The Three Amigos!

Bonjour! I hope y'all had a wonderful week wherever you may be because we sure did here in Canada. This week was full of crazy surprises.

Last Wednesday it showed all day long. We started our day off at the church doing some studies but we also wanted to shovel the snow off the walk ways so no one else had to. It had already snowed about 4-6 inches so I pulled out the churches snow blower and got about half of it done. Elder Halliday wanted to try it out so I taught him how it worked and let him have a go at it. After that we went to go visit the two amazing families that we are teaching right now. The family Neira is from Peru and Myra and her family are from Zimbabwe. They are both amazing families that have accepted us as their own. We taught them more about the Book of Mormon and told and promised them that they will be blessed as a family if they take time to read it. That night we went to ward council at the church and the work we had done with the snow was completely done because it just kept snowing and filled in what we moved.

Thursday morning we got a call from the Amazing President Phillips. He asked us what our day was like and if we were a little flexible to move things around and that he had a surprise for us. We agreed and set up times to have interviews with him at the church. Before President got to the church we passed by a few people including our ward mission leader for a little update on us and how our amis are doing. Frere Renaud is awesome and cares for us just as much as president does. We found out that he might be moving here soon so that is really sad. They are amazing humans. After that we head to the church and find president has another elder with him. Elder Furness. President told us that we would now be a trio!!!! We then had interviews which were just as fantastic as always. Afterwards we took Elder Furness back to the house and helped him settle in a bit. He is from Taiwan and was called as a Mandarin speaking missionary. He has spent his 18 months here already in English or Mandarin. This is his first French area so we are helping him with his French. He has been studying French his whole mission so he is already pretty good. 

That night we visited the Candia family and helped them with their French after we had some dinner with them. It was really nice because elder Furness can speak Spanish more fluently than us so translating and teaching was a little easier.

 

Friday morning we had district council with the Zone leaders and that other sister team that wanted to be there too aha. It was fun. We went off on exchanges after that and it was Elder Furness, Elder Gomez, and moi meme. We came back up to Mont-saint-Hilaire and did some preaching. We tried to pass by a couple of people but not a ton of people were home. We ended up knocking quite a bit and found a few solid potential people. None of the potentials were Quebecois which is kinda funny. There were all immigrants of some sort so we used that and looked for them more. Elder Gomez has learned a couple of phrases in many different languages so when we met people who spoke either Swahili, Lingala, Arabic, Creole, we could get a connection with them. In D&C 90:11 it says, “Every man shall hear the fullness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language, through those who are ordained unto this power." We are those who have been ordained and everyone is more open hearing their own language. That night we tried to pass by Douglas, one of our other amis, he didn't answer our call so we assumed he wasn't home because he will usually will answer. We decided to go get pizza instead. Two minutes after we walked in, Douglas walked in behind us. We sat and talked with him while we waited for our pizza. At this point in his life he believes in other things and does not like the church and has some big misconceptions about it that he isn't willing to change. He also kept calling us Mormons or the Mormon Church so we corrected him every time he said it. Eventually Elder Gomez cut him off mid sentence to explain it to him. He didn't agree with our name and said he likes Mormons better because we don't focus on Jesus Christ so why call us after him. We Dropped him. We tried hard to have him read in the Book of Mormon and see for himself that it truly is Another Testament of Jesus Christ but he wont read. Kinda sad but it's not his time yet. 

Saturday morning we unexchanged and then passed by a couple of people that we haven't seen in a while. We then visited a less active who was at the hospital for the last 4 months to see how she doing. She is a lot better but has a couple things she needs done at her house so we helped a bit and set up other times to come back and help. We played volley that night and had about 16 people there. It was soooo good. A good amount of less actives and non members too. 

Not a ton happened on Sunday.

Yesterday we got up and left early because they needed to fix some things up in our bathroom. After some great studies we passed by our amazing buddy Robert at his fish shop. His buddy there asked about us so we got a cool little teaching opportunity. He really liked us and what we do. We then dipped to another buddies house. Léo is cool but wasn't super interested anymore so we might try again later and help him cut some more wood for him too. Later in the day we had a member call us and tell us that this nice store in the mall is closing and has really nice deals on bags and stuff because we complemented her once on her bag. We took a quick trip there to see what was going on. We ended up all getting ponchos that were kinda similar. They are all made from alpaca fur and made in Ecuador. This dude brought them here and tried to have a store but is going out of business now. The ponchos were a good deal so we took em. That night we joined the youth and some non members on a short hike up the little mountain here. We all wore our ponchos and it was really fun. Yesterday we also were going to have a lesson with our buddy Fanel but we got news that he just moved to a different city. Super sad but we are going to find out if he is really there and have the missionaries get with him because he is still on date for baptism and we don't want him to get lost. 

This week was kinda crazy here with a couple of amis being lost, many others being found, new comps, interviews and ponchos! Being in a trio is so much fun and the faith of three working together is so great. We are seeing miracles. I hope y'all are having a wonderful week and take some time to go to the temple or give some service to others. I love y'all so much. Have a great week.

Love Ya,

Elder Beckstrand

Trio and street contacting aftermath

Snow!

Pics from the mountain with my St. Gezzy poncho and the giant cross.

Trio and more snow

Exchanges