Serving All In Montreal: Son of a Nutcracker

Bonjour a tous! How are y'all doing? It feels like its been forever mostly because today is Wednesday and not Tuesday. The next few p-days will be on Wednesday because of Christmas and new year. This last week has been crazy but super fun.

Last Wednesday we passed by our ami Ado and her husband. He was super nice and talked to us for about 15 minutes before he left for work. He has had a change of heart since the first time we met him. Not much else happened that day.

Thursday was Zone Conference for Christmas. We got up and left early to get to the building on time because we are the farthest area away from where we were meeting and because of traffic we were still late. We had a training on hope and faith and how they are completely different but work together at all times. You can not study one without the other. Faith is knowing that something can happen while hope is knowing that something will happen. Sister Phillips then gave us Gifts. She gave us all these books that have Canada Montreal Mission on it along with a hand carved pen they got from Africa. Super cool. They also gave us custom made Temple recommend holders. Sooo cool. If you don't know what that is ask a Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. They can explain it. After conference, we went on an exchange with the zone leaders. I was with Elder Myers. He is super cool. We went out knocking and found this mom and her son who where pretty interested. The mom didn't accept a book of Mormon but her 21 year old son did. They were so open we went right in and taught them about the restoration.

Friday we re-exchanged right before District council. It was the last one for the transfer and our District leader was actually the First elder I met when I got here. He used to be the Assistant to the President. We took some pictures together after. That night we had our ward Christmas party. It was soo good. We had over 110 people there and soo much food. Everyone was there and it was like one big family. The youth all sang a song and then a couple of other members did too. They then turned on some music and everyone all got up and danced. Too bad it was already 21h00 so we had to head home for the night. We later found out that there were people there until 23h00. We had quite a bit of non members there and some dude that know one knew. He was really open and we talked to him and ended up giving him a book of Mormon.

Saturday morning we went and did service with all the young men to an old ami. He now has cancer and cant do a lot so we went to help him cut wood. We ended up cutting 2 years worth without even knowing it. He was so grateful and happy we came to help. When we were done we went with Maxime to get sushi. I have never had sushi before but it was great. I ate over 25 things of sushi with other stuff too. soooo good. That night we played volleyball like normal and it was just as good as other weeks. Right after we got our transfer calls and we found out that we were both staying another transfer. The ward was really excited to have us for Christmas. We are completely booked for the 24th, 25th and 26th. I'm so excited. Christmas is such a special time of year and a great opportunity to serve others like the ward is serving us. Find some time this week to serve your family and then someone else in need who doesn't have much of a family or some one in need this week. Please. It will not only help them but it will help you as well.

Sunday was crazy. Church was normal. We had some really good talks on member missionary work and on Christmas. Some of the best talks I've heard on my mission. We also dropped some food off to this sick member that morning and it was really nice to see how happy it made them just to get some food in their time of need. After church we somehow ended up driving up towards the "mountain" here. Not really a mountain, more just like a big hill. We found ourselves inside this really old house. We learned that it was one of the first houses build when Canada was founded and now is a historical site. The door itself was 4 inches thick of wood and could only be opened from the inside. We had been talking with one of our amis and she said we could come to one of the prayer nights that she goes to every once in a while. There were about 50 people there and it was more of a cult than anything else. If you have seen the movie Clue, it was soo much like the movie it was spooky. It wasn't too bad but I don't think we are ever going back ahah. Our ami did say she wants to help her friend who is a less active member of our church start coming back to church and she might be coming too so that was the positive that came out of that experience.

Monday we passed by quite a bit of potential amis and a few members. Not a ton happened but we did end the night at bishops house. We had a family night type thing with dinner. We spent some time talking about the ward and ways to help certain people. I then helped him with a couple questions he had about his phone. We then played with an app that quizzes you about your knowledge of names in the book of Mormon. It was super fun. Don't underestimate the power of Family nights and the book of Mormon. It can all be super fun and easy.

Yesterday was transfers so we spent some of the day making sure that everyone in our district was safe and transferring well. Elder Halliday is the new District leader. We also passed by an ami who usually call us to set up appointments or lets us know during church. She doesn't like pass bys very much but we felt like we needed to so we did. She was soo happy to see us and invited us to come back in a couple days with another brother from the ward to have a lesson with her because she was really busy when we were there. We finished the day with some poutine. That is always a good way to end any day.

That's all I have for this week. I hope you all have a great week and I'm super excited to talk to all of you next week over skype!!

Love You!

Elder Beckstrand

Thank you sooo much for these gifts! They are super nice!