Serving All In Montreal: 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