Serving All In Montreal: April 2019

Easter!!

Bonjour!! How is everyone doing? I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter this last Suday! This week has passed by pretty quickly here. We had a really good week and found some awesome new people and we also got our transfer Calls!

Last Tuesday Elder Moellmer was a little sick so we didnt get ou ta whole ton but we did pray and we promised our Father in Heaven that we would go out for a little and try to do some finding and He blessed us because of our work! We knocked into this super cool couple who had never talked to missionaries before so we just shared with them who we are and what we do. He was interested and we left him with Restoration brochure and got a return appointment.

Last Wednesday we started out by helping the bishop again. He had a plumber come to fix the pipes but he accidentally fell through the dry wall into the basement. So we helped fix the hole and then filled the bathroom floor and walls with insulation. It was really nice and i was really glad that I was wearing long sleeves and gloves because insulation sucks ahah. After that we did some finding and found this really cool book exchange thing so we placed two books of Mormons in it. That was about it for Wednesday.

Thursday we started with district council and then went on exchanges with the Granby Elders. I got to spend the day with Elder Tarati from Tahiti. We found this dude named Jimmy who was super awesome! He was really open to hear the gospel because his family was all super believing but he wasn't and wanted to be. He asked us some good questions and then we left him with a brochure. He is awesome. We then did some more finding and talked to this homeless dude for about 20 minutes and then finished the day at the family Candias house eating and teaching them french.

Friday we started off with some studies and talked a lot about priesthood and priesthood blessings. We then talked about Patriarchal blessings and then ran to the church to request our ancestors blessing to read! Its such a cool thing to do! We then unexchanged and then did some more finding. We stopped at the mall to use the bathroom and the mall had this little petting zoo set up for Easter. It was pretty cool but also kinda lame ahah. They just had goats and bunnies and some birds. That night we had dinner with the Family Lucuix and then went over to the church to play volleyball. We had a pretty small group because it was Friday but no one could do it Saturday so we just did it Friday instead aha.

Saturday not much happened. We took a trip out to the farther cities in our area and did some finding there and some of our service for that day got cancelled for some reason. We then came back and did some finding around our house and found this really nice old couple from France. She was super nice and open to the gospel. She told us to come by some other time and she would make us some dinner. As we left we both looked at each other and said that we found our grandma here aha. She was real sweet. That night we were supposed to get our calls but there was something that happened and no one got their calls that night.

Easter! Sunday was great. We had an awesome sacrament meeting and one of the youth in the ward brought one of his friends that came to volleyball a while ago. He really liked sacrament and then we sat in the YSA class with him. We had a super cool discussion with him and he had a lot of solid questions. They youth did a really good job of answering his questions. After church we went and did some finding and talked to a lot of cool people who were outside playing as a family. It was really cool to see that even though some might not know the Gospel, Easter and Jesus still bring families together and bring joy into peoples lives! God is Great! We then had dinner with one of the Sisters in the ward and some of her Friends. It was a super good lasagna dinner and we had a very nice discussion on Easter and Jesus Christ our Savoir. After that we went back to the church and was able to call our families. It was so nice be able to talk to all of my family and kinda be there with them to share this wonderful holiday!

Yesterday was good too! Happy Birthday Pops! Hope you had a great day! We started out the day with an awesome youth activity that the bishop set up because no one had school or work. It was really good to see everyone gather and have good wholesome fun together. We then went to subway together and as we were eating, the youth started talking about their friend that came to church and how they could help him more. It was amazing. They youth here are amazing and will do so much good here. They came up with some good ways to help him be more interested and answer his question in the best way. Later that day we did some finding and found this really cool Quebecois lady who was really interested and really nice. She was a little busy with work but said we could come back at any time. We also talked to our friend Emmanise and her husband a little bit and they are awesome still. That night we finally got our transfer calls and Elder Moellmer will be staying here with Elder Guerra. I will be leaving to Sherbrook with Elder Arnold. I'm kinda sad to be leaving this place. I have been here for 6 months and it has become my home away from home but I'm excited for this new adventure in Sherbrook.

Anyway, That's all I have for this week. I hope you all have a great week this week and know that Your Father in Heaven loves you! I know this is really his church.

I love you all!

Elder Beckstrand

More service!

Bonjour y'all! How is everyone doing? I hope that you are doing well and are having fun! This week as gone by really fast and it was really good. We did a ton of service and saw many blessings come from it. It was awesome!

Last Wednesday we started off by helping our Bishop again with his bathroom. This time he had talked to a plumber and he said to completely gut the room so we did. We pulled up all three layers of wood flooring to get to the cross beams of the ceiling below us. It was really fun but Moellmer was scared of slipping off the beams and falling through the drywall so I did a lot of the work. As we were almost finished with the bathroom we got a text from the elders in Gramby asking if we could stay after our meeting the next day to help with a service project. Of course we agreed to help but we knew we would be a little tired ahah. After we got done we went out and did some finding and got about 5 solid return appointments. We also knocked into this super solid dude Named Reno. Our conversation started with me and him speaking in french but slowly turned into English with Elder Moellmer. It was really cool and we talked about a whole bunch of different things but focused on personal revelation and the fact that we have a living Prophet today. He was super interested. We left him with a brochure on the restoration and invited him to read it.

Thursday we had district council at Gramby and we had a really cool discussion on 4th Nephi. There is only one chapter but it is full of a ton of cool truths. After the council we helped them and some members of their branch move this really big and heavy medical bed. It came in about 5 parts and was just kinda weird. It was really good to be able to help them and get to know some of the members over there a little better. Once we got home we passed by our ami Emmanise. She is finally home from her trip in Haiti. She brought her mother back with her. We had a good little conversation with her and set a return appointment for later. We then passed by someone we knocked into about a week ago. His daughter opened the door and was just really curious as to who we were. We asked him if they had some time to meet with us that day and he said they were busy and his daughter asked him why we couldn't come in aha. He explained to her that we were missionaries that talked about religion and I added that we talk about Jesus Christ as well and her eyes just lit up with Joy and curiosity. It was sooo cool to see that in her. He continued to say that they were busy and kinda ignored his daughter a bit but told us to come back at a latter time and we could talk. His daughter will a great member of Christ church one day!

Friday was a little less exciting. We did have two really good lessons. The first was with our ami Diana. We were planning on having a lesson on the Restoration but we ended up talking about the Word of Wisdom. It was really good. The member we had with us was able to connect with her very well and helped her understand it better. It was a good lesson. After that we had a lesson with Patrick and he taught us about faith. It was really good. Everything in the gospel ties back to faith one way or another. There is a reason why it is the first principle of the gospel. So important! That night the ward was having a meeting on financial independence and Patrick showed up and stayed for it. It was pretty cool.

Saturday was one of the best! It was Cabane a Sucre! Its basically the peak of maple syrup production season so the ward comes together for a brunch were they get a whole bunch of food and then drench it with syrup. It was really good. Our jobs for it was to take food to the tables and then occupy the children while the rest of the food was cooking. I was just basically running around the church for a bit to keep the kids away from the food. We then all ate together and then played some Games. Elder Moellmer and I won the Jeopardy game. It wasn't too bad. We then ran over to this tiny town an hour away to help with some service. Same people we helped last Saturday too. We helped them clean some of their cabinets and lay down the flooring in the living room. It was really cool. The mother then asked us if we could pray with them before we left because that's what we did the last time. It was so cool to see her ask for that. We then went back to the church and played volleyball with our gang. Same big group of people we had last time. At the end of it Fordi asked us who was going to say the closing prayer and then we all decided it would be his friend that he brought. He agreed and said this beautiful prayer and thanked God for this group of friends that he can call family. It was super nice to hear that they were all feeling welcome there and liked it.

Sunday was kinda slow too. Church was really good and we had the bishop and his councilors give talks about the General conference. It was good. The rest of the day we spent finding and passing by our amis.

Yesterday we had a nice time to go finding and found 2 new people who seem awesome! We had a super lesson with Emmanise and our member friend William. It was really good and we talked about baptism. She didn't quite understand the reasoning on why we needed a baptism but then we read some scriptures and read some things from the brochure and she understood the importance of baptism. We also invited her to church for Easter and she said she would come! She is doing super well!

That's about it for this week. I hope you are having fun. Keep being awesome and try to invite someone to Church this to Celebrate Easter with you!

Love you all!

Elder Beckstrand

Cabane à sucre

Here is a video to explain it a little better.

https://youtu.be/J5fY_ewr1c8

Service

P-day (He hasn't explained much about this yet, but they rode the Metro to an Art Gallery)

Hopefully he'll explain it next week.

Service miracles!

Bonjour y'all! How is everyone doing? I hope that you all had a wonderful week and watched and enjoyed Conference! It was soo good! This week here was pretty good and we saw some pretty cool miracles!

Last p-day we had a little time to do some finding and we knocked into this awesome man that was wearing an Ironman shirt. We had a really good conversation about Ironman and he showed us some of his gear and this awesome tattoo he has. It's the Mdot on his forearm. Super cool. We also then met some cool people that were not interested but told us which houses to knock next because they would be more open. It was actually a cool little miracle.

Wednesday we helped bishop take his bathtub out of their house because it was super old and super heavy. After that we ran over to district council in Granby. It was really good. We then had a cool lesson with Fordi. He is slowly progressing and getting better. We are sending him videos everyday and trying our best to help him read and feel the Spirit of God. That night we had a nice lesson with our buddy Patrick. He pulled his name out of the church a couple years back but now wants to come back. We are helping him read and teaching him the lessons now too. It was really good. After that we came back and Moellmer made us this really nice chicken dinner. It was good.

Thursday not much happened but that day I had been talking to this guy over Facebook and he seemed really interested. After he got off of work, he found out that his grandmother had had a stroke and was in the hospital. He called us and asked if we could pray for him and his grandma. We taught him how to pray right then and there and had him pray for his grandma. It was super cool and I'm super grateful for the opportunity we have to use technology as missionaries. We then found out he lives just outside our area so we had to pass him off to some other elders to continue to teach and help him.

Friday was great. We started the day off with studies and then had lunch with the Chacon family. They speak perfect Spanish and french but want to improve their English so we help them practice during lunch. After that we did some finding until volleyball. We had to play Friday night because of conference on Saturday. We had a lot smaller of a group but we still had all of our non member friends join us. We were just missing members. We had a lot of people there that liked soccer so we played volley with just our heads and feet for the fist half of the time. It was super cool. I also sat out for a little bit to talk with one of the non members about the mission and the church. It was a super good conversation. We then played normal volley for the rest of the time and had a ton of fun.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at my favorite Dumas family's house. We had a huge breakfast and they cut my hair and then we watched conference together. It was super cool and really nice to be in a family setting for conference again. After conference we changed into our service clothes and headed an hour away to help someone move and clean their new house. I thought it was a member at first but it was just a friend of a member. They were super nice to us and we worked hard and quick. They were super impressed with everything we did. We got about two full week-ends worth of work done in about 3 hours. It was really fun and we even got to share a little about missions and the church with them. They are awesome and were kinda interested. This was such a big miracle for us because we decided to skip the second session of conference to help them and my comp wasn't super sure about it at first but we knew that we would be blessed by helping. We are going back again to help them and hopefully teach them more about the church. Priesthood session was super! I loved the talks that were given in that. Everyone should go back and read all the talks from all of conference.

Sunday went by really quickly. We started out by watching the second session that we missed and then headed over to a different members house to watch Sunday mornings session. It was really cool and we met about 10 of her friends that come from different wards around here. We then had a big potluck afterward. It was really good. We watched the second Sunday session at the church and then had a dinner with all of the youth and the bishop and his wife. It was really good. We all discussed the things that we learned from the conference.

Yesterday not much happened but we have some solid finding time and we met an awesome man who let us in and talked to us for about 20 minutes. We had set a goal to find three people who were interested and didn't find him until after knocking houses for 45 minutes. He is married with three kids and is very spiritual. We then kept knocking and found this woman who was really interested but was busy with kids so we left her with brochure and told her we would come back later. We ran out of time before we could find the third but we did then have a good lesson with Patrick again. We read from the Book of Mormon with him and talked about conference! We also then invited him to teach us about faith the next time we come by. I'm excited to see what he knows and how he teaches it.

That's all for this week Folks! Hope you all loved conference! Let me know which talk was your favorite and what you learned! Keep being awesome!

Love you all!

Elder Beckstrand

Mdot tattoo and Moellmers dinner

Snow and ice

Cleaning service

My snapshot of our conversation today with his new haircut. - Penny

Arabic and Spanish!

Bonjour! How are y'all doing? I hope you all had a great week. This week was good but the work was kinda slow. Here is a quick little recap of what we did this week.

Last Wednesday we helped our bishop completely tear out and gut his bathroom. It was actually nice and fun. We got to punch through the drywall and break up tiles and tear up the tile floor. That night we had a nice lesson with our ami Diane. She is open and likes to meet with us. She had a lot of questions about the churches stance on gay people so we brought a member from Montreal who is gay. They had a really nice lesson and they spirit was there! We also did some finding and ran into 3 awesome Arabic families and I said a couple words in Arabic and they let us right in and loved us. We then had to use google translate for the rest but it was still good.

Thursday we started off with some studies and this dude from New York walked into the church and asked us questions and we talked with us for about an hour. He said we could come over and meet his family that live here because they would like to speak English with Americans again. He also said he would take us on a tour of Montreal or Vermont on a p-day if we wanted too. He was soo happy to meet Americans again. We spent that day finding and then that night we had dinner with my favorite Mexican family. I read all of 1 Nephi chapter 3 in Spanish this week! It was awesome!

Friday was awesome! We had district council here and then did exchanges with the Granby Elders. I was able to be with Elder Hadden from Salt lake. He is super cool and we got some good finding in. We meet a lot of really nice people but also some not so nice people. We did some Facebook finding and called a couple of new people through Facebook. It was really cool. That night we went to go get dinner and saw the other elders walking around and it was kinda weird to see two people in church clothes walking around but then I remembered that that is what I look like everyday haha. That night Elder Hadden and I exchanged some stories from back home and it was nice to talk to someone who came from home aha. The Granby Elders then slept over that night.

Saturday morning we all had some studies together and then the Elders left. We were supposed to have four lessons but they all fell through so we got some more solid finding time. That night we had volleyball and we still had about 7 non members there but not as much members. Some of them were sick but we still had fun anyway. Not much else happened that day.

Sunday was a fast Sunday because General Conference is next week. I am so excited for conference and to be able to hear from our Prophet and apostles. We had two people come to church and a super less active dude come back too! It was awesome. After church we tried passing by our Arabic families and as we were walking up to the door, we hear him calling for us from his car. He motioned for us to get in so we did. Kinda weird to get in a random car with a random Muslim dude but that's missionary work. He had been reading the Book of Mormon we had given him but we talked for a little bit and he dropped us really hard. He told us to stop coming by but told us he respects what we do. We told him that we loved and respected him too and then left. We then went out to a little town and did some finding and passed by some potential people to finish off the night.

Yesterday was April Fools and we both forgot so nothing crazy happened. We helped bishop move some wood around the house because winter is finally coming to an end here and they don't need all the wood everywhere. After that we passed by our friend Ado and talked to her for a bit. She is doing really good. We also talked to her little boy and he is awesome. He is soo small and when he talks it is a mix between French, Creole and English. It is the funniest thing in the world. After that we had a good chunk of finding time so we walked all round the town and did some street contacting and knocking. We passed by so many houses and talked to a ton of people all for one solid return appointment. The miracles only come after the trial of your faith. We learn that in Ether 12. Read it. Its good. That night we ate dinner and did a little language study of Spanish because the one investigator we had to turn over to the Spanish elders. He is going to be baptized on the 20th! We are going to have a combined lesson with the other elders here soon so we can help encourage and lift him along the way. Its soo cool!

Anyway. That's about it for this week. Sorry its kinda short this week! Ill write more next week!

Love you all!

Elder Beckstrand

Volleyball