Serving All In Montreal: We elves have 3 main food groups...

Merry Christmas to everyone!! I hope all of y'all had a great day yesterday and took some time somewhere to be with your family and remember the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of our Lord, Savior, big Brother, and Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. This week for me here in Canada has been pretty crazy.

Last Thursday we started off with some service. Our bishop is in the process of moving houses and their new house has a extra section added on and they have talked to the mission office and the missionaries will be living there with them once they get it all set up and ready. We went and help them move three big trailers full of fire wood over to the new house. It was really fun. That took a good part of the day and we spent the other part doing some street contacting before dinner. We had dinner at the family Micheals house. They are an awesome ward family that is from Haiti. There son is not a member yet but we are teaching him. Dinner was really good and they invited us back over Saturday morning for kinda like a PreChristmas breakfast.

Friday was district council. We have a team of three sisters and a team of elders. Two of the missionaries are from France so we do most everything in French. We wanted to be nice so we bought pineapples for each team as a Christmas present. After that we went and did some more street contacting and stopped by this one man's house. He is from Switzerland and the French from there is kinda weird. Its another completely different accent. Not a ton happened that day.

Saturday was a different story. We started of at Micheals breakfast thing which was really good. Their whole family was there. We ate some good breakfast foods and then they gave us a present! They gave us both a nice blue button up shirt. It was super nice. After that we walked over to our friend Ados house. She is doing really good and still reading the Book of Mormon. Right as we were about to leave she asked if we were hungry. We never turn down food as missionaries because that's rude. She brought us this thing that looked like meat on a piece of thick bread. 3 of them. We asked and she said it was pig but it wasn't cooked or grilled. We asked how it was made and she said it was kinda just in the stew so kinda boiled but not really. We didn't ask any more questions and just started eating it. The first bite I took was half raw pig meat half small bones. I want sure what was in my mouth and I didn't want to check so I just chewed and swallowed while trying not to throw up. The second bite I took was of the stuff that I thought was the bread. It was really just raw pig skin/stomach with the hair still on it. It was so much worse than the first bite. I ate as much as I could as fast as I could to get it over with. There were three big 4"×4"×4" cubes of this. I ate all of it except for the skin of the last one. I picked it up with my fork and almost threw up so it put it in a napkin. Then wrapped it with a second napkin and put it in my pocket. I graciously thanked her for the food and then waited for elder Halliday. He thought I finished mine so he wanted to finish his. He almost did and then stopped the last few bites. As we were walking away, I pulled out the last piece and showed Halliday. We had a good laugh about it and then he threw up on the side of the road. After that we got slushies to cover up the flavor and then went and played volleyball. It was so gross. Definitely the worst food I've ever eaten.

Sunday was kinda chill because we were both super sick. After church we walked about an hour out to this family that we are teaching to check up on them because they didn't come to church. They were so happy to see us and let us right in. we talked to them for a while and set up some more return appointments. About 10 minutes down the road back, this car stopped by us and it was him. He took us to get some lunch because we hadn't eaten yet and he felt bad we walked all the way to him. We had an awesome lunch with him and talked about the gospel the whole time. Super cool Christmas miracle.

Monday we took more pineapples and pictures to our friends and ward members. We then went with a ward member to give presents to a ward family who has been struggling for a while. It was super cool and nice to help them. We then spent the evening with The Vandais family. They are super cool. We had dinner with funeral potatoes and ham. We then had a family home evening with them and read Luke 2. It was super nice. We then went home and I opened my Christmas onsie and it is amazing! Thanks Mum.

Christmas morning started really early for us. As we were getting ready for bed Christmas eve night, Elder Halliday accidentally kicked my bed frame and cut his leg wide open. About 5 inches long and deep. I used my lifeguard knowledge and what I had with me and wrapped it up the best I could with a little gauze pad and a ripped up pillow case and convinced Halliday to go to the Hospital. I drove him up to the hospital after we called a few people. We got to the ER at about 00:05 on Christmas. We waited about half an hour to be seen by a nurse and she just wrapped it up and told us to wait for the doc. At about 04:10 we finally get called into a room. During that time we talked and helped anyone we could in the waiting room. We let a couple of other people in ahead of us because they needed it more than us. Everyone loved us and we even got to share the gospel with a couple of other people. Right before we got called in a lady came back to thank us for letting her pass us because she got to see her grandmother one last time before she died. Super sweet experience. We then went into the room. The nurse came in and cleaned it again and prepped it for the doc. He came in and numbed it up and then disappeared for half an hour. He came back and we talked to him while he stitched up Halliday's leg. He was kinda interested and really liked what we do as missionaries. He ended up getting 7 stitches. By the time we got back home it was about 06:15 and we crashed hard. We then woke up at about 11 and ran to the church to talk to y'all! We then spent the day with the Family Dumas and sang, ate food, played some games and had fun. They gave both of us a big box of food for Christmas and it was perfect.

That's about all I have for this week. I love you all so much and I am praying for all of you. Keep up the good work and don't be afraid to help others or share the gospel in some way this week.

Love you all!

Elder Beckstrand

Halliday's leg and my amazing pillow case wrap job.