pasco. I will be going back to my same area in Vancouver living with the Boyle's again. I'm excited about that. My new companion is Elder Uribe. He is from New Jersey but originally from Chile. I served around him quite a bit already. He was here in Pasco while Elder Godinez was my companion.

I feel really lucky to have been able to serve for longer periods of time in fewer branches. It has allowed me to get to know the people I teach better and have closer relationships with them. I will most likely not get transferred out of Vancouver which will mean I will probably only serve in two branches my whole mission. Isn't that so cool!

It's been really hard saying goodbye to everyone. Leonardo was the first one I talked to about it and we both cried. It was really hard to see him like that. I'm very glad that Heavenly Father allowed me to come back to Pasco to be able to help him more and become even closer friends.

There are also some other families and individuals that are very close to being baptized that I will miss. The Flores family and Arnulfo are both going to be baptized this week. They've been interviewed and everything. I'm happy though that I could take a part in their conversion. It honestly feels like I'm leaving a part of me here. It feels so strange to be leaving.

I'm excited to see Francisco in Vancouver and the Boyle family. So both of my summers will have been spent in Vancouver and both of my winters in Pasco. That's funny to think about. On Mother's day we could use Skype again since I'll be with the Boyle's. How does that sound?

Our zone BBQ went great last week. We had a lot of fun and the food was amazing. Elder Parlogean is a great cook. The weather was a little windy but still decent. We just ate the food inside the church and had the grill outside in the courtyard.

The weather has been really nice lately. It's even been up in the 80's. Can you believe that? Today it was already 70 degrees at 8:30 in the morning.

This afternoon Elder Hortin and I are going to go and see the Whitby's and say goodbye to them. That's another family that I am going to miss.

I just helped Leonardo set up an account on the computer at the library so he can email me! It won't be hard to keep in touch with him anymore. Woohoo!

I'll tell you all about Vancouver next week.

Love you all

Elder Ben Arnold

2010-04-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

We just went to the temple this morning. It was awesome. There was a little technical difficulty but it ended up being even better than normal. We woke up really early and went to the 7:00 session. I learned so much this time. I wish that I could go every week. I always get so spiritually recharged when I go.

Do you remember Elder Godinez? He came and visited us the last couple of days. It was really awesome to see him again. We even got to go on exchanges with him the other night. He's staying busy down in Idaho with school.

There was a branch party on Saturday and we had a lot of recent converts and investigators there. I loved it. There's just something about food that gets a lot of people out of their homes and over to the church. ha ha. Whatever works.

Santos is going to be moving to California this next week. That makes me sad. We're going to make sure the missionaries get him down there though. We have an appointment with him tomorrow.

Today we have a zone BBQ. Elder Parlogean, who's from Texas, is making the BBQ and rice. It's been marinating all night long. I got to smell it last night and I'm excited to eat it.

The Flores family will hopefully be baptized this Sunday. We need to have their interview tonight but weren't able to meet as planned with them last night. They are an awesome family and are going to go a long ways in the church.

We're meeting with Arnulfo again tonight and he came to church last Sunday. Hopefully things pick back up with him. His life just seems to keep getting harder for him. He really needs our Heavenly Father's help right now. I pray that he follows the things that we tell him.

I love you all
Have a great week
Elder Ben Arnold

PS I don't remember if I already told you this but we have transfers this week. ZLC is on Friday and that's when we'll find everything out. Hopefully I can squeeze another one out in Pasco.

Tell Matthew and Jonathan that I love them and that I always pray for them.

2010-04-07T15:59:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

Things continue to be amazing in Pasco. It's been really windy lately which has made it a little bit colder. Not cold enough to keep our suit coats on though. We don't have to wear them anymore since General Conference this last weekend.

General Conference was amazing. I really liked Elder Rasband's talk on how missionaries receive their call. I want Matthew and Jonathan to go back and watch that one again. There was definitely a theme of the home and parents teaching their children. I also like how Elder Holland called us to repentance.

Mom do you think you could burn some of the conference talks onto a DVD? Also there are the video clips called Mormon messages that are really good maybe you could put some of them on there too. Maybe that would be a good assignment for Matthew or Jonathan too.

Not a lot of investigators came to General Conference. I would like to be able to take it to them. The only one that came was Arnulfo. He loved it. He's so awesome and humble. Every time we read something with him that helps give him comfort, he tells us that those words are so beautiful. And he longingly looks at the Book of Mormon with his hand rested on its pages. He has found happiness through the gospel. He is going to be baptized on Sunday of this week. I wrote an email to a missionary that taught him in Mexico and got a response back today! He was pretty excited.

The Flores family are going to be baptized not this Sunday but the following. We're going to teach them tonight at the church. The kids have made a lot of progress lately. We've been having some really good lessons with them.

We have a lot of exciting things this coming week. We have both a zone meeting and a stake meeting that Elder Hortin and I have to get ready. Lots of planning, woohoo. Then we also have the baptism to get ready.

I got the Easter package. It was great. I wore the tie from dad the very same day. I even wore the pin too. That was the last day I wore my green suit. It's a good thing we can wear slacks from now on because I completely thrashed my blue suit pants and now my green suit pants have two holes in the backside. Hopefully I can get that fixed before I need to use it on Sunday.

I love you family.
Have a great week.
Elder Ben Arnold

2010-03-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

We met a new guy named Arnulfo. He is awesome. He talked with the missionaries down in Mexico. He moved up here with his family and since then his family has been broken up. When we first met him he was very depressed and didn't know what to do with his life. Ever since our first visit he has gotten a lot happier and is always excited to meet with us. He is going to be baptized on the 11th of April. He is a very humble honest man.

The Llamas didn't come to church. Gabriel decided that he wants to stay Catholic. It seems like he got antied by one of his family members. We have another lesson set up this next Friday and he did commit to come to one session of general conference. I pray that he comes with his family.

The Flores are progressing really well. They are looking good for the 10th of April. They are looking for a job and a place to live. We are teaching them in a hotel right now. The kids have been warming up a lot to us. It is a lot of fun to me to help the kids understand the plan of salvation. They were actually asking a lot of tough deep questions last time.

Juan and Briana haven't been doing so well. We went over on Sunday morning to wake them up and they didn't answer the door or their phone. We haven't been in contact with them in a little while. We left them a message on the phone talking about the importance of these things and that as soon as they are ready to take things more seriously we will be waiting for their call. I hope that they call soon. I love that family.

Pasco is doing amazing right now. The Lord is blessing the work here. It is looking like we are going to hit our goals for March and April. We are very excited and are working harder than ever.

Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

Teach when you find, find when you teach.

2010-03-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hola familia

This week has been pretty awesome. One of the most exciting things was on Sunday. Gabriel Llamas came to church! The rest of his family didn't come but they are all going to come next week. He loved it and said several times that he was going to bring his family next week. He has changed a lot recently. Just last night we had an appointment with the whole family. We read about the plan of salvation in 2 Nephi 9. Leonardo came with us too. It turns out that they met each other before a couple of different times.

We met a new family this last week. They just moved from Nevada and were investigating the church there. They were even on baptismal date. It is a family of seven and all of them came to church this last Sunday. They are a really cool humble family. I'm excited to start working with them. We're going to have our first lesson with them tonight.

Juan and Briana didn't come to church this week. They didn't set an alarm and they slept in. They're still progressing and excited to get married. They got an apartment. And Juan has had jobs available to him left and right. He is working two jobs right now. They're good jobs too. They're being blessed already for having desires to do what is right. We'll work hard to get their wedding arranged this week.

At our most recent lesson with them one of their friends was over visiting them, Katrina. She wasn't involved in the lesson but listened. Then at the end we just started to talk to her and asked her a lot of questions of the soul. She opened right up and she committed to be at our next lesson with Juan and Briana. That was cool. Just like PMG says, "Teach when you find, find when you teach."

The work is progressing rapidly in Pasco. The whole stake is getting really involved in Missionary Work and people just keeping coming out of nowhere for us to teach. The Lord is blessing us in many ways.

General Conference is even closer! I'm super excited to bring investigators to church in two weeks. We're so blessed to have a living prophet to guide us.

I love missionary work!
Elder Ben Arnold

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

2010-03-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

This week has been busy. We had Zone Conference yesterday that we'd been getting ready for. Elder Hortin and I had to do a training on Teaching using questions. The whole Zone Conference was focused on that. It was amazing. It's completely changed the way that I teach. I got to apply the things that I learned a lot last night while I was on exchanges with Elder Jack up in Connell and Basin City. We got in two doors while tracting using these questions.

Santos was confirmed on Sunday. Juan Saldana confirmed him. I love taking part in ordinances like that. It is a very spiritual experience. Which reminds me this last Sunday was branch conference. Elder Tracy, my previous companion, did the translation during sacrament meeting. He did a good job. It's fun to serve around him again. Then in gospel principles the Lybberts came in and visited with us. So I got to sit next to them and translate. I think it's harder translating from Spanish to English than from English to Spanish.

I didn't tell you, I don't think. We got all of our Citius Altius Fortius t-shirts and wristbands that we ordered. The whole zone loved them. It's fun to see them wear them every week.

Did I tell you last week that Briana got her ID? We set a baptismal date with them for the 4th of April, General Conference! They committed to be married before then! We are so excited for them!

Hey Matthew, Happy Birthday! I can't believe that you are already 18. Only one year until you get to go on a mission. You are going to love it. Something is coming in the mail for you. I'm sending it today. I already bought it just need to get it in the mail.

We have dinner with the Llamas family tonight. Our last lesson we just taught Gabriel and Gloria, the mom and dad. Juan came with us and they committed to come to General Conference. They know that they need something else in their lives and the mom is willing to come to church if the dad, Gabriel, will come. He has a hard time believing that he should come to our church because he has grown up strongly believing in the Catholic church. We gave him a lot of things to think about last time and he is very sincere about his family. He is such a good guy. I pray that he opens his heart to the things we teach so his family can receive the many blessings that are available.

I wish I could write about all of the other things that happened this week. There was so much. Life is good when you're busy doing the Lord's work. Even when you're tired.

I'm getting anxious for General Conference. I highly suggest that you all get up that morning and shower get in church clothes and go watch it at the church. For every session. I've gotten way more out of as I have done that. That way you also don't fall asleep. You should also try and go to one of the sessions since you're so close. Maybe I could see you in the audience. We're so blessed to be so close.

I love you all
Remember to read your scriptures everyday and to pray
Elder Ben Arnold

What happened to Amy?

2010-03-02T11:09:00.001-08:00

March 2, 2010
Hola familia,

On Saturday morning I did a baptismal interview. It was amazing and a very spiritual experience for me and her. After the interview I had to talk to President for something. He answered the phone and said, "Elder Arnold, I was just about to call you. Your sister is okay." A feeling of peace came over me. Then I asked myself what happened? My sister is okay from what? I got a panicked feeling and wanted to know where Amy was, in the hospital or with her mission president. He went on to explain that he had just gotten off of the phone with my Stake President and that there had been a large earthquake in Chile. That was the first that I heard of what happened. Ever since then I have been praying fervently for my little sister to be okay and to be able to help those around her.

We already got the shirts we ordered for the zone. They're pretty cool. I'll send some pictures of them soon. Which reminds me, I have been going picture crazy lately. I have probably a thousand new pictures to send you. I have most of them all ready to send on a DVD.

We walked to church with a family on Sunday. They are already members but have been struggling a little bit lately. The father in the family just passed away. It was really hard for the daughters. They are 15 and 13.

Santos was interviewed for his baptism this upcoming Sunday and he's all good to go. We’re really excited for him. He is a very humble guy. Leonardo has been key in his conversion. Leonardo has set the goal to get the Melchizedek priesthood as soon as he can. He's changed so much lately and doing so well.

During our last weekly planning we prayed for Juan and Briana that they would realize the importance of living the gospel. They haven't been answering our phone calls or making the appointments that we set with them. Then just last night they called us and asked us if we could set up a time to meet. We saw them two hours later! We had an amazing lesson with them. We read out of 1 Nephi 17 where Nephi was commanded to build a boat. And we related how if God was so powerful how could God not help them get married and get her ID. Which is what has been preventing them from getting married. They were really excited to go there this morning and pick it up. We called them this morning to remind them to go and get it. No answer. We'll see what happens.

Transfers are coming up pretty quick. We have ZLC this Friday and then transfers the following Wednesday. I'll let you know what's going to happen next Tuesday.

I was talking to President Belnap this morning about something and he told me that on Thursday one of his friends that is going to be a mission president in a Spanish speaking mission is going to come with Elder Hortin and me so he can ask us questions and watch us plan. That was pretty unexpected and hopefully will be a good experience.

We went with Juan down to Burbank to an appointment we had with Teresa. When we got there she was out in the back working on taking out a big pile of weeds and logs. We jumped right in and started pulling it all apart. It was just what I needed. I wasn't feeling 100% spiritually speaking that day. After working hard for an hour I felt like I got it all out of me. I think it changed Teresa's view of us as well. We should have a great lesson with her when we go back in a couple of days.

I love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

I'm a really happy missionary right now.

2010-02-23T16:24:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

We had stake conference this last weekend. It was amazing. It was a life-changing experience for me. As a result I'm examining and studying Moses in the Pearl of Great Price. It has been opening my eyes in a lot of different ways. Another thing that has been important that I learned was I need to record all of the inspiration that I receive. I haven't been good at using a study journal in the past but I'm good at it now. I don't let a single thing go by without carefully recording it in my study journal.

At the stake conference in the leadership training session before the adult session Elder Hortin and I did a training with all of the Ward Mission Leaders. It was awesome. We're looking to see some big improvements in the different ward missions. We also put together an awesome zone meeting. It was kind of like a glorified District Meeting, haha. We got permission from President to do that instead of District Meetings last week. It got everyone really excited to go out and work.

We decided to walk to Stake Conference on Sunday instead of driving. We talked to a guy on the way and gave him our phone number. All the time finding, it works.

We're going to have to move Santos' date back a couple of weeks but he's still doing really well.

Funny story. I went on exchanges this last week with Elder Spencer. In the morning at 8:00, we went to go help somebody move from a two bedroom apartment into a one bedroom apartment. It's a long story as to why that is but it took us from 8:00 to 12:00 to finish the move. It was like death. I didn't know you could fit that much stuff in a little apartment. On top of that there were about 10-15 of us helping her move the whole time.

After that experience I've been extremely OCD about the cleanliness and organization of our apartment. You'd be proud mom. haha.

I love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

Leonardo is on fire!

2010-02-16T16:02:00.001-08:00

Hola familia,

Exciting things are happening in Pasco. Leonardo is really on fire now. The other night while we were on exchanges again; he called up Elder Hortin to see if he could go out with them that night. So he did and they taught a couple of lessons. We also had a lesson with him and Santos. Santos read his reading assignment in Mosiah 18. We reviewed verses 8-10 with him and he committed to be baptized on the 28th of this month! He is a very humble man and is trying very hard to learn and repent.

Juan and Briana haven't been doing so well. It's been hard to get a hold of them lately. They didn't come to church last Sunday either. They've been working on getting her ID still. We keep committing them to go and get it but something always gets in the way. And apparently there are always really long lines at the DMV.

Amy, feliz cumpleanos! No puedo creer que ya tienes 22 anos. Espero que fuera un buen dia. Perdon que tu correo electronico todavia no ha llegado. Espero que llegue tu carta muy pronto. Ojala que la proxima vez que escucho de ti ya la hayas recibido. (Happy birthday! I can not believe she's 22. I hope it was a good day. Sorry that your email has not arrived yet. I wait your letter soon. May the next time you hear and you received. - translated with google translator)

Here's a cool story about finding: I was on exchanges with Elder Smith. We were knocking on some doors in an apartment complex and we saw a Hispanic lady walking down the street with several children. We decided we were going to catch up to her and talk to her. It was a long walk and we had to walk quickly but we caught up to them. I talked to her about temples and eternal families. She said we could come by and visit with her and her family. She gave us her address and phone number. We need to talk to everybody about the gospel

I've been focusing a lot lately on my personal and companionship studies. I've noticed that I've been receiving a lot more guidance and inspiration for those that we teach. Great power comes from reading the scriptures.

I love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

I love missionary work!

2010-02-09T12:59:00.001-08:00

Hola familia,

I don’t think I told you last week but Juan Saldaña is the new Branch Mission Leader. He’s doing awesome. We already worked a lot together when he was just a branch missionary. There was also a high priests group formed! That’s one step closer to becoming a ward. We’ve been working really hard to try and get the Perry Plan up and going with all of the changes that are happening. We think that it will actually go somewhere this time. We’ve been trying to teach Juan everything that we know to help him fulfill his calling.

Recently Leonardo had been struggling spiritually. Something happened in the last week and now he’s on fire. He blessed the sacrament! I almost cried when I saw that. He was up there with Juan Saldana and with Francisco Chavez. It was Francisco’s first time as well! It was fast Sunday and like Amy it was a spiritual outpouring for me. I felt the power of the Atonement. In these last few weeks the gospel has meant so much more to me.

Another story about Leonardo: Elder Hortin and another missionary, Elder Burgin, went over to visit him. Santos, his roommate, was also there. Santos has been doing drugs. And he was high when Elder Hortin and I talked to him the first time. He felt like if he was going to listen to us that he was really going to commit himself and listen. So he threw all of his drugs away that next day and hasn’t used it since. Elder Hortin and Elder Burgin had a great lesson with the two of them. He told me later that night that Leonardo was on fire. He’s eating everything up right now and doing everything he needs to. He also got offered his old job back again. He was looking for a job in Yakima; I’m glad he found one in Pasco.

We started teaching a lady named Angelica. She was taught by the other elders when I was first in Pasco. In fact I taught her while I was in a companionship with Elder Anderson and Elder Dudoich. She’s really excited about coming to church and getting baptized only her husband is really Catholic and appears to love worldly things like alcohol more than God. We have an appointment with them tonight. We are going to be reading out of the Book of Mormon on the topic of “wickedness never was happiness”.

I can’t tell you about all the experiences that I’ve had this week but I’ve felt several times like Heavenly Father was working through me to teach and help his children. That is such a good feeling, when you comfort people and get them back on the right path.

I love missionary work!

Scriptures Equal Power

2010-01-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

The baptism of Francisco went great. He’s so solid. He’s been reading a lot out of the new Gospel Principles book. Which by the way I have enjoyed very much using. Elder Hortin performed the ordinance of baptism and I confirmed Francisco. It was a very neat experience. I felt impressed to tell him about sharing the gospel to people around the world. We’ve lately been talking about how we’re going to try and help him to serve a mission. He’s 23 years old.

Scriptures equal power. I testify with Amy. If we would just read our scriptures everyday we will always progress forward. I’ve seen too many investigators, members, and missionaries that are stuck spiritually speaking. They seem to have negative attitudes or they just don’t enjoy church as much as they used to. Missionaries may not be excited to go out and work. They just don’t have the vision. The reason is because they are not effectively using their study time or not studying at all. As we read the scriptures we receive revelation and inspiration. We receive the motivation and desire to do the Lord’s work. We are excited and have a vision about what we do. As we leave the scriptures by the side of the bed and let our busy lives be filled with things of the world we hinder our spiritual progression. There is a direct connection. Other things like church attendance and Family Home Evenings help but can not replace daily scripture study.

Today I saw an interesting contrast between worldly things and godly things. We went to the 7:00 am session at the temple. At which I was taught several amazing truths of the gospel. I received guidance in my own personal life as well in how to help those around me. Almost immediately following our temple visit we went to the mall in Kennewick to buy some new shoes for Elder Hortin. It felt so dirty inside of there, in some stores more so than in others. There was a drastic difference between the spirit in the one and the other. How wonderful it is that we have places on this earth like temples where we can escape from the filthiness of the world, spiritually speaking.

I was saying earlier that I love the new gospel principles book. The main reason is because of its simplicity. As I’ve taught the basic, simple, pure truths of the gospel in place of complex analogies or stories we see more success and have more effect on those that we teach. The spirit can bare witness of pure doctrine more than it can an analogy or doctrine that is doctrine at all but rather an opinion.

This last week we spent a large portion of time preparing for our monthly stake meeting. It went very well. There was a lot to report on. The meeting was effective because lots of action items have come from. We were able to point out many areas of weakness and strength that have influences on missionary work. We have an amazing Stake President, President Montierth, as well many other amazing, spiritual giants of leaders.

Transfers are coming up. We’ll find out what happens at ZLC this upcoming Friday. It’s strange to me again to look back on this transfer and see how quickly it has gone by. I should be staying here for at least one more transfer. I love Pasco!

Love Elder Ben Arnold

2010-01-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

Eugene and Francisco

2010-01-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

Things have been busy this week. We had interviews yesterday, which is why we’re writing today. There was a lot of planning for that and also for a Stake Meeting coming up. We focused on teaching simple and true doctrine during interviews.

Hey something exciting. We just got back from shopping at Wal-Mart. You’ll never guess who I ran into. If you remember last year while I was in Pasco I met a man named Eugene. It was in the Panda Express. Well I saw him today. He walked past and the spirit made me recognize him immediately. I called to him and went over and started talking to him. He’s been slowly doing better. He has missionaries come and visit him frequently. This was an answer to many prayers. I wanted to be able to talk to him one more time and the Lord in his own time gave me the opportunity.

While at Wal-Mart we also got a new lamp because it’s really dark in our apartment. And my chair broke. The whole back part of it broke off. I got a new, cheap, comfortable plastic chair.

The internet is being really slow right now. There are a lot of kids on facebook and playing online games. Either they are out for lunch or they don’t have school today. That’s one nice thing about the winter. Usually we use the library when they are all in school. I might even be sending this letter to you in the mail.

We have a baptism this upcoming weekend. His name is Francisco. I don’t remember if I told you but this is the guy that during the first lesson when we were talking about the apostasy said, “So then Joseph Smith was called to restore the church so that we could have all of those things again.” At the end of all of our appointments he asks us when we are going to have another lesson instead of the other way around. He says that he loves learning the new things that we are teaching him.

We’ve been finding a lot of people to teach through the Vargas family. They have a lot of family and friends.

A lot of the training that we’ve received lately has been on finding new investigators because that’s been really hard lately. There just hasn’t been enough time with all of the progressing investigators and people on date. But we need to keep finding otherwise our pools of investigators go down.

Love Elder Arnold

Vargas family wedding and baptism

2010-01-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

Baptisms

2010-01-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

January 5, 2010

Hola familia,

First, we had a baptism on Saturday. Yisel and Ana, the daughters of the Vargas family, were baptized. It went really well. Ana was a little nervous but got over it and she did a good job. They are 11 and 8 respectively. The water was pretty cold. We couldn't start filling up the font until late because there was a primary meet the teacher in another ward that morning.

We've been so busy lately. There's so much to do with not very much time to do it all. We've had two Elders living in our apartment with us for the past few weeks. They just moved out yesterday. It feels empty in there now. There will be less distractions in the evenings though, so that will be good in that way.

The Pasco Stake has been seeing a lot of success in missionary work lately. For this month of January we're looking at just under 30 baptisms, which is just less than half of the total number baptized in all of 2009! It's been mind blowing.

We're teaching a young man, 26, named Francisco. He's a really smart kid. Maybe I can't call him a kid because he's older than me. He's been coming to church for a little while but haven't started teaching him until more recently. We were teaching him about the apostasy and the falling away of the church after Christ. Then he made a comment about that's why the church needed to be restored. Elder Hortin and I just kind of sat back stunned. I've never heard anybody say that before. Or understand that that quick. He's committed to be baptized on the 16th of this month!

There was another baptism in the branch this last Sunday. In fact there were six people that were baptized all together. One family, and two others that are really good friends. Investigators of the other Elders and the Sisters. Each one of them had somebody different baptizing them as well. So there was a lot of people dressed in white.

There's been a change in Pasco in the last few months. All of the missionaries are catching it and you can see the vision in their eyes. It's so much fun to be around so many missionaries that have that mindset and desire to work.

I love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

Christmas Past

2010-01-04T12:25:00.001-08:00

December 30, 2009

Hola familia,

This has been an amazing last week. Everything has just been going so smoothly and I've been so happy.

Jose was ordained on Sunday. We did it right after church. It was a very spiritual experience for me. Before the actual ordination I was worried that I wouldn't be able to remember all of the things that I needed to say. Heavenly Father helped me out though and brought it all to my remembrance. Jose has been stepping up a lot lately. He's recognized that he is the head of the house and he needs to be a spiritual support for them. Receiving the priesthood has helped him to see that responsibility that much more.

I've already started putting the pictures in my journal. It also makes it easier to remember all of the things that I did during the day so I can write about them.

I had a really neat experience just a couple of days ago in my personal study. I was searching for an answer to something. I was really bothered by it. And I needed some spiritual confirmation from Heavenly Father. As I finished praying I stayed on my knees for a couple of minutes. A name of one of the seventies came into my mind. I went back to my desk and felt impressed to open my November Ensign, which is the conference issue. I was again impressed to look down the list of names of the speakers. I slowly read each name. When I came to something like the 7th name it stood out at me. It was the same name that came to me at the end of my prayer. So I turned to that page and began reading. At first I wasn't sure where this was taking me or how it was going to be an answer to my prayer. My answer was in that talk. And as I read different parts of it the spirit confirmed those things to me. Whenever the spirit comes over me that strong it makes me cry. I felt so joyful and so close to my Heavenly Father. Just as Amy testified I testify that our Heavenly Father loves us and is always looking over us. "Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you."

Thinking back on past Christmas' I can't remember any presents that I received. The things that I remember is decorating ginger bread houses with my family. I remember not being able to sleep at night in anticipation to open presents. So me and Matthew played a football game on the computer all night. I remember being with my family and those that I love. Christmas one year ago the thing I remember most is talking with my family. And I'm sure that is the thing I will remember the most about this Christmas.

Love Elder Arnold

PS Feria means fair, that's the word Amy couldn't think of.

Cardboard Christmas Tree

2009-12-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

Of course transfers happened this last week. Elder Hortin got here on Wednesday afternoon. He's from Smithfield, Utah, which is near Logan. He came out at the same time as Elder Blomquist. He's served in Yakima and Sunnyside.

This whole last week has been extremely busy, in part, preparations for Christmas. We're going to the Stake President's house today for a zone p-day. We're really excited about that. The reason for that is because the stake reached its goal for the year, which is amazing. There are also a lot of baptisms scheduled for January. We'll start the year off with a bang.

Jose Vargas got interviewed to receive the priesthood. He'll receive that next Sunday. He asked me if I would ordain him. That hit me really hard as I was talking to him in the church hall. I feel very privileged for having that opportunity. It's been amazing to see that family progress. They all love church. And the other daughters are going to be baptized in the beginning of January.

I don't know if you remember last year when we talked to you for Christmas. We used a member’s newspaper store. He has four lines there so we can be all talking at the same time. I'll call you at 9:45 our time which is 10:45 your time.

I believe that I got all of the packages. I got the one from grandma and the one from Amy and from Crate and Barrel. I remember at least one from big box games and I think there's another one in the van. We're driving the mission van up to the Stake President's house. It's pretty big. I think it's a 12 passenger van.

We have a cardboard tree in our apartment that Elder Anderson got from somewhere last year. All of our presents are under it. I'll take a picture of it so you can see it.

I love you and look forward to talking to you on Christmas!

Elder Arnold

Baptism and new companion

2009-12-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

This week has been an awesome white and snowy week. We got maybe a couple of inches of snow. It snowed again a little last night. It makes driving a little bit slower but it is pretty and white.

We took Elder Godinez to President Belnap's house this morning. I'm going to miss him a lot. We've been companions for the past four and a half months. Elder Hortin is my new companion. He came out with Elder Blomquist. He'll get here tomorrow.

Just so you know Elder Godinez will be going to Rexburg for school. He's going to be studying Construction Management.

I'm glad I'm over being sick. I missed going to our dinner with the Llamas family. Which by the way means flames in English. They didn't come to church. We haven't been able to talk to them and found out why yet. They seemed so excited to come.

The Vargas family, previously referred to as the Gomez family, are now married and baptized. The wedding was amazing. So many people helped them out. They made it a very special experience for them. And lots of people came too. I took lots of pictures and will be sending them home this week.

Their baptism went very well. Again there are pictures of their baptism as well. Three of them were baptized this week, Jose, Antonia, and the older daughter Cristal.

This has been a very busy week with all that's happened.

Love you all very much
Elder Ben Arnold

Sick again

2009-12-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

This is going to be a short letter. I’ve been sick since last night and haven’t had as much energy.

We still don’t know anything about transfers. They didn’t give us the information at ZLC like they usually do. They said that we were going to get it at Christmas Zone Conference but we didn’t.

By the way Christmas Zone Conference was great. We got very spiritually fed. And we got to watch Forever Strong. They cut out the first 11 minutes or so though. It was very inspirational. There are lots of things to apply to missionary work out of it as well.

The Gomez – Vargas family, soon to be the Vargas family, are getting married tomorrow, Thursday. The parents will then be baptized on this upcoming Saturday. They just got their marriage license on Monday. I can’t believe how many miracles have happened to get them to this point. I’ve been praying for miracles so that they could be baptized before Elder Godinez left. And it’s going to happen.

We’re having dinner with the Llamas family today. They haven’t come to church and we haven’t had many lessons with them recently. There will be more to report next week.

Love you

Elder Ben Arnold

La familia Gomez

2009-12-01T15:43:00.000-08:00

December 1, 2009

Hola familia,

This week has been very eventful. Another family found us: La familia Gomez. They are progressing the fastest out of anybody that I've taught. They've come to church and have kept all of their reading commitments. And they accepted a baptismal date for the 12th of December. That was all after just like 3 days of knowing them. Three of the kids are baptismal age. It's been amazing teaching them. We've run into a little problem with them that might push their date back but they'll still be baptized.

Here's a story about the mom in the family:
11-29-09
...
The Gomez family is amazing! We watched the testaments. We then re-watched the part about the authority given to Nephi. They accepted a baptismal commitment for the 12th of December. So Elder Godinez will still be here!!! Antonia sent us home with a big pan of food and with a bunch of homemade tortillas. They were good.

I was just remembering another experience we had with Antonia. In our lesson that we had with them yesterday she told us about a near death experience that she had, where she was standing outside of her body and watching the doctors and other people around her body. This happened at the beginning of this year. The reason this came back to me today was because in the Gospel Principles class the topic was the Spirit World. Brother Bedoya was talking about death and how it is a separation of the spirit and the body. He then asked Antonia if she believed that was true. She said that she knew that was true and nodded her head. That was her whole response. Then she looked at me and gave me a smile...

The Llamas family isn't progressing a lot right now because we're having a hard time getting a hold of them. We went by on Sunday. Little Gabriel was outside playing in the yard. He ran over as soon as we pulled up. We talked to him about coming to church with us in a little while. He ran up the steps to tell his mom saying, "Yes, we get to go to church today!" He is such an awesome kid. I really feel like he'll be an amazing missionary someday. Hopefully we'll be able to find them at home more often.

I'll let you know how transfers go next week because we have ZLC this Friday. I can't believe time is going by so fast.

Love Elder Arnold

PS I got the package this morning. Thanks for the jacket. It's just what I was hoping for. I already set up the little Christmas tree. Did you get that from Germany? I already ate a bunch of the candy too.

Llamas family

2009-11-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

I just realized that I haven't told you about the Llamas family. I remembered to bring my journal this time so I'll copy some of it over:

11-14-09
...After hearing him I feel so much more connected to the spirit. I feel more open to receiving personal revelation.
Elder Garrett and I went out and worked together tonight. I sincerely felt a new sense of urgency. We first attended Tamara's baptism. I shared a testimony after the ordinance. Right after the prayer we congratulated her and then left. We called Felix leaving the church parking lot telling him we needed him for an exchange in five minutes. He was all for it. We visited several different people. At first nobody was there. Then we started to find people left and right: Rolando, Moises, Nancy, Brittany, Ronnie & Brandon, Gabriel, and the Leal family. That was all in an hour and a half. We were truly led by the spirit. One of those visits stands out in my mind. That is Gabriel. Just before heading back to the Leals, Elder Garrett said, "Why don't we go see that family that we ATF'd that were out playing soccer?" So we drove over there and a man, in his 40's, named Gabriel answered the door. I introduced us and began teaching how a prophet and apostles have been called. We talked to him about the grandness of the church throughout the world. That these men just like the men that walked with Christ go throughout the whole world. And that one of them would be here in Pasco tomorrow. He was taken aback. He turned to Elder Garrett and asked him, "Is this true? Is this real?" Elder Garrett responded, "Es la verdad." We committed him to come and he said for sure he would.' It is incredible what happens when the spirit guides. This is God's work. His hand is in our lives everyday.

End of journal entry 11-14-09

11-16-09
Happy B-Day Mom!
...

11-17-09
...
We had two really great lessons. We arrived about 20 minutes late to Gabriel's house. They were there waiting for us. And Gabriel had read the pamphlet. All of them seemed to be understanding very well. It was best when we asked questions. I definitely talked too much. The kids participated. And they all sat there quietly and patiently.
At the end of the lesson we gave Gabriel a book of Mormon in Spanish and the four kids books of Mormon in English. I'm very excited for this family...

11-20-09
...
Last thing we did tonight was see the Llamas family. Wow that was spectacular. When we first got there, I heard little Gabriel (junior) say, "Yes!" They immediately turned off the TV and all gathered around to listen to us. Even the mother was there. We reviewed the restoration and the Book of Mormon again. We showed them a lot of pictures from the picture book produced just recently by the church. They hadn't read from their Books of Mormon yet. I think that they will be excited to next time though.
At the end of the lesson Ana, the oldest daughter, offered the prayer. Little Gabriel is really excited to give it the next time. Also next time we're going to watch the Restoration video and the end of the testaments. I noticed also that we need to try to include Karain more often. She seems to be getting left out a little bit.
...

I love missionary work!
Elder Ben Arnold

PS I talked to Mayela Poulson again recently. In fact I tracted into her sister in Pasco. Her husband is not a member. It sounded like it was a pretty delicate situation but maybe we could get something going if we talked to Mayela.

That's crazy that dad's using facebook.

I'm pretty sure that I can call you pretty much anytime on Christmas. We'll probably hear more as it gets closer.

(Where is Elder Godinez going home to?) He lives in North Carolina. Then just a couple of weeks after going home he'll be going to Rexburg to go to BYU-I. That means we'll be able to run into him sometime since he'll be so close by.

Elder Godinez

2009-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

This last week has been amazing. I have grown and been fed so much spiritually. I mentioned in my last email that Elder Holland was coming to our mission. On Saturday the entire mission came to the Gage Building in Richland. Elder Perry, Elder Jay Jensen, and Elder Holland all came. We first took a picture with them in front of the temple. Then we all got to shake each of their hands and look into their eyes, which they later described as being our own personal interview. I felt when I looked into Elder Holland’s eyes that he was looking straight into my spirit. It was an experience that I will never forget.

All three of them spoke to us. Wow. I wish I could share with you all of the things that I was taught. I want to share one experience though that caused all of us to think a lot and made us cry.

This was while Elder Jensen was teaching us. He had one of those small earpieces/microphones so that he could walk around and write on the chalkboard. Close to the very end of his teaching he said, “Could I have Elder Godinez please come up and join me.” Of course I was sitting right next to Elder Godinez. He was pretty surprised and seemed a little nervous. I’m not going to say everything that happened but after Elder Godinez read a few scriptures and a small discussion with Elder Jensen, Elder Jensen did something that I will never forget. He began to talk about Elder Godinez coming up on the end of his mission. This is something that I don’t ever talk about with Elder Godinez because it is a soft spot. He loves his mission. He would serve longer if he could, I know that. Then he talked about at the end of his mission that his stake president would sit him down and he would release him. Then he would take his name tags from him. And at that moment Elder Jensen began taking off Elder Godinez’s nametags. With each one that he took off Elder Godinez began to cry harder and his head would drop lower. After they were all taken off, Elder Godinez was standing there with his head in his hands with Elder Jensen standing next to him with his arm around him, comforting him. Everybody, including President and Sister Belnap were all crying. When Elder Jensen did this, I felt something was being pulled out of me. It hurt emotionally and spiritually.

Elder Jensen was trying to teach us a point of how we can’t stop after our missions. If our mission is the spiritual high of our life, then we are doing something wrong. I’ve been caused to reflect on this experience many times. Then a couple of nights ago, Elder Godinez and I had a very spiritual experience together and we were taught even more of this principle by the spirit. I’ve never understood the importance of this work and personal progression so well before.

I believe I explained Leonardo’s situation with the letter I wrote last week. Well I had a very amazing spiritual experience with him. Sunday morning we drove over to his house to make sure that he knew about church with Elder Holland. He didn’t. So he got ready and met us over there. Come ten o’clock I was sitting next to him right in the middle four rows back from the pulpit. That was a very special experience. The joy that filled my soul in seeing his progression. Wow. Something that I can’t adequately describe.

This Stake Conference with Elder Holland was an amazing missionary experience. There were over 100 investigators at the meeting. Sitting there watching him. We are going to see a lot of fruits from that. Just from talking to a few of those people right after the meeting I am getting chills. They all felt something. They knew that he was a man called of God. Something else cool is that on that day, November 15, is the day that Juan Saldana was baptized one year ago. What a great way to celebrate.

I think I might not have been clear. Elder Holland came both on Saturday to teach the missionaries and on Sunday to Stake Conference to visit the Pasco Stake.

I wish that I could explain more of the experiences that I had this week including finding a new investigator family, who are awesome. But I am running out of time.

Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold

PS I love being a missionary!!!

Griselda, Moises and Leonardo

2009-11-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

I don't think I ever mentioned to you that Elder Holland is coming to our mission this upcoming Saturday. The entire mission is coming to the tri-cites to a mission conference. We're all pretty excited. There's also a possibility that they're talking about splitting the Pasco stake. Who knows what's really happening though. They might even just be announcing that it will be happening later, like in a year.

We were tracting the other day over in East Pasco on a street named Douglas. We went past this house that didn't really look like anybody was home and there wasn't really a front door either. It was just a glass sliding door. We were going to skip it then I remembered a trailer that I knocked on in West Pasco that was similar. And it was a really cool guy that answered and we were able to teach him a little bit. So instead of skipping the house we went and knocked on the glass door. A young woman named Griselda answered the door. It turns out they had just moved from Tennessee. And over there they had gone through three sets of sister missionaries. Woohoo, I'm really glad that we stopped by.

We had a fireside put on by President Belnap at the Gage building in Kennewick. Lots of missionaries and investigators and recent converts came, including a good number from the branch. Griselda, the Sisters recent convert, spoke at the fireside and did a great job. Everybody that went loved it. The spirit was very strong. I sat next to Elder Godinez as he translated into the transmitting device. It was easier to listen to him speak in Spanish because he was talking louder.

We’ve been teaching this guy named Moises. He is the boyfriend of Itamar, who I think I’ve told you about. Anyway, they’ve been having some problems and they’ve split up now. We’ve been meeting with Moises which meetings generally consist of us sitting there and listening to him for a while, then sharing our own feelings and counsel from the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. Lately, it’s been harder for him to accept what we teach because there is a member who is good friends with Itamar that’s not been a good example for her. It’s been a frustrating situation for us in explaining to Moises how that could happen and still in a sense protect the face of the church. I’m sure glad that the spirit testifies to what we say. Apart from that, he’s progressing very well right now.

This last Sunday I was so excited! Leonardo came to church. I felt inspired this last week to write him a letter and leave it in his mailbox. So I did it and look what happened. I also felt very guided in what I wrote in the letter. He also came to the fireside that night. Yes! I saw an increased amount of light and happiness in his countenance. He hadn’t really been to church since General Conference. I’m really excited to tell Elder Blomquist.

I love you all a lot
Elder Ben Arnold

Staying in Pasco

2009-11-03T13:07:00.000-08:00

Hello family,

This last week has been a little hectic. But I've also learned and grown a lot. Yesterday the work was going really slow in the morning because nobody was home or answering their doors. We ended up tracting quite a bit. Mostly all that came from that was a man told us that when we studied more about the Mormon church in depth we would very quickly leave it. And that it is a structure established by man. He got all of his references from members that had fallen away. It was pretty sad to see how blinded he was. It was one of those situations where it was really hard to keep the spirit with you. You want to just rebuke him and strike him in the heart with the spirit.

But at the end of the day we went on double exchanges with Juan and Felix. Juan and Elder Godinez went to Richland and taught a couple of amazing lessons, giving us some really good new investigators. Then Felix and I first went to one of our investigators houses who had been progressing a lot. She asked us why it had been so long since we had been over. They had kept their commitment to watch a conference talk by President Monson, so maybe we will be able to make some more progress with them.

Then we had a really good family home evening with a family that is partly recent convert. The mom taught the lesson on temples. It was awesome. Then we went and saw Brittany. We talked about eternal families and the temples a little bit. We also talked to them about getting married so they could one day take part in having an eternal family. They are going to be getting married next August just before I go home due to some situations they are in. So maybe I'll get to see them married and baptized. That would be awesome. We were blessed with lots of success last night I think in major part because we kept working all morning and afternoon without even really talking to anybody. Except for the guy that told us we were going to leave the church. haha.

Transfers are tomorrow. Elder Godinez and I are both staying together for his last transfer. I was excited to hear that. That means I should definitely stay here at least for one more transfer after that probably even two. That means I'll be in Pasco cumulatively for more than a year. Isn't that cool. There were not too many changes in the other members of the zone.

Halloween wasn't too eventful. We worked during the day like normal then went to the branch party. There was a ton of people there. Juan put on a clown show with one of his friends who was really talented at juggling and riding a unicycle. It was cool. It reminded me of my glory days wearing that little red fireman’s hat. haha.

Love you all lots,
Have a great week,
Elder Ben Arnold

Linda: Did you get snow in Pasco?
Ben: We haven't gotten snow yet. It's been a little bit colder in the mornings lately. I'll let you know when we do get it. I think normally it doesn't snow much in Pasco. Last year was a once in ten years kind of thing.

Ben: The zip line sounds scary. How high up is it? I wish I could come and try it out.
Linda: Scary? You're not afraid of anything. Let's see... David made a ladder with two ten foot boards but they overlapped by about 3 feet, so maybe 17 feet up?
Ben: You're right I wouldn't be scared. I thought I'd just throw that it in there. Haha. That sounds pretty fun.

Victor's baptism

2009-10-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

October 27, 2009

Hola familia,

Victor's baptism went great! Devin Lybbert was the one to baptize him. If you remember Devin is his friend and the one that referred him. Then he was confirmed the next day in sacrament meeting by Elder Godinez. It was really neat.

The other night we had a lesson with Victor at the church. We watched the testaments video in the primary room sitting on one of the couches. In my personal study that morning I learned some new things about the atonement that have really made me a lot more appreciative for what Christ did for us. The spirit was really strong during a few parts of that movie and it made me cry. Even though I've already seen the movie probably more than 30 times. That's one of the beautiful things of the gospel, there's always something new to learn.

This last week we found this lady named Itamar. The morning that we found her I was trying to figure out where we were going to go tract. I was praying for guidance but I didn't feel very inspired. I eventually ended up choosing a street. While we were tracting that street we found Itamar. She's just younger than twenty. She said that she was really open to learning new things. She had just moved there two months prior. We went back for our appointment. She soaked it all up. She was involved in the lesson and was understanding everything. Then we found out that she had a roommate that is a guy. We were a little nervous to meet him. A few days ago we were out of people to visit in the evening. I suggested that we go and visit Itamar. My companion was hesitant because we weren't sure of what the boyfriend was like. Then the suggestion came again. Let's go visit Itamar. Same response. Then the prompting came a third time. So we went over and visited her. We met her boyfriend who was actually really cool. Then set up a time to go back and see them. The Lord knew that we needed to go see them. It reminds me of a couple of different accounts in the Book of Mormon. Helaman 5 and 3 Nephi 11. The people heard a voice 3 times before they understood it. It seems that is what the Lord had to do in our case as well.

The BBQ up in Basin City with the Whitby's went great. It was raining earlier in the day but it cleared up by the time we got up there. They cooked us some awesome food. I probably ate way too much. We played a bunch of sports in their huge field. It was a lot of fun.

This morning we got to go to the temple. It was amazing. It's been 5 months since I've been. I learned a lot of new things. The spirit was very strong in the celestial room. It was very peaceful and I felt like I had no worries in the world. Everything was taken off my shoulders for that little while. I'm glad that we have temples on the earth. What a privilege.

Love ya all,

Elder Ben Arnold

PS When Amy says the word pass she's referring to going by somebody's house or just to visit somebody. In Spanish you use the verb pasar to say that. Which literally translated into English means to pass.

Yeah, I'm jealous of the computer thing. I don't miss computers as much as I used to. But I keep getting reminded about them every Tuesday. That and seeing people's computers that we teach that aren't working nearly as good as they could be. If only I could help them out a little bit. Oh well.

Sick baby

2009-10-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

October 21, 2009

Linda: I thought that Elder Becerra was your companion. When did you get Elder Godinez? Tell me about him. Where is he from, etc.
Ben: When I moved from Vancouver to Pasco is when my companion changed from Elder Becerra to Elder Godinez. He is originally from Morelia Mexico. He's lived about half of his life in North Carolina. He's really good at soccer. He's a great teacher and a really good missionary. He's almost done with his mission. This upcoming transfer is his last one. By the way transfers are in about two weeks. I'll find out not this friday but the next what's going to happen.

Linda: I just got a notice from UPS saying that your package has been delivered. When will the mission office give it to you?
Ben: I actually had to go up to the office a few days ago. So they gave it to me then. It was a bomb package. It sure made my day. I've been really excited to use all of my cool sweaters and stuff like that. It's raining today and been getting a lot colder lately. Thanks for all of the little treats. I also really enjoyed the little toys from wavetronix. Especially the little traffic light. haha.

Linda: Did you receive the postcard we sent you from Europe? You wrote in your last email, "I love it here in Pasco." That made me think of when we went to Oregon shortly before your mission and drove past your mission. I said, "Ben, look, here's your mission." You looked around and didn't look too impressed. It was funny. I'm so glad you love it now!
Ben: I got the postcard from Europe. It was pretty neat. I remember when we drove through my mission. I think I was just afraid that there wasn't going to be any people in it to teach. haha. I can't wait to show you Pasco. You will be amazed at how many Hispanic people are here.

Linda: I think you’re right. I think you had swine flu. Did you have a sore throat with yours? Was it like a cold but with fever and aches and a headache? Or did you throw up?
Ben: I had all of that. Including throwing up a little bit. That was only on one day though. After talking to some other people I'm a hundred percent sure that we did have swine flu. I'm really glad that we got over it. I plan on getting the flu shot. I don't want to go through anything like that again.

Linda: Do you need more Spanish scriptures?
Ben: I don't think I need any right off the bat. Victor is actually going to be getting a set from Devin, the member who referred him and has been teaching him with us. We have some very good prospects of people coming up though too. Could you send another set of the Book of Mormon on CD's in Spanish. I don't plan on giving them away. We just have an investigator, Luis, who can't read. I want to loan him one CD at a time to help him gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon.

Linda: Amy said her date to come home is September 28th. Do you have a date too? Ben: I don’t know.

Hola familia,
Victor is all good for being baptized this upcoming Saturday! He's been interviewed and everything. He's really just absorbed everything that we've taught him like a sponge. It's been a lot of fun teaching him with Devin and his wife. We get to practice translating so they can understand. It's kind of weird though when you're talking in Spanish and in the background you hear an echo of what you're saying in English. Sometimes it makes it hard to concentrate.

We had a very spiritual blessing of health for a baby. There is a young man in the branch who has a child but his wife is not a member. While we were over at their house both the little girl, 4 months old, and the dad were sick. She asked us if we could give their little girl a blessing. I was stunned. I've never had a non-member ask for a blessing like that. The thing that was most amazing about this situation was the mother’s faith that the child would be healed. She asked and the Lord answered. We gave a blessing to the small baby and then to the dad. During the entire blessing the baby was just so calm. Just before she had been crying and had been very fussy. Then about five minutes after when we left the baby didn't cry again for the rest of the night. And hasn't had any problems since the blessing. The mother knew that it was due to the blessing that the baby was healed. The father also felt better afterwards and made a very quick recovery. The Lord answers our prayers when we ask in faith.

This mother is now one of our top progressing investigators. She has been very open and has been keeping her commitments. I'm so excited.

For preparation day today we are going to go play sports in the rain and have a big BBQ with some members up in Basin City. In fact these members, I'm related to them. Awesome huh. I don't know if I told you that I keep finding lots of relatives up here. It's pretty cool.

Love you, Elder Arnold

Testimony meeting

2009-10-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

Family,

This last Sunday Victor wasn’t going to be able to come to church at 12:30 so we brought him to the English ward which started at 8:30. He speaks English fairly well and understands quite a bit. Spanish is definitely a lot easier for him though. Since it was fast and testimony meeting people were of course bearing their testimonies. To be honest they were a little bit boring. There were quite a few that were very eloquent and long but I really didn't get anything out of them. Then a man, who was probably in his late 20's and who was a little scraggly looking, got up. He was very nervous and in few and stammered words shared that he had fallen away from the church but now had come back and was experiencing a lot of joy from it. He was very emotional and fought so hard to express his feelings. It wasn't very long but it hit my heart. Following him a little girl got up. She was probably about 8 years old or so. Maybe a little older. She was very calm almost monotone. She shared her testimony on the priesthood. As she began I was stunned and shocked at the things she was saying. She shared an experience of how her father and uncle gave a priesthood blessing to her little brother who had fallen down a flight of stairs. The teachings of Jesus Christ came to my mind as this little girl spoke. Be even as a child, meek, submissive, humble. These two testimonies were more powerful and influential than every other eloquent speaker that I heard that day. These two testimonies were heartfelt. They were sincere and the spirit carried the message to the hearts of the listeners. Wow. What an experience.

Update on Victor: We moved the date back to the 24th. Everything was being pretty rushed and unorganized. And we wanted everything to be well prepared and to go smooth. Ever since we had General Conference he has changed in his outlook on what we teach him. He has told us very firmly that everything we've taught him is true. I already told you that he came to the English ward. I think I told you earlier that he had a problem with coffee. He thought he was going to have a hard time quitting. The morning after we committed him to not drink it anymore he called us and told us that he had had a small cup. But that he wasn't going to drink anymore. And since then he hasn't. He told us that he thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was. The Lord supported him as he showed forth his faith. It's been a really cool experience to see the difference in him since the day I met him at Devin's house, expecting our lesson to be boring, to today where he is really excited for his baptism.

Tomorrow is Elder Godinez's birthday. He turns 23. We've been having a really good time in our companionship. I'm pretty sure that he's going to finish his last transfer, the next one, here in Pasco. So I should be here for at least a couple more. Did you know that after two more transfers in Pasco I'll have spent one year here? That's pretty intense. I love it here in Pasco.

Elder Godinez and I having been working with the Stake quite a bit recently and they're very excited about missionary work. It's all been coming from their end. They are providing a lot of support. We are expecting to see a lot of good things happen before the end of the year.

I've got kind of a sad story. We were teaching this young lady. I think I told you about her last week. She read. She's really smart and going to college. She was showing interest and starting to pick up even after just our first lesson. Her dad didn't like that we were meeting with her. So the lessons had to end. It's really frustrating when stuff like that happens. Especially with a person as prepared as she is. We're just going to have to pray that his heart is softened.

I know that this is the work of the Lord. I love listening to his prophet and apostles. Serving him in the way that I am has brought me so much joy.
I love you all so much,
Elder Ben Arnold

PS In the picture of me holding the banana is the Ramirez family over in Vancouver. They were recent converts of something like 6 months to a year when I got there. I think just recently they have been going through some hard times financially. They are a really cool family.

Farm hands!

2009-10-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

Today we had a pretty fun day. We went up to Connell and did some farm work. We laid pvc pipe in an apple orchard. The rows were really long. I still have that blue glue on my hands. I think it will be a week or so by the time it all comes off. Then we had a carne asada afterword. Which was really good.

Conference was great. There were several things that stood out to me. I think Elder Scott started it out with a bang. I learned a lot on how to better follow and recognize the spirit.

I really enjoyed Elder Callister's talk. I can't wait until I get it in the ensign so I can study it. He answered tons of concerns and doubts people might have about the restoration and all things that fall under it.

On most of the speakers I had quite a few notes except for Elder Holland. While he was speaking I just sat there during pretty much the whole talking staring at the screen intently. He had so much intensity and sincerity for what he talked about. Again I can't wait to study his talk more in depth.

Investigator wise conference was great. We had 4 people come. As well as a few recent converts, which included Leonardo and Felix! During the Priesthood session I was sitting in between the two of them. Before the first presidency spoke I explained to both of them who was going to be speaking. Then just as President Monson got up to speak I looked over at Felix and he looked back with this huge smile on his face. It was priceless. Then talking to everybody afterward, including Felix, Juan, Leonardo, and Victor, each person had had very strong feelings and were all very spiritually uplifted. Victor, who is going to be baptized on the 17th, was almost in tears a few times; that's what he told Elder Godinez. It really opened his eyes to the importance of what we taught him. During every session he was at, his eyes were glued to the screen.

Love you all,
Elder Ben Arnold

PS I didn't pluck a chicken, but I am the one that caught the one that Elder Montoya killed.

The little boy in the yellow shirt is Orlando, and his dad is Francisco. They are some of my most favorite people I've met on my mission. I've written him twice since I left Vancouver. I haven't gotten a letter back so I'm not sure how he's doing. Elder Becerra says that he's been doing good though.

Snapshots from Ben's mission

2009-10-04T15:04:00.000-07:00

Cool Down

2009-10-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

September 30, 2009

Hola familia,

I'm writing today because we had zone conference yesterday. It was really good. I really wanted to learn how I could be a better missionary and I was taught a lot of stuff by the spirit. I'm going to tell you about one activity they had us do because I want Amy to know about it and give it a try in her missionary work.

President Belnap had us do some role-plays on committing somebody to be baptized. We used the question "will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?" Then the "investigator", our companion, brought up a predetermined concern. After you've been a missionary for a long time it's really easy to address concerns. You just jump right in and teach using the scriptures and then recommit. But President Belnap wanted us to do it differently this time. He asked us just to wait and be patient after the concern was brought up. Then once the spirit tells you what to say that's when you speak and ask questions and address their concern. Even though it was just a role-play it worked amazing. The baptismal commitment turned into a very spiritual experience. This was one of the main things that I took from this zone conference. That we need to be more patient and listen to the spirit more often.

Victor is doing awesome. He has a baptismal date for the 17th of October. We're so excited for him. We should actually be meeting with him tonight at about 6:00. The thing that has definitely been key in his conversion is his fellowshipper, Devin. They work together so Devin talks to him all the time about his reading and other things like that. And of course like I said before he was the one that referred us to meet Victor. He just invited him over for dinner and to meet some of his friends (us) that could help him be more happy.

Yesterday Elder Garrett and I were on exchanges. We taught a lesson to a girl that is 18 years old. Her name is Yvette. She was baptized with her twin sister in Idaho. And right now is living with her dad while going to school. She found us while we were visiting the Ramirez next door. As we were leaving she saw us walk by out the window. She hurried and put her shoes on and then ran outside to catch us. We talked to her for a little bit then set up a time to come back. In our lesson we had invited Abby, the next-door neighbor who is fifteen to come over. After the lesson, since they're both members, we did some role-plays with them. Elder Garrett and I pretended to be their friends at school and stuff like that while they had a conversation with us and then shared a small pass-along card. They're both really excited to go out and share their cards with a few of their friends that they have in mind. I was thinking that you guys should have a family home evening and practice talking to your friends about the gospel. It'll give you a lot more confidence to do it in a real situation. The nice thing about role-plays is that you can mess up and it doesn't matter. The only people that see you is your family.

The weather is starting to cool down a lot here. After General Conference this weekend we have to start wearing our suit coats all the time. Which is fine since we're starting to need them right now.

We're really excited about General Conference. One, to hear the prophet speak and the apostles. And two, because we get to bring investigators to it. That way they can feel the great spirit and love that our living prophet has for us.

Well, have a great week, and spread the gospel
Love you tons
Elder Ben Arnold

Recovered

2009-10-01T14:47:00.001-07:00

September 22, 2009
Hola familia,

I'm all better! Woohoo! This last week we haven't really had anything to report on. We got sick Monday evening and we were confined to our house until Sunday morning. That was a really long and really boring week. Mostly we just tried to sleep. My fever got up to 103.7. It scared me a little bit. We were in contact with the mission doctor and tons of people brought us over medicine and food and stuff. So we were well taken care of. Amy might find this funny, our highest number on our weekly report was a 2.

The baptism went awesome. Felix is a really good person. He's smart and he catches onto things really well. Even though he has a hard timing getting to church with work. We taught him about fasting a while ago and just recently found out by accident that he was fasting on fast Sunday with us. Even though he couldn't come. We've already shown him where the church is in his hometown in Mexico. He knew right where it was. He's excited to look it up when he gets there.

Something really sad happened this week. What's even more frustrating was that there was nothing we could do about it. Teresa got taken by the immigration and deported to Mexico. I got to talk to her on the phone and Gabi went to the immigration office to see if she could do anything. Nothing. I've been praying a lot for her. On the bright side she'll get to see her son again. And somehow she'll stay in contact with Gabi and Juan so I'll be able to find her I hope. It was just a really scary experience.

There's another person that we're teaching, Victor, that has been progressing really well lately. We just had a lesson with him last night. You can tell when a person is understanding what you're teaching them. Most people just listen to us to listen to us and then get us out of their home. But when a person is listening and understanding and wanting more the whole lesson just flows and the heavens feel like they are opened pouring down revelation. And that's what happened last night. We were teaching about the plan of salvation. Victor was like a sponge he just soaked up everything that we were saying.

I almost forgot. This week is transfer week. Due to being sick Elder Godinez and I didn't even get to go to ZLC. Oh well. We're both staying together for another 6 weeks. There's only one change in our district and only a couple more in the other district in our zone.

Love you family,

Elder Ben Arnold

Sick

2009-10-01T14:40:00.001-07:00

September 17, 2009

Hello mom,

Elder Godinez and I have been sick with the flu since Monday night. We've had to stay at the apartment and rest for the last few days. We're just beginning to get better and aren't supposed to leave for the next couple of days still. We just had to come and print out some talks because we needed something to entertain our minds.

Our baptism was awesome on Sunday evening. I'll tell you more about it when we feel better.

Love you lots,

Ben

New Bible

2009-10-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

September 8, 2009

Hola Familia,

Just yesterday we had an activity out at a park. It is something that the branch does every year. We had carne asada and played games. Elder Godinez started talking to one of the guys that came, not a member. At the end of the activity we got him and one of our investigators, Luis Fernando, to come and sit down with us in the grass to have a lesson. We reviewed the Restoration lesson a little bit. The coolest thing about it was that Luis Fernando who is not a member was testifying and adding a lot to our lesson. The other guy we had just met thinks that Luis is already a member. It was really cool.

Another awesome lesson we had; we taught Victor at Devin's house again. Devin is a member that invited Victor to talk to the missionaries in the first place. And this time Victor brought a friend, Martin. We watched The restoration DVD and a the very end of the testaments. The spirit was really strong. We were going to set a baptismal date with Victor that night but Martin was there. Martin didn't catch on nearly as fast as Victor did. He doesn't really like the story about Joseph Smith being called as a prophet. He was kind of funny actually.

Felix is still going to be baptized on Sunday. He's really excited about it. I'll let you know how it goes next p-day.

I'm really excited for the 14th. The new bible in Spanish comes out!!! It's going to make teaching so much easier. I can't wait. All of us missionaries always talk about it. Most of the members aren't very aware of it. In fact I was talking to Juan Saldana. He's been wanting to buy a new Bible. I told him that he needs to wait until the 14th and buy one of the new ones. He didn't even know about it. You'd think they would've announced it in church recently. I read they're only printing 800,000 though. Hopefully there will be enough to go around with the few million Hispanic members.

I can't believe that Amy has been out for 6 months. And her Spanish is beginning to take over in her English emails. That's so awesome. I can associate all of the mistakes she makes with some quirky Spanish grammar or spelling. That's so cool!

Well I love you family,

Elder Ben Arnold

Referrals

2009-09-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

September 2, 2009
Hola familia,

This has been a very busy week. We had interviews which is why I'm writing today instead of yesterday. Interviews went well. Elder Godinez and I were the ones that were in charge of planning and organizing it. And we had to do a lot of training presentation stuff. It was a little stressful at first but it turned out well.

Just yesterday we went on exchanges with the AP's. Elder Duncan came into Pasco with me and Elder Godinez went over to Kennewick. Right after dinner we got a hold of Brother Miles and went and visited all of the members of his small apartment complex, it has four vacancies. We ended up teaching two of them and just talking to the third and setting up a return appointment. Talk about referrals received. And both of the lessons were both with Brother Miles there, which was a huge contribution. He's a lot like Kobe in his desire and willingness to share the gospel (I got the email from Amy about Kobe's missionary experience). The first lady, Adriana, has three super crazy little boys. They are so happy and full of energy. Since the lesson was in Spanish Elder Duncan was spending the whole time trying to calm these little guys down. They would grab onto you and take your scriptures. It was so funny. Anyway she was a really cool lady and hopefully will be able to come to church this Sunday. We're just going to have to provide a lot of fellowshipping to help with her little boys. The other girl we saw was named Aby. She's a really young mom with a boyfriend who doesn't live with her. Those young mom's with kids always seem to be pretty receptive. It's just something about being in the presence of a little kid that just came from the presence of our Heavenly Father. She actually was born in the US so we had the lesson in English. That way Brother Miles and Elder Duncan could participate. She said that she would come to church with Brother Miles this Sunday and she even offered the prayer at the end.

Teresa came to church this week! It's been a while since she's been. It brings me so much joy to see her progressing in the gospel.

Leonardo is still trying hard to come. I'm praying that his situation improves. He has such a strong desire to do what is right and he recognizes what he needs to do.

We had a really cool lesson with another member named Brother Lybbert. For now he works for his father in law on his farm. So he knows a lot of Hispanic people. He invited one of his friends over for dinner and had us come over at the same time. He told his friend Victor about us coming over. Later on during the lesson we found out that he expected the lesson to be really boring. Which means it wasn't. He's a really intelligent guy, a lot like Felix. He really caught on to everything that we taught about and he was really willing to do what we asked him. The thing that was crazy about that lesson was that it lasted for an hour and a half. Including a little bit of talking at the beginning because we were there for dinner too. It only felt like we were there for about 20 minutes. The time just goes by so quickly while you're sharing the gospel.

Then to top off our week of referrals just the other day we got two media referrals, which I haven't gotten very many of lately. We were able to get a hold of one of them yesterday and taught a great first lesson.

Just because of how crazy things have been and with Felix's bad work schedule it looks like his baptism will have to be pushed back another week. He's still really excited about it; we just have to keep working hard and get it to happen.

I got some DVD's! That means I'm going to actually be sending some pictures home soon.

This last week has also been the week for giving blessings. We have given probably 5 or 6 in this last week. It's not hard to do in Spanish anymore. Which is great because I can say what it is that the spirit tells me more easily.

I love you. Keep sharing the gospel.

Elder Ben Arnold

Protection

2009-08-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

I'll start by answering some of your questions. I haven't seen the Matson's because they moved to Boise. That was one of the reasons why we moved out of their house. Because they were going to be moving soon.

I did run into Mayela Poulson while I was at a baptism in Connell. I was really surprised because they were living in Pasco when I was here last time. I did the baptismal interview for the lady that was baptized. She was really cool. And Mayela had been working a lot with her and was really key in getting her baptism to happen.

Felix is doing really well. His baptism is on the 5th of September. He's really ready to be baptized. The only sad thing is that he's only up here in Pasco temporarily. He's moving back to Mexico in November I think. He was just up here to help support his sister for a little while. He's excited to go look up the church when he gets back to Mexico though. So he doesn't plan on falling away from the church. We've had really good lessons with him lately. He always does most of the reading that we give him so he's prepared for the lessons. Then he always asks questions when he doesn't understand something so we actually know that he's understanding things. It's a lot a fun when you get to teach somebody like that.

I saw Leonardo a couple of times this last week! I saw him actually just last night. We had a family home evening with several members and investigators at a park. We had a little lesson and we had some refreshments. We also played some soccer and a little bit of frisbee. It was a great experience for Leonardo to become better friends with some of the members and get him even more excited about the gospel. Sadly he couldn't come to church this last week due to a really weird situation in helping out somebody that he didn't really know. He really wanted to come to church and he was pretty bummed out.

We've also been meeting with Teresa and she's beginning to do good as well. She's working in the apple fields right now. Hopefully she'll come to church this next week.

This last week while we were tracting somebody tried to throw water on Elder Godinez and me. They missed though. The Lord was protecting us. It was actually really funny. We can take the scripture being mocked and spit upon almost literally now. haha.

I think it was this last week that we had another ZLC. So we had to drive all the way back over to the Dalles. I sure have had to spend a lot of time in the car lately. I did get a letter written to Francisco on the way over though. I hear that he's doing really well, as well as some of the other people that we were teaching.

I memorized my address and then I forgot it again. I can tell you as much as I can remember though. It is off of "Cartmell" in between 19th and 20th avenues. And it is apartment number 108. The apartments are called the driftwood apartments.

I love you family

Elder Ben Arnold

One year since Ben entered the MTC!

2009-08-19T15:34:00.001-07:00

August 18, 2009

Hola familia,

This last week has just flown by. This whole next transfer is going to be gone pretty quick too. The first year of my mission has gone by very quickly, especially recently.

I don't know if I've ever told you much about Elder Godinez, my new companion. He is from North Carolina, originally from Mexico, Morelia. He's lived in the US for quite a while because he speaks English without any accent. And he speaks Spanish perfectly as well.

Moving back into Pasco is amazing. It's so good to see all of my friends that I made before. I've talked to Teresa already but haven't been able to get a hold of Leonardo.

When I got here, the Elders had been teaching a guy named Felix who was already set up with a baptismal date. He's really neat. The other night we were getting this call from a Private number. Every time they called it was while we were in an appointment. I felt like I should answer after about the fifth time and it turns out that it was Felix. He doesn't have a fixed work schedule or a cell phone, which makes it kind of hard to find him. We had gone by his house twice that day to see if we could catch him there. He felt bad about that and obviously tried really hard to get a hold of us. Then we were able to set up a time to go and visit him this week. He is one of very few people that are taking initiative and being active in their part of preparation for their baptism.

Isn't Amy's Spanish amazing? She's already writing that much and hasn't even been out for 6 months yet. Do you have a Chilean accent? While I was in Vancouver I met one of the sister missionaries that served there and she spoke really well. She didn't have a Chilean accent. I just thought that was interesting. Keep up the good work Amy.

We're living in an apartment. I'm sad to not live with members anymore. It's just different. It was a little messy when I first got here due to Elder Waldo finishing his mission and the chaos involved in that. In my spare time, which is limited, I've managed to go through and organize almost the whole apartment. It's involved throwing away more than 5 big bags of garbage. I'm pretty sure missionaries have been living in this apartment for just about a decade. And there's stuff that has been left since the first set of missionaries: clothes and other things that nobody was ever going to use. So I got rid of most of it. I was already mostly familiar with the apartment and with our whole area since I had already served in Pasco for six months. It's been fun to be able to jump right into it and start working.

I seem to be getting more and more tired. We've been teaching a lot this last week. Like actual sit down appointments. It's making me really exhausted mentally. My favorite part of missionary work is definitely teaching people. Especially in their homes. And in Spanish. The thing that makes it fun is not just teaching but asking questions. It's a challenge to get them to share their obstacles and doubts with us. Then when you do find them out and share and expound on the scriptures to help address their concerns and help them repent, it's such a joyful and exciting work!

I want to throw this part in for Amy. My last week in Vancouver I did a training on being a missionary of order. Being organized and more than just that but teaching in a way where we don't just teach but do as I was talking about before, teaching the person. Addressing their needs and helping them to change. A part of being a missionary of order is keeping records 100% up to date. Updating the area book every night as a part of planning. Then during daily planning and weekly planning not just writing down numbers and planning on where to go but to receive personal revelation on each individual investigator. It's hard to explain the whole thing in one paragraph. It's taken me my whole mission to figure out all the little things that go together into being a missionary that is organized.

I'm not sure what my new address is. We live on the northwest corner of Cartmell and 19th. It's right behind the pizza place. It's just right off of Court st.

I feel sorry for you Matthew. Having wisdom teeth taken out is not very much fun. I remember how much I bled and was uncomfortable. Anyway, hang in there and remember I love you.

How's the zip line coming along Jonathan? Isn't it crazy that school is starting already?

I love you family,
Elder Ben Arnold

Back to Pasco!

2009-08-11T11:15:00.001-07:00

Hola familia,

This last week has been pretty hectic. There have been lots of things that have come up that took time out of our missionary work. But we've still gotten some good things done.

Right after I emailed last week we started the long drive over to Kennewick. We mostly just talked and slept. We had the Zone Leader Council that night. Elder Bruce C Hafen from the first quorum of the seventy was there. We reviewed a lot of how we're doing as a mission and areas that we could focus on to improve. They really wanted us to share our true feelings and be completely open with them. It was really interesting.

I found out that my new companion is going to be Elder Godinez and that I'm going back to Pasco! I was really excited to find that out. I got to see him, Elder Waldo, and Elder Dudoich and a few other people that I'm good friends with.

Elder Becerra is going to be training the only Spanish missionary coming out this transfer. He's really excited and nervous. I'm super excited for him.

On Wednesday I got the fun job of driving all the way back to Vancouver. My leg felt really weird after we got back. It started to cramp up a little bit while I was with Elder Becerra that night.

We had zone conference on Thursday. Elder Hafen talked to us. It was really good but also really long. We started at 9 in the morning and we didn't end until about 4 in the evening.

On Friday we took Sebastian out with us. We picked him up at 12 and then took him back to his house at 8 when we had an appointment with his family. The day was pretty slow. We didn't teach a ton of people. I think a big part of that was because it was Friday. Everybody likes to leave and party because it's the beginning of the weekend.

Cornelio has been out of town lately as well as Roger and Deysi so not anything new to report for them.

We found a new investigator named Angelina. We couldn't go to her appointment and we didn't have her phone number. And when we went back she had been waiting for us. We felt really bad about that. We apologized and she let us in. Elder Becerra were trying a different technique today. We were going with just soft cover copies of the Book of Mormon. No backpack or anything else. Angelina let us into her house. We introduced the Book of Mormon briefly and then just read to her out of it. We just shared everything that the spirit told us to. The lesson was so amazing. The spirit was very strong and she was very interested. Elder Becerra read out of Ether 12 and I shared the conversion story of Alma the younger. We left her with a very strong commitment to read Mosiah 2 and then to pray and even to come to church this next week. Sadly I won't be here to see her again. Something feels really special with her though. She's an older lady probably in her 60s or maybe 50's.

The mini-missionaries did not sleep with us. In between the two days they went home and slept there.

Congratulations on your AP tests, Matthew. You're a smart kid. Put some of that brain power towards studying 3 Nephi 11 to the end of 3 Nephi this week. Focus on how Christ teaches the people. And then think how you might be able to apply that as if you were a missionary. Notice also how much he loves the people and is not just teaching them to teach a lesson. Especially in chapter 17, I love that one.

Jonathan that same assignment goes to you. Tell me about how the zip line is coming. Take some pictures of the construction of it so I can see everything you had to do to get it up.

I was just measured not too long ago and I was right at 6'2". Matthew might've caught up to me already. We'll have to measure up in a year.

I'm leaving for Pasco tomorrow, Wednesday, early in the morning. I have to drive to the Dalles. Then I should be free to do stuff for the rest of the trip. I plan on catching up on the millions of amazing letters that I haven't yet responded to.

I won't have time to send pictures until I get to Pasco. Sorry I've been so bad about that too. I've got lots of good ones though!

Love you family

Elder Ben Arnold

Moving Again

2009-08-04T11:35:00.001-07:00

August 4, 2009

Hola familia,

Don't have too much time today. The library's internet was down so we had to go to a different library in southern Vancouver. The other reason that we're rushed is because I have to go to a meeting with the other Zone Leaders in the Tri-cities. I'm going to be a Zone Leader. I found out on last Monday when I got a call from President Belnap. So I won't be staying in Vancouver. I'm guessing I'll be going back to Pasco but on the other side. We'll see though. There's still lots of possibilities.

Ricardo came to church again. This time Sebastian came with him. They both seemed to really enjoy it. Just yesterday we talked to them again. Daniel was there as well. The lesson went super good. We extended the baptismal invitation. They committed to be baptized if they got an answer. It seems that Ricardo already has got an answer; he just didn't want to voice it in front of his two sons. We'll talk to him about that a little bit more during this next week.

Jacob should be visiting soon if he hasn't already seen you. I gave him something to give to you. I'll explain later if you have any questions about it.

We had mini-missionaries this week. A couple of priest age boys came out with us for two whole days. It was a blast. They both enjoyed it and we got a ton of work done in our area while they were here. Elder Becerra and Gabe were riding bikes while David and myself were in the car. Matthew and Jonathan if you ever get a chance to do that, I would say do it. You'll learn a lot and get excited about serving a mission.

That's so exciting to hear about Teresa's mom being baptized. Missionary work is just so much fun and brings so much joy into everybody's lives.

I got your letters mom. It is really fun to see the pictures of everybody and see how they're doing.

Francisco received the Priesthood! He's doing really well. He might be getting married soon. I'm going to miss him a super lot.

We met a new guy named Cornelio this week. He's very interested in what we have to share. The entire time during the lesson on the restoration he was on the edge of his seat. He shared his own feelings and was very open with us. I haven't really seen anyone like that since Francisco. He was also, just like Francisco, very anxious to get a copy of the Book of Mormon and to begin reading it. I'm sad that I won't be able to see him finish his progression and come into the church.

Sorry that there's not any more time.

I love you family,

Elder Ben Arnold

PS Thank you everybody for the letters you have sent me. I'm trying really hard to respond but I'm not the best letter writer. Expect them to come soon though.

Heat Wave

2009-07-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

July 28, 2009

Hola familia,

Ricardo came to church! Neither of his sons did but this was a huge step for him. It's really cool how we got it to happen too. Elder Becerra and I planned really hard for how it was we were going to accomplish the task of getting him to come to church. We used all of our methods of planning from our mission including ODOR-PAL. We ended up planning out two lessons. The first one would focus on authority, apostasy, and the restoration all referenced from the bible. We shared probably about 25 scriptures with him covering the three topics. That lesson went really well. The purpose of this lesson was to give a setting for the next lesson. In which we watched Joseph Smith: the prophet of the restoration. It was in English because it hasn't even been released yet. He speaks and understands English really well though. During the hour of the movie I looked over at him occasionally to see his reaction. His eyes were glued to it. You could see how much he was thinking and pondering on what he was seeing. When the movie ended we talked about how he felt and what happened in the movie. The conversation was simple. Basically it went along the lines of, "That really happened? Yep." He was stunned and speechless. Everything just really started clicking in his mind. And to top it all off the spirit was very strong. Elder Becerra and I left that lesson on a super spiritual high.

Yesterday was not a good day. I ate something weird on Sunday I think because I had the symptoms of food poisoning. Sunday night from the hours of 11:00 pm to about 5:30 am I threw-up about 6 or 7 times. It wasn't very fun. I got a blessing Monday morning. We took the day off so my body could recuperate. It's so boring and miserable to be a missionary stuck at home sick. This is only my second time like this. I slept really well last night and I've felt a lot better today.

We went on exchanges with the zone leaders this last week. I was with Elder Clark. He's a really good missionary. He honestly talks with everyone. I learned and grew a lot just in the one day we were together. We also had a really interesting lesson together. I think I've told you about Deborah before. The spirit told us to go see her. So of course she was at home when we knocked on the door. She invited us and we began talking. Right away she told us about a dream that she had had three days ago. It was a dream about the second coming. She was with her family trying to find safety. She saw some stairs or steps going up a large hill. At the top of the hill were two missionaries. She told me that one of them was me and that the other was Elder Clark. The thing that was odd about that was that she's never met Elder Clark before. I wanted to make sure that she really did see specifically us two and not just two missionaries. And it really was us. We talked to her a little bit about this and she thinks that it came from God.

After that lesson Elder Clark and I were talking about how we've always heard about weird stories like that. Where people in essence get dreamed to somebody's house. We were both very stunned and pretty excited. We're going to review her dream with her in more detail when we go back next time, probably tomorrow.

We're going to go see Jacob tonight. I have something for him to take home to you. And to answer your question he is not a member. I think he'll be coming to Utah in about a week.

Sadly, we haven't heard anything from Lana yet. Heavenly Father knows where she is though. He'll make something work out.

It has been really hot lately. This morning when we went outside it felt like the hottest morning that I've ever felt. The summer will pass over in a while and we'll have our cool weather back.

The Boyle's wedding went well. Now we're just waiting for all of their family to go back home and we'll move back in. It'll probably be on next Monday. We still visit them just about everyday.

I love you family,

Elder Ben Arnold

Spirit Tracting

2009-07-30T19:53:00.002-07:00

July 21, 2009

Hola familia,

This last week has been very full of crazy stuff. First off, we moved. It's just temporary for the Boyle's Wedding. We moved out last night and we'll be there for two weeks. We're living with President Ross, the branch president. We already miss the Boyle's but the Ross's are great too.

We had a cool experience doing some "spirit tracting" as we call it. We get in the car and Elder Becerra tells me where to drive. Every time we've found several people to teach. One of the teaching experiences was really neat. We had just got finished teaching a man in English that we taught in his garage. He was a little bit drunk so it made it interesting. Then we got back in the car because he said there weren't any Hispanic people in the area. Elder Becerra told me where to turn whenever we got to an intersection. After driving for just a minute we saw a lady sitting down on the sidewalk in the shade. She looked like she had been crying. The spirit said to talk to her so we parked the car about a block down the street around the corner. When we were first walking up, we couldn't see her because of the trees. We were praying that she would still be there. We walked really fast until we got within sight of her. When we got up to her she was looking away kind of ashamed. We just started by asking her if she was okay and if there was anything we could do for her. She didn't say anything just shook her head. We talked to her a little bit more with the same kind of response and then I asked her if it would be alright if we shared a scripture with her. She gave the same response and shook her head. Then she said that we could say a prayer for her. It was the first thing she said and it was really quiet. So we sat down in the shade with her on the sidewalk. I asked her for her name. She said "Lana". Then I offered a prayer specifically asking Heavenly Father to help her. She was a lot more open to us after that. She told us why she was sad and that her ex-boyfriend had just yelled at her and told her to get off of his property. It just tore her up and the reason she stopped on the sidewalk was because she was so overcome with emotion that she couldn't keep walking. We read Alma 7:11-12 with her and talked about it. I could see that it meant a lot to her. Her countenance cheered up quite a bit. The subject then changed to talking about Spanish. Where she works she associates with a lot of Hispanic people and she has to use a translator, a real person. She bought rosetta stone and has been using that. I talked to her about how I learned Spanish and she was really impressed. She said she would give us a call so we could come over and give her a Book of Mormon in Spanish and English. It was such a cool lesson. I felt on such a spiritual high after all three of us got up and went different ways.

Your adventures with scuba-diving sound like a lot of fun. I'll be excited to join you later on. Try not to have too much fun without me. haha.

Off of Amy's comment about the song coming on the radio. I hear stuff like that every time we go into a fast food place. It's kind of hard hearing all that stuff. Most of it doesn't sound as good as it did before the mission though. You can feel the spirit leaving as you hear it. There was one time in a Chinese restaurant where I heard some motab come on. That was really cool.

On Sunday I did my first baptismal interview. It was in English with Tyler. He just got married to one of the members in the branch. They're both about 20. He's really cool. He's very ready to take part in this church. He was actually kind of bummed that he had missed the opportunity to serve a mission. Isn't that such an amazing attitude?

ATF stands for All Time Finding. When you say that you ATFed somebody it means you talked to them outside of tracting on doors. For example talking to somebody in the park or outside in their yard or garage or on the street.

Francisco got an emergency call to go into work. One of the other workers just up and quit and he's been working double shift this whole week. It's been really hard on him. He hasn't been able to meet with us and he wasn't able to come to church yesterday to receive the priesthood.

Our district improved again this week. We've all been talking to more people, teaching more lessons, and seeing more success.

Another update on Jacob from Jerusalem; Sister Tulva, who is awesome, got us a Book of Mormon in Arabic to take over to him. He wasn't there the first time we tried but we left the book there for him. Then we came over the next night and went in and talked to him for a long time. It was really interesting and fun. He wants to come see you guys when he moves down to Provo in about a week. He's going to take something to you from me. When do you get back home? That way I can tell him when to go over. I have his email address so I'll keep in touch with him. I'll give him all your information so he can get in contact with you.

Exciting week!

Love you, Elder Ben Arnold

Fearless Finders

2009-07-30T19:53:00.001-07:00

July 14, 2009

Hola familia,

This last week our district has been really excited. We got a lot of work done together and are looking to work even harder this week.

We had zone conference this last week. It was at Beacon Rock which I've been to in the past for a hike. We got to wear jeans and t-shirts which was kind of weird. There were a lot of missionaries there. So we got to see lots of our friends. There's so many that I still don't know. We had little workshops where a stake president or bishop would talk to us about different topics. In general the zone conference seemed to be focused on the after mission life. It was really helpful and gave most people I think a better understanding of what we're doing and a desire to work hard. I always get recharged from Zone Conferences.

Nobody will play tennis with me either, Matthew. I've played a couple times recently but I was a little bit too good and nobody wants to play that much anymore. Ooops.

Elder Becerra and I have been fearless finders this week. We're always trying to talk to every single Hispanic person that we come across but sometimes it comes up in a really awkward situation and it is really hard to talk to the person. So this last week we overcame that and have pushed each other really hard to not miss a single opportunity. As a result we've opened our mouths more and are teaching more people, even if they're not all really super interested in what we teach.

One of my favorite ATF experiences was with a guy selling ice cream. We saw him riding down the street and we really wanted to talk to him. So we waved to him and said hello. So he rode right over to us because he wanted to sell us some ice cream. Which we did. And it tasted delicious. It was a $1 coconut flavored popsicle. Then we changed the topic of conversation to missionaries and then into the message of the restoration. It was well worth the $2 that we spent.

One of my fearless finder moments turned out to not really be a Hispanic guy. We had just contacted one of our referrals and we were in the car pulling out of his driveway when we saw a guy taking out his garbage right next to us. I only got a glimpse of him and he looked Hispanic. It was another one of those awkward moments for me. But being fearless I rolled down my window and started talking to him in Spanish. He turned around and looked really confused. He started talking to me and he had a Russian accent. His name is Sergey pronounced Seerhay. We had a good conversation about his church and about what we do as missionaries. It was a very good seed planting.

Sorry I didn't tell you about how excited I was with all of the birthday presents that you got me. I got lots of yummy candy from Jonathan. Which I still haven’t finished yet. I got a really cool plaque thing from Matthew, which I have sitting on my desk. It says "Don't measure the success of your day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant". Pretty good huh. Amy got me some ties and wrote me an awesome letter. And from Mom and Dad I got some more ties and a GPS which I use very often. That also included a bike mount which is really cool. I've already used it. We had to buy Elder Becerra a bike first. He got his from a missionary that's going home for 50 dollars. It's like a 500 dollar bike though. He got a really good deal. It even has disc brakes.

Francisco is doing really well. He had his interview for receiving the priesthood this last Sunday. So I'll report on that this upcoming p-day. Isn't that so exciting.

Love you

Elder Ben Arnold

Stacking Hay

2009-07-07T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

This week has been really interesting. First, my new companion is not Trevor Jones. There was a last minute transfer change which I got on Tuesday night. Elder Jones is in Longview instead. I actually just met him the other day and he is really cool. But my companion who I was really excited about is Elder Becerra. I don't remember if I told you anything about him. But we flew into Washington together. He's from Oaxaca Mexico. So he speaks Spanish already and he grew up in Sandy Utah so he speaks English perfectly. He served in Connell for 9 months which is just 40 minutes north of Pasco. We saw each other a lot while I was over there and we were really good friends. So when I found out that he was going to be my new companion I was really excited. I'll send some pictures of him home in a little bit.

A few other interesting things that I found out. Elder Blomquist is training a kid from El Salvador this transfer. I'm really excited for him. Elder Tracy is also going to be learning a lot with his companion.

4th of July was pretty exciting here. It was a normal day for us. But at night there were a ton of fireworks in our neighborhood. I even got to see two trees catch on fire. Good thing there were policemen and firemen everywhere.

Weather has been really hot lately. About 100 degrees everyday with a little bit of humidity. I don't know why it's so hot. Just the last two days it dropped back down to 65. I think that's more normal for here. It's supposed to heat back up again here in a little bit.

District Leader isn't too much different. I just have to get number reports from the members of the district and then prepare district meeting. The last one that we had went pretty well. I think it got everybody excited about this upcoming transfer.

Nothing new on Marta and Ruben. We invited Marta to come to church about an 1 hour before it started and she said that she was getting everything ready to go. And then she didn't come. We haven't been able to talk to her since to find out what happened.

We are having some progress with Ricardo and his two sons, Sebastian and Daniel. Ricardo has been reading the Book of Mormon and some other books including Jesus the Christ. He's really excited for our next visit on Wednesday. Hopefully I'll have more good news to report on them for next Tuesday.

We loaded and stacked some more bales of hay this week. I had allergies really bad, especially when I was in the trailer. I would sneeze every 10 seconds for ever it felt like. And on top of that it was one of those 100 degree days. Elder Becerra and I both got a little heat exhaustion but we're over it now.

My birthday was fun. I don't think we really did anything too special. In fact I totally forgot it was my birthday until we got to the transfer site and Elder Garrett reminded me. It was really fun to meet up with Elder Montoya and Elder Becerra again. That was a great birthday present. Oh yeah, Somebody that is related to Brenda Hall brought me a cake. I wasn't able to be there because of a last minute dinner appointment change. But I'm going to give them a call this week and talk to them. Thanks Brenda!

Amy's Spanish is coming along really fast. She's writing me completely in Spanish now. It makes me even more excited for the time that I get to see her again. We taught a lady from Chile last night. She gave us some empanadas, which were delicious. We had a good lesson and I got to learn a lot of new words that I didn't know before. I'm thinking we're going to teach her a lot so I can get the Chile lingo down.

I've also tried Completos this last week with Sister Campos. Who is also from Chile. They really are delicious. They're called completos because they are totally full to the point where you can't put any more toppings onto the hotdog without it spilling over.

Love you lots,

Elder Ben Arnold

Happy Birthday Ben!

2009-06-30T11:11:00.001-07:00

June 30, 2009

Hola familia,

This last week has been very exciting with lots that happened. First, Francisco was baptized!!! And then confirmed on Sunday. We worked extra hard to get this baptism to go through. We had to have an interview by President Jubitz, which went very well. Then we ended up having to change the time of the baptism on short notice. Which means we had to call every single member, but it was worth it. I think it got more people to come as well. I used the awesome baptismal template that I made with Sister Matson for the program agenda thing. It looked really great. Thanks Sister Matson! The day of the baptism was pretty hectic as well. Elder Tracy and I got there really early to set everything up. It turned out that there was a baptism right before ours so everything was already done, meaning chairs and the font being filled. The stressful part was making sure that everybody that needed to be there was there. Including Francisco, one of the branch presidency, the speakers, and the music stuff. It was a relief when the last person got there and we could start. The whole baptism went perfectly. The two speakers were Arturo and Toni, both of which are recent converts. They both did a great job. Then Francisco and I went down into the water and there was a really peaceful feeling. It was an amazingly beautiful experience to have seen Francisco make it to that point. I could see a stronger light in his eyes than I've ever seen before. Even in just the last few days he is such a different person. He is so much happier even with everything chaotic around him. After the baptism Hermano Garcia talked a little bit and invited Francisco to go up in the front. He wanted to point out all of the people that came to his baptism and that they were his friends and family. This touched Francisco a lot and he expressed how grateful he was with tears in his eyes. He could barely get the words to come out. It was one of the more spiritual experiences I've had on my mission.

The following day at church Elder Tracy performed the confirmation. He did great especially since it was his first time. It was once again the same experience that I felt during the baptism. Francisco was so ready for it. And he was again very emotional like at the baptism.

Well, now the rest of the week. For transfers Elder Tracy is going to be leaving after 7 and a half months in Vancouver. He's going to Walla Walla. Clear on the other side of the mission. He'll be senior companion with Elder Malar; I think that's how you spell it. He came out with Elder Blomquist.

And I will be staying here with my new companion, Elder Trevor Jones. I don't really know him but I've heard lots of good things about him. I'm also going to be the District Leader this transfer so I have some more learning and growing ahead of me.

Birthday has been great. I made the executive decision to celebrate my birthday today so Elder Tracy could be here. We have to be at the transfer site tomorrow morning at 7:30. Which wouldn't give us much time tomorrow.

To answer a few more of your questions; I don't think I'll need any more scriptures. I still have the one pair. I'm not expecting another baptism until towards the end of the transfer.

I got all three packages and a bunch of letters. Including the one from Amy, Thanks Amy.

Marta and Ruben. I'll give you a better update on them next week. We haven't made much progress yet being wrapped up in other stuff. Hopefully we'll get Marta to church this next Sunday to talk to President Ross and make some progress with her divorce.

I love you family,

Elder Ben Arnold

Francisco and Marta

2009-06-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

This week has been turning out just the way that I wanted it to. I guess I didn't mention that Maria fell of date. She wasn't able to come to church last week. Francisco is still looking good though. And that will be this upcoming Saturday. We still have a few things to take care of to make it all happen. The only big thing left is his interview which is tomorrow with President Jubitz.

I thought you'd like to know, we gave Francisco one of those pair of scriptures that you sent me. We couldn't wait until Saturday. And he's been using them a lot since then so I think it was a good idea. We've been seeing him just about everyday for the last little while. He also hasn't smoked since a few days after we committed him to be baptized! He's been keeping his commitments so well!

Sorry about being late on the Father's day card dad. I think you should've gotten it today. If not, maybe tomorrow. If nothing else, just like I told mom, it just extends the holiday for a few more days.

We didn't really go and pick strawberries this week. We did go on a hike today, which is why we're so late emailing. And there were some wild strawberries along the trail. They were some of the sweetest strawberries I've ever eaten. They were just really small.

The gps that Elder Tracy got was a tomtom XL or something like that. And it works really well. It's one of the better ones that I've seen.

So as you might already know transfers are coming up. Transfer day is on my birthday which is a Wednesday. We'll find out what's going to happen on this next Saturday. I'm pretty sure that I'll stay but we're not sure about Elder Tracy. I think it's possible that he could stay one more.

Since it's also getting towards the end of the month, we're running low on miles so we went biking yesterday. Just for the end of the day. We biked from our house down to our dinner appointment with the Woodlands and then we stopped by Marta's house on the way home. That's all we had time for.

The appointment with Marta went super great. We started asking a lot of questions guided by the spirit and found out that the morning that we knocked on her door she had been praying to find the true church. And surprise, surprise, we showed up. The thing that was cool was she immediately recognized this as her answer. She's beginning to read the Book of Mormon again. And she's going to be coming to church this next week. She's actually been taught before by the sister missionaries. I guess she wasn't ready back then. And now she is! She also has a young guy renting one of her rooms from her. His name is Ruben. While we were riding our bikes to the appointment we ran into him walking home from the store. I recognized him from before and we walked our bikes along with him back to Marta's. It turns out that he actually had a lot of LDS friends where he lived in Mexico, Mexico City. Actually, really close to our temple. He's never talked to missionaries or really been introduced to the church. So we're really excited about him.

I didn't really tell you much about our hike today. It was 15 miles roundtrip. I got tons of cool pictures to send to you. As I mentioned there were lots of strawberries to pick and eat along the way. We met a guy named Brandon afterward that we started talking to. He gave us a little bit of water because we had run out. This was back at the parking lot after the hike. We talked for probably 20 minutes about him and his life and then about missionary work and about Spanish; he went to Mexico for a little bit. It was a cool conversation.

Well I love you family, Elder Ben Arnold

Happy Birthday Elder Tracy

2009-06-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

FAMILIA!!!

This week was crazy amazing and ridiculous. I guess I'll start with the beginning. Tuesday night,. P-day and the day before Elder Tracy's birthday, we took Arturo, a recent convert of about four months, with us to an appointment with Francisco. The whole lesson was super spiritual. There were many times where all of us cried and shared some very personal stories. There was one scripture that we shared that still stands out vividly in my mind. Francisco, it turns out, has to overcome a small smoking problem. He is frustrated that he can't just give up everything bad. He wants to do what's right and gets frustrated at himself for not being perfect. So, we read 2 Nephi 4:28-31. "Awake my soul, no longer droop in sin." It hit him so powerfully. He read the whole thing while choking back tears. I have never seen a scripture mean so much to any person before. At the end of the lesson we again talked about baptism and set a baptismal date for the 27th!!!!

Francisco has not smoked since Elder Tracy's birthday and has even got his hours changed at work so he doesn't have to work on Sunday's!!!

Now Elder Tracy's Birthday. We started off by doing a little celebration. We opened up his presents and of course I sang him Happy Birthday. He absolutely was thrilled with the things that he got which included all of that piano stuff, which he uses all the time, and a GPS from his family. Which we also use quite often. He couldn't have been more happy. Thank you.

His birthday continues. At 11:00 am we went out to work just like we normally do. We went and visited Maria. Who is the person I told you about last week. And we also committed her to be baptized on the 27th!!! Dos bautismos!!! So as you can tell this week Elder Tracy and I have been on a super high.

Recently we've been doing a lot of service outside in people’s gardens. It's fun to see the trust that we're beginning to get from the members as a result.

We had interviews yesterday, which is why I'm emailing today. Elder Tracy and I did a small training again about teaching using the scriptures. I also enjoy getting advice from President Belnap. He is a very spiritual man. Later on that day we saw great success. I don't know what the difference was. None of our appointments fell through. That's probably the first time on my mission. I guess that the Lord is just beginning to bless us for all of the hard work we've put in the last transfer.

I'm glad you had a great birthday, Jonathan. It looks like you enjoyed the card. Feel lucky, because I thought about getting you one with Dora the Explorer on it that sang in Spanish and English. haha. Sounds like you're going to have fun with the zip line. Don't get hurt, otherwise mom will never let me do it when I get back. haha.

Washington D.C. I've never been there. When you get home Matthew you need to write me and send me some pictures. I'll look forward to hearing all about it.

Thanks for the advice on tracting, mom. I'll work on incorporating some of that into the way I do my door approaches. I guess in a sense that's how I try to do it anyway. But I've never tried using people's names before.

Strawberries. I have eaten lots of strawberries with members for dessert and things like that. We were going to go strawberry picking with our Ward mission leader today but that fell through because our p-day changed. We were going to go yesterday. I guess we'll have to wait ‘til next week.

I love you all
And I look forward to hearing from you next week

Elder Benjamin Arnold

Searching the Crevices of the Rocks

2009-06-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

June 9, 2009

Hola familia,

This week has been great! I don't even know what to say about it. I think in general Elder Tracy and I are just working even harder and beginning to have more success. Yesterday, somehow we received 5 referrals and contacted 3 of them already. On top of that we got 2 new investigators. It was awesome!!!

One of the new investigators name is Maria. She has three little kids. About a month ago her husband or boyfriend, I'm not sure which, got deported. Apparently Elder Tracy and Elder Jones had talked to them quite a few times but had never been able to get inside and teach a lesson. Maybe this was just a humbling experience for Maria because she let us inside even though her house was really messy. Being alone now she has to find a job and was planning on moving to Pasco. That will be at the end of this month. The lesson was great though. We taught about the restoration. We got her and her three young kids and we all knelt in a circle at the end of the lesson. And she offered up a wonderful prayer. We had to help her a little bit at the end but it was awesome! We asked her how she felt afterwards. There was a definite peace present and she could feel it. We sent up a return appointment for tomorrow and she is really, really interested in coming to church on Sunday. Yes!

I'm a little bit jealous of you Amy. One baptism a week. That would be crazy. That's going to be a lot of new members in the church throughout 2 years. Think of the effects that will have on the eternities. Don't worry; I'm actually pretty content with the work that I have to do. It's lots of fun searching for the Hispanic people out of the crevices of the rock. Ha ha.

Francisco is doing super amazing. He calls Elder Tracy and I his angelitos, which means his little beloved angels. That's cool, huh. We have a lesson planned for tonight. Arthuro, a recent convert, is coming with us. We're going to try and set a baptismal date with him. So we're both pretty excited. The other thing that is really funny, Francisco's son, Orlando, always asks his dad, "papi, where are your friends?" It's awesome how close of friends we've become with those two.

The package for Elder Tracy came this morning. He was pretty excited about it. He thinks it's a little weird that he's going to be twenty. So of course, I always bug him about it. How did you know about the fold up piano thing? Did you know that we bought one of those and it broke? We tried fixing it. We succeeded but then it broke again. I'll send you some pictures of it. He'll love it.

Congratulations on your certification Jonathan. Did you really dive down 15 feet without scuba equipment? That's better than I could do.

Hey Matthew, don't get too good at tennis. I'm not going to be able to keep up. I've still only played once since the beginning of my mission.

I love you all; have an awesome week

Elder Benjamin Arnold

Elder Arnold loves strawberries

2009-06-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

June 2, 2009

Hola familia,

Okay I promise I won't take any more pictures while I am driving. I didn't look like I was almost about to crash did I? Yes I can buy more dvd's. I saw some at Wal-Mart and thought about buying them but then decided not to because they cost like $10. I'll probably go get some next week.

I'm glad that everyone was okay from the scout outing. It sounds like it would've been a blast. We'll have to go do that when I get home but before Amy gets home so we can still be super protected.

Matthew and Jonathan congratulations on your good grades. Keep up the hard work and it will pay off soon. Les prometo.

Wasn't it so good to get that wonderful letter from Amy. She's progressing so quickly. Something I notice in her letters is how much she relies on the spirit. She's a very humble missionary and as a result she will have lots of success. Even with a language barrier she's strongly influenced many people for good.

Francisco is getting very close to baptism. We talk about the subject every time we go over to his house. And it's usually him that brings it up! In our last lesson we watched the restoration video and shared a liahona magazine with him. He now has a testimony that this church was established by a prophet of God and that it is led by a living prophet. The Liahona issue that we gave him was of general conference. He was very excited to hear about a prophet and twelve apostles in our day. It is so powerful to actually see somebody gain that testimony and witness of the spirit. And describe in words how much joy that brought me.

This last week has been really tiring. Since it was the end of the month we were running low on miles. As a result we biked a LOT. I was always ready to take a nap at any minute. We also talked to a lot of really cool people since we were on the street more.

We've been helping the Boyle's take care of their garden. It's been a lot of fun. I took it upon myself to take special care of the strawberries. They're my favorite! I'm going to try and convince them to plant more. I think that is already their plan so I might not have to try too hard. Fruit is also starting to become more available in the stores. Which means I'm going to be eating more fruit!!!

Elder Tracy's birthday is on June 10th. He'll turn 20. We're both really weirded out that we're not going to be teenagers for much longer.

Don't worry Jonathan I remember that your birthday is coming up on the 15th. I'll figure something out to get you.

Love,

Elder Ben Arnold

To Amy

2009-05-27T18:32:00.001-07:00

May 26, 2009 I spent my whole time writing Amy and Teresa. I thought you might like to see my response to Amy. You can take out parts of this letter and post it online if you want to. I love you super a lot.

Hola Amy,

Oh moses smell the roses it's so good to hear how you are doing! I'm sorry that you've been making such a huge transition and haven't heard much from your family. I'm a little sad that your p-day is not until Monday. This email is going to sit in your inbox for almost a whole week before you get to read it. I guess it's still faster than mail to Chile.

It sounds like you have had some missionary experiences already. You may not be able to speak Spanish perfectly or understand it perfectly, but you do speak the language of the spirit. And you have already helped people come closer to their Savior through your sincere desire to share the gospel with them.

When I first came to Washington, it was kind of like entering the MTC all over again. The whole homesickness hit me once again. I think that I actually cried more in Washington than I did at the MTC. Just as you've already felt, the pain goes away and you actually feel closer to them than ever before. And if you ever do feel lonely, just remember that Elder Arnold has always prayed for you the night before.

I do know an Elder Quintana. Last transfer he was serving in Longview, which is not too far from Vancouver. He got moved this transfer though and am not sure where he's at right now.

With Spanish I felt exactly the same as you do. I couldn't understand anything that anybody said to me. So don't feel frustrated. Just keep working and do your best everyday. And then with time the ability to understand and speak just comes. A little bit better every day. Think of it this way, you are probably learning Spanish faster than anyone else in the whole world right now. You are speaking everyday, studying hard, and... you have the gift of tongues!

A few tips on building a good relationship with your trainer. It is a pretty stressful job to train a new missionary. You're responsible for them getting a good start to their mission so that they can be effective in the work. I promise your trainer loves you and wants to help you. Something that will help is good communication. Talk to your companion about everything. Talk to her about your family, about things you like and are interested in, talk to her about Spanish, and always ask her about things you don't understand. Be humble and teachable.

Francisco came to church again this last week! He's progressing really well towards baptism. I'm very excited for the weeks to come.

Yesterday we had a bomb day of tracting on bikes. We rode through a park looking for Hispanic people. We started in a really wooded area where the trail was very overgrown and had roots and low hanging branches. A Russian man shouted us down and we taught him in the little English that he knew. We gave him the phone number for the Russian elder in our mission. We continued on through the park and found an LDS family out on a walk. We then spotted a large Hispanic family having a picnic. We parked our bikes and started talking to them. We shared a little message. They decided that they wanted to move over closer to the bathroom. We got to help them move a big heavy cooler. It was actually pretty cool. At least we started planting seeds. Maybe in a few years they'll remember that and choose to listen to some missionaries. After that it came time to leave. We were just about back at our car when we got another opportunity to teach somebody in English. He just kind of started to talk to us and ask us what we did. We stopped and actually had a really good conversation with him. He's a young guy that just lost his job, has a 6-year-old daughter and is homeless. We bought him some chicken in the Fred Meyer and gave him enough money for a bus ticket to get back to his daughter. We explained the story of Jesus at the well and I think he related pretty well to it. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon in English. Since he would be on a long bus ride, I'm pretty sure that he'll read some of it. If nothing else we did some bomb seed planting with this guy. By the way, his name is Victor. That sounds like a Spanish name but he's not.

I'm so glad that you've had a chance to see somebody be baptized. It's something that you just can't describe to somebody else. It's something you have to experience yourself.

Amy, I'm so happy for you and glad that you're experiencing what has brought me so much joy.

I love you so much,

Elder Ben Arnold

PS I've been praying extra hard for you lately. If I did it, so can you! Tackle for you little brother. Te quiero muchisimo hermanita

What kind of flu did Ben have?

2009-05-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

This week has been pretty crazy. I was sick for most of it. I was stuck in bed for two days straight. It was no fun. I don't ever recommend getting sick as a missionary. First Elder Rodriguez was sick, then I and Elder Godinez both got sick from him. Luckily Elder Tracy has escaped the wrath. As a result we really didn't get very much done.

At the beginning of the week we met a new kid named Sebastian. He is a friend of the Abdala family. So it was a member present lesson! We love those kind of lessons. He had lots of questions and we had lots of answers. He's only 16 but he's very intelligent. Something that I thought was awesome: After we had been talking for a while with him he told me that when he came into the room and I said, "hola como estas" he was really confused. Because when he looked at me I was a white kid. But I guess I had a perfect accent. I was so excited. That made me feel like I was on top of the world. And then of course as I already mentioned I was brought really low by my sickness.

Just at the beginning of my sickness there was a Mother's day activity. All of the men cooked and set up a really nice restaurant for the mother's in the gym. It was really amazing. The food was high quality and all the mother's were really impressed. It was run like a fancy restaurant too. No kids or men were allowed in unless they were waiters or escorts or something. The missionaries jobs were to guard the doors from everybody that wasn't a woman and to escort the mother's to their seats. You would've been really impressed. Then to top it off there was a live mariachi band. I don't know how to spell that. There were five Hispanic guys all playing different instruments and singing. The mother's loved it. They all got up and danced and sang along and had a blast. The good news, they loved it so much so we're going to do it for them again in 20 years. Haha. No that was just one of Bro Woodland's jokes.

I haven't heard anymore than you have from Amy. She probably just had a hard time figuring out using the computer. They probably had a lot to do since it was her first p-day as well. She did write a letter. That might just be what the mission president suggested. I don't know. It seems like she's okay and we'll probably hear more from her when everything’s calmed down a little bit next week.

I wrote her a letter this last week but I lost her address so I couldn't wait until today to rewrite it down from my emails. Oh well. It's a bomb letter she'll love it. And it's all in Spanish. She'll get in some extra Spanish study.

That's exciting that school is almost over for you, Matthew and Jonathan. It's also exciting to hear about all the missionary work that you are doing in the ward. Yes that's what I love to hear about!!!

Oh I almost forgot. Transfers. Elder Tracy and I are both staying!!! I love Elder Tracy. And this area is great. Elder Godinez is going to Pasco to be Zone Leader with Elder Waldo. Elder Rodriguez is staying here and training the only Spanish missionary coming out this transfer.

Also just from how things worked out Elder Harris, who is in our district, is in a threesome with us right now. We had a lot of fun doing some spanglish tracting with him yesterday. We actually had a lot of success. We found three new investigators!!!

Love

Elder Ben Arnold

Beacon Rock

2009-05-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

May 12, 2009

Hola familia,

I'm a little slow to emailing today because we had a zone hike this morning (at Beacon Rock). It was great. I got lots of great pictures. I can't wait to send them to you.

I got an awesome letter from Teresa Romero this week! She told me that she really liked church this last week; she didn't tell me why though. She also had a really cool missionary experience. She just got a new job at a warehouse kind of a place. She started talking to a woman a little bit older than her. She doesn't remember how but they got on the topic of religions and Teresa started to tell her about our church. She answered lots of questions that the lady had. And then she invited her to come to church. And the lady was really interested in going. I'm so proud of that girl!

Thank you for telling me about Amy. I'm super excited for her. I know she's going to have a great start to her mission. I'm a little sad that I didn't get to talk to her but I'm glad to hear that she's doing well.

Matthew you're so funny. Falling asleep. Haha. Sorry that I couldn't have called earlier. It was great to hear your laugh again.

Thanks for setting up the skype thing Jonathan. I think it added a lot more to our conversation. I can't wait to get home and do some fun electronics projects with you.

Thanks for sending that information. Now I can get those letters sent out.

Just to answer your other questions: I could hear you really well. I think my microphone was just a little weak.

Love you,

Elder Ben Arnold

Good-bye, Amy

2009-05-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

May 6, 2009
Hola familia,

Happy cinco de Mayo! I didn't email yesterday because our zone had interviews with president. So our p-day got pushed back to today.

I'll answer your questions first mom. I currently have two SD cards. One is a 2GB and I think the one in my camera is the 4GB one. As for that SD card that didn't work, try plugging it into your camera and then hooking it up to the computer with the camera cable. Can you view the pictures on your camera? If that doesn't work you can send it back to me and I'll get it to work for you.

On Sunday I can call whenever I want to. The phones are free on the weekends so I don't need to use a phonecard. By the way I still have that same phone card that you sent me for Christmas. I'm pretty sure it still has quite a few minutes on it. I'll just call you early in the morning at about 8:00 your time and we can set up a time then.

I actually haven't gotten the cinco de mayo package yet. So I'll be looking forward to getting it soon.

This last week has been pretty intense. We met some amazing new investigators.

First, Francisco: Elder Godinez and I were on exchanges. We went tracting into an apartment complex where one of our investigators lives. On about the fifteenth door we knocked on, a man in his late forties answered the door. Elder Godinez began sharing a brief message with us. Part way through Francisco asked us if we'd like to just come inside and talk. Elder Godinez and I looked at each other, our eyes lit up. We got inside and sat down on some white plastic chairs. He began talking to us about how he is going through some hard times right now. He almost immediately began crying. Through tears he began relating to us how he had just lost custody of his little boy. Him and his wife had gotten divorced about 8 or so months ago. And she just left. Then just about a week before we knocked on his door she came back and took their son with her. Francisco was devastated. His son is his whole life. Of course, they went to court over the custody of the child. The court was on the morning that we knocked on his door, so just a few hours previous, in the which he got partial custody. Just on the weekends. Then throughout the rest of the week the young boy stays with the mom. This had destroyed Francisco. He missed his son so much. Much of the night before we came over, he had been reading the bible and praying. Trying to understand why he was going through this. After he calmed down a little bit Elder Godinez and I began sharing some scriptures with him. Mostly from the Book of Mormon and about the life of Christ. Then Francisco said something that I've never heard anybody say before in my entire mission. He said, "That is such a beautiful book. May I have one? How much will it cost?" You could see an eagerness in his eyes. Elder Godinez ran out to the car really quick after the lesson of the restoration and got a Spanish book of Mormon for him.

The story continues...

Elder Tracy and I went back for our return appointment. Elder Tracy was really excited to meet this guy. We sat down with him and began talking to him about the reading assignment that we left with him at our last meeting. He started explaining all of these things to us that just amazed me. It was evident that he had read 3 Nephi 11 and then started from the inside cover of the book. He read all of the witnesses and testimonies of the book. Then read the introduction and everything else that is found at the front of the Book of Mormon. He also managed to read all the way up to 1 Nephi 15. He told us about Lehi and his family. And about Nephi and Laman and Lemuel. I cannot begin to describe how strongly the spirit resided in that room for that short lesson.

Since then we have also had a chance to meet his son and teach him a little bit more.

This is just one of so many people that we have found this last week. I wish I had time to tell you about them all. There's definitely one principle that I've been taught over and over on my mission. The more obedient you are as a missionary to the rules and commandments, the more the Lord trusts you and guides you to those who are prepared.

Amy leaves the MTC in 5 days! The time has gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday that she went in. I've met a lot of people lately that have connections to Chile. Every time that happens I always get excited and tell them, "Hey, guess what? My sister is going to Chile in 5 days! Isn't that so cool!!!"

I enjoyed hearing about the scuba shop set up in our garage. It'll be fun to use when I get home. I've met a lot of people that I want to go backpacking with when I get home too. So we'll always have friends to go with on any of our trips. Just thought you'd like to know.

Congratulations on tennis Matthew and Jonathan. It sounds like you're both getting better and better every day. What are you going to do next year when coach leaves? I think that'll probably be pretty weird. Hopefully you get a coach as good as him.

I've been using my pull-up bar a lot lately. You'll have to practice to catch up to me, Matthew. Yesterday I did three sets of ten right in a row. And then I'll sometimes do two or three pull-ups on each of the six grips without taking a break. How many can you do, Jonathan?

I love you family, Have a super wonderful week!

Elder Ben Arnold

It's a Small World

2009-04-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

April 28, 2009

Hola familia,

It was exciting to hear about all of your adventures with scuba diving and caving. It makes me anxious to join you. I had already heard about that lady on Britain's got talent. It was pretty interesting to hear about.

I still haven't gotten to play tennis and on top of that it's raining pretty hard today. Which means I won't be playing today. Ni modo. It sounds like Matthew and Jonathan are doing pretty well. Are you guys getting tan? I'm really, really white right now. I don't see the sun very much here in Vancouver. Although our last pday was really hot and I got a little sunburned.

Good job on your talk in sacrament meeting Jonathan. You might be surprised but I haven't spoken in a single sacrament meeting since I've been in Washington. Weird huh? Thanks for your amazing letters, Jonathan. I'm always lifted every time I get them. I love seeing the return address with Mom and Dad's names crossed out with "Jonathan" handwritten above. haha.

Spanish Conference was amazing! I got to see all of the Spanish missionaries from the entire mission. So I got to see all my friends who are still in Pasco. Besides that though there was some really good training. First we heard from President Alder. His topic was faith unto repentance. He gave us lots of good ideas on how to help people act on their faith and do something about it. The thing that was great about it was that he focused a lot on the culture of the Spanish people and gave us suggestions on how to be more polite and have a greater influence. The other speaker was President Piñon. He was so sincere during his role-play examples that he even began to cry. You could feel how much he loved those who were acting as the investigators. He was also the one who translated at the Mexico temple rededication. Which was really cool because I got to watch that. It's funny how small of a world this is.

Which reminds me... Dad. I met a guy named Jacob who went to BYU and got a bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. And he was so excited that I knew Mike Jensen. He just couldn't get over it. And what's more he is not a member of the Church. He was born in Jerusalem and his native tongue is Arabic. But he speaks English perfectly. He's going to be going back for this fall semester to get a degree in law. He's already been accepted into the program. He'll be going at the same time as Elder Dudoich. I'll try and get them to meet each other.

Raquel is doing great. She came to sacrament meeting this last Sunday. We were so excited about that. She's even been changing her work schedule so that she would have more time to meet with us. Isn't that so cool?

We haven't been able to meet with the other group of people that I talked about last time. So, no update with them.

I've been meaning to tell you for a long time. That picture where I was wearing a shrunken sweater; it wasn't mine. It was Elder Blomquist's. So you don't need to worry. I still have all of my sweaters intact and wearable.

I've been looking for the smartsensors here dad but haven't found any. I've found lots of products from competition. I'll keep my eyes open though. Our area covers pretty much everything north and west of road 500. Maybe you could find out where they are installed so I could go find them. I think Elder Tracy would love to see them almost as much as me. I've already told him all about that stuff.

Amy, you're going to be out of the MTC before you know it. Don't worry about not being ready for Spanish when you get to Chile. Because you won't be. Two months is just almost no time at all to become fluent in a language. The harder you work though, the quicker it will come. Just don't get frustrated and keep grinding away. It took me about six months to finally feel comfortable with it. I'm glad you've noticed the power of teaching with the spirit though. That is MORE important than speaking Spanish well. Just a quick example. We were teaching Raquel the other day and having a hard time helping her understand a specific principle. Elder Tracy and I were both praying that she would understand what we were teaching and then just out of nowhere we hear this, "Ohhhhh, I get it now". The spirit just, boom, put it into her brain. What we couldn't explain to her the spirit could. As long as we give it all we’ve got, the rest will be made up.

Matthew my Homie G. What's going on with you besides being busy with school, tennis, scuba diving, and caving? Tell me about Washington D.C. too. Do you still wear some of my clothes? How tall are you and Jonathan?

I love you so much my dear family,

Elder Benjamin Arnold

I like to pull weeds!

2009-04-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

April 21, 2009
Hola familia,

I'll start by answering all of your questions. It is a little harder to find people to teach here in Vancouver. But Heavenly Father is leading us to them so it's still fairly easy. There are four of us Elders in the Spanish branch here. Elder Godinez, Elder Rodriguez, Elder Tracy, and myself.

I haven't yet sent that winter stuff package. I have it all packed up in a box and just need to send it. Hopefully I'll get that done really soon though. I got the Spanish Cds. They came after I got to Vancouver. But that's okay. There's a Spanish zone conference coming up, actually it's tomorrow. I'm super excited about it. So, I'll see Elder Blomquist and I'll give it to him to give to Ramona Marin. It'll be really exciting to see all of my missionary friends from Pasco again.

The family we live with are the Boyle's. They're an awesome family. I've been enjoying something that I didn't like doing at home very much. And that is weeding! Sometimes in the morning we use it for our exercise. We go outside and work hard in their yard for a half an hour. We've made quite a bit of progress already. I never thought that I would enjoy doing something like that so much. It also makes exercise and working out time a lot quicker and more fun.

I think that I'm finally going to go play tennis today!!! Elder Tracy bought himself an inexpensive racquet. We probably won't play for very long but I'm excited for it. We're also going to play ultimate frisbee and work on tuning up our bikes.

Wow, we've had such a good week. Our area is really starting to pick up. I want to tell you about a few of the people that we're teaching right now. The first is Raquel. It was an interesting story how we found her. We were tracting in some apartments. We could tell that most of the people were white. You get an eye for finding Hispanic people after a while. But there were a bunch of kids outside playing. I started talking to them and started talking about Jesus Christ and why we were there. They also loved the pass-along cards that I gave to them. I've probably given them at least 50 cards all together (we've seen them a couple of times). They pointed out all of the apartment rooms where the Hispanic people live. Which was about three I think. Well it turns out that one of them was Raquel. She was really nice to us and asked us to come back the next day. So we did. And she was there! Sometimes that's a surprise to us. She let us in and we taught her a different kind of first lesson which was led by the spirit. She started talking about how there are so many churches and that she's searched for quite a bit of her life, trying to find one that feels right. And after a while she just gave up. She got frustrated. So if you can see where we went with this, we shared with her the story of Joseph Smith. And how he had the same kind of questions that she has. We read the account straight out of the Joseph Smith History. It was so powerful and amazing. She was full of questions afterward. After answering all of them and having her be satisfied with our answers I was feeling really guided and like my tongue was loose. I got to say some stuff like, "Raquel, here is the answer you've been looking for." It was so much fun!!! Probably the time when my mind is the most focused on missionary work is while I'm teaching. Everything just leaves my mind. And the spirit just comes in so strongly. Since that day we've had two more appointments with her. Actually, maybe one. My memory isn't very good. She's making so much progress. And I can see it in her eyes when we teach her that deep inside she knows it's true.

Well, have a great week family. I can't wait to go caving and scuba diving with you in the near future.

Love, Elder Benjamin Arnold

Biking in the mud

2009-04-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2009

Hola familia,

I did get my Easter package. I also got one from Grandma. So I've been spoiled. I've got a lot of candy now so I'm going to be a hyper boy this week.

I've never seen the video of Amy opening her mission call. That would be cool to see. I didn't see it in the Easter package. Maybe I'll look a little harder just to make sure that I didn't miss it.

I'm loving it here in Vancouver. It has rained quite a bit but I'm really enjoying it. Amy instilled a love for rain in me. The members that we live with have been out of town for quite a while and only just barely got back last night. So I haven't had that much of an opportunity to get to know them other than just this morning.

My new companion's name is Elder Aaron Tracy. He is from California. He's been out three transfers so this is his fourth. It's really funny because we have so much in common. We're both computer nerds! We've had a few intense discussions. Just while we're driving in the car getting from appointment to appointment. That's the other thing. Vancouver is so much bigger. And there are fewer Hispanic people. It's like less than 4% population of Hispanic. Which is so much different from Pasco.

We had a really nice Easter dinner with the Reshke family. The food was great. They both served Spanish speaking missions. And they attend the Spanish branch. Brother Reshke served in Chile. So I was excited to tell them about Amy going there soon. Also President Alder, our ward mission leader, served as a mission president in Chile. So many connections to Chile. I heard that the Spanish down there is crazy. That they slur lots of words together. They also cut off practically all of their s's.

Elder Tracy and I just found this really awesome group of people that we're teaching. They are three couples that all hang out at one house. All three of the guys are out of work right now. It's so much fun teaching them. There was a time when we were teaching them that I was so overcome by the spirit that I felt like I was trembling. Everything was completely silent in the room with all their attention fixed on us. It was amazing. I don't ever think that I've taught that powerfully with the spirit.

I didn't really have any allergies in Pasco. But when I first got here my eyes started to itch and my nose was irritating me, so I had to take some medicine at first but now I feel better and it's not bothering me.

I did remember to bring my bike with me, which we have already used quite a bit. Now that's a story. Our car has to get the rear brakes replaced so we've been doing a bunch of bike riding. We'll be able to use the car again on Wednesday evening. We rode up and down some really big hills. We also rode next to some railroad tracks in the rain and mud. It was so much fun! We also watched some Hispanic people play volleyball for a while. We tried to play with them but it began to rain really hard and they stopped playing.

Have a great week, I love you
Elder Ben Arnold

Transfer!

2009-04-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

April 7, 2009

Bueno familia,

Well, I found out what's happening this transfer. And I'm not staying in Pasco. On Wednesday (tomorrow) I'm heading over to the West side of the Mission. I'm going to Vancouver. Vancouver west to be specific. My new companions name is Elder Tracy. Not sure how you spell it yet. He's younger than me in the mission so I'll have to be the senior companion. I was hoping to go junior this transfer. Oh well. I'm excited to see a greener part of Washington. I'll miss all of the awesome friends that I've met here.

I've been cursed to move. This will be my fifth time moving. And I've only been in one area. I don't think that is very normal. I guess that I'm getting pretty good at it. Luckily some of my stuff was still packed from two weeks ago when we moved into the Strebel's.

This last week Elder Waldo has been really sick. He had a temperature of 103.8. That's ridiculous. So we spent quite a bit of time helping them go to their appointments and things like that.

Elder Blomquist and I went to breakfast this morning at Denny's, in honor of us being separated. The waitress was LDS and gave us lots of extra food. And then a guy who is a brother of some people we're teaching paid for our meal. That was so cool. We left a big tip though.

Conference was awesome!!! I loved Elder Holland's talk. The brethren threw it down this time. I also thought it was cool when President Monson said, "CEASE NOW". That was really bold. I also really appreciated Elder Perry. Talking about member missionary work. How we're an underutilized tool. And how we waste most of our time finding when that's not our calling. Hopefully that motivates people to get going on missionary work. Also the conference was broadcast to our stake center in both English and Spanish.

I still whistle quite a bit. I don't mean to; it just kind of comes out.

I'm going to send a bunch of my stuff home before I leave tomorrow. It's all of my winter clothes stuff. It has made it easier to pack.

Yeah, I did buy a tennis racket. I have wanted to play so bad. I haven't been able to use it still. Maybe I'll get to today. Maybe Elder Tracy plays. That would be neat.

I haven't gotten the Spanish Book of Mormon on Cd yet. Maybe it'll come today. If not I'll just mail it to Elder Blomquist. He's staying here in Pasco. His new companion is Elder Viera. He's from Brooklyn and 27 years old. He's been out for over a year. I'm sure that Elder Blomquist will like him.

I love you,

Have a great week, and good luck with tennis Matthew and Jonathan,

Elder Benjamin Arnold

Elder Arnold gets spicy!

2009-03-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

March 31, 2009

Hola familia,

I heard about the Spanish Bible. We're so stoked about it. We'll actually have something good to study out of. It's funny, because our current bible that we have contains a whole bunch of notes and things in the back that are all false doctrine. We're going to be really anxious until September. They announced it at our last sacrament meeting.

Good job on tennis, Matthew and Jonathan. You probably noticed mom but I bought a tennis racket. I've been itching to play so bad. I haven't had the time to use it yet though. So hopefully today I'll get to go and serve some for a little while.

It sounds like scuba diving was fun. I can't wait to go and try it with you. I think I'll probably be with mom and Jonathan the whole time. I always have problems with my ears on airplanes so it'll probably be the same with scuba diving.

I'm getting a little better at eating spicy foods. Since we eat some every once in a while. If you remember I never liked any amount of spiciness before I left on my mission. I even thought that those red cinnamon jelly beans were hot. Now those are nothing. So I'm making some improvement.

There were two baptisms this last Saturday. One investigator from the sisters and one from the zone leaders. It was really cool. Oh did I tell you? I've translated in sacrament meeting now once and also at a baptism. From Spanish to English. It was lots of fun. It's fun to have made so much progress in Spanish in just the last two transfers.

I guess that I have two sisters now. Amy and Andrea. I guess it'll kind of be like coming home to a new baby girl in the family. Ha ha. Just kidding. It's too bad that I'm not there to join in on the fun with Matthew and Jonathan.

We are currently living with the Strebel's. Our new address is 4820 W Margaret, Pasco WA 99301 (If anyone wants to write to Ben, he may only be at this address for a week, so send letters to his mission office address). The Matson's and the Strebel's both went out of town for a little bit so we're babysitting two houses. The Strebel's are really cool. They're good friends with the Matson's and moved into Pasco at about the same time as each other.

We'll find about transfers this upcoming Saturday. And transfer day is on the 8th, which is Wednesday. So I'll tell you what's happening next Tuesday.

Edgar and Lilian are doing really well. We just showed them lds.org. And they're really impressed that all of the scriptures and everything is online free to download. Edgar is going to put some of the scriptures on his MP3 player and listen to it at work instead of other books or music. We're super excited about that. He doesn't like reading as much because he doesn't understand it as well as when he hears it. Their son Justin is really cool. He just walks around during the lesson and he loves getting into the food. He always gives us high fives now. I love teaching that family.

Maria and Juan. We had an appointment with Maria just the other day. We had an inspired lesson with her. We were going to teach her about the plan of salvation but we diverted following the spirit. She was telling us about one of her sons that's been causing her a lot of heart-ache. So we shared Mosiah 27 and Alma 39. We read some of the highlights of the chapters and helped relate them to her situation. It was an amazing spiritual lesson. She was really apologetic about not having done the reading assignment and she promised very sincerely that she would do it this time.

Rafael and Maria. We actually haven't been able to visit them again yet. So we'll tell you more about them next week.

Well, have a great week.

I love you super a lot

Elder Benjamin Arnold

Awesome week!

2009-03-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

March 24, 2009

Hello family,

How are you doing? This has been an awesome week! Our baptism on Sunday went really well. The sisters also had a baptism. The two people were Ramona Marin and Maydelis Suarez. Socorro, Ramona Marin's son was the one that baptized her. And Elder Dudoich baptized Maydelis. There was a really big turn out. It was just a lot of fun. So they'll both be confirmed this upcoming Sunday.

The Pasco Library reopened today!!! Now we don't have to drive extra far to get to the library. They put in a lot more computers, which has been really nice. And the time is for an hour straight without any interruptions!!! They got new computers and the keyboards are amazing. Just thought you'd like to know that.

Tell Natalia congratulations on her baptism. I'm glad that it went so well. It's always so exciting to take part in them.

Wow, I can't believe you're so tall Matthew and Jonathan. You've both just about got me caught. Well, I was expecting this day to come anyway. I can see the changes in all the pictures that you send. Since I don't see you as often your maturity is more obvious to me.

Did I tell you about the chicken coop that we roofed? That was what I thought of when you told me about Dad, Matthew and Jonathan all working on those garden boxes.

Transfers are coming up pretty soon. They'll be on the 8th of this next month. I don't think I'll be staying in Pasco but we'll find out. I'll be sad if I do leave. Also we got a phone call that made me sad this morning. Elder Dudoich told us that we are moving out of the Matson's today. We didn't even have a clue that that was going to happen. The Matson's don't even know yet. Sad huh. I don't know what I'm going to do without them. It's going to be so weird.

Tomasa is doing pretty well. We've had a hard time getting a hold of her lately. She has been busy with her family and things like that. We're hoping that she's really close to baptism though. She loves the Book of Mormon. And understands that it is the word of God. It's just been a little bit of a struggle to get her to read on her own and pray to receive a spiritual confirmation. That's the way most people we teach are though.

We were given some cool new investigators this last week by the Lord. The first ones live next to a member who's been their friend for a long time. Their names are Rafael and Maria. Rafael loves talking about politics and stuff. He has so many ideas and theories about things. They were really cool. They both love talking. So I'm afraid we might get stuck in a long lesson with them sometime. I'm really excited to start teaching them though.

The other family we found was somebody that had been taught a little bit before by missionaries. We tracted into their door and their daughter answered. We left our number with them and asked her to give it to her parents. Then just a few days ago we got a call. Juan who was recently in jail called and asked us to come over because he thought that Maria needed to get closer to God because she is going through some really hard times in her life right now. So we went over and had an awesome first lesson with them. Elder Blomquist asked Maria to say the prayer at the end of the lesson, guided by the spirit. She started to cry during the prayer and couldn't finish. It was a very spiritual experience. We shared some comforting scriptures form the Book of Mormon. That is a powerful book and she knows it now. I can't wait to tell you about our next appointment.

We're teaching another family that I don't think I've told you about. Their names are Edgar and Lilian. They have an autistic son. We've had about four lessons with them so far. They are solid. The only real obstacle they have is getting to church. They're a little nervous about bringing their son to church. But we already have a family in the branch with autism. So we've been working on getting them talking to each to share ideas and help them feel confident.

I got your package! Thank you for all the wonderful little snacks and for the sets of scriptures. I'm excited to give them away. I don't think we'll give one to Hna Marin because she is partially blind and can't read as a result. Do you think you could find some CD's with the scriptures on them? It would be nice for her to be able to at least listen.

I sent Amy a letter the other day. I drew flowers and stuff all over it. I included a bunch of pictures with stuff written on it and then also some pamphlets from a Baptist church. I need to send you some of those pamphlets too. They’re really cool. Most of them are in Spanish.

Did you like your birthday present Matthew? I'm sorry the card was late. I thought I got it in the mail on time. I guess not. Write Amy soon. She would love to hear from you. Make it a good letter, include lots of details. Tell her how much you love her. Okay Homie G. Gracias.

I'm glad you’re on the tennis team, Jonathan. Keep working hard. Remember I only won one match my entire freshmen year. Most of the time it was a shut out 6-0 or 8-0.

It's Elder Anderson's birthday today. He turned 21. We woke him up this morning with silly string and party hats that had Dora the explorer on them. It was really fun. Hopefully we made it enjoyable for him. Then we took him out for breakfast this morning. It was lots of fun.

Have a great week. Love, Elder Benjamin Arnold

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-17T13:35:00.001-07:00

March 13, 2009

Hola Familia,

Buenos dias means good morning too. And hombros are shoulders. And you did spell it right. Good job! You are learning Spanish. The hardest part about learning Spanish is just learning all the words. The grammar and everything is pretty easy to pick up.

It's exciting to hear how Amy's doing. Make sure you tell me her email address as soon as you find out. Tell her that I love her. Maybe you could forward this letter to her.

That's exciting to hear that Natalia's getting baptized. We have a baptism coming up this Saturday! Ramona Marin. She's been taught for quite a while and she's an older lady. Her interview is today and that should go well. Her son, Socorro, is going to be the one baptizing her.

I sent Matthew's birthday card this morning. So it should get there on his birthday. It has all of my pictures in it as well as my old MSF, credit, card. It got compromised and I got a new one. I thought you might like to see it. Also one of the SD cards in there is one that I bought here in Washington. The 4GB one. It was only $15. It was such a good deal I had to take it.

Yes! Jonathan is a tennis player. Keep playing and working hard at it everyday and you'll start seeing the results in no time. Remember that I was a terrible tennis player when I was a freshmen (and I'm still not that good, but that's not the point). There was only one other person that tried out besides me. Lucky me.

That present for Matthew sounded just like what I wanted to get him. Hopefully he'll enjoy it and use it. I would've liked to have had one of those during high school. I would've used it all the time. So, have fun Matthew!

Invitation Sunday was kind of a bummer. Out of all the members we visited and talked to about it only one brought a friend. That was really sad. And then the talks went on forever. The first two speakers took up all of the time. And the other 4 speakers still gave their talks. So it ended up being over an hour and a half. And almost none of our investigators were there because they all had visitors and things. Oh well, it was still uplifting for those who came. Hopefully the next time it comes around it will be a little more successful in the branch. I probably won't be here next time though. That's a sad thought.

The Matson's will be moving, sometime. I have no idea when. They are going to sell their house before they move. And they still have a ton of stuff that they haven't packed. Actually haven't really even started that much. Which makes me really happy. I don't want to leave the Matson's. I love 'em to death.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day,

I love you,

Elder Benjamin Arnold

Chicken Coop

2009-03-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

March 10, 2009

Hola familia,

It sounds like you've all been pretty crazy busy this last week. With school, work, trying to have fun, and getting Amy ready to leave tomorrow on her mission. Time just flies by, doesn't it? The days, months, and years just keep on clicking by. And Matthew turns 17 in just a week and a little bit. Almost happy birthday Matthew!

I wish I could've heard your amazing talk Amy. I'm glad that I get to read most of it. It's exciting to talk about missionary work. Especially to get members excited about it. That's all we focus on during our dinner thoughts. We have a thing called invitation Sunday coming up that was an idea of President Belnap's. It's a special sacrament meeting with special talks. Also the whole meeting is explained by the bishop or branch president about everything that goes on so that a person who is not a member can understand what it is that we do. There was a lot of success the first time that they did it back in September. As a result there was 22 baptisms in the mission. So we're really excited for the one on this upcoming Sunday, the 15th.

We've had some crazy weather lately. It'll be in the 50's and then start hailing and snowing and then go back up to the 50's. It's made life a little bit more interesting.

I wish I could've eaten some of your waffles Amy. They sound amazing. Too bad that they wouldn't go through the mail very well. You'll just have to make me some in 2010.

Leonardo is amazing. He's come out with us on exchanges. He's also so much fun to be around. I wish that you could meet him. I would tell him to call you but he doesn't really speak any English. And I can't be there to translate for him. Oh well. You'll eventually get to meet him.

We helped somebody roof their chicken coop this last week. That was a lot of fun. It was especially fun to watch Elder Blomquist and Elder Malan try to catch the rooster. It was really fast. It took them a long time before they succeeded. We also helped build a support wall. It was really fun to get out of the every day routine and do some good service.

Our new finding people techniques aren't really so much new as a reminder to always be finding people. It was more of getting us to talk to every single person that we come into contact with. Which we've done a pretty good job of implementing. In the last couple of weeks we've tripled the size of our investigator pool. So we've had a lot more work to do lately with trying to teach all of these people. The best and most fun days is where you just go out and work hard and teach all day long. It's such an amazing feeling to share the gospel with somebody.

Well, I have to end this email up.

I love you all very super much

Elder Benjamin Arnold

P.S. Thanks for getting the scriptures. I can't wait to use them.

Baptism

2009-03-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

March 4, 2009

Hola familia,

BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!!! Leonardo Arellano. That's really cool that you went to a baptism the same day that I had a baptism. Ours was at 7:00 pm though. So 8:00 pm your time. It was amazing! I wish I could've taken a video of it to show you how awesome it was.

I've told you about Leonardo before but I used the wrong name. I used to always call him Leonar. Because that's what we were introduced to him as. Good thing we found out before the baptism though. haha. He was a referral from a member named Delia. We had a couple of lessons in her home. And there were several members involved in teaching him. It was such an amazing experience to see somebody from beginning to end in getting baptized.

It was also really exciting to get my clothes wet. It is kind of funny because I've lent out my tie about four different times for baptisms and finally it was me wearing it. It's hard to express in words how much joy this has brought me.

This reminds me of a favor I have to ask of you. Leonardo didn't have a triple combination. Which means he doesn't even have a copy of the Doctrine and Covenants. But sister Matson is amazing and she helped me out with getting him a nice copy with his name on it. But for future people I was wondering if you could send me a couple of copies of some nice triple combinations and bibles. In Spanish of course. Thank you!

We had a really amazing Zone Conference yesterday. Which is why I'm writing you today. They talked a lot about things that Elder Blomquist and I have needed to focus on more. Which is mostly on getting New Investigators. We've done a lot of tracting but it also gave us other ideas as well. Right after Zone Conference we put the ideas into practice and saw success immediately. We found several new investigators yesterday. And one in particular was amazing. His name is Edgar. He had all the right questions and has been so prepared. It was even better because we took one of the priests out with us and he was strengthened because of it as well. His name was Edwin. His family is very active in the church and a great asset to the branch.

It sounds like you've all been as busy as me. I'm glad that you start your day off with a bowl of marshmallow matey's still Matthew. Right now I'm eating Cinnamon toast crunch to begin my day. Cereal, that's where it's at. If anybody doesn't agree with me you'll just have to take it up with my homie g M. Silly.

Tennis sounds exciting! I wish I could watch you guys play. Maybe when I get home. Tennis gives you a lot of control over your own mind. Something that comes in useful in missionary work. Play hard Jonathan, and give it everything you’ve got.

Okay okay, I'll take scuba lessons when I get home. If Matthew and Jonathan liked it then I guess I probably would too. Actually it always sounded pretty cool.

Congratulations on your ACT score Matthew. Now teach Jonathan your ways and make him get a 36. That would be awesome. But really, that is awesome that you did that. You'll see a lot of things open up too because of that.

I hope that you have a wonderful week. Make it count. It's your last one with Amy. Your amazing, beautiful, caring, kind, cool, and awesome sister will be out serving the Lord. So give her lots of loves.

I love you,

Elder Benjamin Thomas Arnold

2009-03-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

February 24, 2009

Hola familia,

It sounds like you've all been super busy with everything this last week. Matthew, your tennis stories sound like lots of fun. I wish I could be there to watch you play. I haven't even been able to play once since the beginning of my mission. There are some tennis courts around but I have to go buy some tennis rackets and balls. Maybe I'll just wait until summer. Hopefully I'll have a companion that is willing to play with me. Maybe I'll stay with Elder Blomquist all summer. That would be cool.

It's exciting to hear that you've taken up tennis as well Jonathan. I can't wait to play with you when I get home. Granted, I won't be very good. You'll have to be nice to me. What else have you two been up to?

Transfer info: Elder Blomquist and I are both staying!!! That makes me happy because there are lots of people that are getting close to being ready for baptism. Leonar is supposed to have his interview today. But we couldn't find him at all yesterday. And he never answered his phone. Hopefully he's okay. As long as everything still goes okay his baptism is scheduled for this upcoming Saturday at 7:00. Hopefully I'll be able to tell you all about that next week.

This last Sunday we had a fireside by President Belnap. We had two investigators there. It was really awesome because there were lots of recent converts who shared their conversion stories and their testimonies. One of them was Juan Saldana. Who was baptized while I was here, by Elder Anderson and Elder Mortenson. He doesn't speak English that well so Elder Anderson went up with him and translated what he said into English. It was actually really funny. I wish I could've recorded it and sent it home to you. It was an amazing meeting because the spirit was really strong and it gave all of our investigators a strong desire to really find out if this church is true.

Tomasa is one of the ones who was at the fireside. She's been making lots of progress lately. We're hoping to help her take the next step in a couple of weeks. She is the center of her family. As soon as she comes many will follow. I'm super excited for her.

We've played soccer for the last couple of p-day's. It's been a lot of fun. Last time I was the goalie. It was so crazy. I actually did a pretty good job. Diving all over and making miraculous saves. We also got some durag's. You'll see them in some of the pictures that I eventually send home. I'm going to try and get the pictures from everybody in our district and burn them to DVD's. That way you get lots of pictures.

I've fallen in love with peanut butter. I eat it all the time. I guess just because it gives me so much energy. I've just been craving it all the time. We found a funny comic that depicts this exactly. I'll take a picture of it and send it home.

Well, have a wonderful week.

You're happy missionary

Elder Benjamin Arnold

Happy Birthday Amy

2009-03-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

February 17, 2009
Hola familia,

I got your package mom. It was wonderful. I'm glad that my translator is now back. I forgot to tell you that I had sent it in and that the new one was coming to Utah. I'm glad you figured it out anyway. Thanks, it's already been put to good use between Elder Blomquist and I.

It sounds like Amy had a busy birthday. I hope you didn't work too hard Amy. And that you had some time to enjoy your first day of being 21. It sounds like my letter got there but maybe not my present yet. I hope you enjoyed my pictures. Make sure you get on top of putting all the music you want on that present of yours. Time sneaks up on you. And you won't want to do it all at the last minute.

Driving is coming along just great. I've figured where everything is. Elder Blomquist has to help me out sometimes though. He pays a lot better attention than I did when I was the passenger.

Tomasa has been doing pretty well. She's been to church twice now. And this last week she brought three of her grandkids with her. Hopefully we'll make some good progress with her this week. Maybe the spirit will convince her to be baptized.

I haven't heard much from Blanca lately. I haven't seen her at church in a long time either. She is such an amazing person I wish that things would just work out better for her.

Leonar is the member referral and the one that was going to be baptized this last week. He's had some doubts that he's not ready for it yet. He wants to be completely prepared. Which is a good thing other than it's preventing him from partaking of all those wonderful blessings that we have available to us. We're going to meet with him tonight and go over baptism in depth. We'll hopefully be able to set up his baptismal date for the very end of this month. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Lucia's been doing amazing lately. She came to church this last week. It was so exciting to see her there. She's still been having lessons with the sisters in sister hill's home. Which has been a huge help to her. She's slowly getting more and more ready. Hopefully she'll have the strength to take the last couple of steps necessary to be baptized. Heavenly Father is helping her. As long as we keep working hard everything will work out okay.

Don't worry I haven't been sick lately. There's been a lot of sickness going around. Elder Blomquist and I have avoided it. Hopefully it stays that way.

I don't think I'll be moving this transfer. I'll probably stay one more here in Pasco. But just in case I'll find out this Friday or Saturday what will really happen. So around that time just send everything to the mission office.

Well it sounds like I am currently the heaviest member in our family. Sitting at a comfortable 158. I actually haven't checked in a while. So I'll find out for you next week. I've been using my pull-up bar a lot. And we also play basketball early in the mornings on Monday and Wednesday with the 4th ward. It keeps my cardiovascular system healthy and strong.

Well, I hope you have a wonderful week,

Love, Elder Benjamin Arnold

I'm still here. Only for another ten minutes though.
I'm excited to read the Harry Potter in Spanish. It'll test my vocabulary.

I hope you did good on your ACT test Matthew. Good look with it. Make sure you tell me how it goes this week when you find out.

I sure miss you Matthew and Jonathan. I wish I could come home for a few days and play tennis and go mountain biking with you. I also wish that I could share all of the things that I'm learning. I've grown so much spiritually. I'm able to focus on the really important things more. One of those things is my family. I'm definitely going to be a different person when I get home. And don't worry Matthew I'll come back ripped with muscles. BAM.

Thanks for your letters Jonathan. Your words lift me up. They make me feel more loved every time I read them.

Keep working hard you two. Look for ways to love your family members. I promise that you'll be happier as you do so.
Love Benjamin

Big Eater

2009-03-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

February 10, 2009
Hello Family,

I had few interesting dinners this last week. One of the most interesting ones was with some members in an English ward in Kennewick. We had Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken. It was really good. I had goal to finish it all. So I ate 5 and a half plates of it. I was super full afterwards. The reason we were eating there was because we did a combined lesson with the sisters to teach Lucia. Who should be getting baptized soon! Elder Johnstun and I started teaching her close to when I first got here in Washington. It's exciting to see the progress she's making.

Today has already been an amazing P-Day. We went to the temple first. I always learn so much every time I go. And this time I was more attentive than usual.

I usually do my laundry at the Matson's house.

The baptism for the 15th is going to be pushed back a couple of weeks probably. But it's better for him to be ready for his baptism. There are just a couple of things to work out with the word of wisdom. He's making so much progress though. He has such a strong desire to improve and change his life. There is something that I'm really looking forward to. Leonar's brother died not very long ago. It's been the thing that has really caused so much change in his heart. And Leonar has such a strong love for his brother. The other day we taught him about the spirit world and how missionary work is being done there. I could see a light come on in his eyes when he heard that. So I really want to be there when he does the baptism for his brother in the temple.

Something that we're doing better on this last week was getting lessons with members present. We exceeded our goal. It was awesome. We're hoping to see continued progress in this area. It's something we've focused on for a long time but has only just recently been coming together.

I guess I haven't really told you much about Elder Blomquist. He's from Arizona. He can play the piano really really really well. It's fun to listen to him in the mornings sometimes. He doesn't get to play all that often. Besides being really musically talented he also is an awesome missionary. His teaching skills and Spanish have both come along rapidly. He's had lots of opportunities to learn since he has a trainer that doesn't know all that much. We're working hard together and having a fun time sharing the gospel.

It sounds like you've been having a fun time at home. Don't worry, hearing about your vacations doesn't really make me feel bad that I'm missing them. I only really miss being with my family. Can you believe that I'll have been out a half a year on the 20th. I can't believe how fast time is going.

Les quiero mucho,

Que tengan una buena semana,

Elder Benjamin Arnold

A Baptism

2009-03-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

February 4, 2009

Dear family,

Every transfer we have a zone conference and interviews. Two different days. They're always on Tuesdays so our P-day gets moved to Wednesday. That's why I write a day late sometimes.

We had a really awesome baptism this last week. They were two girls that I helped teach with Elder Anderson and Elder Dudoich. Their names are Abby and Bianca. They're young girls, teenagers. One of the coolest things about the baptism though was that we had three investigators there. One of them is the guy I was telling you is going to be baptized. He loved the baptism. We went over to his house the next day and talked to him a lot more about him being able to be baptized. He was excited to be able to start a new life. It turns out that the 15th is his birthday. So that's when we set his baptismal date for. A new year a new life. Just two days after your birthday Amy!

We had a really neat experience with Tomasa just the other day. We've been teaching her for quite a while now. Even since Elder Johnstun was here. She's never been to church before this last week. It was a miracle story. She was having a really bad morning. Just mad at the whole world. She tried calling us to tell us not to come by but she couldn't get a hold of us because our phone doesn't accept calls outside of our area code (her phone has a California area code). Then she recognized that it was Satan trying to prevent her from doing what is right. When she related the story to us she told us over and over that she told Satan to get out of there. It was really cool to hear in Spanish. It was a lot more powerful. Then she decided if we came by to show her how to get to the church that she would go. And of course Heavenly Father made sure we went by her house and she followed us to church! The story doesn't end there though. She couldn't stay longer than just one hour because she had a court hearing right after sacrament meeting finished. She was really worried about the court because she hadn't done whatever it was that she was supposed to. She didn't have the money or resources to finish. But she had been praying for help. Because of that and probably her willingness to follow the Lord for no apparent reason her court hearing was changed to a week later. Which gave her sufficient time to get everything finished. It was a powerful testimony to her of the hand of God in her life. She also has a grandson named Santiago who has received many miraculous blessings as a result from prayer as well. We're excited to go see them in the next couple of days. We're going to extend a baptismal invitation to them!

By the way my favorite scripture is D&C 6:36-37. I think I told dad that on Christmas. But there's no rush. We've still got a year and a half to get that done. haha.

Well time is almost up. I love you all so much. Sorry I didn't answer too many of your questions. But I hope you enjoyed my stories from this week.

Love
Elder Ben Arnold

Insanely Crazy

2009-01-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

This last week has been so insanely crazy. I'm not even going to be able to begin to tell you everything that has happened. First though, I got your package yesterday. It came with one for Elder Blomquist so it was like christmas all over again.

It's really exciting to hear about all the people I know entering the MTC or leaving the MTC. It's a life changing experience. I wish I could tell them all how much I'm excited for them.
We've focused a lot this week on finding new investigators just like last week. Also with visiting less-active members. And we've been having a lot of success in both areas.

Sergio has been a learning experience for me. He has had a very hard time accepting the Book of Mormon and prefers to read from his international version of the Bible. At our last lesson we focused almost solely on the Book of Mormon though and the spirit was very strong as we did that. He had been a little sick and because of that hadn't done any reading. He's going to give us a call when he gets better. Hopefully it is soon. I love talking to him.

Lucia is doing amazing. We actually went bowling with her on last P-day. I don't remember if I told you that or not. She has such a strong desire to change and become closer to God. I'm glad that I could be behind the scenes a little bit and help her. She lives in Kennewick so I don't really get to see her very often. I do get to talk to her on the phone every once in a while.

I haven't talked to Blanca for a while. Since the beginning of the transfer the sisters have been visiting her. Maybe I'll try to check up on her this week.

I have some news that I've been really excited to tell you about all week. This last Sunday we taught a man named Leonar at a member's house. It was through the member that we found him. And we committed him to be baptized. It was so exciting!!! It will be coming up in the middle of February. Right around your Birthday Amy.

Tomasa is an investigator we've been teaching for a while now. She's made a lot of progress lately. She has five grandkids living with her. Three of which are elegible for baptism. And two of which are really interested. One of those two is Santiago. He is an awesome kid. He's in the sixth grade. I had the opportunity to tutor him in math for about a half hour after our last appointment. It was so much fun!

This is to answer Matthew's question about the TI-89 cord. It is just a standard USB to mini-USB. There should be a whole bunch of them laying around the house. You could ask dad. I know he has one for his GPS.

Spanish has been coming along really fast this last week. We study really hard and pray for help from the spirit. I'm able to understand pretty much everything that people say and I'm finding it a lot easier to teach and talk to people about whatever. Sometimes it's still hard to understand people on the phone or if they use a lot of words that I've never heard before. But it's really exciting and I love everything about it.

Thank you for everything my wonderful family,I love you,
Elder Benjamin Arnold

Elder Blomquist is His Name

2009-01-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Family,

I got your letter this last week. I was very excited to get the map of Mexico. I've met a lot of people from all over and was able to recognize many of the states on the map. I was also excited to see all of the pictures. I felt my nerdy self being fed as I read that other article you sent me, thank you.

This past week has been insane. Spanish is coming along faster than ever. I have to focus really hard and understand everything that the people are saying to us. I've definitely been blessed with the gift of tongues at this time.

Elder Blomquist has been doing really well. He's excited to be here. He has lots of energy and excitement. He's from Arizona. He hasn't really been homesick so that's been helpful. We just go out and work as hard and obediently as we can. As a result we're finding lots of new people to teach. I was really scared at first. I've settled down a lot now though. I'm putting my trust in the Lord and moving forward with the work.

We met a cool guy the other day named Sergio. He's really into the bible and interpreting it in his own way. He goes off on a lot of tangents while we're teaching and asks some pretty deep questions sometimes. Usually he doesn't like our answers. He prefers to stick with his beliefs. This next time we'll focus on reading a chapter out of the Book of Mormon that contains only really simple doctrine and also testifying a lot. Hopefully it'll give him the chance to feel the spirit.

I've also been in touch with one of the investigators that me and Elder Johnstun had in Kennewick. We're going bowling with her and the sisters today. Her name is Lucia, I met have told you a little about her before. She has been making some amazing progress lately. I'll let you more about how that goes.

We're actually in the Kennewick library today and we only have 30 minutes here. The pasco library is down for remodeling. So I only have a couple of minutes left.

I love you all so much, have a wonderful week,

Elder Benjamin Arnold

He's a Trainer!

2009-01-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Family,

I'm getting really anxious and excited. My new companion is flying in tomorrow. I'll meet him on Wednesday morning and move back into the Matson's then. We should both stay there for at least the next two transfers, so three months.

We'll both learn really fast, Spanish and how to teach. I've had a lot of really good experience lately. Elder Anderson and Elder Dudoich have been really good at getting me to speak a lot of spanish and giving me lots of opportunities to teach.

By the way, I ran into Eugene again. The person I told you about on Christmas that I met in Panda Express. He's doing awesome. I found out where he works and I'll look for him everytime I go there. I'm glad that I've been given the chance to talk to him again.

You can send me the P.F. Chang's card. I'm sure I'd use it. There's one of those restaurants nearby my house. The Matson's took us there once. It was really good and I'll look forward to going back. That was when I ate the really big chocolate cake.

I like that fortune cookie that you got for me. Something that's funny is usually since I've been a missionary all of my fortune cookies are true. I'll copy them all down and send it to you sometime. Maybe I'll just take a picture of them.

I've been doing a lot lately to get ready for my new companion. I've been studying extra hard and figuring out everything that we're going to do starting Wednesday. I'm actually really excited about doing every part of being a trainer. Except that Spanish is going to be really interesting. I haven't built up a big enough of a vocabulary to be able to understand everything. So I'm looking forward to the time when we'll be in a lesson and neither one of us will understand what they said. It will be a memorable journal entry.

I love you all so much and have a wonderful week

Elder Ben Arnold

P.S. I have tried using the new magnesium stuff but not very much. My other one has almost run out. So I'll just switch over and see how it goes. If it doesn't work very well I'll let you know in the next couple of weeks.

I love you, thanks for everything you do!

Pasco Pictures!!!

2009-01-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

We were so excited to get pictures last week! Hope you enjoy them as well. New pictures on the side bar coming soon!

{Look CaRefULLy!}

{Ben with his current companions and zone leaders, Elders Dudoich and Anderson}

{Elders WILL be boys}

{Ben has nothing but good things to say about this zone.}

{Elder Arnold with the members he lived with, the Matsons. You're a mean one...hhhmmm not the Ben we know!}

{Elder Arnold, Teresa, and Elder Johnstun on Teresa's baptism day.}

{Elder Johnstun and Elder Arnold in front of the Columbia River temple.}

It Was Mostly Just

2009-01-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Family,

Great Gatsby! This last week has been crazy! I have so much to tell you about. I wish I could tell you all about it on the phone. Also we don't have as much time in the library today so this will be a little difficult.

Thanks for the advice on weight control. I haven't really been trying to gain weight so much as muscle. I'm not eating lots of bad food to try and gain fat. I'm eating pretty good but also working out every morning. And by the way my current weight is about 158. Depending on what time of day it is and if I just drank water I can be about 160. I could start eating a little bit healthier of breakfasts though. I just eat frosted flakes with milk. I'll buy some more nutritional stuff next time.

I got the Land's End package. I love all the stuff. The sweater is really soft and comfortable. The long underwear has helped me already many times in staying warm. There were two shirts and two pants. And of course the sweater which I already mentioned.

We keep getting snowed on. The roads were finally clear and then it's snowed twice since then. It hasn't been too much though. It was mostly just slushy so it'll be burned off in no time.

I'm glad my room is being put to good use. Enjoy using it. It's the best room in the whole house!

I'm so excited that you get to go to the temple so soon, Amy. It's a wonderful experience there's lots to learn everytime you go.

You only mispelled three of the spanish words. Lunes miercoles and jueves. Good job though. I'm glad you are enjoying using the translator. Mine has a couple of problems with it and I called the technical support. So I'm sending mine back to them and they're sending me a new one. It's kind of a bum deal because I'm really going to be needing it here soon.

Love you all so much,

Elder Ben Arnold

Rosa

2008-12-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

Hello Family,

The snow's been clearing up here as well. It's gotten a lot warmer and the snow has just mostly melted. There isn't really any left on the streets. There are still piles of it by the sides of the roads though.

My pull up bar was about thirty dollars. I bought it at Walgreens. I don't know where you would find one back at Provo. I'll send you a picture of it so you know what it looks like.
That reminds me that I got all of my pictures ready to send this morning. All I have to do is send it now. I will get that done for sure today.

I haven't gotten the Land's End package yet. We went and checked at the Matson's house the other day but it wasn't there. I did have a letter waiting for me though.

I love the sweaters that I got for Christmas. I wear one everyday. They give me one more choice in my things to wear. It used to be that I really only got to pick out a tie. Now I get to pick out a tie and a sweater.

This morning we finished off my crepe package. Elder Anderson has a really good recipe for the filling. We bought some bananas and mashed them up with brown sugar until it was kind of liquidy. Then we would put that in the crepe with some whipped cream and top it off with a drizzle of chocolate syrup. I had three of them and afterward I was really full.

I kind of have a fitness trainer too. Elder Anderson has been getting me to do some really good workouts with him. The other day we went over to the gym and did a jumping workout. My calves felt sore for a couple of days afterward. He's also helped me do some benching. We have done a lot of pushups and pullups as well.

Spanish has been coming along really well lately. Just the other night we went over and saw Teresa to help her with something. Juan was there to help as well. He was baptized just the week before by Elder Anderson and Elder Mortensen. Anyway, while we were there I heard a couple of jokes in Spanish and I understood most of them. Without anyone really having to explain them to me. I also talked to Teresa for a little while about some scriptures in the Book of Mormon. At that point the Spanish was just coming out. I didn't really even have to think very hard about how to conjugate things the right way.

The way we met Rosa is kind of a funny story. We were over at her apartment complex visiting an investigator. When we were just leaving we saw a man outside cleaning up his house. He had a big box of garbage. We went up to him and started talking to him in Spanish and asked if we could help him. So we took the big box of garbage over to the dumpster with him. When we got back we started talking about coming over and teaching him a little bit. He said it would be okay. When we left and he went back inside we could hear Rosa start to yell at him in Spanish. "Why did you tell them they could come back." She went off on him. It was hilarious. Elder Johnstun and I couldn't help but laugh. When we went back a couple of days later Rosa was the one who answered the door. She was really nice to us and we've taught her a couple of times since. She's been to church once. It was just kind of a funny experience.

Que tenga una buena semana. Les quiero.

Elder Ben Arnold

Feliz Navidad

2008-12-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Family

Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad!!!

First you'll probably want to know what happened to me when Elder Johnstun left. The last time I saw him was yesterday, the 22nd. I moved in with the Zone Leaders, Elder Anderson and Elder Dudoich. You'll get to see some pictures of them in my Christmas letter.

I got the Farkle and cookie packages. So I think there's only one that I haven't gotten yet. I also got the one from Amy.

We're not going to be using our cell-phones to call. I'll still be calling sometime Christmas morning though. It'll be a surprise.

I don't know if you've heard but we have gotten a lot of snow up here. It reminded me of Provo last winter. And it has been really cold. Usually it's about twenty degrees in the daytime.
The roads have also been pretty bad. Our little cars are definitely not made for it either. Ni modo. Manejamos bien porque somos de Utah.

That big chocolate cake that Sister Matson told you about was huge. I took some pictures of it so you'll get to see it. It was a six layer Wall of Chocolate. I managed to make it through five of the layers. That was all I could do though.

Since Elder Johnstun just lives thirty minutes away from Provo he'll come and see you sometime. He'll be glad to answer any questions that you have. I'll also give you his contact information next week.

Well I'm almost out of time. I love you so much.
Elder Ben Arnold (Benjamin)

Some Kind Words From the Matsons

2008-12-17T10:40:00.000-08:00

Dear Sister Arnold,

I am glad for this opportunity to let you know how very much we are
enjoying your son. I think that he is as good as they come! He is
always kind and thoughtful of others and you might like to know that
at my house, he is the first to get up from a meal and start the
dishes! You have trained him well.

It is plain to see that he truly loves and appreciates his family.
He has taken some service time to direct us (bro. Matson and I) in
solving several computer problems. some of them have been real
problems for some time.

We will really miss him when he leaves here and hope that he stays in
the area so we can see him often.

Yesterday they did splits with another set of Elders and Elder Arnold
had to take the lead. He did very well and was surprised at how well
the spanish came to him and he was able to converese for 20 minutes in
spanish and give some discussions without a problem and understood
most of what was said.

We both know that he is exceptionally bright but his spiritual gifts
may even exceed that!.

thank you for sharing your wonderful son.

Merry Christmas to you.
--
Sister Matson

Icy Roads-Investigators at Home

2008-12-17T08:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Family,

Christmas time has been amazing. It snowed!!! The roads are even snowy. And the bridges in between Pasco and Kennewick have been really icy. Don't worry though we drive really carefully. I think it's a good thing because most of the people that we know are scared to drive now. That means that most of our investigators are at home more often. And to top it all off it got down to one degree this morning. That's cold. I didn't think it was supposed to be that cold in this part of Washington. I actually would appreciate the long underwear right now.

If you really want to give some gifts to any of the people we're teaching you could just send some games like Flux, en Español. By the way, I don't think I've told you but I love that game. I've played it with Elder Johnstun a couple of times so we could figure out the rules. The spanish on the cards is hilarious.

Right now there are six of us missionaries covering the Spanish branch here in the tri-cities. So to answer your question we only cover one branch. There is a lot of work to be done though. There's so many good people in that branch too. I hope that I'll get to stay here for a couple more tranfers.

You were right Amy. I wasn't jealous of you having to study for Chemistry. Haha. I don't know why but that reminds me that I got to direct the Matson's how to fix their computers. I'm not allowed to touch computers but at least it made me think. It gave me a good chance to stretch out my knowledge of computers.

Nice job on the Spanish mom! (Nosotros hicimos galletas con chocolate) It's exactly right. Estoy animado a comerlas galletas (I am excited to eat the cookies). I promise I'll speak Spanish when I talk to you on Christmas. I'm going to forward a separate email to let you know when we can call. I'll give a set time next week after I get your feedback.

I love you, love you, love you. Have a great week.

Elder Ben Arnold

P.S. By the way I have heard from Elder Burr. He's doing really well. I've also heard from Elder Cahoon. He's doing good too.

Benjamin

2008-12-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

(He refers to himself in this letter by Benjamin because I have taken to calling him by his full name since he left.)

Hello Family,

I'm sorry that this email has been so delayed. The computers were down at all the libraries on Tuesday. Then we had zone conference all of yesterday, I'll tell you more about that. So I haven't had the opportunity until today to email you.

I've been really bad at writing letters and sending you my pictures lately. This next week I'll do better though. Sister Matsen got me and Elder Johnstun some Christmas cards with our pictures on them. Which reminds me that we got the house all decorated this last week. We helped the Matsen's out with putting up the Christmas lights up outside and with putting up their tree. I was glad to be able to participate in the decorating.

I've been taking a lot of pictures recently so I'm excited to send them home. I'll probably just send them on an SD card since I've collected a lot of them (oops).
Thanks for keeping track of my money mom. By the way that big purchase from BestBuy was just a Spanish and English translator. Which I have been using all the time. I would recommend getting one for Amy before she leaves. I'll tell you what kind it is so you can check it out. I don't have it with me right now though.

It hasn't been very wintery here. The temperature is usually in the low 40's or high 30's. And it hasn't snowed yet. It hasn't even threatened to yet.

Benjamin would love some jerky and fudge! I don't know if Christmas would be the same without getting some jerky in my stocking. And I can't ever say no to that fudge.

I love how you're now a plant nerd Amy. Now you know what I felt like about computers. I've been so excited about your mission call. I've told everybody about it. They also all think it's really cool that we'll be able to speak Spanish to each other when we get back. And that we'll be back at almost the same time.

Jonathan, I want to see how you're DS works with cooking in the kitchen. That's something that I would love to play with. Tell me more about it the next time that you write.
Congratulations on your drivers license Matthew! I'm excited because I know you're really excited. How's school going? What's your absolutely favorite class?

The confirmation of Teresa went great! I was pretty nervous but I had prepared really well. The hardest thing about it for me was talking in the Tu form. As missionaries we don't do that very much since we're supposed to use the Usted form. Other than that though it was awesome.

The half-time show at a baptism is just the time while the people are changing after the baptism. It's only about fifteen minutes. Sometimes we watch the restoration as well.

This is my average daily schedule:
6:30-8:00 wake up, exercise, eat breakfast
8:00-9:00 Personal Study
9:00-10:00 Companion Study
10:00-10:30 or 11:00 Spanish Study

Then we go to our scheduled appointments or visit the people we planned to from the night before.We eat lunch at about 12:00.Then it's the same thing again. Going to appointments until dinner. Which is usually with a member. We're supposed to be done with that by 6:00.Then we continue working again until 9:00. Which is when we're supposed to be back to our house. We plan for a half hour then get ready for bed. Then we turn off the lights and go to sleep at 10:30.

I love you all so much,
Elder Ben Arnold (Benjamin)

Crepes and Jello...Reminders of Home

2008-12-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

Familia,

Yes!!!!! You got it Amy. I'm so excited. I would've jumped up and down and gone crazy but I'm in the library. I'll have to wait until I get out to the car. Haha.

It sounds like you've all had a pretty exciting week. Don't worry I didn't miss out too much. I had a really good week too. The highlight of my week was that we had Teresa's baptism just this last Sunday. It went perfectly. I got to give the opening prayer and do a half-time show with Elder Mortensen. All in spanish of course. Elder Johnstun did the actual baptism so I'll be doing the confirmation this upcoming Sunday. I'm a little nervous but really excited. I've already got everything I need to know down.

Blanca hasn't been baptized yet. We've had some things to work out. She will be though. I'll keep you posted.

I got your package this last week. I loved it. Elder Johnstun was in a different room when I opened it. When he came back in I had all the food neatly organized on my bed. I was so excited to cook some of my own food. I think it was that next morning that I cooked us some crepes. They were very good and it reminded me of all the times I made them at home. I'm also really excited to make the strawberry jello. That is one of my favorite foods in the whole world.

For Thanksgiving we weren't supposed to go out and proselyte so we mostly just visited some of our progressing investigators and members. We ate a really good Thanksgiving dinner with one of our investigators. She is married to a member and his whole family are members.

We haven't decorated our house at all. I think Sister Matsen will probably do that though. So I don't think we need anything.

On Christmas I'll be calling you. When it gets closer I'll tell you what time I'll call. I'm really excited to talk to you again.

I love all the things that you're doing with the DS Jonathan. Keep it up and you can show me all the things you can do when I get home. Until then, write me a letter and tell me all about it. Maybe you could make a movie of it so I can see what it looks like too.

Congratulations on your ACT score Matthew. Especially good job on your math score. I knew you had it in you. By the way I love seeing you wearing my clothes. It makes me feel like I contributed to a good cause. You can wear them all you want.

When that Click 500 manual gets done Dad I was wondering if you would send me one. I just want to see it in it's final state. That sounds pretty nerdy, huh. Tell me more about how that project is going. I love hearing about that kind of stuff. I'm a deprived Electrical Engineer right now.

I love you so much,
Elder Ben Arnold

Becoming a Better Missionary Everyday

2008-11-25T12:55:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

You wrote me a lot of great emails this week. I'm so happy to hear how everything is going at home. Life just keeps getting better here in Washington. I learn how to be a better missionary every day.
My Spanish is coming along great. I can carry out pretty good conversations with our investigators. I feel like I'm learning so fast. I'm even comfortable with talking to people at the door while we're tracting. Sometimes I don't understand what they say. Usually I get it though and can answer their questions. I love Spanish.

I don't know what we're going to be doing on Thanksgiving. We probably have a dinner with a member. The members we're living with are out of town for a week. We're also not supposed to go tracting so we'll just visit members and our progressing investigators.

We've had a lot of amazing spiritual experiences lately. We got prayed to somebody's door the other day. We were over visiting Blanca and she wasn't there. When we were leaving Elder Johnstun told me to pull over in front of this other house. When someone answered the door we saw a woman inside who was crying. They immediately let us in because they had just been praying for help and comfort. That was cool.

Another similar experience happened when we were driving to an appointment and we missed a turn. We saw a lady sitting on the curb who was crying into her hands. We parked in an adjacent parking lot and walked over to talk to her. She was still crying when we got there. We talked to her for a little bit and asked her if she needed any help. We gave her a way to contact us later if she wanted to. We feel like we'll see her again soon.

I think that Satan must be trying extra hard lately to hurt people. There are so many things going wrong in lots of people's lives. Look for lots of opportunities to help people. You may not be able to do very much for them but even small acts of kindness can make a huge difference.

We eat with members most of the time. We also have food back at our house. And occasionally we eat at fast food restaurants. We're very well fed. I'm never hungry, except for on Fast Sunday.
I would love a sweater and sweater vest for Christmas. I've borrowed one of Elder Johnstun's and one of Elder Mortenson's before. They are very handy.

What are you going to be doing for Christmas? Are you going to go down to southern Utah for new years eve again?

Work hard, and remember to read and pray every night.

I love you,
Elder Ben Arnold

P.S. Will you look up Josh's address for me? I think that Elder Johnstun ran into him one time here in Kennewick. We might could go on exchanges with him.

Happy.

2008-11-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

Querido Familia,

I got my package that you sent. I was thrilled to open it. You put lots of goodies in it for me. I already ate all of the candy and the dried apples. I keep forgetting I have the dried cherries otherwise they would already be gone. Don't worry about me being hungry. I am very well fed. I eat as good as I did in the MTC. Which means I eat three meals a day. And I'm always completely full at the end of every meal. I've probably started gaining weight again but I'm not sure since I don't have a bathroom scale.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is definitely the strawberry jello. It's been my favorite for as long as I can remember. That's why I would always try to get you to make it Mom. You were just too good at turning it back over to me. Haha.

The people that we are teaching are amazing. I'll tell you more about a couple of them in my letter. Most of the people that we talk to are very receptive and are willing to talk to us. Something funny that always happens is they're always willing to schedule an appointment as long as it's not today. And then when the day of their appointment comes and we show up they would again prefer to just reschedule it for a different time. I think it's hilarious. It's the same with giving prayers. Whenever you ask anyone to say a prayer they're always willing to say the next prayer, but when the time comes to say the prayer they always insist that we should pray.

Keep "stretching" Jonathan. I expect you to be taller than me when I get back. How much longer until you pass up Dad?

Don't worry Mom. I'm not lying when I say that I'm happy. I promise you that I am. I love being a missionary.

You're so close to getting your call Amy. Aren't you excited!!! I am. Don't worry, time passes really really fast. Just enjoy where you are now and things will move forward faster than you can imagine. Thank you for all of the many wonderful things that you have done for me. I love your letters and all of the fun creations that you come up with. I don't know what I'm going to do when you leave on your mission. Teach Matthew and Jonathan your ways. Haha.

Matthew, I've got someone for you to play pingpong with! It's my companion Elder Johnstun. He leaves on December 23rd. He'll find you sometime. I don't think he believes me how badly you would beat him so you'll just have to show him. Haha.

We use the pass-along cards and the pamphlets all the time. We have lots of them on our supply shelf. We also have plenty of Book of Mormons. We get all of them through the mission so we don't buy them ourselves. My two favorite pass-along cards to use is the one with the picture of the Salt Lake Temple and has questions of life on the back. The other one I like is the free Finding Faith in Christ DVD. With the picture of Christ on the front. They help a lot on doing a door approach and for doing street contacting. We use the pamphlets during our lessons to give the people something to look at as well as to study when we leave.

We got a new account and card for our money. That's why you don't see any activity in my bank account. We get more money at the beginning of every month. Mostly it's just for food but we can use it for anything missionary related. Like buying bathroom supplies also.

Having a wonderful week. I love you.

Elder Ben Arnold

It's Good to See Your Face!

2008-11-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

Holding a weight behind his head. Our skinny boy has gained some weight!

Ben's companion Elder Johnstun.

Playing basketball on pday. Looks like he is about to get dragged down.

Settling In

2008-11-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

Hola familia,

The library was closed yesterday. Since that's the only place we have to email we had to do it today instead.

I got the Halloween card that you sent. I absolutely loved it. I'm so happy every time that I get a letter from you.

Yesterday I played really hard. My whole body hurts really bad. I'm sore all over. Mostly my legs though. It's just so much fun to play basketball. I can't hold myself back.

Have fun at your concert Amy. I can imagine how excited you are to go. I'm getting very anxious for you to get your mission call. I can't wait to find out where you go.

I bought a frisbee this last week. We've played with it a few times in the morning. It reminds me of all those good ultimate frisbee games at Wavetronix. I've been trying to play tennis. We have a bunch of places to go play. We just need to get some rackets and I have to convince Elder Johnstun to go. He wants to go though so it won't be hard. I'll probably be really rusty.

I've taken a lot of pictures recently. Although I won't send them to you until probably next week. I'm also going to send you your birthday present mom. Then you'll have the opportunity to meet Elder Johnstun and get a tour of the place that I live.

I've been getting worse at writing in my journal lately. I still write every night just not a whole page. I'll have to fix that tonight.

My nerdy self is still in me. I have this constant desire to use a computer for more than just emailing. Don't worry though, I've never even touched a computer outside of using it for email. I'm always telling Elder Johnstun how a laptop could help make missionary work more efficient. Maybe that day will come. He thinks that's pretty funny.

We haven't been able to go to the temple yet. We get to go once a transfer. I think we're going either next p-day or the following. I'm getting pretty excited about that.

The days just keep flying by. I'm afraid that these two years are going to be over without me even noticing it.

You should send me pictures in letters or on an SD card. The internet is pretty slow here. And I don't have too much room in my inbox.

Have a good week. I love you.

Elder Ben Arnold

PS I can't remember the address of our house. So I'll just send it in the letter that I write.

BUSY! BUSY! BEN!

2008-11-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Sorry that I haven't been very informative yet. When it comes time to write you I forget everything that I wanted to tell you. I'll mostly just try to answer all the questions that you had.

I email here in the Pasco library. I can print out my emails. I don't know how much it costs. I get the first three for free though. It's not a big deal though. Probably only a couple of cents.

I don't have any gloves. I haven't really needed any yet but they will probably come in handy soon.

My companion, Elder Johnstun, is from Mona Utah. I will be sending some pictures home today with my letter from last week. That way you can see what he looks like.

We live with members, the Matson's. They're an older couple and they're awesome. I actually don't know our address right now since we just moved last Saturday. As soon as I get another letter through the mail I'll let you know what it is. I'll also take some pictures of our house so you can see what the inside looks like too. It's really big.

I'm excited to get your package Amy! I'm sad that they won't be coming in those cool bags anymore.

The weather has been just like Provo. I love it. It's starting to get a little bit cooler now. It doesn't rain very much. There's really not that much in the way of trees and plants. In that aspect it is also very similar to Provo.

We've been so busy. The first several days here in Washington we worked right through dinner. And didn't eat until 9:00 when we went back to our house. In those cases we would just stop by a McDonald's or something like that. Recently though we have had a lot of dinner appointments with members. The food has been really good every time. It's also not very spicy. They probably do that because they know that we're gringo's.

I didn't vote. I was planning on it. Then I forgot to send the letter to get my ballot. I've had a hard time remembering things like that lately. I guess that's why they give us planners.

We rode our bikes quite a bit at the end of October because we were out of miles on our car. We've been a lot better at using our miles efficiently though so we'll probably not need to ride our bikes too much.

I'll tell you about some of our investigators in the package that I send home. We're teaching a lot of people who are really prepared. It is so cool to be a part of this work.

I love you lots,

Elder Ben Arnold

Kennewick Welcomes the Spanish Elders

2008-10-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hello,
It turns out that we get a little bit of time to email today since we couldn't do it yesterday. I also didn't quite get the letter done yesterday. I should get it sent to you tonight. So expect it in a few days.

I have my new address but we're going to be moving on Saturday morning. That's kind of a long story that I'll tell you about later. When I figure out our new address I'll let you know. I would prefer it if everyone just sent mail to the mission office though. They forward it to the correct address. That way I won't forget to tell you my new address if I'm moving because it'll always just be the same.

My first week in the mission field has been crazy and awesome. Elder Johnstun and I have been working hard. We've had a lot of appointments and lots of referrals. Kennewick has never been opened to Spanish Elders before. We have a lot of people to teach. The only time I've been tracting (I think that's how you spell it) was when I was on exchanges with Elder Mortenson and Elder Becerra.

Our preparation day was really fun. We played a lot of sports. I finally got to run again. It felt so good to actually be physically exhausted.

I don't think I've told you, in our area we have a car. Since we cover a part of Pasco and all of Kennewick. We've just about gone over on our miles for the month so we're going to be biking all of today and tomorrow. I'm excited. That means that this morning we got to put our bikes together. That was a lot of fun. Everything seems to be working okay. Thanks for the new helmet. I've been needing one of those for a long time now.

I've been doing really good at writing in my journal still. I haven't missed a single day. And I always write exactly one page.

Lots of things have happened since I've been here. We've taught a lot of people. And they've pretty much all been in spanish. My spanish has been improving a lot. It's so cool to be able to understand what people are saying and to be able to talk back. I've still got lots to learn though. I wish I had time to tell you about every single person that we're teaching. That would take forever.

I got to look at my blog website yesterday. It is so cool. Thank you for doing that. I really liked the pictures on the side that would change.

Thank you for being such an awesome family.

I love you
Elder Ben Arnold

We Are Dying to Hear About Washington

2008-10-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

(Ben's pday was Tuesday but he didn't have time to write much of an email. Paper letter is in the mail and we are anxiously waiting.)

I don't really have any time to email today. Thanks for your emails. I got your letter mom and my bike and all of the bed stuff. I sent a letter today with lots more information about this last week.

I love you all so much.

Elder Ben Arnold

Washington Here I Come!!!

2008-10-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

I'm so excited to call you tomorrow morning. I don't know if I told you. I report to the travel office at 8:00. So we'll leave the MTC at about 8:30 probably. I can't say for sure what time I'll be able to start calling. It'll probably be about 10:00. My flight leaves at 11:20. So I won't be able to talk to each of you for more than about 10 minutes. That's not very long. I wish I had more time. Make sure everybody's cell phones are charged all the way so we don't get any calls ended early. Haha.

I really like the pillowcase from the Hall's. It's so cool. I've gotten lots of jealous looks. Maybe I should lock it up tonight. Haha.

If you can't tell I'm in a really amazing happy mood right now. I've been getting really really excited to go to Washington tomorrow morning.

The other members in my district all report to the travel office at 6:00. So I'm going to have to wake up early with them. Oh well. I'll also be in Washington before they are in Texas. It's funny how that works out.

I took some pictures with Elder Kuchar(Adam) yesterday. I found out then that he was leaving today at about 4:30. He has a really long flight. I'm excited for him, because I know what it feels like.

I'm sad that I didn't get to go with you on the canoeing trip. I can imagine how much fun it was. Those were some of my favorite trips. They were so relaxing. The more I think about it the more jealous I get.

We already said goodbye to one of our teachers, Brother Farrell. He's amazing. He told us all about his mission during our last class with him. Some advice he gave us was to take a lot of pictures. That's something I've been working extra hard on lately. If I can be diligent with sending them today you will get a whole bunch.

The latest that I'll get you my new address will be by next monday. Hopefully I'll be given the opportunity before then. I'll tell you all about my new companion and I'll send you some more pictures.

I hope that my calling card works. Just in case I think I'll bring a bunch of extra quarters. It would be pretty sad if I wasn't able to call you just because I didn't have a way to pay for the phone call. I wish that we could just have a cellphone. They're so much easier to use.

Amy, make sure you send me a letter and email the moment that you get your call. I keep getting more and more excited for you everyday. For now though, get a copy of Preach My Gospel. From what you've told me in your letters you would enjoy studying chapter 6. If you can find enough time study one section each day. I've found that I progress the most from studying when I study about the Savior and his Atonement. The progress is sometimes slow but keep it up and you will be amazed at how much you've learned when you turn around and look back.

I almost forgot to tell you about our teaching appointment this last thursday. It was awesome. I taught with Elder Sudol and Elder Jensen. We each taught about a third of the lesson. I was amazed at how much our Spanish has improved. It's amazing to be able to say most of the things you want to. And after having studied for only two months. I can't believe that we've already taught the four times in spanish in the teaching appointments. We truly have been blessed with the gift of tongues.

I love you all so much. Don't worry about me. I'm super excited and happy. Look for opportunities to love and serve each other.

Elder Ben Arnold

Getting Ready to Leave

2008-10-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

Hola familia,

I have way too much to tell you. I don't really know where to begin. This week has been really hard. I wrote you a letter yesterday with the permission of President Watkins. There's a lot more information in there about what's happened. Don't worry about me though. I'm fine.

I got my flight plans on Friday. I'll be leaving on Tuesday morning, the 21st, at about 8:30. My flight leaves at 11:19 and it arrives in Washington at 12:00. I'm assuming there is a time zone change. Forty minutes seems too short for that flight. I'm getting really excited to go. I feel a lot like the time right before I entered the MTC.

I'm sorry I haven't sent the SD cards back yet. It's hard to find time. I'll definitely get them in the mail today. By the way I really enjoyed the videos. I don't know if I already told you that. It's amazing to see you.

I'll call you when I get to the airport. I'm guessing we'll have the opportunity after we're all checked in and ready to go. I have the calling card in my wallet all ready for being used. I got the Delta skymiles number. I'll try my best to remember to give it to them. My flight is Delta so I will be able to use it.

Also there are fourteen missionaries in my flight group. All going to the Washington Kennewick mission. I don't know how many are English versus Spanish. That was really exciting to find out. Since my name is the first in the alphabet I was assigned the flight leader. I mostly just have to make sure everybody shows up and doesn't get lost. Fun, huh.

I did send the Tax forms that you sent me. That was kind of a funny experience. I was so excited that I got a package. And then I found out that it was only tax forms. I had a good laugh. I got them sent just a few hours after I got them.

Good job on getting your mission papers all finished Amy. I look forward to hearing about it. I get so excited about it whenever I tell any body about my family.

Keep up reading those scriptures to Mom, Jonathan. What makes it even better is when you start with a prayer. Ask for the spirit to be there. And you will learn so much more. I've experienced this so many times.

I loved the pictures of you and your date Matthew. You looked very handsome. I love the shirt and tie. You'll have to let me wear them when I get home.

Thank you all so much for your prayers. The power of prayer is real. I have seen so many prayers answered. And I feel your love and it gives me great comfort. Thanks for your prayer Dad. I really have needed that this week. Have fun with your new calling. You'll do a great job as the first assistant in the high priest group.

Thanks for taking care of my bike, Mom. I am actually really excited that I get to put it all back together again. It's been such a long time since I've been able to do something like that.

Love you so much,

Elder Ben Arnold