General and Zone Conference with Exchanges!

Salut! How is everyone doing? This week has been full of so many adventures and miracles!

Last Wednesday, I had exchanges with the awesome Zone leaders! We stayed here in Drummondville and I was with Elder Desvergez. He is awesome and is straight from France. He started his mission here so he had some people he wanted to go pass by that we haven't had really any success with. The first person we passed by was really not interested and almost called the cops on us. We decided to leave him alone and try someone else. Her name is Gabrielle. She is super nice but never really accepted lessons. We stopped by and invited her to the women's session of General Conference and she Agreed! It took some persuading she agreed and actually did show up! She has been a little more open to us since and hopefully will want to take some lesson here soon.

Thursday didn't start off the best. We were supposed to have a lesson with Luke but he wouldn't let us in. It was the first time that that has happened and we were getting a little worried. We just set up a different date to come back and hoped for the best. That night we had a good lesson though. We are now teaching the son of the woman named Judy that I mentioned last week. His name is Shane and is super awesome! We had a quick lesson with him and just shared a few of our beliefs. He liked what we had to say and asked us if he could come to church this week! Heavenly Father has prepared him to meet us!

Friday we started the day with some service for our ward mission leader. We moved sooo much wood from his shed outside to an indoor storage room. He has so much wood stored up for the winter. He is still getting more too. We ended up having two dinner appointments that day. Line invited us over for dinner so we tried to cancel our dinner appointment with a ward member but french is confusing and we ended up eating two dinners. I have pictures of both meals but here you never just eat one plate. You have to have seconds and desert. We ate soo much food. The members here are soo nice too. If you have missionaries in your ward, find a day to feed them dinner. They will love it and maybe invite someone they are teaching too. Keep doing member missionary work! 

Saturday! First off, I hope everyone who ran the marathon did great and are recovering well. I didn't realize how much I would miss running for 4 hours strait and being sore for days after. It was nice to watch Saturday morning conference though! 2 hour church!!! That will be so nice for everyone! But with that, make sure you are studying and spending time with family on Sunday! There is soo much I can say about conference but it will be better if y'all just go watch it or rewatch it if you already have! Also, after we got to the church, Luke showed up on his bike and stayed for both sessions! He is still doing great.

Sunday conference was amazing! WE ARE GETTING A NEW TEMPLE!!!  If you cant tell I'm a little excited about that. Also The prophet talked about the importance of the name of this church. Follow his council and please call it by its full name and not a nick name. Merci! We had 6 people we are teaching come to the church to watch conference! One of them was Shane. He loved all of it. In between the sessions, we all started eating the lunches that we had brought. I started talking to him just trying to find out more about his life and what he does for a living and we ended up talking a little about baptism! I decided to show him the baptismal font and tell him a little about where they change and little things like that. He then asked how that happens. He asked if he needed to set up an appointment or something like that to be baptized! We told him we need to teach him a little more but he could definitely be baptized! We then went and started a little reading group with the people who were still at the church. It was a really good day. 

Monday morning we had interviews with President Phillips because our Zone conference was changed from this Friday to yesterday. Sister Phillips talked to me about winter here and told me about how I'm going to freeze. It was really helpful, ahah, but then she told me about a few stores to buy good clothes so I'll be okay. That night we had another lesson with Shane! We found out he had already read the first 6 chapters of the Book of Mormon and tried to bring a friend to the lesson to listen in. He is amazing. We taught the Restoration and invited him to baptism and ,of course, he said Yes! He then invited us over on Thursday to have another lesson but he said he would make us some dinner to eat during the lesson. We must have been doing something right to be blessed with him! He is awesome!

Yesterday was Zone Conference and it was just as good as the last time. When people are gathered together for the same reason to follow Jesus Christ, the spirit has to be there. It was such a spiritual experience. We received some training on how to teach and ask inspired questions. We finished yesterday with a lesson with Kathy. It was also amazing. She is progressing so well but her smoking is holding her back. We are working on it. 

Thank you for all of the prayers that are coming my way! The work here is really good and hopefully we have some baptisms here soon! Watch or rewatch conference this week and don't forget to go to the Temple! I love you all and hope you have an amazing week! 

Love, Elder Beckstrand

Elder Desvergez and me with a Kitten

This is the two dinners I had in the same night. Both within about an hour. One is an old american meat pie and potatoes and the other is very french!

A cake that a member bought us for my birthday. 

The biggest church in Drummondville. It has a real bell tower that rings every Sunday.

A picture I took from the bridge. There is land there but it was soo foggy you couldn't see it.