The one where Josh came home.

This entry will be by me, Penny.  

Because of stupid Covid-19, Joshua, and all of the foreign missionaries had to be sent home from their missions.  So, Jake, who had just been out for a year was home from Guatemala. Riley was home from Mexico.  If you had been out for less than 18 months, like Jake, then you could choose to be reassigned in your own country, wait to see if your mission reopened or just be done.  Those missionaries who had been out 18 months or longer, like Riley and Josh, were considered DONE.  I honestly do not know of anyone who waited.  It took awhile for the church to get everyone home, quarantined for 2 weeks and sorted out before they could start reassigning them but Jake was called to finish his mission in Washington State, which he absolutely loved. Riley was home and everyone kept asking us about Josh.  When was he coming home?  Why wasn't he home yet?  Well, when Jake came home, No one was allowed at the SLC airport to get him except 1 person. He wasn't allowed to hug my parents or see anyone for 2 weeks.  My dad cried.  It wasn't a happy occasion for anyone especially Jake. I did not want that to happen to Josh. At our airport they weren't even allowing anyone inside to pickup the missionaries. You were to wait outside for them to come out of the building to you. It was INSANE!  The world was crazy!  I wanted to slap everyone. But that wasn't going to help Josh.  So, he and I talked about it and decided that we wouldn't tell anyone when he was coming home.  We just kept pleading the 5th and saying, "Maybe they figure that Canada is enough like the US so they are letting him finish his mission".  My plan was to just call everyone one night and say, "Let's drive out to the airport to see what missionaries are coming home."  Then we would be sitting there in our cars watching these parents running up to their missionaries as they walked out of the airport and all of the sudden Josh would walk out and everyone would say, "Wait, that missionary looks like Josh...It Is JOSH!"  Then they would jump out and run over to him and it would be happy and fun and not a sad, Oh sorry you're home, kind of thing. But, I also knew that Konnor would never go for that so I had to let him in on it so he would help me out. I needed him to say how cool it would be to throw Shayne off any scent of lying.

    So, I let Joel in on it and he was NOT happy about any of it.  He did not like having to lie to people about it and didn't think it would work. He thought it would blow up in our face and make everyone mad. I told him too bad, he had to keep it a secret because if he blew this for me I would be SOOO mad. And so it started...

    The first thing I had to do was convince Sophie to come down and spend the weekend so she would be here.  DONE!  Everything was going great. The day came and we were doing yard work, putting rock in on the side of the house. We had planned to work in the morning and then go to the airport around 4:45 because his flight was supposed to come in at 5pm.  BUT, I got a call that morning saying that he already missed his first connecting flight.  So they re-routed him to LAS VEGAS at 8pm!!!  Oi Vey!  So, instantly I pulled Konnor aside and we worked a new scheme.  I would tell everyone that since they did such a great job at the yard then we would reward them with ice-cream in Vegas. Now remember that we are right in the middle of the Covid lock down and Vegas is completely shut down.  So there really wasn't any place open to even get ice cream.  Konnor found 1 store that had a drive-thru still open and put on the performance of a lifetime to make it sound like the best trip in the world. Joel then called Dan Cluff to ask if we could borrow his 15 passenger van so we could all be in 1 vehicle. He was stoked! Then we all showered and left.  As we were pulling up I got a text from Josh saying that his flight was early.  I looked up and could see it about us.  I also just happened to be on Facebook and saw that one of Josh's companion's did get home to SLC and his parents posted a picture of a cake that said Welcome Home Elder Hall. So, I hurried and showed it to everyone and said, "Hey Elder Halls' mom just posted and he is on that plane! Let's go see him!"  Of course, Konnor and Joel said OK and Shayne and Sophie believed it because I was friends with all of their companion's moms.  So off to the airport we went!  When we pulled up to park we were literally the only ones in the parking garage. We got the very 1st stall and hurried in.  It was creepy to see a once super busy airport to a completely deserted one.  The only people we saw were that janitors and security guards.  Then the fam started to get suspicious.  I told them that if we just waited right where we were then they would have to come see us because we were by the baggage claim.  See how sneaky I am.  Meanwhile, Konnor and Joel went for a walk.  A couple minutes later they came back with Josh and Sophie said, "Wait, is that Josh?"  Shayne said, "No, it can't be. We are looking for Elder Hall not Josh!"  She was getting upset. It was hilarious.  And ever more so when Sophie and David took off running down the corridor towards him and gave him a hug.  It wasn't until then that she finally realized what was actually going on.  It was perfect! Thank you Konnor.  Thank you Joel. The reaction was exactly how I wanted it to be no matter where the location was.  Sophie and David were bawling.  Shayne still couldn't believe what was going on and Ben was glad to see Josh but wondering when we were going to get ice cream. 

    There were only 2 other people on Josh's flight and they took carry on luggage so the only bags that came through the baggage claim were Josh's.  It was incredibly weird to see the machine turn on, spit out two bags and then turn off.  We picked them up and walked out explaining everything to everyone as we went.  As we loaded Josh's bags into the Cluff's van another light went off in Shayne's head.  It was great to watch them put all the pieces together. We then had to tell them that they could NOT tell anyone for 2 WEEKS!  The were dying!  It was Spring Break and we still needed Josh to be on his mission as far as anyone knew so we could give the grandparents surprise Covid free hugs.  It worked for the first week and after that I got sick of hiding it and needed him to drive out to Brad's house to get something for me because I was extremely busy painting The Grip trying to get it ready to open it's new Green Valley location. So, Brad knew, then JoEllen knew. So we had to swear them all to secrecy.  Hard work to get everyone to lie for you but when it pays off...it really pays off.

Here are the results: 

WELCOME HOME JOSHIE! WE LOVE YOU!

The one with general conference!

Bonjour à vous! How is everyone everyone doing? We have officially started week three of quarantine. It has been pretty fun and crazy.

This week was pretty "normal" for now but we did have a few meetings which led help break up some of the routine. We had a meeting this week about family history and how that is such an underused tool that the lord has given us. In preach my gospel, family history takes up 2.5 while finding through our own efforts as missionaries is only one page. That definitely shows how important it is. There is a lot we can do in our family history and I encourage you all to try it out. Even those of you out there that say that your tree is full and there is no more work for you, it might be true all of those files are there and accounted for but go in there and add stories or memories about those people so those files turn into actual people. There are so many blessing that come from doing that. It can also prepare those who can go to the temple so you can have names to do when you are able to go again. 

General conference was awesome! It was such a spiritually high weekend and I'm not going to write a whole lot about it because there is too much to say but I highly encourage everyone who hasn't seen it, members or not, to go watch it. If you have already seen it, re read it or watch it again because there were so many blessings, promises, warnings given and so much doctrine taught. We are so blessed to have a living Prophet in our day. A modern day Moses or Abraham who receives prophetic revelation from God to guide the earth at this time. We will be so blessed and prepared for anything in life if we hearken unto what the Prophet and Apostles have spoken of. I was completely blown away with this conference and the spirit it had even through it was all through technology. I absolutely loved it! 

That's about it for this week. Hopefully we will get out more this week after this special fast on Friday! I hope you all join us in this, I know it will help. Keep up the great work and keep being awesome! Sorry for the short email but I love yall! 

Elder Beckstrand 

My indoor exercise.  

I ran 60 laps around the basketball court at the church which roughly translates to a 5k

The one with zoom zone conference

Bonjour a tous! I hope y'all are doing well and having fun in whatever state of quarantine you are in. Here in Montreal we have just hit our two week mark but don't have any signs of getting out of this soon. All of our missionaries from outside the US  and Canada went home this week though if they were able to get into their countries. That made us lose about another 17 missionaries but the rest of us are still holding on and taking care of multiple areas at once to make up for lost people. We are hoping to get a lot of missionaries get reassigned here this next transfer so we can get somewhat back to our normal areas. We did have some fun things happen this week however. 

Last Wednesday we had zone conference which was really weird because we had to do it over zoom video calls. We stayed home and set it up on our phones. It was really different from previous zone conferences but it was still really good. We talked about how to use this time to our advantage and how to continue the work from home. Some missionaries have shared some really cool miracle and blessing they have seen from this already. We learn from the Book of Mormon that people tend to turn back to their God when a hard trial comes into their lives and we have definitely seen that happen. I then also had a district leader meeting after which was new for me. Those meetings took up most of that day. 

We have also been getting a lot of referrals from other missionaries. The other day we got a call from some sisters down in Las Vegas who have been talking to this man named Mathew. We were able to get in contact with him and he was super awesome and super nice. He said his life used to be really bad but once things got terrible, he decided he needed God back in his life to help him and it worked. He now wants to share that with everyone else that God can help. We talked to him for quite a while and did what we could but the next day he got kicked out of his house for talking to us because his roommate hates God or anything religious. Mathew said he would rather be homeless and on Gods good side than to live in a place that doesn't allow him. It was such a proud moment of his faith and love for God. We tried to keep in contact with him but he had to find a place to live and we couldn't do much to help. We tried checking up on him a few times but then he ended up blocking us all on Facebook so that kinda ended it. We did however give his information over to the YSA elders so hopefully they are still helping him. On the bright side we did have an amazing call with another man we are teaching named Jean-ive. He is awesome. He read the first couple chapters of the Book of Mormon and called us because he had some questions.  It was about an hour long call but it was really good. He had great questions.

 

Other than that we haven't done a whole ton of stuff this week that's worth writing about. General Conference is this weekend so I hope y'all are going to watch it. It's going to be good. If you haven't started preparing for it yet, there is still time. Go read the first vision and pray about it. Then read some of the Book of Mormon. If you don't know where to start, I recommend 3 Nephi 11. It talks about when Jesus appears to the Americas after his death. Then pray about it! I know it's TRUE and I know that you can know for yourself as well. I love y'all! Have a great week and stay safe!

Elder Beckstrand

p.s.  We were just told that our mission is closing over 30 area's because we are not getting any missionaries this transfer like we thought we were.  So, hopefully when this is all over things will get back to normal or better because people will be humbled and ready to hear the gospel.  Transfers are next week so I will let you know what happens.

This is what you do to pass the time and when the Dial soap is on sale.

 

 

Our mission President told us to all go buy Hockey Sticks and some sort of fake puck to keep ourselves entertained.  They are all super cheap right now!

 More murals for Mom.

Some guy picking up trash.

The one with a full week of quarantine

Bonjour à tous! I hope that y'all are doing well and having fun during this crazy time in the world. 

This week for us has been interesting. Other than our occasional outing to play some basketball or go for a walk, we have spent the whole week in our apartment. We also got another missionary with us, Elder Harris from SLC, so we are now a trio. One of the elders in my district was sent home due to health issues and so his trainee has joined us. It has been an adjustment to stay inside compared to what I'm used to doing as a missionary but we are trying to keep up the work the best we can. Our work mostly consists of contacting members and teaching people through Facebook. It has been interesting. I have been learning how to use Facebook a lot more effectively. It has been fun in the fact that even when we are not personally with people still get to share the gospel through technology and the spirit is still there! It has been such a testimony builder to see that the Spirit really is there any time we share truth with people. His role is to testify so when we preach, he is there to be a second witness and speak to the hearts of those listening.

I've also seen the Hand of God during this time as well. He has been opening and softening the hearts of people all the time. He has also been revealing so much to the leaders of the church to help guide us all and protect us specifically as missionaries. I am so grateful for this chance I have to be a missionary at this time and the chance I have to stay here and continue the work. God has a plan for each and every one of His children and He will help us through this tough time. 

Sorry for the short email but I'll make sure I have more to write about next week! I love y'all! Keep being awesome and wash your hands!

Love, Elder Beckstrand

 More Murals for Mom
 
The Olympic Oval in Montreal
 

 

 ANOTHER MOUSE!  We live on the 2nd story and they climb up the winding staircase outside.  We left this one under the bowl for a day and when we checked on him he was basically dead.  So we tossed him off the balcony and it snowed that night so he was really dead that morning if he had survived the toss. 

 Basically dead.

 No one around