Salut! How is everyone doing? I hope y'all had a wonderful week and found some way to share the gospel or give service to someone! This week here in good ol' Canada has been really fun and we had some really cool miracles happen.
Last Thursday we spent most of the day passing by peoples houses and checking up on them. We tried to contact two new referrals that we got but only one of them was home. Alice is super nice. She is from Côte D'Ivoire and is super accepting to us and the gospel. She is just kinda busy and wants any lessons to be with her and her husband. Kinda tricky but we are trying our best to find times that work for all of them. Later that night we swung by the chapel to check out a game night that one of the members set up! It was super cool and there were a few non members there. Members have such an influence on non members and other members.
Friday was amazing. We tried to go see a member who lives in that sketchy part of town where we almost got robbed last week. We thought ahead and decided to park a couple of streets away and walk so no one saw our car. 2 minutes after we parked this tall dude came walking up the street and kinda gave us a weird look and surveyed our car. He then walked around to the back and was reading our licences plate for a good two minutes and then walked back down the road that he came up and disappeared behind these other cars. We hurried and drove off and hid our car in a mall marking lot about a kilometer away and then walked. We didn't see anything while we walked there. After the lesson we walked out of the building and started heading down the street and Elder Halliday tells me to cross the street immediately so I follow but also check my surroundings and the little Latino dude is watching us from the widow of his apartment. Super creepy. We hurried back to our car and left for the next place which was on the other side of town. We were going to drop off a book of Mormon to a potential and then dip because we had something to do with the bishop but they invited us in and asked us all these questions about the church and the book. The whole family gathered around to here what we had to say. There was a mother with her 2 daughter and 2 sons from Zimbabwe. They are so cool. We gave them a Book in Swahili and they loved it but asked if they could get one in English. They love speaking Swahili but hate reading it. They all speak about 5 or 6 languages. Once one of them asked for an English one then a couple of the others did too. They are amazing. At the end of the lesson we asked if we could pray before we left and they said yes. After the prayer they clapped and told us how much they love us. They told us we were part of the family already and to stop by whenever. We gave them our information and they tried to read Elder Halliday's doctor scribble and then said, " Elder Halliday et Elder.... Je ne sais pas l'autre nom." I don't know if that was because of his writing but almost everyone here has trouble saying my name. It's kinda funny though because if they speak English then they can say it pretty easily.
Saturday was really fun. We had breakfast with the family Dumas. They are amazing. We had a full buffet breakfast and then played a little bit of street hockey afterwards. We then had some stuff to give to less actives and that took up most of the time. That night we played volleyball. We had all of the youth from the ward there along with a couple non members. Rachel is the daughter of our old ward mission leader and she and her friend Jorgon used to be super against the church but enjoyed the missionaries. We met with them a couple of times but always said that they love to talk as long as we don't try to get them to try to come to church because they wont ever come. We talked to them a couple of days before that and told them about an English ward just 25 minutes away and they said they would think about it. They came to volleyball and had a wonderful time.
Sunday was super cool! The two hour church is super nice but it comes with a lot of responsibilities. We need to make sure that everyone is doing their own personal studies during the week so that they know what is going on at church and so that they don't get left behind. This new change also puts an emphasis on family nights. These don't need to be strictly spiritual and I hope that they aren't. Make sure that y'all are spending one night a week as a family doing something fun and having something spiritual go along with it at the end that prepares y'all for the next weeks lesson at church. At church we had testimony meeting and it was great. Our old ward mission leader got up and bore testimony on his family because Rachel and Jorgon went to the English church on their own free will. It was super cool to know that they went and that there is a change happening in their hearts. You never know the difference you are making. That night we had dinner with a less active family. We helped watch the kids and cook because the dad was asleep because he works weird hours and the mom had back problems so we helped as much as we could while we were there. African food is soo good.
Yesterday was really cold. We went and got sushi with this single sister in the ward for lunch because it was her birthday. She is super nice and fed us well. She has two totally less active daughters that we are trying to help her with so it was nice to be able to sit down with her and run ideas around on how to help. We might be having them at volleyball this week. After that we went over to this other single sisters house to try to help her jump start her car. She just bought it from someone but apparently it has been siting for 6 months and the battery is completely dead. It was fun but we were freezing our hands off trying to push the cold metal car with our hands. That's our fault for not grabbing our gloves though. After that we did some street contacting as we walked to our church so we could finish a update document for our bishop so he can see the progress of the people we teach and the less actives we are working with. It was about -15° but with a ton of wind. Really cold.
We woke this morning to about 7 inches of new snow! It's just going to keep getting colder and snow more and more. I'm really excited for it. Well... that's about it for this week. Make sure y'all have family time this week and go to the temple. Je vous aime beaucoup!
Love Ya!
Elder Beckstrand
Here are some pictures of street hockey and a picture of us the other night when it got really cold and we had to suit up.
Sushi from the other day and a hamburger that I ate earlier today.
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