Berry, Benjamin T

Hey everyone, I'm here. This week, nothing too crazy happened because I was sick. It started on Wednesday. I got that little tickle in my throat. Then it progressively got worse, and Friday ended up being the worst day. It's hard being sick as a missionary because you can't do much when you're sick, and you can't talk to anyone. I talk to so many people daily, and it was limited so quickly. Members were still great and brought us meals, and the Spanish elders went on exchanges with my companion, covering both areas and handling our lessons and such. But I'm finally good again—I was beginning to lose my mind. On Sunday, we were out walking, and this guy wouldn't really talk to us, but then he paused and asked me, "Describe the process of photosynthesis." I was thrown off. My high school science teachers would kill me if they were here right now. I answered clumsily and halfway correctly, and he wasn't too impressed. He began to treat me like I w...

Yo, what's up! I'm still here. I realized after I sent out last week's email that I didn't add any photos—my bad. Also, that email was typed up so quickly, so that's why. This week was kind of exhausting but good. It felt like I was swimming underwater holding my breath—not sure how far I swam, but when I came up for air, I actually covered some distance. The work here in Madera has been going great. The Lord somehow manages to use dull, dollar-store plastic toys (me) to do His work. I’m a good plastic shovel, I guess. I remember always buying those toy animals or dinosaurs that "grow" in water, only for them to come out slightly bigger, curved, and extremely disfigured. I got scammed. It’s so easy to scam kids. This week felt like we ran into tons of good people! Normally in English work, people are pretty blunt, but this week they were all chill and kind. The weather is slightly cooling off, so everyone is in a better mood. I went on an exchange with the...

Yo, how's it going? Back at it. This transfer has been exhausting. I'm so tired all the time! I need a teddy bear or something. But the work is great! We had interviews with the President, and those are always amazing. I've talked to him probably a total of 40 minutes my whole mission so far. But I guess he trusts me or something—or thinks I smell. He also said I'm going to have another transfer here in Madera, which means I'd be here for about a quarter of my mission. I like it here, though. It was nice to see my family come to California for a week and "couldn't see me." I'm glad they had a good time, though. It's hot here in the Central Valley, so I don't blame them. It's been nice to see myself grow out here. Back at home, I just handled problems so much differently. But every day, there is different stuff going on out here, and it's nice to see how quickly the Lord is willing to help if we lean on Him. I feel like I've been...

Hey everyone, I've lived another week here in California. This week felt pretty quick but very good. Anyhow, enough rambling—let's get to it. The title of this email is what it is because we watched a car wreck in front of us the other day. It was the first time I've ever seen a car wreck. I'm talking lightly about it because no one got hurt. A lady ran a red light and hit another car that was going when it had the green light. They started screaming at each other and getting all hysterical. I hope their day got better. We've had a lot of good contacts this week, and now we're teaching a Hindi lady. It's very difficult to teach someone who has no background in or knows little to nothing about Christianity. But it is a fun challenge and helps us teach simply. We got to go to the temple and had several exchanges. The temple was nice, and it's always good to see the temple cat. The mission has made me like dogs way better than cats because cats aren't t...